Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
“Sweet dreams, kid.”
Early morning mist rose through the Georgia pines like the souls of the dead ascending from their graves on Judgment Day. The lonely jackhammer knock of a woodpecker echoed somewhere in the distance. Daniel and Trinity rolled slowly along the muddy road, windows down, Daniel scanning cabins on the left, Trinity the right.
“Thought we s’posed to be hauling ass,” said Trinity.
“Keep your eyes peeled, I can only watch one si—hold on…right there, perfect.” Daniel turned into a driveway and stopped behind a battered, once-green GMC Sierra with about twenty years on it. The cabin had no electricity, much less a satellite dish. To the right of the cabin, a pile of freshly cut firewood and an axe sticking out of a tree stump. Tall rose bushes bloomed fiery red against the cabin’s wall, and a massive Cracker in faded denim overalls stood cutting back excess leaves with a twelve-inch Bowie knife. He looked to be in his mid-thirties. He turned and stared at them. He didn’t smile.
Trinity said, “From where I sit, this is about as far from ‘perfect’ as we are from Seattle. I say we back the hell outta here.”
“Stay in the truck.” Daniel got out slowly, closed the door. To the man with the knife, he said, “Good morning—”
The man let out a humorless snort. “Was good, until you showed up. Round here, folks get gutted for trespassing.”
“Sorry, I, uh, didn’t see a sign posted.”
“’Round here, don’t need a sign.” He gestured to the road with his knife. “You girls best be on your way.”
Daniel raised his left hand and reached for the door handle with his right. “No problem, understood.” He opened the door of Trinity’s truck. “Before we go, can I interest you in swapping trucks?”
“Huh?”
“Straight swap, our truck for yours.”
“What am I gonna do with a pretty toy like that? I look black to you?”
“Your Sierra’s worth—what?—maybe five, six hundred bucks? But fresh tires, so I figure you’ve kept it running OK.”
The big man stepped forward, holding the knife at chest level. “So?”
“Our truck’s practically new, decked out with all the options, worth fifteen or twenty times as much. Call it a pretty toy, but it’s also a pretty valuable toy. You can sell it, buy a good solid truck with plenty years left in it, and pocket some serious cash in the process.”
“Can’t sell it if it’s hot.”
Daniel held the man’s eyes. “It’s not.”
“Cross your heart and hope to die?” The man shook his head and snorted. “Big City faggots always thinkin’ we just a bunch a gullible morons up here.”
The blade rose, its sharp tip now pointing directly at Daniel’s chin. Electricity hummed through his nerves, his fingertips tingling. In an instant, his right foot slid back into position, weight shifted to the balls of his feet, and his core muscled contracted.
“Keep waving that blade around, Clyde, and I’m gonna get the sudden urge to defend myself. Which would look a lot like me breaking your wrist, dislocating your knee, and shoving that pretty knife up your ass.”
It stopped the man cold. The blade came down a few inches and he stood with his mouth half open, probably trying to decide which of two possibilities was more likely to be true. Either Daniel was insane, or…
“Don’t make me prove it,” said Daniel. “And you’re the one making assumptions: talking about big city faggots, when I never said shit about mutant inbred hillbillies.” Then, softening his tone, “Now I came in peace to make you an offer, and the offer still stands. The Caddy’s not stolen, but for the sake of argument, you could strip it and sell it a piece at a time. The catalytic converter alone would buy two of your trucks. So you wanna make a trade, or what?”
The man sucked air through his front teeth, and the hand with the knife dropped down by his side. He walked slowly to the back of Trinity’s Escalade and pointed at the tailgate with the tip of the knife and said, “C’mere.”
Daniel walked back, stood beside the man, and looked at the bullet holes put there by Samson Turner. One in the bumper, four in the tailgate, and one more, higher, on the pillar to the left of the rear window. Three inches to the right, and it would’ve exploded through the back of Daniel’s head. Three inches. The thought turned his groin to ice.
The man said, “Who’s chasin’?”
Daniel shrugged. “Wish I knew. But we can’t hang around, so the offer expires in ten seconds. Yes or no?”
The windshield was stained nicotine yellow and the cab smelled like cigarette smoke and body odor in equal measure, but at least the redneck had taken care with maintenance. Daniel checked the oil as he topped up the gas and found it clean, recently changed. Brake and transmission fluids both fine, tire pressure bang-on. It would get them to New Orleans and beyond. And an old pickup on these roads was like a yellow cab on the streets of Manhattan or a Vespa in Rome. It would help them disappear into the background noise of the place.
A couple miles down the road, Trinity said, “Way you talked to that boy…” He let out a whistle.
“We needed the truck.”
“Gotta call bullshit on that, Danny. That was about way more than a truck. I mean, how badly you itchin’ to die, exactly?”
Daniel looked squarely at his uncle. “Don’t think I’m itching to die, not really. But I do like to keep death within spitting distance. Helps me stay sharp.”
“Probably not healthy.”
“Coming from you,” Daniel smiled, “that should probably worry the hell out of me.”
They stopped in Calhoun, and Daniel ducked into the Piggly Wiggly for supplies. On the way out, he stopped at a payphone by the front doors and fed all his coins in.
She answered on the first ring.
Daniel said, “Julia, it’s me, I—”
“Jesus Christ! Where the hell have you been, why didn’t you call me?”
There was no mistaking the tremor in her voice.
“I am calling you. Sorry it took a while.”
“For the last twenty-two-and-a-half hours, I thought you were fucking dead, Danny. Long time to find a payphone.”
“Look, I’m glad the idea of my death upsets you, but I’m sorry you had to be upset for so long. That’s the best I can offer. We had to lay low.”
“Hold on.” The phone clunked in Daniel’s ear as she put it down. A few seconds of silence, and she came back with her composure intact. “Trinity’s alive?”
“Not for the record.”
“I see.”
“We need to put some miles behind us. I promise when it’s time to resurrect him, you get an exclusive.”
“OK. I’ll sit on it for now, but I need to be able to reach you. Area code 706…where are you, Columbus?”
“No, and we’re not staying put. I’ll get a pre-paid cell, call you with the number. And I need a favor. We give ourselves away if we use any plastic, so I need you to wire us some cash.”
“Um, wow…” There was a pause on the line. “Yeah, OK, fine.” A longer pause. “You realize I’m breaching my professional ethics with this. We’re supposed to cover the story, not be the story.”
“I’ll never tell.” Daniel smiled to himself. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“It’s not a joke, Danny. It’ll come out eventually, and my journalistic credibility will go down the toilet.”
“Yeah, that would really suck for you. Meanwhile, we’re running for our lives.”
“Don’t be a jerk. I said I’d send it. I just want you to know what it’s going to cost me.”
“OK, but what do you want me to do about that, other than feel guilty?”
“I want you to stay alive.”
Atlanta, Georgia…
Just four blocks from the Governor’s Mansion on West
Paces Ferry, a sober stone mansion stands on a corner lot, surrounded by an eight-foot-high, spiked iron fence. Any casual observer would note the electronic gates across the driveway, the intercom and CCTV camera mounted on a steel post outside the gates, and the expansive lawn, green as the skin of a lime and trimmed golf course short. A closer inspection would reveal cameras mounted under the front porch overhang, high-density xenon security floodlights bracketed under the eaves, and razor-sharp holly bushes planted beneath the ground-floor windows. But unless you knew they were there, you’d never notice the bulletproof glass behind the double-hungs or the gun-port flaps beside each window.
A white stretch limousine pulled to the gate and the driver’s window came down. The driver pressed the intercom call button. A man’s voice said, “Confirmation code,” and the driver punched it in on the keypad. The gates hissed open, and the limousine pulled to the top of the long, circular drive. The driver cut the engine, got out and opened the back door, and led Father Nick inside Southeast Regional Headquarters of the Department of World Outreach.
“Nick, good to see you.” Conrad Winter stood in the marble vestibule with his hand out and a smug grin on his face.
“Didn’t know you were stateside.” Nick gave a curt handshake, thinking: This day is getting better by the goddamned minute.
“Our resources are at your disposal,” Conrad raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture, “but it’s your show. I’m simply here to observe and consult and offer assistance in any capacity you may need.”
It was a lie, of course. Conrad was Nick’s counterpart at Outreach, of equal rank, and was not here to play second fiddle. Cardinal Allodi had sent him to be Allodi’s eyes and ears and to take control of the operation if Nick faltered.
And they both knew it.
“Fine. Bring me up to speed, what have we learned?”
“They both got out alive,” said Conrad, walking toward a stairwell at the back of the hallway. “Command center is downstairs.” At the bottom of the stairs, he slid a card key into the lock, a green light flashed on, and the thick steel door buzzed open.
The room was about thirty feet square. Young priests sat at computer stations, tapping keyboards, reading screens. Others sat at desks, talking into headsets, working the phones. A massive electronic map of the southeastern United States dominated one wall. Another wall was covered with flat-panel monitors.
Nick knew of World Outreach’s high-tech command centers, but he’d never been inside one before. He understood the Church’s need for such operations in a troubled world and for men like Conrad to run them—but he wasn’t looking forward to this.
Conrad signaled to the young man on the nearest computer and said, “Bring up the video.”
Black-and-white security video of a parking garage now came up on a monitor, the screen divided into four segments, each showing a different camera feed. Conrad said, “The underground garage at Trinity’s TV studio.” In the top-left segment, Daniel and Trinity burst into the garage from a stairwell door and crossed out of frame, now entering the bottom-right segment, where they approached a limousine and Daniel tugged on the driver’s door handle. From the high angle, there was no way to see if anyone was inside the limo, but the door didn’t open. They ran out of that frame and into the top-right segment, where they got into an SUV, Daniel behind the wheel. Back in the top-left segment, the stairwell door flew open again, and a black man in a suit ran into the garage. The man had a gun in his hand. He adopted a shooter’s stance and unloaded at the back of the SUV as it tore out of the garage.
The young priest paused the video and said, “It doesn’t look like either one took a bullet. And no gunshot victims at area hospitals match their description.”
“Who else has seen this?” said Nick.
“Nobody, sir. We hacked into the security system, downloaded the video, and wiped the drives. The police haven’t even seen it.”
“Good. What do we know about the shooter?”
The young priest tapped on the keyboard, and an enlargement of a Georgia driver’s license came up on another screen. “Samson Turner. Fox guarding the henhouse, as it were. Trinity’s head of security.” Turner’s concealed carry permit came up on the screen, along with his army discharge papers, PI license, college diploma. “Former Special Forces, Silver Star, honorable discharge, now works in executive protection. Employer is one of the best firms in the field; clients include Fortune 100 CEOs, A-list Hollywood actors, blue-chip law firms, you name it. Argos Security, headquartered in Nevada.”
Nevada. Of course—Trinity’s sports predictions… “The gaming industry,” said Nick.
The young priest brought incorporation papers for Argos Security up on another screen. “That’s what it appears. Argos is owned by a private, numbered company in Grand Cayman, but we know the same holding company also owns Paradise Beach, an online casino based in Antigua and Barbuda.”
“OK. What do we know, after they left the garage?”
“Nothing yet, sir. Both their cell phones are offline.”
“Of course they are.”
“We’ve got a surveillance team in place at Trinity’s house—”
“Waste of time,” said Nick. “They’re not going back to his house.”
“We’re also monitoring for any bank card use—debit or credit—but there hasn’t been—”
Nick silenced the young priest with a flick of the wrist. He clapped his hands together twice and addressed the room. “Gentlemen, phones down, fingers at rest.” The room fell silent and all eyes came his way. “You are dangerously underestimating the subjects of this investigation. Daniel Byrne is the best man the ODA has. He’s not going to make it easy for us. We’ve got to do better than this.”
Conrad spoke to the young priest. “Bryan, run that video back a bit. OK, pause it there. That’s a Cadillac.”
“I don’t know anything about Cadillacs,” said Nick. “What?”
“We can hack into GM’s OnStar system,” said the young priest at the computer, “it’ll tell us where they are.”
“Do it. I want the location of that truck within the hour. And redirect your men away from Trinity’s house. I want them looking at Julia Rothman.”
“The reporter?”
“She’s…an old friend of Daniel’s. They’re fond of each other. If our other efforts fail, she’ll lead us to him. So I want everything. I want her phone calls. I want her e-mails. I want her credit card activity. I want to know what she likes on her pizza and what songs she sings in the shower. Full surveillance, round-the-clock.” Nick again addressed the room. “We are not the only interested party, gentlemen. Keep that in mind. We have to find them first.”
“Absolutely, Nick. My men are at your command,” said Conrad Winter. But his thin smile and unblinking eyes added: …for now.
Daniel picked up a pre-paid cell phone at a Kroger and called Julia, and she came through with the money, which he picked up at a Western Union in Gadsden, Alabama. Along with the cash, Julia sent a two-word message:
YOU’RE WELCOME.
He topped up the gas, then bought his uncle a pair of blue jeans and a simple gray shirt at Kmart. Trinity drew the line at abandoning the white leather belt and cowboy boots, and Daniel had to settle for partial victory.
“Just trying to keep you alive,” he said as they pulled onto Highway 77, a paved two-lane heading south.
Tim Trinity grinned. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate it.” He rolled down his window and lit a cigarette.
Daniel eyed the cigarette, said, “That’s the fifth one this hour. How bad you itchin’ to die, exactly?”
Trinity watched the smoke rise from between his fingers. “I do so love the devil sticks.” He took another drag, blew it out the window. “Yes I do. ’Course I should give ’em up…but you and I both know I ain’t gonna live long enough for these things to kill me.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I just don’t think God’s plan i
ncludes me living to see you and Julia make perfect little Judeo-Christian babies, that’s all.”
They rode in silence for half a minute. Daniel said, “How did you know about Julia?”
“How could I have missed her?” Trinity smiled. “Admired your ambition, going after an older woman like her. You did real good, boy…she was a knockout.” Daniel said nothing. “Oh, come on! Don’t say you don’t remember, and don’t say you didn’t see me. I saw you see me. The Maple Leaf bar? Mid City Lanes? Golden Gloves? High school graduation? I stood to the side, holding the door wide open, every chance I got. You always knew you were wanted.”
Daniel raised a hand. “Fair enough. I saw you. And maybe I should’ve thanked you for the offer and told you I wasn’t interested in being an apprentice con artist.”
“Never said you should take after me.” Trinity flicked the cigarette out the window. “Made sure you got good grades, told you I had a college fund set aside. You coulda studied whatever you liked, done whatever you pleased. You knew that.”
“Yeah, well, you also told me we were on a mission from God. Mixed messages. I was a kid, remember?” He pointed at the radio. “Find us a news station, will ya? Let’s see what’s doing in the big world out there.”
Trinity turned the knob and scanned up the AM dial…some hillbilly music…a screaming preacher with a mind full of the “End Times”…a countrified pop station…and then he found a news station and brought it in strong.
…amazing development last night, when the Georgia Lottery numbers came up exactly as Reverend Tim Trinity predicted. But at a press conference this morning the Georgia Lottery Corporation announced that, despite the record jackpot, there were over 859,000 tickets sold with those winning numbers, so each winning ticket will pay only four dollars. For the first time in its seventeen years of operation, the lottery is being suspended pending an internal investigation. The GLC insisted that the investigation will be swift and said the lottery will resume as soon as the integrity of the game can be assured.
The Trinity Game Page 19