The Overseer

by Conlan Brown

  Grow up, Vince thought. You’ve got a homicidal maniac on your hands, and you’re worried about a woman? “Mmm…” Vince nodded sympathetically. “John, it’s time to let her go.”

  John didn’t move. “I know, I just—”

  “No.” Vince shook his head. “There’s no ‘just.’ She’s moved on with her life. It’s time for you to do the same.”

  “I just—”

  Trista is so out of your league, you idiot, Vince thought, but he reached out a sympathetic hand, putting it on John’s arm. “John,” he said as tenderly as he could, “I’m worried about your ability to be Overseer right now.”

  “What?” John said, head lifting suddenly.

  Vince nodded. “You’re letting Trista distract you from God and your ability to make sound choices as leader of the Firstborn. Don’t you see that?”

  “Do you really think…”

  Vince stood, buttoning his suit jacket. “Yes, I do. You’ve let your obsession with Trista last too long. You don’t need any more distractions. It’s time to accept that it’s hurting you, your work, and ultimately the Firstborn.”

  John stared at him for a moment. “Is it really that bad?”

  “John, you’re acting pathetic,” Vince said with a loving nod and unbroken eye contact. John looked away. “Maybe it’s time to take a break. Reconnect with your faith and move on.”

  John said nothing.

  “Just think about it,” Vince added. “For now, let me talk to this Angelo. See if I can gain his trust. Good cop, bad cop, you know.” He winked.

  “OK,” John mumbled.

  Vince smiled and stepped out of the room.

  John walked to the conference room windows and looked down at the street far below. He rested his forehead against the glass and closed his eyes.

  Vince was right. He’d always been right. His obsession with Trista was pathetic. It was so un-Christian to make a woman that much of a priority in his life. Right?

  John banged his head against the glass, smacking it with his palms. He cursed loudly, angry at himself for how weak and feeble he’d let a woman make him.

  A woman.

  He let loose with a vicious string of profanity, grabbing a rolling chair and flinging it across the room. The chair tumbled to a stop.

  John slid to the floor and sobbed.

  Vince Sobel walked through the hall, past the night guard posted at the door. Nodding, he indicated that it was OK to enter.

  The door shut behind him, and he paused—the room going dark. He looked at the man named Angelo. The man sat in a chair. Calm.

  Vince pulled up another chair and sat in front of the other man. “It’s Angelo, right?”

  A set of eyes lifted from the obscurity of darkness. Dark, intense eyes.

  “I am who you say I am,” he said softly and with resolve.

  Vince adjusted in his chair, suddenly unsettled by this man. “I hear you wanted to talk to Devin Bathurst,” Vince said with a smile. He leaned, elbows on knees, trying to be friendly. “I hear it…didn’t go so well.”

  Angelo didn’t blink.

  “So,” Vince said with another smile, “tell me about yourself, Angelo.”

  Angelo said nothing. He stared with dark eyes through the dark room, watching Vincent.

  “Listen,” Vince continued, still smiling, “this will all go a lot smoother if—”

  “You can’t let them proceed,” Angelo interrupted, face stern.

  Vince frowned. “I’m sorry?”

  “Devin Bathurst plans to save the politician from being killed. It’s a trap. You can’t let him.”

  Confusion was the only thing that Vince felt for several seconds, staring at the other man. He laughed, suddenly and awkwardly, reaching into his pocket for a slip of paper and a pen. “Let me make a note of this,” he said, regaining his composure, trying to make Angelo feel like he was being taken seriously. “I need you to explain to me exactly what is going to happen.”

  Angelo blinked. “You don’t believe me.”

  “Of course I—”

  “I can feel your thoughts,” Angelo said.

  “Uh…,” Vince stammered, trying to find a way to backpedal.

  “You don’t believe that I can see the future,” Angelo continued, “or the past.”

  Vince smiled encouragingly. “I hear that you see all three?”

  Angelo’s head dipped slowly in a nod.

  “Like Alessandro D’Angelo?” Vince asked.

  “Founder of the Firstborn orders.”

  Vince shook his head, suddenly concerned, feeling outmatched. “Is there any chance that you’re wrong about Devin Bathurst and everything having to do with—”

  “I know about your wife,” Angelo said with eerie calm.

  Vince’s body went cold, down to his core. “What do you know?” he said, hesitant, scared, and trembling.

  “The man that she met.”

  Anger bubbled up in Vince. “What did she tell you?”

  “Linda? We’ve never met.”

  “Then how did you…?”

  “You had been married eight years when Linda met him. She told you she had only been seeing him for six months, but it had been more than a year.”

  “What?” Vince said, feeling all the old feelings—black and poisonous—start to well up in him.

  “You say that you’ve forgiven her. You told her that. And the counselor that. Even your friends—and the pastor you spoke to. But you haven’t.”

  Vince felt any semblance of a smile evaporate. Anger—no, rage—took over. “That’s not true.” He launched to his feet, trying to tower over Angelo. “I love my wife, and I forgave her for what she did.”

  Angelo remained seated and calm. “Do you believe that I see things yet?”

  “You could have found out about my wife through a lot of different ways. You’re just making up the rest!”

  Angelo’s eyes became sad for a moment. “I know what you never told the counselor. What you’ve never told anyone.”

  Vince paused, watching the calm man. “What do you think you know?”

  “That sometimes, when you think about it, you wonder if she would cry if you jumped from the roof of the office building where you work…”

  Vince stared.

  “…and that sometimes, when you can’t take it anymore, you wonder what it would be like to take the letter opener from the top drawer in your study and to stab her with it.”

  The anger took Vincent over, face burning. He sat, staring at Angelo, tears forming at the edges of his eyes. “I would never do that!”

  “No.” Angelo shook his head. “You don’t trust your wife anymore—but you wouldn’t ever hurt her. But you and I both know that your imagination has gotten away from you from time to time.”

  Vince brushed a tear and cleared his demeanor—instantly done crying. “What are you trying to do?”

  “I’m trying to show you that I see what is coming—and that Devin Bathurst must be stopped.”

  Vincent looked away, unable to bear this anymore. “I just—”

  “She told you it was a man from work,” Angelo added, hesitantly. “That you didn’t know him.”

  Vince turned back to Angelo and glared, gaze intense, face trembling. “It was our pastor, wasn’t it?”

  Angelo nodded slowly. “Do you believe me now?”

  Vincent shook all over. “Tell me everything you know about the future.”

  Devin was in John Temple’s office, Hannah inspecting a cut on his forehead from his fight with Angelo, when John walked in, red-eyed and obviously upset.

  “I can’t believe this Angelo guy,” John huffed, shutting the door behind him before plopping into an office chair. “He doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would he warn anyone not to follow after their calling as Firstborn?”

  Hannah turned from her work on Devin’s forehead and moved to where John was, taking a seat beside him. “I don’t know. But something about this assassination attempt has him
seriously spooked.”

  Devin remained at his desk, trying for several seconds to remember what Angelo had said to him before their fight. “He says that it’s a trap. He believes that it’s somehow connected with the Thresher.”

  Hannah shook her head, confused. “I thought it was the Thresher that caused Blake Jackson to do the things that he did.”

  “But,” John argued, “he did those things out of a fear of the Thresher. That hysteria was his trap.”

  Devin tapped his index finger on his desktop for several seconds. “If it’s a threat having to do with the Thresher, then maybe we should pay a little more attention.”

  “I don’t know,” John said. “I went to the archives and talked to Jerry Kirkland, our historian.”

  “We have a historian?” Hannah asked.

  “Yeah,” John said. “Jerry. He’s Prima, like you. He’s been collecting and archiving all the known history on the Firstborn— and he says there have been Thresher scares from our Firstborn ancestors for…centuries.”

  “And?” Devin honestly wondered if John might have a point this time.

  “And,” John continued, “there’s evidence that the threat of the Thresher has done more to divide and destroy the Firstborn than something dark and demonic actually acting upon us.”

  Hannah frowned. “Are you saying that the Thresher doesn’t exist?”

  “No,” John mused, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees. “But he said that the tools of the Thresher are fear, pride, and love of power.” He made a pensive face. “Are we actually considering letting this all go because of fear?”

  “Or,” Devin offered, thinking as he spoke, “are we motivated by pride?”

  The room was silent for a moment as they each turned to their own introspection.

  Hannah broke the silence. “I guess there’s only one thing we can do.”

  Devin looked down at his hand on the desktop, examining its stillness for a moment. He knew what she meant. And he knew she was right. But it seemed so foreign—to let his guard down. To allow himself to experience that kind of unabashed spiritual nudity.

  John and Hannah were already kneeling in the center of the office.

  Something like embarrassment or shame tried to keep Devin in his seat. Or, he corrected himself, fear.

  Devin stood and walked toward the center of the office. Then he knelt with John and Hannah, completing their circle.

  They were totally quiet for a moment—only the barely audible sounds of their collective breathing. Then Devin drew a long breath of his own—

  —and let it out.

  “Our Father, who art in heaven,” he began.

  “Hallowed be Thy name,” they said in unison. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.”

  Devin could feel it beginning. Like the tiny murmurings of an infant’s heartbeat, building with the recitation of each phrase. Like a thick rumble rising from the earth. Like the heavens splitting. The sensation grew and grew.

  “For Thine,” they said together, heads bowed, eyes closed, “is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory…”

  They went silent.

  Devin spoke the last word. Softly. Sincerely.

  “…forever.”

  There was a moment of stillness.

  Then it happened. Not images, or sounds, or instincts. Simply a peace.

  —an undeniable, unexplainable, completely intangible knowledge—individually derived, communally shared—that this was what they had been called to. That stopping the assassination, finding the girls, fighting the evil, was the only thing that mattered.

  They spoke together: “Amen.”

  John Temple walked into the hall in time to see Vince exiting the room at the far end. John stopped, looking Vince over. He looked like death warmed over—vacant and confused. John approached. “Vince, are you OK?”

  Vincent grabbed him by the arm, suddenly aware. He pulled John a few feet away, into an alcove. “You have to listen to him,” Vincent declared, making intense eye contact.

  “OK.” John nodded, confused.

  Vince looked like he’d seen a ghost—was a ghost. “He knows things, John. Things he can’t. Shouldn’t.” Vince looked down, fidgeting. “Stuff I’ve never shared.”

  “Like what?”

  Vince’s face snapped upward again. “Things I would never share. Things that no one would ever tell me. He knows what he’s talking about, John.”

  John shook his head. “We have to do the best we can—”

  A rough hand grabbed John’s arm, squeezing hard—eyes blazing. “He says to let the assassination thing go—so we do it. Do you understand?”

  A frown began to form on John’s face. “Devin and Hannah were called to these things. Not by you and me, but by God. We’ve prayed about it—and I can say without a doubt that this has to be done.”

  “No,” Vince declared, firm, angry, and unmoving. “You will not do that. It’s a trap. It has Angelo scared—and that means something.”

  John took a step back. “Vince, you do remember that I’m Overseer, right? You don’t tell me what to do.”

  Vince looked around, his perfectly sculpted hair shaking free, dangling across his forehead. “John, call them off. You have to. There’s no choice.”

  John Temple cleared his throat. “Vincent, I said it before, and I’m going to say it again”—his voice got quiet but startlingly firm—“I’m not going to tell either Hannah or Devin to back off, and I really don’t care what you think about this, because I’m Overseer, and I’ve spoken.” John tried to regain his composure and stepped back—attempting to seem less authoritarian.

  Vincent straightened his hair and buttoned his jacket. He looked John in the eye. “Then maybe you shouldn’t be Overseer anymore.” He walked away.

  John stood for a moment at a loss. Then he pushed through the door of the office where they’d taken Angelo. The night guard was on the floor, knocked out.

  Angelo was gone.

  Chapter 9

  TRISTA STOOD AT the mirror, patting makeup onto the dark circles under her eyes. She’d slept badly after the fiasco with John last night. So bit by bit—with eyeliner, shadow, mascara, blush, and lipstick—she carefully reconstructed her professional face. She would need every bit of cover she could find today, in case she ran into John again at the Firstborn’s office.

  Outside the sun was lifting behind the Manhattan skyline. A seemingly endless labyrinth of glass and steel canyons. Cold and lonely, a metropolitan jungle filled with people who treated one another as props and obstacles. A forest of human souls that couldn’t be seen through the crowded trees of people.

  Trista’s phone beeped electronically, the red light on its exterior flashing. She moved toward the hotel coffee table and scooped up the phone, answering. “Trista Brightling,” she said efficiently.

  “Trista,” a voice said enthusiastically. “Vince Sobel here. Meeting today. Conference room—noon.”

  Trista thought for a moment. “Noon? That’s the lunch hour.”

  “Yeah,” Vince said slowly, as if trying to think through his next sentence as carefully as possible. “It’s a time that everyone else is available and”—another pause—“well…John’s out of the office at that time, and we need to talk about some stuff.”

  Trista felt a sharp sensation of anger stab at her at the mention of John’s name. “What do you plan on discussing?”

  “Just some concerns for him on a personal level—and some concerns about his work as Overseer too. We think you would have some…insight that might be helpful to everyone else there. Can I count on you being there?”

  “Uh.” Trista felt her anger blur with a dozen other feelings and was suddenly very confused. “I—yes. I’ll be there.”

  “Fantastic,” Vince said with gusto. “And…uh…you wouldn’t mind keeping your knowledge about this meeting…discreet, would you?”

  She knew what he meant. “I won’t tell John,” she said with
a nod, then closed her phone.

  Hannah pressed the suburban doorbell and waited. She hugged her arms, feeling the latent chill that still remained from the last few days of rain.

  For a moment she tried to talk herself out of it, but it was too late. She’d already pressed the bell. And she had to see for herself. She had to see if Angelo was—

  The door opened. “Yes?” The woman who answered was middle-aged and well kept but obviously not looking her best. “Can I help you?”

  Hannah was hesitant. “Are you Kimberly’s mother?”

  The woman’s face got serious. “Who are you?”

  There was no good answer. Nothing that Hannah could think of to adequately describe who she was or what she was doing here. “I…I’m someone who heard about your daughter, that she hadn’t been home. I was wondering if there was anything I could do to help?”

  The woman looked at her for several moments, then motioned her into the house.

  Five minutes later Hannah was sitting in the living room with a cup of hot tea, listening to the mother—a woman named Peg—talk about her girl named Kimberly.

  “She’s been gone over two days,” Peg said, shaking her head, visibly fighting back tears.

  Hannah clasped the boiling hot mug in her hands. “Do you have a picture of your daughter?”

  Peg stood, walking to the fireplace. “This is the newest picture we have. It’s about six months old—so it looks a lot like her.” Peg passed off the frame. “She cut her hair a little since then, and the blonde highlights grew out, but that’s her.”

  Hannah looked at the girl in the picture. She was undeniably pretty and was probably very popular. The kind of girl who would eventually be prom queen. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “She said she was staying at a friend’s house Saturday night— but when I called Sunday afternoon, her friend said she’d not planned anything with Kimberly.” She shook her head. “After I grilled her, she finally admitted that Kimberly had been sneaking out to college parties almost every weekend.”

  Hannah tried to make eye contact, her face sympathetic. “But this time she didn’t come back?”