“You said the apostle Peter was impatient and didn’t understand the bigger picture,” Cheyenne said, remembering the note she had read multiple times by now. “Do you understand the bigger picture?”
Her dad nodded, holding her hands in his. “I don’t know everything Jazz has said to you, but I know he’s told you a lot. We’re going to warn people about what Acatour is doing. Telling them that Christians are being singled out and executed isn’t going to upset or concern lots of people. But showing them that they’re not only being monitored but also manipulated? The country will be up in arms. America is no longer the ‘In God We Trust’ country, but people still believe we’re the land of the free and the home of the brave. We’re about to expose that citizens aren’t free. Not one bit.”
“And we’re warning them about the judgment to come,” he added. “Chicago is going to be destroyed. I know it sounds ludicrous. I get it.”
“I understand exposing everything that Acatour is doing. But do you really believe this stuff about an evil society being behind everything? I know something bad is happening, especially if a couple like the Parschauers could be—” The reality was so awful, she didn’t even want to say it out loud.
“There is a great spiritual war that’s never been so bloody as it is now,” her father said. “This country has turned its back on God, not in just subtle ways but now very publicly. And to some degree the heart of the depravity is in Chicago, in the building you lived and worked in.”
“So now you’re saying God’s angry at PASK? At Acatour?”
“The leaders at Acatour are the ones who for decades have been systematically rooting out Christianity in this country. You’ve told me about the work you have done for them. You are setting up belief systems for people to digest daily without their even realizing it.”
“I realize it now,” she said as she moved to sit on the edge of the couch. “All this time I’ve bought the lie that Acatour has helped make this world a better place. All the things they’ve done for science and the medical world. The money they’ve given away. The programs they’ve launched.”
“They certainly didn’t hesitate to end your time with them after realizing who your father happens to be.”
She shook her head. “It was a PR nightmare. I get that.”
“Do you really believe that Christianity is promoting hate?” her father asked.
“Some of it, yeah. But that’s beside the point. We’re not talking simply about faith in some religion.”
“Christianity and religion are two different things,” he said.
“If you want to believe that. But you also believe in some mysterious prophet—and I use that term loosely—who says God is literally going to take out Chicago. How? Fire from heaven or some virus? A terrorist plot? And why? Doesn’t that sound like hate to you? Isn’t that what Christians would say if an extremist from another faith threatened the same thing?”
Keith Burne sighed. “I don’t want to get you angry.”
“I woke up, and my whole world blew up. My company is evil, and the work I’ve been doing has been for the wrong reasons. I thought my father might be dead, and now when I finally see you, it sounds as if you’ve lost your mind.”
“What about Jazz? What about the Parschauers? Have they lost their minds too?”
“What is supposed to happen to Chicago?” she asked again.
“I don’t know. We just know the date.”
“How can you trust this man called Reckoner? Someone whose real name you don’t even know?”
He seemed to understand her indignation and her need for answers. This was how she always operated. “There was a man who came before Jesus called John the Baptist, and he preached to all the people and told them that Jesus was coming. He was wild—someone who lived in the desert and lived off the land. He baptized people, hence the name, and he called himself a nobody, a ‘mere stagehand’ in one version of the Bible.”
“And what does that have to do with anything?”
Her father smiled. “Always impatient. Always.”
“Yeah. So?”
“John the Baptist told the people that Jesus was coming and would ignite a fire within the people. That He was bringing the Holy Spirit, who would change people from the inside out. He also said Jesus would eventually put things in their proper place, leaving out the trash to be burned.”
“Where does the Bible say that?” she said, annoyed with this ludicrous line of thought.
“Matthew 3:10. Let me think. It’s something like, ‘The ax of God’s judgment is ready to sever the roots of the trees. Every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire.’ ”
“So, then, Chicago is the trash? That’s very kind for God to feel that way.”
“Chy, we’re all sinners who need to be saved. You’re asking how I can believe all these things, and I’m trying to explain it to you. My soul’s been awakened—ignited—and I can hear God speaking through the Holy Spirit.”
“You hear actual voices?”
“No.”
“Yet this prophet…You think he can?”
“Yes.”
“So, then, what’s his grand plan? Besides letting cows run loose around Chicago or spray-painting cars?”
“We’re going to deliver one final message to the people in the Chicagoland area,” he told her.
“And how are you going to do that?”
“We’re going to deliver it to every single person’s SYNAPSYS. We’re going to speak directly to them.”
She shook her head and laughed mockingly. “That’s impossible.”
“Is it?” He paused so she could see the obvious. “We spoke directly to you, right?”
Cheyenne felt a wave of goose bumps cover her like a bucket of cold water. She put her coffee cup on the table next to the platter of pastries. “How are you going to do this?”
Her father once again took her hands and gently clenched them.
“We need your help to do it.”
TWELVE
It Is Well with My Soul
1.
The day dawned with the weather seeming like a wet towel crumpled in a closet and starting to reek. Dowland stood on the sidewalk in front of the house, the street blocked off on both sides by police cars and officers, the EMT team and the coroner talking together.
Steady rain fell, but he ignored the drops running down his face. The cool water felt good, especially since he felt the rage inside him searing and waiting to get out.
“Where is he?” Dowland asked one of the detectives.
“He’s in the back of my car,” the police officer told him, pointing to the unmarked four-door SUV a few houses down.
FBI Special Agent Vallery Herrera glared at him, apparently not appreciating his interrupting her conversation with the detective. She was one of the few who knew Dowland other than by name and probably the only one who would openly show her disdain of him. Those who knew him carried that disgust inside, but Herrera had the guts to make sure he and everybody else around noticed it.
“I like your jacket,” Dowland said, nodding at her FBI apparel that glistened with the morning rain as he walked past.
Herrera caught up with him and then blocked his way to the vehicle. “You’re not going to talk to him,” she ordered.
He grinned, even though he really didn’t want to be dealing with any of this, not now and not here. “You’re feisty as ever,” he said. “But I gotta admit: you are still absolutely hot.”
She sighed but didn’t take the bait. “What I ever saw in such a chauvinist pig, I’ll never know. I would’ve gotten any other guy kicked out of the agency for such misconduct and treatment of women.”
Dowland raised his eyebrows, aware that she was trying to reverse roles and provoke him. “You have to know the right
people. Then you’re okay to act whatever way you want.”
“Obviously,” Herrera said. The dark eyes bored into him. “Why are you here?”
Reminiscing time was over. “There’s a sweet grandma and grandpa inside that house who were not only killed but pretty much butchered for no reason.”
“And that’s why we’re dealing with this,” Herrera said.
He flicked the badge dangling over her chest on the necklace. “Sometimes these things mean nothing. When I show up, it means you can stand back and watch.”
“Why’s Costa a concern to you? How do you even know him?”
Dowland looked at the tinted windows of the SUV where Lorenzo Costa sat. The twentysomething hotheaded Italian had been an agent for the last five years, and Dowland didn’t really know the guy. He just knew that Costa would do anything for the right people at the right time. “You need to stay here and wait for me and make sure nobody bothers me. You got that?”
For a second Herrera looked as if she was going to say something, but then she hesitated. She gave him that look again, the look she used to give him, the one he loathed. It was when he let his guard down while they were together, when she had him wrapped around her finger and he finally let someone inside the fortress. She would study him, wanting to know why he carried the weight he did, wanting to help him. Wanting to understand the hurt, as she once said during an intimate moment.
“Listen to me. This level of business…” Dowland shook his head, this time speaking in a hushed tone to be certain no one else could hear. “Stay away, Val. I mean it.”
Her hard, protective shell softened for a moment. Just as she had been able to see the baggage he carried, Dowland knew about her deep-rooted wounds. For a second he saw the little girl having to survive in the big, bad world and the steel she protected her heart with, steel forged by the savagery of a painful youth.
He leaned into her, so close to the lips he had kissed too many times to count. “You once said I’d never change. But I have, and it’s because of this world, because of the things I know. Every single time I try to believe it’s not as dark and hideous as I think, that happens.” Dowland pointed back to the house where the bodies of the elderly couple still lay.
“I’ve changed, Val. But not for the good. And it’s because this world’s changing in the exact same way.”
2.
The back door was unlocked, so Dowland opened it and nodded to Costa to move over so he could slide in beside him.
There was no chance Lorenzo Costa was going to run. The FBI agent had willingly come back to the scene of the crime and explained what had happened. Initially it appeared as if he was going to take off. Or perhaps he had left to clean himself up and intended to come back to the house to do the same. But somehow the situation had gotten out of his control, and Dowland knew it.
Right now Dowland was the only one who knew everything. Even Herrera didn’t realize the truth.
Costa’s eyes looked wired, as if he was on something. He twitched, breathing rapidly, and moved around on the leather back seat of the vehicle.
“Look, man, things escalated and got out of hand, but we’re good. They don’t know, and I gave them some false leads. They don’t like how I handled the initial call, and Detective Dobbs could see the Pique racing through me, so he told me to stay away, and then when you called—”
Dowland’s hand sprang up and clutched Costa’s sinewy neck, digging his nails deep into the skin. Then with his other hand, he blocked Costa’s arm from grabbing his handgun, as he continued to squeeze the larynx. Costa couldn’t even get out a cough as Dowland suffocated him.
“I wanna watch your head turn as purple as a beet as you die,” Dowland said, cursing at the young moron next to him gagging and convulsing. He blinked and saw the images back there in the house as the man’s muffled moans became weaker.
Finally Dowland let go. He had to. This was already public enough and already put him in a not-so-favorable light. He didn’t want to suddenly turn it into a spotlight.
“You stupid animal,” Dowland said as Costa coughed and regained his breath. “You make a rabid dog look good.”
Gasping and sweating, Costa pleaded with Dowland and cursed as he told him that things were fine, that he had important information. Dowland didn’t want to hear it.
“All I gave you were names. Just a couple I had information on and wanted you to go by and check out. And what happens? You think it’s Thanksgiving and you’re carving a turkey?”
“They were hiding something,” Costa said, spitting and rubbing his neck.
“How do you know?”
“I just knew. And they proved it too.”
Dowland knew now there was no question that Costa’s mind was racing with Pique. He’d force Costa to shut off his SYNAPSYS, but suddenly disconnecting the digital drug and going from two hundred miles an hour to zero could possibly give the guy a heart attack. Which wouldn’t be a bad idea.
“So what, then? What were they hiding?”
“When I got back, I spotted a vehicle in front of the house. I got the info on the car, but the people coming out of the house…That’s why the old couple were so dodgy, why they didn’t want to talk. Guess who suddenly popped back up on the radar?”
Dowland waited, not wanting to play any games or waste any more time.
“Jamil C. Taylor,” Costa said.
“Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“Known officially as License. The rapper.”
This came out of nowhere. “Are you certain?” Dowland asked.
“Absolutely. Took a pic to confirm, and it matched. First sighting of him in a while. No details as far as why he was connected to the couple.”
“And that justifies your complete lack of judgment?” Dowland retorted.
“The woman we’ve been looking for—Cheyenne Burne, the daughter of Keith Burne. She was with the rapper.”
How in the world are those two connected?
Dowland knew Costa was reading his surprised reaction and relishing that he had uncovered something even Dowland didn’t know.
“What do you want me to do?” Costa asked.
“Did the two see you? Did they have any idea you spotted them?”
“No.”
“Okay.” At least the idiot had actually done something right.
“So what are the chances that those two suddenly show up together out of nowhere?” Costa asked. “That they’re going to see that couple?”
“That is a question you’re not going to get answered. You don’t wanna answer it. Do you understand? It will take five seconds to get you two life sentences for what you did to that couple back there. And there’s nothing I’d like more than to make that call.”
“You were the one who got me to—”
“Shut up. My mistake was failing to know the character of the man I was dealing with. But listen to me. If you think you’re holding some kind of card because of what you know, you’re wrong. You, my friend, just torched your entire deck of cards. You are a very big liability, one that only I know about—at least for now. You get it?”
Costa cleared his throat, nodded, then looked straight ahead at the windshield of the car. Dowland watched him for another moment, his mind cluttered with scenarios and questions and tasks. Then he opened the door and climbed out.
It was becoming clear that the people Dowland worked for weren’t the only ones with a secret network full of vastly different individuals.
3.
He doesn’t say goodbye to Costa and doesn’t worry about cleaning up the mess in Tulsa. Dowland gets in the Autoveh and tells it where to go. His SYNAPSYS is off and he’s untraceable. It takes him ten minutes to arrive back at the airport and another ten minutes before he’s in a lounge drinking vodka, though it’s not noon yet. The rush is coming over him and telling him h
e’s drowning. He might as well keep suffocating his soul. In order to try to think. In order to remain focused on his next step.
So this anonymous character is out there threatening to expose the evil running the world, and those in power will do anything to shut him up.
After Dowland’s leads have gone nowhere, suddenly this has-been rapper enters the picture. How is he affiliated with the Reckoner, Acrobat…the man of many nicknames? And Cheyenne Burne? What does she have to do with this, especially considering her father and how he disappeared? He was put on the list of those to monitor, those who might be disrupters.
Dowland doesn’t merely drink but drains the vodka, ordering one after another to feel a little something more in order to feel less. He can understand a person like Costa in some ways—resorting to a weakness like Pique that brings instant ecstasy, then long-term pain. Dowland knows enough to stay away from something like that, yet his vices aren’t that different. He knows they’re not manageable, not when he’s hiding away like this, downing glasses as if they were shots.
I need to think. I need to get a plan before someone comes asking for one.
License. Burne and his daughter.
Dowland curses.
He thinks of the first time the group he called “The Thirteen” came to him. Two men, not very important, one now dead and the other sent into hiding of sorts. Two men setting up a meeting and presenting the facts. How people like his style. How they like his attitude and beliefs or, as they note, his lack of beliefs and his anger at those who have them. These two men know his past, all of it, every little bad thing that ever happened to him and the reasons behind his hate. They give him an opportunity of a lifetime where money will never be a problem again. Where he can play James Bond. And where he can take that hatred and do something with it. Of course, they don’t define it as hate. And, of course, Dowland doesn’t consider it as such. Instead, all parties agree it’s patriotic and noble.
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