She chuckled in a delirious and haunting manner. “But my advice to you, Jon, is to stay there and stay calm. Just relax ’cause everything’s ‘gonna be cool.’ ”
With that last word the image disappeared. Dowland stood there for a moment, the Beretta waiting for someone to arrive, but nobody came. He was on his own.
2.
It was past midnight but how long after Dowland wasn’t sure. The diner he sat in didn’t have any screens on the windows and no clocks displaying the time. The walls were bare in this vintage establishment, the kind of diner that had barstools and a server behind the counter who took orders and wore a coat and matching cap. Dowland hadn’t seen the name of the restaurant, which was a block from his hotel. All he had seen was the stark glow through the long windows.
He had wanted to find a bar and forget this night, but he knew he couldn’t do that. He needed to be clear and focused. He needed to figure out a new plan, one that got him far away from everybody. Perhaps leaving the country. But every contact he could think of was probably being watched and monitored. He couldn’t trust anybody. Not a soul. So he needed to fill himself with some coffee and food and figure out a plan.
For half an hour he sat in the diner, sipping one cup of burned coffee after another, then ordering some eggs and bacon that he had difficulty eating. In the middle of his meal, a couple had come and sat on the other side of the L-shaped counter. They seemed at first to be a couple, though the way they barely spoke to each other and their body language said they definitely weren’t in love. There was a coldness and distance between them. They both ordered coffee but nothing to eat. The young server made small talk with them until he realized they didn’t want to be bothered.
Giving up on the rest of his dinner or breakfast or whatever it could be called, Dowland got a fresh cup of coffee and sat there, watching the couple to see if they were doing the same to him. Neither of them looked his way, however, and that made him even more suspicious.
I’m done. He knew this. It was no big revelation, no sudden realization. It was the absolute truth.
The Reckoner was still out there after exposing Jackson Heyford and Acatour. The CEO was ruined. If someone didn’t assassinate the man, he would divide the rest of his life between being in court and being in hiding. He was done. The religious freaks responsible for this had somehow done the impossible, not just by breaking into SYNAPSYSes but by avoiding capture.
Mel and the others in control would be looking for heads to roll. Literal heads to roll. With long hunting knives that took their precious time. He was surely at the top of their lists since they didn’t have many others to blame.
Blame God. Oh, wait. That’s right. You already got rid of Him, didn’t you? You can’t blame someone you don’t believe in.
He took another sip of coffee, feeling the weight of his Beretta resting in his shoulder holster. The man across from him in the dark suit and blue shirt glanced at him for the first time, but it was quick and then off him again.
Dowland knew it had come down to this. Fate and karma and all those other mysterious things in life had finally caught up with him.
Or maybe it’s God finally announcing His arrival.
For a moment he shut his eyes and felt his body shiver. He had tasted hopelessness in his life, but this was different. It was almost as if he couldn’t taste anything at all.
If You’re up there, then You win. You hear me? You win.
Dowland slipped his hand into his jacket, felt the barrel of his gun, and then took it out.
Almost.
The woman leaned over and said something to the man for the first time since sitting down. The man nodded and then looked straight ahead at the server.
Dowland let out a long breath, looking at the couple. He knew it was time. And it had been a very, very long time coming.
TWENTY-FOUR
How the Story Ends
1.
“I never told you what I used to do,” Hutchence said, his face shaded under the baseball cap.
Will stood on the lawn between his in-laws’ sprawling lake house and the water. The rest of the family was back at the place where they’d been living for the past seven days, the large condo Amy’s parents owned. Hutchence had told Will to meet him at this cottage on Gun Lake this April afternoon, a week after what was now being labeled “The Day of Reckoning.” After a week of not hearing a single thing from the man this pun referred to, Will had wondered if he’d ever see him again.
“You never told me a lot of things about yourself,” Will said.
“True. Want to take a guess?”
“I don’t know…Maybe an FBI agent? Or a computer tech? Or maybe a drug smuggler? I have no idea.”
“I taught high school band.”
Will smiled. “I wouldn’t have thought of that.”
“A normal, happy, content guy. But then one day I woke up to find my wife was leaving me. I had no idea. None. I thought we were still crazy and madly in love. I mean, it was devastating. A year after the divorce was final, she remarried. The court found in my favor. She had to pay me alimony. That’s how bad it was.”
“And did you have any—”
“No kids,” he answered, “which now, so many years later, I’m grateful for. But you know something, Will? I’ll be honest. If my ex-wife showed up this second and walked over to me and asked me to take her back, I would. In a heartbeat. After everything she did, I’d still take her back. Without question.”
“You must have really loved her,” Will said.
“But here’s the thing. I was as much in the wrong as she was. In many ways I put my wife on a pedestal, making her the idol I worshipped. Making our wonderful little life this lie I bought into. The rude awakening came after she left me. Things became…real.”
“How so?”
“I’ll just say I turned into a real big mess.”
The sun made the above-average sixty-degree temperature feel even warmer. Will couldn’t wait for summer. Then again, he couldn’t wait for any glimmer of hope, no matter how miniscule it might be. As bright as it looked today, things felt very, very dark.
“So, then,” Will said, “how did you suddenly start hearing messages from God?”
Hutchence gave a wistful smile. “Let’s just say that God got my attention in a pretty big way.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“All I’ll tell you is that when God called me to do His work, I ran and hid.” Hutchence laughed. “I didn’t want to have a part in any of this. You know what character in the Bible I most resemble?”
“The apostle Paul?”
“Seriously? No one like that. I’m Gideon, a timid man from a weak family who was so skeptical that he needed God to show him signs before he would listen to God’s call. I did the same thing in my own unique and stubborn way.”
“Didn’t Gideon lead an army of three hundred valiant men?”
“ ‘Then all three groups blew their horns and broke their jars. They held the blazing torches in their left hands and the horns in their right hands, and they all shouted, “A sword for the LORD and for Gideon!” ’ ”
“You have quite a gift for memorizing Scripture. And book quotes.”
Hutchence only laughed. He walked to the edge of the water and picked up a rock and tried to skip it. The rock took two hops before dropping.
“Never could skip rocks,” he said, then turned and noted Will’s expression. “How are you feeling about everything?”
“Honestly? I’m frankly more than a little terrified to walk outside. I feel I’m being watched. I feel as if I could be one of those Christians who are suddenly abducted and never heard from again.”
“Will, ‘the Bible is not a script for a funeral service. It is the record of God bringing life where we expected to find death.’ ”
�
�That’s pretty profound.”
“Actually, that’s Eugene Peterson.”
Will laughed. This took him back to their first meeting at his old bookstore.
God didn’t allow my bookstore to fail. He closed that door and opened another. A much bigger one.
“So what’s next? How do we keep fighting?” Will asked.
“Brother, every single day is a fight. A battle. So? ‘A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on all of God’s armor so that you’ll be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. For we’re not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.’ ”
“Ephesians, right?”
“Yes.”
“I get that, but practically. Small, minute picture.”
Hutchence moved closer to Will and clasped his shoulder. “You go to bed tonight and ask God for forgiveness for all your failures throughout the day. Then you wake up tomorrow and ask God for all the strength He will provide.”
“I wish I had your kind of faith,” Will said. “What are you going to do now?”
“Remember the movie I told you to watch after we first met? Stalker by Tarkovsky? Near the end of the film, the Stalker sums up my life’s mission. He admits he’s a louse who hasn’t done anything good in this world and never will. But he tells the other two men his purpose, that he brings people like himself—desperate and tormented and hopeless—to this place and he helps them. I relate to the Stalker. That’s what I’ve been doing and will continue to do.”
Hutchence didn’t give Will any more instructions or advice or plans. All he seemed to have wanted to do was to connect again and encourage Will. The only encouragement Will could find in the shadow of the darkness of today.
Before climbing into his car to leave, Hutchence took out a flat, wrapped present and gave it to Will. “Here’s a parting gift for you.”
Will knew by the size and the weight that it was a book.
“Thanks,” Will said as his strange and unique friend got into his small two-seater. “Will I see you again?”
“Yeah,” Hutchence said. “Or at least you’ll see me around. In the news.”
“I can only imagine.”
“You know, Will, you’re one of the very few who’ve actually met me in person, face-to-face.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t know,” Hutchence said. “But consider this. Maybe God’s got big plans for you.”
He shut the door and started the engine. With the window down, the loud rock music could easily be heard. But before Will could recognize the song, Hutchence drove away.
Walking back to the edge of the lake, Will ripped off the gold wrapping paper to see the book he’d been given. Sure enough, the first thing he saw was the author’s name: A. W. Tozer. Underneath the name was the title: The Set of the Sail.
Will grinned as he opened the paperback book. Hutchence had signed a note on the title page.
To Will: True Love Waits. Your Friend.
He turned a few pages, and at the end of the first chapter, the final paragraph was highlighted.
Let us, then, set our sails in the will of God. If we do this we will certainly find ourselves moving in the right direction, no matter which way the wind blows.
2.
Later that evening Will found Amy in the corner sunroom of her parents’ four-thousand-square-foot condo, reading instead of watching a show, which was her usual nightly ritual.
“You can turn on the news or whatever,” she said. “I had to turn it off. It’s hard to watch all day long. More than a hundred people have died in the rioting.”
The leather-bound Bible she’d been reading rested on her lap.
“I don’t feel like watching anything either,” he said. “At least it appears that my father isn’t going to show up on our doorstep anytime soon.”
As he sat in the armchair next to her, he knew there were a hundred thousand words he wanted and needed to say to her. Will just wasn’t sure which ones to start with.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
Amy began to cry. Her tears surprised him, especially after her being so strong during the past week they’d spent with her parents.
“Sweetie, what’s wrong?”
“I’m— I’m scared, Will. I’m really frightened about the future. About our family. About what’s going to happen to our girls.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“I know we’re supposed to have faith and all that. But I feel…lost.”
“I’ve felt lost for a long time,” he said, moving over to kneel at her side. He took her hand and gripped it gently. “Living with me for the last few years—I know it hasn’t been easy. And I know I can’t change, Amy. Not on my own. But I know God can change me. He can make me more of the husband you need. More of the father our girls need. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or next week or next month, but I know tonight that all I can do is begin. Okay? To try to let God do some things instead of trying to do all of them myself and getting nowhere. Including…including getting a job and working for your father.”
“I know you don’t want to—”
“It’ll be fine. Moving up here around family will be great.”
“You’re giving up on your dreams,” she said.
“No. Those dreams left me a long time ago. They were mine and mine alone. God has bigger and better things for us. Not for me, but for us.”
More tears came, so first Will wiped his own cheeks, and then he brushed them off Amy’s soft skin.
“We know how this story ends,” he said. “Right? We’re still in the middle of it. We gotta remember that even when it looks like we’ve reached the very end, we haven’t, Amy. Not yet.”
3.
A couple of hours later in the shadows of the family room, he saw the silver moon through the picture window and stopped to admire it for a moment. It hung perfectly still, yet he knew it rotated, moving at the precise speed to keep its face always pointed to Earth. God’s purity could be seen in His creation, while His grace could be seen in each coming day.
The heaviness he carried didn’t feel like shame or regret, nor was it frustration or exhaustion. It was grief over the ignorance that had followed their message. So many refused even to listen to the gospel message they had shared. People couldn’t see, nor did they want to see, their Maker and Creator. They not only didn’t care, but they also fought to obliterate the very idea of God with a tsunami of hate.
Will talked to God for a few moments and then wiped the tears off his cheeks and headed downstairs to check on the girls. The soft, warm glow of the nightlight stood guard just outside their room. He stepped onto the soft carpet, hearing Shaye turn on the squeaky bed and Callie breathing softly and seeing Bella’s scrunched-up figure underneath her blankets. He stayed in the bedroom a little longer than usual, just listening and thanking God for these girls. For their lives.
He knew he’d been called to serve and love God and to tell others about Him. But he also had a duty to be a father to these three amazing girls, not just to tell them about Jesus but to show Him to them by his words and actions. Will didn’t know which responsibility was more daunting. He had failed at both time and time again.
Heading to the other bedroom where Amy slept, or where she probably tried to sleep without success, he knew there was hope to still be a hero in this tale. Just like Gideon and like Hutchence. To no longer be a spectator but to be a soldier. But first he had to do the basics. He had to have more than a mere belief that simply accepts the truth. He needed a faith that was confident in the truth.
“See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!”
At the doorway of their temporary bedroom, in the middle of the black night, in the aftermath of Acatour’s desolation, Will was starting to see.
TWENTY-FIVE
Rescued
1.
Cheyenne looked at the paintings again, all of them surrounding her like a ghastly army of dark giants with ominous names. The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise with two distraught figures walking down into darkness from the slit of piercing light streaming from the narrow entryway in the massive stone mountain. The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah with its mouth of destruction, with bloody lips dripping and a throat of bright lava swallowing everything in sight. The darkness of Jonah Preaching Before Nineveh and the raised hands reaching toward the light in Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still.
“Starting a collection?” Jazz asked as he walked into the small guest bedroom of Pastor Brian’s house and saw the lit-up screens on the wall in front of her.
“Look familiar?” she asked.
“All this time I was expecting to see an image like that of the Incen Tower.”
There was no smile on his face or irony in his voice. Only the stern solemnness death brought. She looked at the raging skies and fire collapsing on the helpless bodies below in The Great Day of His Wrath.
“I’m afraid,” she said. “Afraid of the ramifications of what we did.”
“As a Christian, I’m instructed not to be afraid,” Jazz said. “But if I’m being honest, I am. Not of what’s to become of me, but of what’s to become of the rest of the world.”
“Screens off,” she said, and they disappeared, leaving the room in a dim light. “Is everyone else asleep?”
American Omens Page 36