We stepped off the boat and walked quickly to the building. It was shaded by a stand of live oaks along one side. The exterior walls were salmon-colored stucco, and the door was huge and painted white. We slipped in, trying to make as little noise as possible, and found an open spot at the back. I smiled nervously as heads swiveled our way and back to the front again.
We’d arrived in the middle of a sermon. A man on stage was pacing back and forth and holding a cordless microphone. He was handsome in a nondescript sort of way, bland and nonthreatening—blond hair parted to the side and tamed with a lot of product, white teeth that had seen braces, neatly shaped eyebrows. He looked like the type who got manicures. He stopped pacing and faced the crowd, looking pensive.
“There’s a lot of folks out there right now who’ll tell you not to fear God.” He steepled his fingers and tapped them to his lips. “They say, ‘God doesn’t want to be feared, God loves you, God wants you to be happy.’” He shook his head and started moving again, more slowly this time. The audience murmured and shifted in their seats.
“You know what I say to them? I ask them, ‘Do you need more evidence that God is displeased with us? Remember how he cast us from the garden! Remember the Great Flood!’” He paused for effect. Shane and I exchanged a glance, but we didn’t dare slip into mindspeech.
“But there are those of us who have chosen the path of righteousness. And we will be saved!” He raised a hand in triumph, and the muscles in Shane’s arm tensed. “I have faith in my salvation. I know that God is with me.” More cries of assent from the crowd. “I know because I have given myself over to him, and he does great things through me!”
Everyone was cheering now. The energy in the room shifted, and I cast a glance at Shane, suddenly understanding, suspecting what was about to happen and hoping I was wrong.
“But not for me—oh, no! He has given me these gifts so that you might have faith. So that you might believe and be saved.” He’d worked up to shouting again, and everyone was getting to their feet. “For God is my strength!” He raised one hand into the air, palm open. “He is my power!” He raised the other hand. “He is the Light of Lights!” A ball of light exploded between his facing palms.
Even though I’d been expecting it, I gasped. The preacher was holding the light ball over the congregation, and people were screaming and crying and falling down on their knees. I had to admit it was pretty impressive. If I hadn’t known how he was doing it, I might have been awestruck myself. Beside me, Shane went rigid, and I put my hand on his arm. The fury coming off him was enough to tip off a converter with far less skill than the man on the stage.
“Calm,” I risked sending to him, and I felt him deliberately relax.
“Thanks.”
It went on for a little while, the ball of light moving around the room and the people falling out of their seats. Then the preacher started lifting up random objects on the stage. A chalice full of wine, a candle. I didn’t think he was pulling until he lifted the huge wood-and-iron cross that hung over the stage. It must have weighed about three hundred pounds, and I was certain there was no way he could manage it alone. I was right. An instant after the cross started moving, the power surge hit me in the gut like a fastball. He was pulling from someone, somewhere, and the energy was so potent I nearly cried out. I might as well have. The whole crowd was whipped up by the spectacle and screaming. But no one passed out.
I reached out, searching for the source he was pulling from, but he didn’t seem to be drawing from the congregation. I tried to go backward, tracing the power source from him into the crowd. No good. The crush of people interfered with my perception, and I was afraid to sink into his head. He was too strong not to notice. Was he somehow taking from all the parishioners at once? It didn’t feel like he was, but it was hard for me to tell. I’d almost given up when I caught the faint, fading aura of someone outside the throng of bodies—someone close, but not exactly in the room. The preacher lifted the cross higher, and whoever it was weakened even as the surge made me gasp.
Please, God, please don’t let him take too much. The pull reverberated in my chest, like rock music played too loud. As it went on, pressure built in my head. I pressed my fingers to my temples. Shane looked over at me, concerned.
“I’m okay,” I said, but he didn’t look convinced.
“Come on.” He took my hand and tugged me toward the door.
The pain was intensifying, and all I could do was nod. Shane drew me back through the crowd, shooting insincere, apologetic looks to our neighbors. One of them, a pretty middle-aged woman wearing khaki pants and a blue-green cotton shirt, put her hand on my shoulder in what I’m sure she meant to be a comforting gesture. I was so weakened by the sustained surge, I couldn’t fight the connection to her thoughts, and they nearly overwhelmed me. —must be too much for her—the Lord’s power can be frightening—poor thing—never seen her here before—has she been saved?
I jerked away, nausea rising in my gut from the onslaught of mental energy.
Shane got me outside. He led me to a little grassy area alongside the church, and I leaned over with my hands on my knees and tried not to vomit. It was far more bearable out here, and without the interference from the congregation, I could tell that the preacher was drawing from something—or someone—on the west side of the building.
“What happened?” Shane ducked his head so his face was level with mine. “You okay?”
I nodded, rubbing my temples with my fingers. “He’s pulling. Being that close to it was hard for me.”
“From who? The audience?” Shane made an angry sound low in his throat and looked toward the building.
“I don’t think it was a member of the congregation.” I straightened and walked toward the church, reaching out with my awareness, grasping for the lines of power. The wall was edged with landscaping and I couldn’t get too close without being obvious, but it didn’t matter. I closed my eyes and let my mind take over, hunting for the source. There was still a lot of noise from the mass of people in the audience, but I could sense the way the energy in the air was disturbed around the path of the pull, like watching sunlight refract off a fishing line.
“He’s got someone trapped down there,” I said.
“How can you tell?”
“I feel her. At least I think it’s a her.”
She seemed to be sleeping, or possibly, given what I’d just felt, knocked out. Shane stared at the wall in front of us, extending his mental hands through the cinderblocks just as I had. His face went grim when he found the captive.
“What do we do?” I sent to Shane. “We can’t break down the wall.”
“You can.”
“Now?”
My brain was racing through the possibilities. The front door of the church opened, and people streamed out of the building into the parking lot. I realized how suspicious we looked, staring at a blank wall and not talking, me with my hand raised as if I were greeting someone. I walked away from the wall to stand under a live oak tree a few yards from the building, and Shane followed.
“We’ll call the police,” he said. “Tell them we heard something down there. There’s a service station in Platville—shit.”
I looked up, wondering what he meant, and then followed his gaze to see the woman in the blue-green shirt hurrying up to us.
“You poor things!” she said, coming up and taking my hand. I tried not to flinch. “Reverend Geary’s services can be truly overwhelming. Are you all right?” —such a nice young couple—and we need more young people for the youth outreach group—hope they weren’t frightened off—
“Oh, yes.” Shane answered for me and gave the woman his most charming smile. She smiled back. I’d seen women with far more self-assurance than this one melt when Shane really decided to apply himself. He put his arm around me and gave me a sickeningly concerned look. I resisted rolling my eyes with effort. “I think she was just overcome.”
“Why don’t you come with me to the church kitchen,
” the woman said. “You need to get out of the cold.”
Shane gave my shoulders a gentle squeeze, and I glanced at the surface of his thoughts. “Say yes. It’s a chance to find out more.”
“Thank you so much,” I said. “That is so kind of you.”
The woman looked as though we’d just made her day. Shane and I followed her to the back of the church, which came up against the cluster of houses and double-wides I’d seen from the water. She kept up a steady stream of praise for the preacher, Reverend Dominic Geary—what a good man he was, how close to God, how holy. I made little assenting noises from time to time, and that seemed to be all the encouragement she needed. We came to a simple wooden door set into the back wall of the church, and the woman opened it without unlocking it and led us inside.
“You don’t lock your doors here,” Shane commented.
“No need. We don’t have problems with robberies, you know, even with all the folks coming down from the city for the service. I guess those who decide to come are the good sort.” She gave us a look, as if we all knew who the bad sort were. I nodded, glad she couldn’t hear what I was thinking.
We walked down a narrow hallway with a handful of doors on each side. I tried to reach behind each of them as we passed, feeling for the one with Geary’s victim, but none of them were right, and we ended up in a largish kitchen with a window overlooking the back parking lot. Shane leaned against the doorframe, and I sat down in a folding plastic chair while our hostess poured a glass of tea from a pitcher in the fridge. She handed it to me, and I took a sip. Sweet.
“Better now, honey?”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you so much.”
“I’m Maryanne Fisher.” She held out her hand. I introduced myself and Shane, then I put on my best innocent-girl face and asked Maryanne if Reverend Geary performed such astonishing miracles every week.
“Oh, no, you were lucky to see something so impressive today.” She paused. “Lately, you know, he’s been particularly...”
“Powerful?”
“Yes!” She beamed at me. “But you can never tell when the spirit will move him.”
Spirit, my ass, I thought, and glanced out the window to hide the look on my face.
“It can be difficult for folks,” Maryanne went on. “After what happened to Matthew Green, we try to be extra careful.”
I risked looking in her head and got a tangle of frightened images. “What happened to Matthew Green?” I asked, and felt her clam up.
“The doctor said he had a weak heart to begin with. I suppose the Good Lord just saw fit to call him home.”
I dug a little deeper, past her desire not to think about the incident, and got flashes of images—Geary raising the cross, a commotion in the front row of the church, screaming, a crowd forming around a fallen figure, paramedics arriving. A woman sobbing over the body of a young boy, ten or eleven years old. Even through the filter of Maryanne’s memory, I could tell he was dead. I pulled out.
“It was a terrible blow to his mother, poor woman,” Maryanne was saying. “I don’t believe the family ever came back after that.” She gave a little sigh and shrugged. “That was all some time ago, though. And nothing of the sort’s ever happened since.” She smiled at me. “I’m so glad you’re feeling better.” I could tell she was sincere, and I had to stop myself from frowning. She meant well.
“Thank you,” I said, making myself smile back at her. “You’ve been so kind.”
“Well, we’d best be getting back. Thank you so much, Mrs. Fisher.” Shane took her hand and squeezed it.
“I do hope y’all will come back,” she said. “We’re always glad to have new faces around here.”
“Oh, we will,” Shane said. “It’s been a truly illuminating experience.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“That son of a bitch,” Shane said once we were back at the boat. “He killed a kid.”
“I don’t think he meant to.”
Shane shot me a sharp look. “Does it matter?”
“I’m not defending him. I think he’s disgusting. But I don’t think he intended to take out a member of his congregation. Not good for business.”
“He let it get out of hand again. That body we found.”
“You think he was in the audience, or someone he had trapped down there?”
“Who knows. But if I had to bet I’d say he kidnapped the poor bastard. Think about it—he could yank some homeless guy off the street and no one would notice for weeks.”
“We’ve got to get that woman out of there.”
“Couldn’t agree more.” Shane started the motor and pushed up the throttle as we cleared the dock.
We rode up to Platville in the boat, and I waited while Shane called the police from a pay phone at the gas station. We decided to tell them we’d heard tapping that sounded like an SOS signal coming from a room at the back of the church. As Shane told the lie, I cringed at how lame it sounded, but it was the best we could come up with. When he’d finished the call, we rode back to the middle of the lake to wait, pretending to fish.
I had to give the police credit; they’d taken us seriously. Fifteen minutes later, two sheriff’s cars came screaming up with their sirens on. Unfortunately, when Reverend Geary came out to meet them, they got a lot more comfortable. We watched through a pair of binoculars as the officers went inside the church. They didn’t look hurried.
“That can’t be good,” I said.
“We’ll see.”
I risked slipping into the mind of one of the deputies to watch what happened next, and I felt Shane do the same.
“So you won’t mind if we have a look around, then, Reverend?” my deputy was saying.
“Of course not. Please. Be my guest.” Geary had that smarmy preacher grin I hated—big and wide and friendly in an I’m-so-holy-I-love-everybody kind of way. It looked so phony, I wondered how everyone was keeping a straight face. The man whose brain I’d invaded seemed to agree. What a jackass, he was saying in his head.
I stayed with them as they searched the church, opening doors and looking in bathroom stalls. My deputy was keeping Geary ahead of him, watching him as they made their way through the building. When they came to the west end, to a set of rooms behind the stage, I was sure they were about to hit paydirt. I couldn’t risk slipping into Geary’s head—if his performance was any indication, he was too experienced not to notice—but I was certain they were close to the warm body I’d felt through the wall. I tensed, waiting for a door to open and reveal a half-dead woman chained to a wall, or something equally horrific.
Instead, the man whose head I’d invaded collapsed.
“Holy shit!” I pulled back in a hurry as Geary’s pull hit. Shane was by my side in the next instant, and I slumped against him, trembling. My connection to the subject made the surge much more intense, and I was having trouble catching my breath.
“What is it? What happened?” Shane was shaking me with worry, but I didn’t answer him, frantic to know what had happened to the deputy.
“Can you still see anything? Get back into that guy’s head!”
Thankfully, he didn’t question me. His eyes dilated and went dark as he slipped into the other deputy’s mind, and then his lips went thin. I leaned my head back on the side of the boat and closed my eyes, willing my heart rate back down. After a moment, Shane spoke.
“He’s just knocked out. They’re calling paramedics.” He paused. “He’s giving the last three rooms a quick check—they’re just closets.”
“Yeah, right. Could you tell what he was thinking? Was he suspicious?”
“Mostly just concerned for his partner,” Shane said. “And grateful to Geary for helping. Geary’s a pretty good actor—he really looked shocked.”
“So much for getting the cops after him. No telling what he would have done if they’d actually seen something. What now?”
“We go back tonight and we get her out.”
* * *
At half past mi
dnight, Shane, Lionel and I got into Shane’s Camaro and drove south to Briny Point. Bruce stayed back to watch the B&B. He hadn’t been happy about our plan, but he’d known better than to argue.
A storm rolled in as night fell, and the rain was coming down hard. Visibility was low, which made the drive down slower, but we all agreed it was probably better for sneaking into the church undetected.
“We should have borrowed Bruce’s car,” Lionel said. “This one is so conspicuous.”
“It’ll be fine,” Shane said. My heartbeat got faster and shallower, and Shane reached over from the driver’s seat and squeezed my hand. “It’ll be fine,” he said again.
We parked behind the church, but even the few yards between the car and the back door were enough for us to get soaked. At least the sound of the rain masked the crunch of shells and gravel under our feet, and there was certainly no one else out for a walk in the moonlight.
The church was dark and locked, but it was pathetically easy to feel the other side of the entry door for the deadbolt. So much for not worrying about “the bad sort.” The good reverend apparently wasn’t as trusting as his flock. I swung the door open, and Shane and I stepped into the same narrow hallway Maryanne had led us through that afternoon. We’d agreed beforehand that Lionel should wait outside and alert us if anyone approached, so we nodded to him and closed the door carefully behind us.
I nodded down the hall, and Shane nodded back. We were trying to use minimal mindspeaking in case Geary lived onsite and could pick it up in his sleep. When I let my awareness reach out down the passage, I could sense the woman I’d felt earlier. Without all the noise of an audience, it was easier to pick up on her quiet presence. She was sleeping. I hoped.
We started down the hall, and I searched behind the doors to the left while Shane checked those on the right. We passed the kitchen we’d been in earlier, a couple of rooms that felt like classrooms, a pair of bathrooms. When I found what we were looking for, it was obvious. Shane gave me a glance that said, “Go ahead.”
I hesitated. What if Geary was behind that door? Or someone else, a guard? I reached through carefully and felt only the same mental signature I’d picked up before. I took a deep breath and opened the door from the inside. It was a storage closet.
Twisted Miracles Page 18