Whispers in the Night

by Brandon Massey

  These people—this crowd—would slow her down, possibly prevent her from doing her job. And, somewhere among them, was a killer who would not be deterred.

  “Find a place to park,” she said. “I’m going to wade through this, see if I can find someone with security.”

  Reggie glanced toward the throngs of people. “Are you sure about this?”

  She tried to look sure. “I’ll be fine.”

  He was wedged behind the wheel of the tiny car, looking even more awkward than he did in the passenger seat. “How will I find you?”

  Karyn held up her cell. “You’ve got the number.”

  She rounded the car and sank into the growing crowd of parishioners who looked regal in the morning light. Karyn blended in well. Her enthusiasm for dress-up was only slightly better than Reggie’s, but attendance here required a little more than casual attire.

  She’d donned her tan linen pantsuit with a white blouse beneath, one of the outfits she kept on reserve for special occasions. Preventing homicide wasn’t on her list of possible affairs when she purchased it, but good fashion was prepared for anything, even when people aren’t.

  Her outfit—and looks in general—was on her mind mainly because it was on the mind of the people—men—she passed in an effort to find security. She wasn’t a mind reader, not by a long shot. She supposed the ability fell into the empath category, but even that was more glamorous than the reality of it.

  Every woman knew when she was being ogled. It was an instinct developed around the same time the body began to mature, making a woman a target for the scrupulous and unscrupulous alike.

  For Karyn, it was a million times worse.

  With her talent, every unwelcome pair of eyes felt like a featherlight hand pawing her flesh. She was subconsciously aware of every part of her body being assessed as she passed even the subtlest voyeur. Her face, eyes, breasts, stomach, hips, butt, and, more often than she cared to consider, feet (she didn’t even own a pair of open-toed shoes) were under review.

  She’d learned long ago, when her abilities were in their infancy, that this type of visual molestation was the nature of man. For that reason, she usually avoided crowds. Something else she learned long ago . . . it was rarely any better at church.

  With her skin crawling, she forced her way through, suppressing the urge to scream. There were times in the past when she hadn’t been so successful. But an outburst here could ruin her chances. Stay cool, girl.

  Thirty yards ahead, she spotted what she was looking for. He was tall and lithe in a navy-blue blazer with the Heavenly Duty crest on his sleeve. A wire coiled out of his collar to a bud in his ear, Secret Service–style. As she approached, she felt her mind slip into a prayer, her first one in a long time. Please, God, let this work.

  He caught her in his periphery and faced her. Immediately, she felt him undressing her with his eyes. She ignored the discomfort and went into her spiel. “Excuse me, sir.” She eyed the name tag on his left lapel. “Dale?”

  He smiled. “What can I help you with, miss?”

  “Do you know Jessica Manning?”

  “Of course. She’s a senior pastor here.”

  “Good. I’m her daughter. Karyn Manning.”

  His eyes flickered away, then back to her. She didn’t need psychic abilities to read the expression. He was skeptical. “Well, she would’ve left your tickets at the Will Call table. The doors will open in an hour and you can—”

  She dug into her handbag and produced her ticket to prove she wasn’t trying to con her way into the conference. “No. I already have my ticket. I just need to know if my mother is here yet. I need to tell her something.”

  His skepticism shifted to downright suspicion. “I wouldn’t have any way to confirm senior staff ’s arrival. That’s not part of my detail. But I do know Miss Manning has a cell phone. I’m sure her daughter would have the number.”

  She felt him shut down, the tunnel of cooperation contracted to a pinhole. The indirect approach wasn’t going to work.

  “Excuse me.” He turned away.

  “Wait.”

  Dale raised an eyebrow. His expression said, What now?

  “I’m going to tell you something. I’m not crazy and here.” She raised her ticket and tore it in half. “I’m not even going in, so don’t think I’m the one who’s going to give you trouble. But you’re security, and if you choose not to act the consequences will be on you.”

  “Miss, you’re not making any sense.”

  She leaned close, unwilling to let anyone else hear. “Someone’s going to shoot Horace Sinclair. They’re going to do it when he goes onstage to open the conference. You have to warn him.”

  Dale took a step back. His expression was stone. “Please.” Karyn felt the tears coming. “You have to believe me.”

  “Don’t move.”

  The guard turned away and spoke into a communicator attached to his cuff. Karyn could not hear what was said, but when he faced her, he nodded. “Come with me.”

  It was her turn for skepticism. “Why? Where are we going?”

  “Someone wants to speak to you.”

  “My mother?”

  He shook his head; his face glowed with eerie reverence. “Bishop Sinclair.”

  Dale ushered her inside Heavenly Duty through the front door. Some onlookers rushed the entrance and were halted by more guards. Curious shouting turned to angry screams. Karyn barely noticed.

  She craned her neck, looking around. This place . . . marble-tiled ceilings fifty feet high, gold light fixtures with crystal ornaments, a glass wall overlooking a sunken sanctuary, concession stands, a bookstore, credit union, employment office, full-service restaurant, day care, and, over the entrance to the worship hall, a gargantuan portrait of the good bishop. It was like the Sistine Chapel and Staples Center thrown in a blender.

  In Reggie’s words, ho-lee shit.

  “This way, miss.” Dale motioned to an unmarked corridor. She shook off her awe and followed his directions.

  The hallway took them to a steel door marked PRIVATE. Dale unclipped his ID badge and passed it over an electronic lock mounted in the wall. It buzzed and a bolt retracted in the frame. The door swung outward, revealing a brightly lit stairway.

  Karyn looked to the guard, uncertain.

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  They ascended to Heavenly Duty’s second floor.

  This new level was less religious regal and more like a corporate call center. Gray carpet led through a bay of unmanned cubicles. On the far wall, a series of locked doors barred them from darkened offices. But one office was open and well lit.

  “Wait here.” Dale entered the office and closed the door.

  Karyn was anxious, but relieved. She’d never expected someone to actually listen and take action. Cooperation was so rare when it concerned things yet to pass. To coin her mother’s favorite phrase, God was looking out for her.

  The door opened. Dale motioned her in as he left, casting furtive glances over his shoulder.

  This office resembled the royal décor of the Heavenly Duty’s first level. Rich carpet, high ceilings, oil paintings . . . and the patriarch himself. Bishop Sinclair sat staring out of his window, troubled.

  He swiveled to face her. Though it had been years since she’d been in his presence, she believed time had taken a greater toll on her than him. He had to be near the half-century mark, but didn’t look a day over thirty-five. He wore gold-framed spectacles over hazel eyes, and only a few renegade strands of gray could be seen in his goatee.

  He smiled; it was strained. “When he told me Jessica Manning’s daughter wanted to see me, I was a bit startled. I hope I don’t offend you by saying this, but it’s been so long since I last saw you. I’d forgotten about you.”

  Embarrassed heat seared her cheeks; she hoped her complexion hid her blush. “It has been a while, hasn’t it?”

  “You’ve grown into a very beautiful woman. The spitting image of your mother.�
� It was an honest compliment, nothing implied there. It was flattering; and with that, Karyn got a glimpse of how a woman could become enraptured by the compliments of such a powerful man. Somehow, she couldn’t convince herself he ever took advantage of the affections of the women in his flock. He was one of the good ones.

  And she was going to save his life.

  “As happy as I am to see you, Dale gave me some troubling information. He says it came from you.”

  She swallowed. “Yes. Someone—I think someone—is going to—”

  He held up a hand. “Not here.” He motioned to the window, and for the first time she noticed the people on the rooftops of a building in the distance. The people and their cameras.

  Bishop Sinclair rose and closed the blinds. “It’s funny, there was a time when only movie stars had to worry about paparazzi. Our country is so consumed with celebrity. The saying should be ‘In Tabloids We Trust.’ ”

  “Bishop—”

  He stopped her again. “There was a newspaper article a few years back, during the time Mayor Peppers was running for his second term. I spoke openly against his policies, so he attempted to discredit me. Things I said in private appeared in the article, out of context. At first, I thought someone in my senior staff was leaking information. We later found out my office had been bugged.

  “That was taken into consideration when we designed this building.”

  The bishop moved to what she assumed was a bare wall. He pressed on the plaster. Some sort of locking mechanism clicked, and a crevice appeared.

  It was a door to a hidden room.

  “Come,” he said. “It’s safe to talk in here.”

  She stepped inside, a little awed by the level of intrigue the bishop’s type of celebrity demanded. The room was a scaled-down version of the main office. There was a desk, a small bookshelf, a console of security monitors, and a worktable littered with circuits and tools that smelled of oil. It was an odd setup—the worktable more than the rest—but she supposed it served its purpose. Especially today.

  As soon as he closed the door, she vomited the words: “Don’t ask me how I know what I’m about to say, but you have to believe there’s going to be an attempt on your life. Someone’s going to shoot you in front of your congregation if you don’t do something.”

  “Dear Lord.” He kneaded his face with stiff fingers. “That’s what Dale said. I prayed he’d gotten mixed up.”

  “It’s true. I swear.”

  He looked at her, sighed, and nodded. “I believe you, child.”

  At his desk, he scooped up the phone and thumbed a red button on its face. “Mr. Markham, come to the back room, please. Bring Jimmy with you.” He placed the receiver back in the cradle.

  “Who did you call?”

  “Our chief of security.”

  His statement could’ve been an introduction, for as soon as he said it, the lock disengaged. A linebacker-sized, blue-eyed behemoth entered the room. His hair was long, platinum and slicked back, a stark contrast to the bishop and the mostly black Heavenly Duty congregation. He looked Nordic—like Thor without the hammer. Mr. Markham, she presumed.

  A shorter, frailer blond—the bottle variety—tailed him. Once they were all in, the room felt too tight . . . and hot. Karyn found it difficult to breathe, as if these men didn’t just inhale the air, but absorbed it.

  The sensation wasn’t physical. This was part of her gift. A warning. Something was wrong here.

  Mr. Markham sealed the door behind his little buddy, and then focused his gaze on Karyn. “What appears to be the problem, Bishop?”

  She glanced at Sinclair. He couldn’t even look her in the eye. “She knows, Mr. Markham. I don’t know how, but she knows about our plan.”

  The world tilted. Sinclair’s words and her heightened sensitivity to the present danger were almost too much to bear.

  She backpedaled, collided with the wall, and used it for support while she forced her breathing to regulate. A fine sheen of sweat plastered her blouse to her chest and back.

  Why was it so hot?

  Markham spoke: “She does, does she?” His voice was high, squeaky. It made him no less intimidating. He shot the other blond—Jimmy—a look. “Now, how did that happen?”

  Jimmy shook his head frantically. “Nuh-uh, wasn’t me. Wasn’t Jimmy.”

  Karyn didn’t need her powers to realize Jimmy was mentally challenged. What the hell was going on here?

  “We should call it off,” Sinclair told Markham. “If there’s a leak, we shouldn’t go through with this.”

  Markham gave him an easy smile. “Our objective hasn’t changed. Think of the good this will do. It’s worth the risk.”

  Karyn found her voice. “What are you talking about? Objectives? The good?”

  “Karyn.” The bishop’s eyes begged her to understand. “You’ve got it all wrong. No one’s going to kill me. The bullet’s not even real.”

  “What?”

  “It’s supposed to be a blank and a . . .”

  “A squib,” Markham chimed in. “It’s what they use in the movies to make gunshots look real.” He moved to the worktable and picked up a harness and a bag of what looked like hospital blood. “It’s a low-charge explosive and a packet of red corn syrup. Bishop Sinclair’s in no danger whatsoever.”

  Karyn shook her head. What she saw in her vision wasn’t corn syrup. In the future place she could smell the copper stench. It was blood and it was real.

  “Why?” she asked. “Why this?”

  “Forgiveness, Karyn,” Sinclair said. “It’s all about His message. Our congregation is at its peak. And we’re going to only rise higher. But somewhere along the way, His message got lost. It became about being in the ‘cool church,’ about getting your Heavenly Duty license plate holder. It’s about being the Heavenly Duty choir director, or chief financial officer. People have started to look at our church like a country club. The in-crowd belongs to Heavenly Duty, and we don’t cotton to nobodies around here.”

  Sinclair’s eyes glistened. “It never should’ve come to this.”

  “So you’re going to fake an assassination?” she asked. “It’s come to that?”

  Markham spoke up. “It’s not the assassination that makes this special. It’s the assassin.”

  Before she could question him, Jimmy began to bounce up and down like a hyper child. “Point and shoot. Bam!”

  Karyn could’ve burned a hole through Sinclair with her gaze. “No. Tell me you don’t intend to involve him in this.”

  Sinclair spoke with his voice and hands, channeling the energy that made him a world-famous speaker. “If you’ll let me explain, you’ll see why it could only be him.”

  He continued. “People threaten my life all the time. Most recently, members of the Church of King Christ.”

  He let that hang and she bit. “That’s the Aryan church. It’s been in the news a lot lately.”

  “Right. The officialdom of the church claims no knowledge of the threats, of course. But it’s all semantics, now, isn’t it? The lines have been drawn. There have been talks of riots, even among my people.”

  She began to understand Jimmy’s bottle-blond locks. If Sinclair wanted it to look like the shooter was connected to an Aryan church, Jimmy needed to look Aryan. She got that, but not what Sinclair hoped to accomplish.

  “When we do this, there will be horror and panic . . . Old Testament terror,” he said. “The true Christians will be separated from the vengeful charlatans. We’ll finally know who’s been listening.”

  Now Karyn was clear, on one thing anyway: Sinclair was insane.

  “You’re doing this because you want to weed out the lukewarms?” she asked.

  “No. So I can save them.”

  “I thought only Christ saved. Or is that just semantics, too?”

  Sinclair’s eyes flickered. He concealed the anger quickly. “When I ‘survive,’ and I forgive Jimmy for what he’s done, my message will be stronger than ever. My follow
ers will be stronger for it. Don’t you see?”

  “It won’t work,” she bluffed. She knew more than any of them it was going to work better than they’d dreamed. “You’ll be seen by medics and cops. They’ll find the squib.”

  “You’d be surprised how many of our members are in law enforcement and medicine,” he countered.

  “What about Jimmy? He’s supposed to be ostracized, maybe go to jail, for your ego trip?”

  Markham spoke up. “True followers make sacrifices to spread God’s Word. Besides, we have strong ties to the legal community, too. Someone in Jimmy’s condition will never see trial. This will work, miss.”

  She shook her head, her resolve hardened. “No. It won’t. Because I won’t let it.” She made for the door, but was halted by Markham’s manacle-like grip.

  The heat in the room went nuclear.

  This is not the future. It’s the past, gray and grainy like old news footage. Markham’s here, talking to men who look like him. They nod, laugh, and over their heads a crucifix hangs and the Lord looks over their deeds with anguished eyes.

  Markham shakes the hand of another. In the web between the thumb and forefinger of this other man’s hand, there’s a swastika.

  Fast-forward. Markham tinkers with a rifle. He removes one set of rounds—the blanks—and replaces them with black casings that look like missiles.

  Skip. The future’s now. While the masses huddle over a dead bishop, Markham watches from a balcony with Jimmy murdered at his feet and a smile on his lips.

  Karyn blinked to get her bearings. How long was she out? Seconds? Minutes?

  “Is she all right?” Sinclair asked.

  Markham watched her carefully. “She’s fine now.”

  “Wait.” She went to move and felt her arm snatched backward. A silver cuff chained her to the heavy worktable. The table was bolted to the floor and would not be moved.

  To Markham, she said, “What are you—?”

  Her eyes drifted past him, to the fifth figure in the room.