Sinner

by Ted Dekker

  ANNIE WATCHED the door close behind Brian Kinnard, unable to hide the amusement on her face. Simple fact: she liked them. Even without their gifts, she found Darcy in particular superbly suited for life in the capital. Not a career politician who thrived off the foggy landscape of compromises, but a real voice for change. The kind of person best suited for Washington was often the kind who hated it enough to suffer all that was required to effect change.

  People like Darcy and Billy. So hard to attract, but oh so valuable if you could.

  She kept her eyes on that sealed door. “Well, that went well.What do you think?”

  “I think you’re way out of line, even speaking about muzzling . . .Christians.” Ben Manning spread his fingers out on the table and tapped a large gold ring on the wood. “Or any religion for that matter. And Darcy presents a significant problem.We have to end this.”

  The ice clinked in Deputy Director Newton Lawhead’s glass. He took a sip, set the tumbler down, and slid his sunglasses into his pocket. But he offered no comment.

  “I would say this is the beginning, not the ending,” Lyndsay said.

  Manning continued as if he hadn’t heard. “I’m the last one to suggest extreme measures, but I hope all of you can appreciate the delicate nature of our problem here.We have to silence her.”

  Annie faced the senator, surprised by his bitter tone. “Silence her? What exactly are you suggesting?”

  He pulled off his glasses and met her stare head-on. “I’m suggesting that all of this is horribly irresponsible. I can’t be a party to it. That child could walk into any bank and leave the wealthiest woman in the world. Imagine what she could do in a war, or a presidential race, or . . . or . . .” Manning was too flustered to elaborate.“She could single-handedly bring this country to its knees in the worst of ways. She has to be stopped.”

  “No, Ben, she has to be guided. If she fell under the wrong influence, yes, then we’d have a problem. But she’s not a child, and I don’t see her as the kind who will easily fall under anyone’s influence but her own.We work with her, not against her.”

  “Agreed,” the attorney general said. “And for goodness’ sake, we protect her.”

  Ben Manning stood abruptly, scowling. “You can’t protect her. No prison can hold someone who has the power to seduce the first person who looks into her eyes. You’re flirting with disaster. A vial of the deadliest virus. Drop it and we all die.”

  Lawhead cleared his throat. “You’re suggesting we kill her, Ben?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. If they couldn’t find a way to win Darcy and Billy’s complete confidence, they could indeed have a very awkward problem on their hands.

  But kill them? The very idea seemed ludicrous to Annie.

  “We protect this country at all costs,”Manning said. He walked around the table and strode for the door.“It’s your job to figure out how to do that.”

  He turned back with his hand on the knob. “And if you don’t, I will.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  * * *

  Day Six

  KELLY DROVE the car down the street that wrapped around the school yard. Kat sat quietly beside her. Johnny was unexpectedly called out of town Saturday night, so Kelly had agreed to take her to the court-house and return her to Boulder City High during the lunch hour.

  It had been four days since Kat’s change, and those days had passed like a dream. She really did feel as though she’d been birthed into a new world. Everything was new to her.

  The debate, however, had become a familiar fear. She’d imagined her face-off with Asad a hundred times, and each time it brought a tingle to her fingers.Who was she, to engage in such a debate? But she would do it anyway, in just a few hours when the bell rang at day’s end.

  During her time with Johnny Saturday, he’d shown her an account written by a prisoner named John the Apostle, who had actually been with Jesus while he was on earth, thousands of years ago. The basic truths of Jesus’s teachings hurried through her mind like soft echoes in a deep canyon. Big words that sounded strange but right. Perfect.

  Love the Lord your God with all your heart. Love your neighbor as your-self. Simple enough. Jesus was all about love.

  The kingdom of God is among you. I am the Light of the World. The Truth, the Way. No one can go to the Father but through me. Again, simple enough. Truth was all about Jesus.

  Others were less obvious. The gate to heaven is narrow; only a few will pass through it. Unless you leave your mother and your father for my sake, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you cannot follow me.

  The world will hate you if you follow me.

  Clearly, following Jesus wasn’t a casual affair. She’d never imagined such startling, narrow-minded teaching could follow so easily in the path of love, love, love, all you need is love.

  But it made perfect sense to her heart if not her mind. Jesus wasn’t merely a good and wise prophet; he was God, and he was pointing the way to God. To himself. As it turned out, following that way came at a price few were willing to pay.

  It cost their own pride, as Johnny put it. Their self-interest.

  You won’t make it through the narrow gate because your eyes are on yourself and your own endless arguments and you’ll run into the wall, O blind one. That’s how she had put it, and Johnny smiled.

  So then, the debate. Johnny had been right in saying that truth was best shown, not simply argued. She had no idea what kind of words she could use to show Carla and Asad and the rest of them that Jesus was the Way.

  It would be foolishness to them. Which, appropriately enough, was another one of Jesus’s teachings.

  The car rolled to a stop in the parking lot and Kat opened her door.

  “So I can come over after school then?”

  “Johnny will be back this afternoon.Why don’t you come for dinner?”

  “Really? I’ll check with my mom, but that should work.”

  “What does your mother think of all this?”

  “We haven’t really talked about it. I mean, she knows something’s up, but I wanted to wait until we actually have some time to talk it through. Not sure she would believe me, you know what I mean?”

  “Cried wolf a few too many times?”Kelly said.“Don’t worry, she’ll see the change.”

  Kelly said it all with a smile, that perpetual smile, so constant that at times Kat wondered if it had been surgically affixed to her face.

  She’d told Johnny about finding Kelly behind the shed, crying, but he only turned away. Kelly had been through hell in Hungary, he said. She had been caught up in an underground training camp for assassins hired out to the world’s largest governments. Her mind had been stripped and forced into a mold that she’d since rejected.

  She’d been his handler, he said. Forced to manipulate him before they’d fallen in love and gone on the run together. Without her, he’d be dead or worse, a vegetable. He owed his life to her. Johnny said it all with a knot in his throat and then dismissed the subject.

  Kat wondered if whatever had happened hadn’t blinded him just a bit. Not that she was jealous, but . . . just who was Kelly anyway? She never talked about Jesus. She never joined in the discussion. She never did anything but sit there with that flat smile, rubbing Johnny’s back.

  “That’s what I was hoping,” Kat said. “Okay, see you.”

  “Six?”

  “Cool.”

  Kelly left Kat standing in the parking lot. The school grounds were quiet this time of day. A man on a riding mower was cutting the grass around the fountain pond, and two groundskeepers had weed cutters out, trimming the edges of the walkway around the concrete slab that surrounded the water.

  Blue sky above, sun blazing hot. She headed for the lunch wing.

  Tires squealed past her and she saw a news van brake to a hard stop. A camera crew spilled out and began to run toward her followed by a blonde woman dressed in a blue
business suit.

  They ran past.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Stay outside,” the blonde woman said.

  Kat ran after them.

  “Where is it?”

  “In the lunchroom,” the reporter said. “From what I’ve heard it’s a mess in there. You need to stay back!”

  Odd, here Kat was, basking in the light of this new kingdom, and all around her the world was coming apart at the seams.

  The back entrance to the lunchroom was around the other side by the gym. She cut across the lawn, rounded the building, surprised to see no students on the greenway. The reason became immediately apparent: someone had rolled a large garbage bin in front of the cafeteria’s fire door, blocking any exit.

  Whatever was occurring inside had been planned.

  She threw her weight against the bin, but it refused to budge. Fists were pounding on the other side of the door. She could hear screams.

  “Does this door lead to the lunchroom?” the cameraman demanded, running up behind.

  “Yes, push! We have to clear it.”

  With three of them pushing, the Dumpster rolled free. The door burst wide open with a bleat from the fire alarm, spilling a stream of students. The screams from the lunch hall weren’t all cries of fear. There was as much anger in the voices as panic.

  The cameras were already rolling behind her. “We’re here at what appears to be an emergency exit at the Boulder City High School lunch-room, where students have been trapped for the last five minutes.” The reporter spoke rapidly. “It appears that the exit was blocked before the riot began. No sources have come forward yet to reveal the nature of this conflict, purportedly a racially instigated conflict between Arab Americans and African Americans within the student body . . .”

  Kat saw an opening in the flood of students and ducked inside. The sight that greeted her made her catch her breath.

  The new lunchroom was set up food-court style,with hundreds of small round tables situated around a dozen stations that offered everything from pizzas to salads to sandwiches, some for a price, some as part of the school’s free-lunch program.

  Most of the tables were on their sides, a few broken. The food stations had been destroyed by thrown chairs, which appeared to be the weapon of choice.

  A group of roughly fifty blacks were scattered along one end, facing off Hispanics who clutched chairs, shielding themselves from a fusillade of ketchup bottles, mustard tubes, glasses, and silverware. The floor was covered in condiments and bottles.

  A line of Arabs headed by Asad and his gang stood along the wall to Kat’s left, turned toward both the Hispanics and blacks on either end. It was a three-way face-off.

  Of the seven hundred students in this lunch shift, only a hundred seemed to be directly involved. The rest had taken shelter behind stations or had taken up chairs to ward off flying objects.

  She’d expected to see the Arabs and blacks going at it after last week’s run-in. But Hispanics? Granted, there had always been some rivalry between black and Hispanic gangs, but that rivalry had been limited to a war of words.

  She couldn’t imagine what had pushed things to this level.

  The principal’s voice was screeching over the PA, demanding calm. It wasn’t working. The camera crew piled in through the exit. The reporter was at her shoulder.

  “Can you tell what’s going on? You see anyone you know?”

  Then Kat saw the fourth group on the far side, opposite the Muslims, mostly Indians huddled behind a makeshift fort made of overturned tables.

  A four-way battle, and she could hardly tell who was against whom. Hispanics against blacks,Muslims against Hindus? Watching the projectiles, it looked more like all against all. Chaos.

  An older Indian student she recognized as a Hindu was screaming at the Arabs. He cocked his arm back and hurled a bottle at the group.

  “Death to Muslims!”

  Two of his compatriots stood from behind their tables and hurled the same words, chasing them with a glass saltshaker and some cutlery.

  The first projectile slammed into the wall behind Asad and shattered with a loud pop. A large blotch of ketchup splattered on the baby-blue wall, erasing Is from the large motto painted on the wall: Tolerance Is Beautiful.

  Asad didn’t bother ducking. No fewer than ten of the Arabs heaved a volley of condiments and silverware on the ducking Hindus.

  “Death to the infidels! The Hindus are warmongers! Allah akhbar! ”

  Kat felt panic welling up in her chest. It didn’t take much of an imagination to see how blacks against Hispanics versus Arabs could mutate into Christians against Muslims against Hindus, not when religion and race were so closely connected. Not when they all knew that they all secretly despised each other in spite of the tolerance preached in every classroom.

  A small Indian girl suddenly stood from behind the tables, eyes fixed on the Arabs across the room. Kat had seen the dark-haired girl around a few times, a freshman who looked as green as a foreigner who’d just flown in from Calcutta. The wide-eyed girl looked at the open door behind Kat, stepped out from the makeshift fort, and scooted out into the open, angling across the open floor for the exit.

  “Stop!” Kat cried, waving the girl back. “Get back, get back!”

  The girl did not stop. Instead, she began to cry. She shuffled in fast, short steps with her arms by her sides. Crossfire whizzed past her and she began to run, white dress flapping around her thin tan legs.

  Kat broke from her safe corner, holding her arm out to the Arabs. “Don’t throw! Stop!”

  A single glass ketchup bottle shot from the line to her left, covered the gap to the Indian girl in the space of one breath, and struck her on the side of her head.

  The girl dropped to the ground.

  Kat sprinted, screaming at the top of her lungs, “Stop! Stop!”

  They weren’t stopping—she could see that in her peripheral vision—but her eyes were on the young girl who hadn’t moved.

  She waved her arms over her head and raced into the cross fire. “Stop it, she’s hurt, you’re gonna kill someone! Stop this!”

  A bottle flew past her head as she dropped to her knees beside the girl. The freshman was moaning now, rolling to one side. No sign of blood.

  “You okay?”

  A spoon struck her on the shoulder and clattered to the floor.

  Kat stood up and faced the gang of blacks, knowing that they thought of her as one of their own.

  “Stop this!” she screamed. She met their eyes and spun to the Arabs.

  “Just stop it!”

  They seemed momentarily stalled by her boldness. The decibel level of the cacophony dropped. She seized the opportunity and cried out, facing the Hispanics. The Arabs had fired the ketchup bottle, but she knew that confronting them directly would only inflame Asad, who believed, as others once had, that a bloody crusade was the only way to convince people of anything.

  “You’ve hurt a girl who only wants to be safe with her father!” she cried. “Is that what your mothers taught you?”

  No bottles flew. All four sides stared at her. An older Indian girl raced out, weeping. “Hadas,Hadas!” She slid to the fallen girl’s side and brushed her hair from her face. Touched the swelling bump on her head. “Speak to me, Hadas.What have they done, what have they done?”

  The young girl tried to sit, and her friend helped her. “Are you okay? Are you sure you are okay?” She cradled her, and the young girl began to cry, soft moans.

  By the door, the news camera rolled. Otherwise the room was still. She had to keep the focus on race rather than religion, Kat thought.

  “Blacks and whites are lynching each other out there, is that what we’re here on this earth to do? Hang each other because we’re different? You’re a black man in a Hispanic neighborhood, they rope you up, is that what you want? You’re Hispanic in a black neighborhood, they lynch you, is that what you want?”

  A single mustard bottle sailed out. She
stepped aside and watched it bounce off the floor, unbroken. It slid to a stop at the feet of a Hispanic student, who picked it up.

  “Go ahead, throw it back,” she cried, pointing at the boy. “But throw it at me, not them. I’m black. Or am I Indian? For all you know I’m Hispanic! Go ahead, throw it.”

  The student looked at his people and received no encouragement.

  Only now did Kat face Asad and his band. “We were made to love each other, not to fight. You think you’re throwing ketchup bottles at the enemy, but you’re not. You’re just giving them more ammunition to throw back at you. Races have been doing that for centuries. The school teaches us to tolerate each other. But I say we should love each other! Tolerance is not enough! Blacks,Hispanics,Arabs, whites,Hindus,Muslims, Christians—love each other.”

  The Arab boy dropped his stare, and she decided to take her words a step further, right here in front of them all.

  “This is my debate, Asad. Love! Love your neighbor as yourself; that is the teaching of Jesus. It’s a narrow way, but it’s a simple way and the whole world ought to listen.”

  For nearly twenty seconds, no one moved or threw a bottle.

  “To hell with your debate,” Asad finally said. “Inshe’allah. The will of Allah will be done.”

  Then he turned and walked toward the door, followed reluctantly by the others. The last few scrambled after.

  A teacher came out from behind a salad kiosk. “Someone, call an ambulance.”

  Just like that, the riot at Boulder City High School was over.

  And the news coverage of the girl named Katrina Kivi, who’d risked her neck to speak sense into a crowd of angry students, had just begun.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  * * *

  Day Seven

  DARCY FELT a bit lost. Powerless even.Which to her way of thinking was a bit terrifying. She’d gone from the highest peak of confidence and power to this miserable state of denial in the space of two days.