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“Yes. I know.”
You know now. You know where to find her. You can come back.
Nodding slowly, Mordecai drove past the two this time. He had to return to his rented home away from home, because there were things that needed doing. He’d begun the preparations, but he had to finish them. So he went to his temporary home. He took time to shower, to change clothes, to get a bite to eat, take his messages off the machine. The school had called. He phoned back and agreed to come in on Monday. Then he rechecked the cord he had run throughout every room of the house, along the baseboards, and the batteries in his remote control. Finally he drove out of town and got himself a different car.
A few hours later he was back at Lizzie’s house, in a dark blue, late model sedan almost as unremarkable as the first car had been. He’d transferred all his supplies into this one. The trunk was filled with various controlled substances, some of them too powerful even to be carried by the average pharmacy—like the vial of salmonella, a bit of which he’d used on poor Nancy Stillwater’s picnic lunch. Cruel, but effective. It wouldn’t kill her, though she would be terribly sick for a week, maybe longer. That was all he needed.
Mordecai didn’t kill unless Spirit dictated it. He wasn’t a murderer. He was a tool of God. Besides, Nancy wasn’t an evil woman. She’d even phoned him to see if he, too, had become sick. When he said he hadn’t, she ruled out her picnic lunch as the source of the food poisoning and wondered aloud where she could have picked it up.
He parked the car in a pull-off, where autumn foliage concealed it from view. Then he walked back to Lizzie’s house and took up a position on a tree stump just inside the edge of the woods across the street. This time he had a video camera, a digital camera and a pair of high-powered binoculars.
He never let her out of his sight for the rest of the day.
A woman delivered groceries around eleven. Beth ate an early lunch, alone at a small table in her kitchen. Yogurt and a banana. After lunch, a teenage boy showed up, and Mordecai recognized him even before he raised the binoculars for a closer look. It was young Bryan.
He and Lizzie worked over textbooks in the living room.
I have a private tutor. The boy’s voice repeated the words in Mordecai’s memory. He closed his eyes, thanked his guides for putting the boy into his path, apologizing again for doubting them earlier. The boy was more than just an honest young man and heir to Mordecai’s gift. And more than a signpost, pointing the way to Lizzie. He was connected to her in some way. Connected to him, too. He marveled anew at the intricate web of the universe and the complex machinations of almighty God. The brilliance of linking Mordecai to Lizzie through this new child. The son.
“No wonder I couldn’t find her right away,” he whispered. “She barely goes out. She’s entirely self-contained. Except for that run in the morning.”
When Bryan left, Lizzie worked out with a punching bag that hung from the ceiling in a corner of her living room, shocking him with the power and fury of her blows. Then she showered. Later she made herself a solitary dinner and went to bed. Alone.
Always alone, Mordecai. She’s changed. Like a lone wolf now, she thinks she’s independent, thinks she’s strong.
And you know why, don’t you, Mordecai? She’s waiting. She knows you’ll come for her, and she thinks she’s preparing. Thinks she’s going to be ready.
Thinks she can defeat you.
Defeat God.
Mordecai lowered his binoculars and closed his eyes. “Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie. Don’t you know you’ve only made matters worse by adding the sin of pride to the list of things for which you must be punished?”
He drew a breath. He didn’t want her proud and independent and strong. Before he revealed himself, Mordecai wanted Lizzie reduced to the needy child she had been once; the lost, confused runaway who saw him as a savior.
She has to die, Mordecai. It’s her fate. You need to correct a terrible flaw in history. She’s supposed to be dead.
He tightened his jaw. “She has to be taught. She has to be stripped of every ounce of pride and rebelliousness, and returned to a state of purity and humility. She’ll come to me on her knees then. She’ll beg me to take her back.”
Are you questioning us yet again? Haven’t you learned better? She has to die!
“Stop!” Mordecai pressed his hands to his ears, awaiting the pain that inevitably came when he questioned his guides.
The voices went silent, and the pain didn’t come. Not this time. But he was worried. If Spirit insisted, he would have no choice but to obey. Oh, if only there could be another way. Maybe, if Lizzie suffered enough, Spirit would be satisfied that she had found redemption. Maybe, if he could bring her down low enough, she could still be saved.
Impossible.
“I have to try.” He licked his dry lips and wondered why he hadn’t thought to bring along some food or water. But he knew why. The voices hadn’t told him to get those things. Maybe it was fitting that he fast while he watched Lizzie. Maybe there was a reason for it.
Lifting the binoculars again, he resumed watching her. He could see her clearly through the sheer curtains, from her blond hair spread on the pillows to the outline of her body beneath the sheets of her small bed.
She slept with the light on.
He knew now where Beth went when she went running in the morning. To that house, where the boy was living, with an old woman and a handsome man. The man who had accompanied Lizzie back to her house.
A dark flame burned in his belly. He didn’t like the man.
It’s the old woman she’s closest to, Mordecai. It was obvious from their interactions this morning.
Again he nodded. He was making progress, he thought. He was identifying the underpinnings that supported her in her fraudulent new life. She had students. She had friends. A home and a job. All of those would have to go. One by one, they would have to go.
“Whatever happens, from here on, Lizzie, it’s your own fault. And everything I do is for your own good.”
You’ve watched her enough for now, Mordecai. Tonight you’ve got other work to do.
Bryan sank down onto the sofa, took up the remote control and began flipping channels on the television. Josh came in from the kitchen, a coffee mug in one hand.
“I’m glad you came down,” Josh said. “I was going to come up.”
“To lecture me about school again?”
“No. Just to talk.”
Bryan shot him a skeptical look. Then he dropped the remote and leaned back. “Why not? There’s nothing better to do.”
“Beth predicted you’d get bored out here in short order.”
Bryan nodded. “I’ve listened to every music file I’ve ever downloaded, ten times each.”
“What would make it better?” Joshua asked.
His son looked surprised. “An Internet connection would help. My laptop’s set up for cable, but Maude says there’s no cable here.”
“Done. I’ll get on it tomorrow.”
“Really?”
Josh flinched inwardly. Had he been so self-absorbed that his son was surprised he would want to do something nice for him? “Sure. I’ll find out what the local dial-up service is and get you signed up. I’ll have to clear it with Maude first—it’s her phone.”
“I should have wireless.”
“We’re not going to be here that long, Bry. Dial-up will do.”
Bryan nodded. “Where is Maude, anyway? Gone to bed?”
“Out at the movies with her next-door neighbor.”
“Frankie the cop?”
“Frankie Parker.” Josh smiled. “I know, a police chief named Frankie doesn’t inspire much confidence.”
Bryan looked at him more closely. “You’re…different today.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. Less tense. More laid-back.”
Josh nodded. “It’s a laid-back kind of a town. Hell, I don’t know, Bryan, maybe I’ve needed to take some time off for a while now. Or maybe it’s…that I’ve been sitting behind a desk too long. You know, when Kevin and I first started our own private security business, we did all the work ourselves.”
“Bodyguards-R-Us,” Bryan quipped.
“Yeah. Now, I don’t know. We’ve got three offices, dozens of men working for us, high-profile clients, and it’s all about paperwork.”
“It’s not fun anymore,” Bryan said.
Josh looked him in the eye. “You know what? You’re right. You nailed it. It’s not fun anymore.”
Bryan nodded. “So quit.”
“It’s not that simple, Bryan.”
“Sure it is. You don’t like what you’re doing, so stop doing it.”
Josh sighed, sensed himself getting impatient with Bryan, and Bryan getting impatient with him, and decided to change the subject. “How’d the tutoring go?”
“Fine.” Bryan reached to the coffee table for a magazine and began flipping pages. It was a copy of Vermont Dairy Monthly—a field full of fat cows on the cover.
“Any sign of that brown car lurking around?” Joshua asked.
“Nope, not that I saw.”
Josh sat down on the sofa beside his son. “Meant to tell you, that was a good call this morning. Spotting the strange car, telling me about it.”
Bryan shrugged, but at least he looked up from the magazine he wasn’t really reading. “I wasn’t sure whether to say something in front of Beth or not. It made her nervous, didn’t it?”
“Seemed to.”
“Guess she has reason to be.”
Josh nodded. “Yeah. I wanted to talk to you about that.”
“About what?”
“About me. About…Beth Slocum. And why I reacted the way I did when I first saw her.”
Bryan lifted his brows. They disappeared beneath the shock of brown hair that slanted across his forehead. “I thought that was none of my business.”
“You said that, Bry. I didn’t. I just…had to make sure she was who I thought she was before I said anything.”
“And now you’re sure?”
“Yeah.” Josh took a breath, telling himself that Beth’s advice had sounded great at the time. Carrying it out was another matter. “This goes back a ways, so bear with me. Before you were born, I worked for the ATF. It was one of the things that came between your mother and me. She hated it.”
“I know all about that.”
Josh blinked. “You do?”
“Yeah. Mom told me.” Bryan set his magazine back on the coffee table.
Josh nodded. “Okay. But she probably didn’t tell you why I was fired from that job. There was a cult leader, keeping underage kids, mostly girls, on a fenced compound, with armed guards and dogs. He was dealing drugs and stockpiling weapons, and no one was sure the girls who were there were free to leave.”
“The Young Believers,” Bryan said.
Josh lost his entire train of thought. “You know about them, too?”
“Sure I know. Mom told me about the raid that went bad. She told me about the girl you accidentally shot, how you lost your job over it. And she told me never to bring it up with you. She said it was the worst time of your life and probably the main reason you two broke up. She said the guilt ruined you.”
Josh just sat there for a moment, absorbing his son’s words. “I had no idea she’d told you all that.”
Bryan tipped his head to one side. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear your version of it. Besides, what does all that have to do with Beth Slocum?”
“Everything,” Joshua said softly. He looked his son in the eyes. “It turns out she’s the girl I shot.”
Bryan bobbed his head forward, eyes widening. “But I thought the girl you shot was dead.”
“So did everyone else. Nearly everyone, I mean. For all these years, I believed it. When I went to see her in the hospital after the raid, she was in a coma. They told me she wouldn’t live, and the way she looked, I had no trouble believing it. She was…hell, she was your age.”
“And they let you think you’d killed her? I can’t believe no one ever told you. You recognized her when we first saw her, didn’t you?”
“I did. It had been a while—she was eighteen years younger and at death’s door when I last saw her, after all. But yeah, it’s not like that face hasn’t haunted me ever since. I just couldn’t believe it could really be her.”
Bryan nodded slowly, his eyes holding his father’s, almost probing them. “That’s what’s different, then.”
Josh looked at him, unsure what his son meant.
“The guilt you’ve been carrying around, Dad. Jeez, finding out you didn’t kill her after all must have been like having a lead weight taken off your shoulders.”
He nodded slowly. “You know, that’s probably it.” Then he frowned. “You ought to look into a future as a shrink, you know that?”
“Doesn’t take a shrink to nail that one.” He paused, studying his father’s face so closely that Josh wondered what his son saw there. Then he said, “Tell me the rest, Dad.”
He really wanted to know, Josh realized. He organized his thoughts and continued his story. “The cult leader, Mordecai Young, didn’t die in the raid, either, though for a long while everyone believed he had.”
“So that’s who they think might come after Beth?”
Josh nodded. “A year ago they crossed paths. She was a teacher—he’d kidnapped one of her students. She bluffed her way into the house were Mordecai was holding the girl, and then she tried to kill him.”
“No way.”
