The bedroom was just off the dining room and the door was open. She debated for just a moment and then stole quietly in to have just a quick look. The bed was made, and that pleased her.
The stuffed lion and lamb posed against the pillows made her smile. Books were neatly perched on the shelves, and an aquarium, home to four tropical fish and one tiny frog, gurgled peacefully.
She heard a noise and turned. Nothing there but the messy kitchen and two pieces of cold pizza.
The bedroom closet was along the wall to her immediate right, closed off with bifold doors. She was tempted to take a peek in there as well, but drew the line right where she stood. Privacy was privacy. Besides, there was a smell in here, like body odor. He has some dirty tee shirts hiding somewhere, she thought, and I don’t want to find them.
Then she saw the picture beside the bed, and paused. It was Marian, looking the best she’d ever looked in one of those perfect hair, hand-to-chin studio poses. She walked quietly, even respectfully, around the bed and to the nightstand to take a closer look.
This was Marian in her prime, before the cancer and chemotherapy. Morgan couldn’t resist. She had to touch it, then pick it up, charmed by Marian’s smile, saddened by the loss. She could identify. She had a picture of Gabe by her bed.
She looked over her shoulder.
Nothing there but shelves, a banjo, and the door to the kitchen.
Sometimes light reflected off the inside of her glasses and made her think she was seeing something. That must have been what it was.
Plus the fact that she was nervous and still hadn’t found her son.
And afraid, maybe. Just a little afraid. Not that there was any reason to feel fear, not in this place, not in Travis Jordan’s house.
She turned her back to the wall and looked all around the bedroom. The only sound was the gurgling of the aquarium.
Everything looked fine. It didn’t smell fine, but— She didn’t know what was in that closet, did she? She hadn’t looked in there.
Well, she hadn’t looked under the bed, either.
Every child’s silly fear. Monsters in the closet and a bogeyman under the bed. Fear for no reason. Enough!
“Michael?”
No answer. He simply wasn’t here.
She walked out of the bedroom—FRONTDOOROPENED!
She jolted.
“Hello? Reverend Elliott?” It was Brett Henchle.
She wilted.
She found some air, drew it in deeply, and sighed it out, her hand over her heart. “Officer Henchle, you scared me to death.”
He smiled, embarrassed. “Whoa, sorry. Do you know why I’m here?”
She managed a smile although she was still trembling. “I think we’re both here to get Michael, only he isn’t here.”
He immediately turned grim. “Where is he?”
“I, I don’t know. He’s been gone a while, I think. Travis and I have both called him but there’s been no answer . . .” Her legs felt wobbly. She shook her head, trying to clear it.
“You okay?”
She pulled a chair from the kitchen table, sat down, and didn’t answer until her head was between her knees. “A little overwrought, I guess. Too much excitement . . .”
“I’ll get you a glass of water.”
She didn’t trust him enough not to raise her head and watch him go to the sink. He no longer stood between her and the front door. She thought of running.
Control, Morgan! Come on!
NANCY BARRONS and Kim Staples made it to the ranch after news hounding and shooting several rolls of film in town. With a word to the police from Kyle and me, they were permitted under the yellow barrier tape and into the thick of the action. The main attraction right now was the slow, relentless parade of campers and motor homes coming down the driveway, each one bearing a red tag indicating it had been searched.
“The end of Cantwell’s heyday,” Nancy commented.
“We don’t know how many are still with him in the house,” I replied. “But he’s keeping hostages.”
“Kyle?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll be writing another editorial, something I hope will bring some balance to the first one. Sorry for the trouble.”
Kyle smiled. “Well, praise God.”
“Kyle!” someone shouted from beyond the yellow tape. “Travis!”
It was Bob Fisher, the Baptist minister. He was standing out there with Howard Munson the independent Pentecostal, Sid Maher the Lutheran, and Paul Daley the Episcopalian. We hurried down to the tape and ducked under to their side. They were full of questions and concern. Could they help? Was there anything they could do?
“Pray,” said Kyle. “Just pray that no one gets hurt, that somehow the Lord will open the eyes of Cantwell’s followers and bring freedom to the hostages.”
“Cantwell?” Paul Daley asked. “Who’s Cantwell?”
Explaining the new name meant telling a lot of the story.
While Kyle began the account, I stepped aside to watch the police setting up floodlights and loudspeakers along the brow of the hill. No doubt they were setting up speakers and lights all around the house.
“He’s not going to like being surrounded,” I said.
“What was that?” Nancy asked.
“I’m not too sure how he’s going to respond to being surrounded by all the . . . authority figures. It might be too much like the fence . . .”
Nancy moaned, “I think you’re right.”
“If he feels corralled . . .”
“FEELING BETTER?” Brett asked.
Morgan had downed most of the glass of water he’d brought her and was sitting upright. She nodded. “I’m with you. Just needed some time to steel my nerves.” Her heart was still racing.
“We’d better find Michael.”
“He probably decided to walk home—to my place. You may have noticed, he likes to walk.” She saw my telephone next to the couch in the living room, and crossed over to it. “I’ll see if I can reach—”
“HOLD IT! HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!”
She jumped and then she froze, hands half-raised and trembling. She turned her head.
Brett Henchle wasn’t talking to her. He was looking into the bedroom, sighting down the barrel of his gun. He motioned to her, get back. “TURN AROUND SLOWLY AND PUT YOUR HANDS AGAINST THE WALL!”
She ducked behind the far end of the couch, her heart pounding.
She managed a prayer, only three or four words, then concentrated on breathing.
Brett advanced on the bedroom, gun extended. He disappeared through the door. “AGAINST THE WALL! SPREAD ’EM!”
Something jingled: His handcuffs, she thought.
Morgan heard sounds of scuffling and blows. Books thudded and crashed to the floor. A body hit the wall. She half rose from her hiding place, longing to help.
A shot went off. She dropped behind the couch again.
A sound like tearing cloth, the impact of a punch. Brett cried out in pain. More scuffling.
Quiet. Then feet stumbling, dragging.
A hand came through the door, grabbing the doorpost, streaking the paint with blood.
Brett’s face appeared, twisted, shaken, pale. He stared at her, trying to form words. He gagged and drooled red. She jumped up to help him. He had prevailed, but he was hurt. He— His body lurched forward, and his torso slipped from around a bloodied blade that remained poised in the air, the handle invisible within the doorway. He collapsed, coming down on his knees, then buckling forward, his head thumping on the vinyl flooring.
The knife entered the room, followed by the hand that held it.
The bloodied hand of Justin Cantwell.
Thirty
DRESSED IN WHITE but bloody as raw meat, Cantwell leaned against the doorpost and gazed at her, eyes crazed, knife ready.
Morgan ran for the door.
A man stood there, Near Eastern in appearance—olive skin, black curly hair, a wicked gaze. He reached for her. She
spun away.
The Hitchhiker was right behind her, looking pale and dead, his blond hair hanging limply to his shoulders. He didn’t grab for her. He just stood in her path, smiling a toothy grin.
She went for his face with the heel of her hand—he wasn’t there. She fell forward, off-balance.
Justin Cantwell caught her, clamping his bloodied hands around her wrists. His hands were cold like steel, their grip unbreakable.
He reeked of sweat—the smell from the bedroom—and blood. She struggled and kicked, twisted, but he got behind her and twisted her arm behind her back. His knife went to her throat.
“Uncle?” His tone was mocking and patronizing.
The Hitchhiker was back, right in front of her. Near Eastern approached from the front door, taking his time, his eyes menacing. She squirmed and pulled, and the tip of the knife poked her neck like a hot needle. She cried out.
“Uncle?”
She held still, gasping, whimpering. The knife had to be cutting her. She was going to die.
“I can’t hear you.”
She formed the word several times before she could finally utter it in a quaking whisper. “Uncle.”
The tip receded. “That’s better.”
A third figure appeared from nowhere, dressed in white and looking like an angel. The three came close, lining up like a wall before her.
“You saw what I did to Officer Henchle?”
Father, receive my spirit . . . She swallowed, then nodded.
“And you see my friends?”
She couldn’t believe it even as she nodded again.
“So you know your options are limited. As a matter of fact, you don’t have any.”
“Oh, Jesus . . .”
The knife jabbed her neck. “Say that name again and I will surgically remove it.”
His “friends” were a vision she could not blink away. “Who are they?”
“They came to my rescue when God didn’t. We’ve been a team ever since.”
“Are they . . . ?”
He snickered. “Who do you want them to be?”
Near Eastern suddenly gained weight, turned pale and gray, and stared at her through the sunken eyes of an old man: Louis Lynch, Florence’s dead husband.
The man in white suddenly wore a dark suit and turtleneck, the same as . . .
His face changed, shifted, became . . .
Gabe Elliott. He smiled and nodded to her.
No greater pain could have gone through her heart. “NOOOO!!”
THE POLICE WERE STILL WAITING for a van from the phone company that would provide extra phones and monitoring equipment. I had to use their cell phone to call the ranch’s second line one more time.
“Hello?” It was Cantwell.
“Justin, this is Travis.”
“I thought I told you to go home!”
“I have to know—”
Click.
CANTWELL TOSSED HIS CELL PHONE on the kitchen table so he could finish duct taping Morgan to a chair. “The miracle of call forwarding,” he explained. “But he’s going to figure it out. We’ll have to be ready when he does.”
“You could have escaped.” Morgan said it in a very quiet voice.
She had agreed to his offer: If she kept her voice quiet, he wouldn’t tape her mouth shut. If she cried out he would slit her throat. It was a solid offer. The body of Brett Henchle lying in a pool of blood at her feet convinced her.
“My loyal followers think I did. They’re buying me precious time.”
“Then why don’t you?”
He cinched down the last strip of tape around her wrists and stood back to admire her helplessness. “I still have to settle my dispute with your boyfriend—if he ever gets here! I was waiting for him, not you and Henchle!”
“What about my son?”
She thought he would strike her. “Your son! The traitor? The turncoat? The coward?”
“Where is he?”
His anger cost him some strength. His face paled and he dropped into another chair. “Don’t worry about him. It won’t do him any good.”
I CALLED THE RANCH’S FIRST LINE.
Matt answered, “Yeah?”
“Matt, can you tell me how many are in the house with you?”
“About twenty.”
I got ready to write. “I need to know their names.”
“I don’t know all their names.”
I could feel Sheriff Parker’s eyes on me. “Matt, the police need to know who’s up there. You have to give them a good reason not to come storming in there right now.”
“Mary Donovan.”
I wrote her name down. “All right. Who else?”
“Dee Baylor.”
“All right.” He went silent. “Who else, Matt?”
“Brandon’s here.”
“Yeah.”
“And there are twenty others.”
I heard a commotion behind me and turned. A motor home had come to a stop at the bottom of the driveway, and the door was opening. Jim Baylor stood right below that door, and let out a whoop when his wife, Dee, appeared, hopping out and embracing him. They started kissing, explaining, apologizing. The scene should have had music.
“Um, Matt, Jim Baylor would like very much to talk with his wife. Would that be possible?”
“No. She’s with the others. We have ’em all confined.”
Jim waved at me as he led his wife away. She was crying, clinging to him. I told Matt, “Okay. Then how about some more names?”
“I told you, I don’t know their names.”
“Then how about getting Brandon on the phone?”
“You have to call the other line. That’s what he says.”
“Well he can’t be that far—” I felt a turn in the gut.
“Just call him on the other line.”
“Well . . .” I didn’t want Matt to know my own thoughts were running me over so I forced myself to say, “Okay. I’ll call on the other line.”
I ended the call. Parker was muttering something but I didn’t hear it.
Cantwell had eyes. He didn’t need to be here to know what the cops were doing or whether Sheriff Parker was smiling.
Parker asked me, “Well?”
“Matt won’t, uh . . . I’ll give it another whirl.”
No. Cantwell wouldn’t want to be surrounded or fenced in.
Fences were a big issue in his life. So he wouldn’t hole up at the ranch, would he?
“Are you going to dial that thing?” Parker demanded.
I dialed the ranch’s second line. It rang repeatedly without an answer, and then a recording came on: “The cellular phone you called is not answering. Please try your call again later.”
“No answer?” Parker asked.
“I have to talk to Dee,” I said, handing him the cell phone.
“JIM! Hold up!”
Jim and Dee waited near the front gate. The loudspeakers on the hill were playing Jimi Hendrix and the floodlights made it look like a night baseball game was in progress. Television reporters were standing just on the other side of the yellow tape, talking into their microphones and looking back at their cameras. The whole landscape was flickering with white, blue, red, and amber sweeps from the police vehicles.
We hadn’t finished our discussion, he said, but we would. I could count on it.
Go home, Travis. Go home.
“Dee,” I asked, ducking under the yellow tape to get to them.
“Is Brandon Nichols up there?”
She was still wiping tears from her eyes. “I don’t want to see him. Not anymore. I feel like a fool.”
“But did you see him?”
“No. He wouldn’t even come out of his room to talk to me.
He wouldn’t talk to anybody. People are leaving. He’s just . . . I just want to go home!”
Jim gave her a squeeze and led her along. “C’mon, hon. We’ll get you home. Thanks, Travis. Thanks for everything.”
“You too, Jim.”
/> I took out my own cell phone and punched in Morgan’s number. “The cell phone you have called is not answering. Please try again later.”
I punched in my home phone number. My hand was shaking so much that I got it wrong. I punched it in again. I felt sick.
The telephone rang, and then— “Okay, we are ready to talk,” said Justin Cantwell. Before I had time to think it, he added, “Don’t look around, Travis. Don’t say anything, don’t signal anyone. I have someone here who’d like to speak with you.”
“Travis?” It was Morgan’s voice, trembling with emotion, her little rasp unmistakable. “Travis. I love you too.” The end of her sentence broke apart as she started to cry.
“So I wasn’t lying the first time,” said Cantwell. “I was just a little early. Do we have an understanding?”
Not far from me, Kyle and the other ministers continued to pray in a circle. I knew I had help.
“We still have to have our discussion,” I said.
“So come home, Travis. Alone.”
“I’ll be right there.”
I came up with some lame excuse I can hardly remember, something about being sick, tired, or incompetent. I don’t know. But I told Parker I was leaving for a while and ran to my Trooper.
I climbed in, closed the door, started the engine, then bowed my head to pray, gripping the steering wheel tightly enough to reshape it. I intended to burst into desperate prayer. I was going to tackle, wrestle, and grapple with God, crying out in earnest supplication for Morgan’s life and my own and for the tattered soul of Justin Cantwell. I was going to bind and rebuke the powers of darkness and cast them out. I would be waging holy warfare in the heavenlies. It was going to be a struggle— Before you pray . . . said the Lord.
I looked up. It was quiet inside the Trooper, and suddenly, strangely quiet in my heart. It threw me. What happened? One moment I was ready to leap into the fires of hell and whip-in-the-spirit whatever evil forces might come my way, and the next moment—well, I felt as if I were sitting in heaven. I saw nothing unusual—no visions, no angels, no lightning bolts or faces in the sky. The same cruel, crazy world was in full swing outside my windshield: The lights were still flashing, the cops were still running around, and the floodlights were still there, along with the TV cameras.