Click! A blade swung free.
Hallelujah!
Thank you, Jesus!
God be with me, he silently prayed, and give me the strength to kill the son of a bitch.
In the last few hours of his darkness, Billy Ray had come to understand his mission. God was presenting him the opportunity to rid the earth of the monster who had abducted him. This was not only a test, but his opportunity to prove himself to the Lord. In so doing, he would not only save his life, and the life of whoever else the killer planned to murder, but also become more of a local hero. The press would eat it up. His parish would flourish. There would be a book deal. Even a television movie.
But he was getting ahead of himself. For now, all he had to concentrate on was somehow getting the upper hand, and he counted on his old buddy, rage, to help him through.
Because he was angry.
Furious and ready for revenge.
He began working with the Ultra, using the tool on the tape binding his wrists.
Come on, you sick bastard, he thought, fury searing through his veins, I’m going to bring you down.
Sister Maria was hauled roughly to her feet.
Her hands were bound behind her, but her assailant had cut away the tape that held her ankles together and untied her blindfold. He’d also draped her rosary over her neck.
“Move,” he muttered from behind his mask.
Woozy and weak, she could barely walk. The muzzle of the gun in her back, and the urging of the brute of a man in black, kept her stumbling forward, through the darkness toward what? Torture, probably. Rape likely. And death certain.
As he pushed her forward, he swept the weak beam of a flashlight over the damp ground. Dead leaves formed a carpet over the soggy marshland. Cypress grew tall, bleached like ghosts, their roots buckling the earth and delving into the standing water. She had no idea where in the swamps of Louisiana he’d brought her, but she was certain she was going to die.
Our Father who art in heaven…
He trained the flashlight onto a building, a single-wide mobile home that seemed as if it had been abandoned long ago, the siding had rusted, the windows broken out, the lean-to that had once been attached to it was now crumpled into a heap of grayed boards.
She thought of the vile acts he would commit against her, of the pain she would endure, and she accepted her fate, prayed for strength, for fortitude, so that she wouldn’t break. She remembered Jesus and what he had endured upon the cross and only hoped that she would be able to handle what was to come with dignity, with piety, and be able to forgive this poor, tortured soul.
Up two uneven steps he pushed her, and she entered the dark interior, where she sagged against the wall. With the gun still pressed against her spine, he lit a lamp.
Her heart withered at the sight of the tiny space that had once been a living room. The interior was filthy from years of weather, vermin, and neglect. The smell of rot was everywhere and seated in a chair on the far wall, his legs bound to the rusted metal legs, his hands pulled behind him, was Billy Ray Furlough. He was naked, a blindfold over his eyes, a gag over his mouth. “No!” she cried, her voice muffled because of the tape over her mouth. Despite the weapon’s muzzle hard against her back, she bent over and started to wretch.
“Fuck!” Her assailant reached around her and tore the tape from her mouth just as her stomach emptied.
How could this be? Dear Father, no!
She was sobbing, crying, utterly destroyed.
No! No! No!
Tears ran down her face and she heaved again and again. She wasn’t aware that her tormentor had left her, that he’d crossed the small scrap of stained linoleum to stand near her only child.
By the saints, how had the monster known? What did he want of her? Deep inside, her soul twisted painfully. Gasping and coughing, she looked over at the masked man who had abducted her and how pridefully he stood over her son.
She couldn’t let this happen. Whatever this twisted mind had invented, she wouldn’t let him harm her son, the baby she’d given away so many years before…
“Don’t do this,” she begged. “Ask for God’s forgiveness and sin no more.”
His body stiffened. “I’m not the sinner,” he said slowly as he pulled off Billy Ray’s blindfold.
Billy Ray turned glassy eyes at her and she realized that he, too, had already suffered. She would not look at his nakedness, but only into his dark eyes, so like his father’s, a boy she’d known in her youth, a man long dead.
“You know each other,” the abductor said in a gravelly, satisfied voice, and to her horror, she saw the recognition in her only child’s features, realized that her secret had somehow been uncovered. “Mother and son.”
Oh, Mother Mary.
“Both living lies.”
Billy Ray’s eyes turned toward their captor, and Maria saw something shift in his features, an anger in the flare of his nostrils, the narrowing of his eyes, and she knew then that he would do something stupid, something dangerous. She couldn’t let it happen.
Somehow she had to save him. Even if she had to kill to do it. Murder was a mortal sin…her soul would go straight to hell.
So be it.
Billy Ray, pretending to be bound and still disoriented, couldn’t help glaring at the woman who had borne him. Why was she here? The psycho had somehow abducted Sister Maria Montoya, the woman who had given birth to him and left him with parents too stupid to understand basic genetics.
There she was in her nightgown, looking old, tired, and scared, her rosary looped over her neck, her lips, now silent, moving mutely. He surmised she was mentally reciting the prayers of each decade of the rosary that was swinging from her neck. No doubt she was hoping for divine intervention.
She. The nun. Who was his mother.
Whore.
Hiding under the sacred habit.
Pretending piety.
He hated her, but more than that, he hated this man who was intending to take their lives with a gun that looked suspiciously like one from his collection, the nickel-plated Ruger he kept under the front seat of his Mercedes.
The psycho turned his back for just a second. In that instant, Billy Ray made his move. He leaped upward, his legs free, his hands unbound. With a strength he swore came from the Lord, he plunged the Pomeroy Ultra deep into the assailant’s chest, just as the man spun.
Blood spurted.
The nun screamed and threw herself at the attacker.
With a roar, the psycho slammed the gun into the side of Billy Ray’s face. Pain shot through his skull. His nose splintered. Billy Ray fell backward and lost his grip on the Ultra. His intention was to stab and stab and stab until the lifeblood flowed out of him, but his hands were slick with blood and the nun intervened, trying to force herself between the two, clawing at the man’s face, attacking him with her bare hands.
No!
In an instant, the big man, his mask askew from the nun’s assault, Billy Ray’s weapon still protruding from him, smacked Sister Maria across the face, caught her as she began to fall, and forced his gun into her trembling, wavering hand…
Sister Maria gasped. He was going to make her kill Billy Ray? No!
She fought the brute, swinging her head back and forth, crying and screaming and praying in one horrible sound. But the psycho was strong—too strong. He aimed the weapon straight at Billy Ray’s heart, cocked the hammer…
Billy Ray scooted backward, tried to get away.
Bang!
The Ruger fired.
Pain exploded in Billy Ray’s chest. He blinked, stunned, and blood gurgled up his throat. He saw the psycho twist Sister Maria’s wrist until she cried out. In slow motion and disbelief he watched the man place the muzzle of the gun to her temple and squeeze the trigger. Shuddering, Billy Ray closed his eyes and prayed as death claimed him.
The nun slumped in his arms. Carefully, he draped her body over the preacher’s, leaving them entwined, mother and son, so different.
br /> Pain seared through his body. He glanced down at the irritating knife still embedded in his chest and felt fury. The bastard had sliced him. Luckily the blade had hit a rib, so the damage was painful but not debilitating. He would remove the weapon soon, but later, when he was away from here. He couldn’t afford any more of his blood being spilled.
He’d been foolish. Gotten careless. Hadn’t given the preacher enough credit for being resourceful. Now, he stared down at the dead man. How had he gotten free? In the flashlight’s beam he saw where the chair had been dragged to the pile of clothes. So the reverend had scooted himself across the room, somehow gotten the tool out of his pocket, freed himself, and then waited? Why not run for it?
Had he run out of time?
Not expected his captor to return?
Or had he wanted to be a hero, had felt invincible as he was on “Jesus’s team,” as he’d so often said. The hypocrite.
Satisfied that he’d arranged them just as he wanted, he lifted the nun’s head and pulled her rosary from her neck. Quickly he slid the holy beads into his pocket. Then he took the gun. Furlough’s nickel-plated Ruger.
Silently he walked outside. Realizing there was blood on his shoes, he took the time to wipe them on the steps before stopping at the Mercedes and popping the trunk. He found the emergency kit, grabbed it, forcing himself to ignore the pain in his chest. Then he headed down a long path, to a dilapidated dock where pilings were settling into the bog. The rowboat was right where he’d left it hours earlier. He stepped inside and, using the flashlight, looked at the weapon still protruding through the wet suit. Checking the emergency kit, he found several gauze pads and sterile tape. Good enough for now. Gritting his teeth, he pulled out the tool. Blood started to flow and he quickly stanched it with the gauze. He unwrapped all five packs, layered the gauze pads, one on top of the other, strapping them down with the tape. He ached and bled from the jagged slice, but no vital organ had been perforated. He’d been lucky this time. In the flashlight’s glow he stared at the weapon, a Pomeroy all-purpose handyman’s tool scripted with the name “Ultra.”
His jaw dropped.
Fucker!
He hated that Billy Ray, and now Asa Pomeroy, too, had gotten in this last word.
Well, it was too late for them.
Swishing the blade in the water, he cleaned the tool and dropped it into the box for the emergency kit. Along with the Ultra, he added the rosary and revolver. Quickly he grabbed an oar. Almost silently he began to paddle to the spot where he’d hidden his truck, not two miles from the preacher’s study.
He’d have to work fast. Dawn would arrive in a few hours and he wanted to be far from the Reverend Billy Ray Furlough’s compound when the preacher was discovered missing.
Besides, his work was far from done.
He wouldn’t have much time, he thought as he dipped his oar into the water. Stroke, stroke, stroke. The pain in his chest throbbed viciously, but he pushed it aside.
He had others to take care of today.
His lips pulled into a rictus smile as he oared through the darkness. The beam from his small flashlight guided him through these familiar waters. He caught the glow of a gator’s eyes as it glided past, and when he scanned the shore, he caught images of ’possum and raccoons staring after him. He breathed in the heavy scent of the water, rowing unerringly, just as he had as a child.
When he’d been allowed.
When the restrictions had been lifted…
His jaw hardened when he recalled how all that had changed. When she had been introduced to him. His lips curled as if he’d encountered a foul smell.
She, with her tinkling laugh, tiny voice, and iron will. A small woman even in the high heels she forever wore. A frail-looking beauty who caused men, even important men, to fawn all over her.
She’d changed things from the start. No more hunting off-season, no more late nights, no more eating in front of the television, no more “obnoxiously loud eardrum-splitting bass” and certainly not one more “disgusting, violent, and sick lyric.”
His hands tightened over the paddle.
Stroke, stroke, stroke.
She, with her tiny, yapping dog and expensive horses…
His smile turned to a sneer as he considered the irony of it all: the dog trampled by the horse; the sleek bay gelding rearing at a snake and tossing off his rider; the rider hitting her head on a large, knife-edged rock. By the time anyone had gone looking for her, the vultures had already been circling.
So now, he could breathe deeply of the thick bayou air, hear the insects thrum in the bulrushes, watch the moon rise over the dark, brackish waters. She couldn’t stop him.
Stroke, stroke, stroke.
He guided his small craft to the side of an inlet. Hopping out, he dragged the boat to the shore, concealing it in the thick cattails and reeds.
Stripping off his boots for the sneakers in his backpack, he took several shallow breaths, then a few deeper ones. The pain was bearable. He stuffed the emergency kit into the pack before heading cross-country through a farmer’s field, then on to the winding county road where he started the two-mile jog toward his truck.
Everything had been going so well.
Until Billy Ray Furlough had nearly outsmarted him, and the nun…who would have thought that meek Milquetoast of a woman had the fire to challenge him? Like a mother bear, he thought, remembering his father’s warnings before they would take up their rifles and begin the long trek to the mountains. Do not get between a she-bear and her cubs. No matter what. If you make that mistake, shoot her. Quick. Before she has the chance to rip your liver out!
Twice during his run, a vehicle had passed. Both times he’d dived into the roadside ditch and laid flat until the beams from the headlights had passed over his body, the illumination fading and taillights visible. Only then would he start loping again, his wound aching and leaden. He knew he was bleeding again, and he bit back an oath when he thought of being fooled by the preacher.
How could that have happened? He was the one with the genius IQ. Billy Ray Furlough was just a hot-headed, has-been athlete who’d found a way to make a buck out of his rage by using it as a tool to appear passionately pious. Correction: Billy Ray Furlough was now a dead hotshot has-been.
His truck was where he’d left it: at the diner where he was often a patron. It was a place that was open twenty-four hours, where truckers often stopped for coffee and pie; in the evenings it was beer and hard liquor. He was known in this place by name, and no one thought twice if his truck remained there longer than he did. He always parked in the thick of the rigs and semis that pulled in at all hours. He always showed his face, too, as he was coming and going: sometimes through the back where the bar was; sometimes the front of the restaurant. He made certain he was seen every two hours or so. People knew him to be a hunter and a fisherman, a guy who sometimes left his rig in the parking lot when he stalked game. He was teased, too, as no one ever saw him with a bagged deer, or even ducks, or fish in his creel. He always laughed at the ribbing, buying a round, and telling the regulars that it was more to be out in nature than anything else.
They believed he was an independent contractor—a sheet rocker. They thought he was oftentimes out of work.
No one asked too many questions and the cover worked just fine.
Now, he glanced around. It was dark by the truck, extremely so, even though the eastern sky was faintly lightening. Quickly and carefully he removed his sneakers, stripped off the wetsuit, then pulled on a pair of jeans. He was shivering. The gauze was bloody. He shoved his arms through a blue cotton shirt, buttoned it over the gauze, then pushed his arms through a navy nylon jacket.
He took a precious moment to pull himself together. When he climbed from the truck, he stopped to purchase a paper from the box outside. Pretending absorption in the headlines, he walked into the restaurant, which was bustling with truckers slurping down their first cups of java for the day. He waved at the red-haired waitress who
m he knew was nearly done with her shift, then took a stool and ordered coffee, eggs over easy, crisp bacon, grits, biscuits, and gravy.
As he waited for his breakfast, he tried not to think about the killings, couldn’t yet let himself go to that place between wake and sleep where he relived the thrill, felt the thrum run through his veins, got off on the memory of their deaths. No, not yet…he needed his wits about him. And he also needed to take care of his injury, but not yet, not until he’d set his cover deeply, made sure everyone saw him having a leisurely breakfast.
Scanning the front page, he noticed that all mention of Asa Pomeroy and Gina Jefferson’s deaths had been placed below the fold, though because of the funeral, Luke Gierman’s picture was at the top of the page. Other related stories were buried deeper in the pages.
“Real sick-o behind that,” a local trucker who delivered eggs said. He thumped the paper as he passed on his way to his favorite booth. The tag embroidered on his overhauls declared that his name was Hank. “Can’t wait ’til they catch that sumbitch and string him up by his balls.” He nodded, squared the bill of his trucker’s cap onto his head. “Yeah, I’ll like to see that. I listened to Gierman’s Groaners all the time. Can’t stand the fact that his sidekick, what’s the guy’s name?”
Maury Taylor, you imbecile, he thought, but shrugged.
“Maury, that’s it. A real jerk wad, that guy. Ridin’ on Gierman’s coattails. Hell.” He rubbed his fleshy jaw, which sported two days’ worth of silver bristles. “Don’tcha just hate it.”
“Yeah,” he said as his platter of eggs, bacon, and grits was placed in front of him.
“Sorry about the broken yolk,” the waitress said. “New cook. You okay with that?”
No!
“I can get you a couple more.”
Don’t do it. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Smile and act like it’s no big deal that the cook is incompetent. “This is fine,” he said.
“You’re sure? It’s no trouble.”