A Shred of Truth

  I ground my teeth. “I’m dying for a stroll.”

  “The Masonic ring. May I see it?”

  “I have it. But what’s so important about an old heirloom?”

  “You have your family secrets. I have mine.”

  “In your e-mail you said I could join the family circle.”

  “The ring, please. Assure me that you’ve followed through on your end.”

  “Not till I see her.”

  “I can live without the ring. Can you say the same about your mom?”

  I shrugged. “It’s been over twenty years now. She’s a stranger to me.”

  The words were sour in my mouth, biting in my throat, but I ignored the taste of them. I would eat my words—eat the bile of my own past sins—if it would give me back the one woman I’d ever loved without reserve.

  “She’s no stranger to me,” he taunted. “She’s my wife.”

  My hand slid around my back, trembling. In seconds, I could end this.

  “The incident at the river crippled her. The first gunshot put her in a wheelchair. I cared for her, fed and bathed her, filled her prescriptions.”

  “I saw you punch her full in the face!”

  “We all require correction at times.”

  I swung my Desert Eagle into view. Clicked off the safety.

  “What is this, Mr. Black?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Did you think I would come unarmed? Lay a hand on her again, and I’ll blow a hole through your skull.”

  “The old self is still very much alive, I fear.”

  “It’s not your place to change it.”

  He shook his head as though his star pupil had failed an exam.

  “Which way?” I snapped. “Take me to her now, ‘new man.’ ”

  45

  Daylight splashed over the pitched roofs of the stockade and dribbled across the courtyard through cracks in the log fencing. I followed my foe along the walkway, behind and to the right, just out of his reach. His arms moved with military stiffness.

  Where was Mom? What had she endured?

  We rounded the corner of the blockhouse. My eyes ran ahead, hoping for an indication of her whereabouts. I had to stay focused. The details of her forced captivity—if she’d been married to him, that’s exactly what it had been—were more than I could handle right now.

  First things first. Breathe, evaluate, act rapidly …

  “Do you consider yourself a student of history?” Newmann asked, looking back at me. “Would you care for an abridged lesson on the Pilgrims?”

  “Are you even a real teacher? Or was that part of the disguise?”

  “Lipscomb is an accredited university. Don’t be foolish.”

  I waved the gun. “Keep walking.”

  He continued straight ahead along First Avenue. “A number of the Pilgrims were imprisoned for their secret gatherings of worship. Some went into hiding for printing religious tracts critical of the king. As a group, they were looked upon with suspicion by the Church of England, and they—”

  “Would you shut up?”

  “You asked about the ring.”

  “The Stuarts. The Masons. Yeah, I know. And Brewster ended up with it.”

  “Elder William Brewster—that’s correct. An intuitive bit of research.”

  “Keep moving. This better be leading to my mom.”

  “My wife.”

  “Move it!”

  He turned at the end of the stockade, led me up a set of steps back toward the river. “Initially,” he said, “Brewster’s boss, Secretary of State Davidson, received the ring from Mary, Queen of Scots as a bribe to aid in her defense, which he failed to do. After the execution, Queen Elizabeth shifted blame to Davidson for the entire debacle.”

  “So why’s it so valuable?”

  “Brewster removed the ring from Davidson’s belongings and claimed it as his own, even engraved his family name into it. He recognized its importance as a Masonic emblem and as a signpost leading back to Templar mysteries in the Holy City.”

  “Jerusalem?”

  “There are secrets still buried there.”

  “On the phone you told my brother it’d been stolen from your family.”

  “Mr. Black, in seeking to break loose from England’s restraints, many of the Pilgrims lost their lives. When Elder Brewster boarded the Mayflower, he understood the price they’d have to pay.”

  “The old for the new.”

  “Yes. I’m privileged to be a descendant of his wisdom.”

  I realized we had circled and arrived back near our starting point. Beyond the low fence, the bluff dropped off toward the river’s muddied currents. “If you’ve hurt her”—I reached forward and pushed the .40 caliber into his back—“you’ll never see your precious heirloom. Where is she?”

  “Doing penance.”

  I followed his gaze over the edge just as he spun away from me with his own weapon, the tapered blade glinting in the early sunlight.

  “You put her down there?”

  “The ring first.”

  “Where is she?”

  “If one only has eyes to see.” Newmann moved to the fence and pointed with his knife at a rope knotted to the upper horizontal support. It disappeared into the thick foliage below. His hand snaked under the braided strands and brought the blade up underneath it, severing a few strands of the twisted fiber. “She’s in the water.”

  “No!”

  “She’s been baptized before, though the last time was warmer.”

  I leaned out over the rail, tried to track the rope through leafy vines.

  “Her mouth is taped, as are her hands,” he explained. “She’s almost completely submerged. If you were to pour one of your coffeehouse creations over ice, it would be no colder than she is now.”

  The slope plunged forty feet to the river’s edge. Where did the rope end?

  “The surface may look calm,” he went on, “but it hides a strong current. There are rocks and submerged hazards below. I’ve heard that search teams often discover corpses miles downriver, though that may just be urban legend.”

  “I can’t see her.”

  “If I were to cut the rope—and that would take very little, I assure you—she would plunge twenty-seven feet to the bottom. Assuming the measurements there are accurate.”

  I followed his nod. Where the pier jutted into the Cumberland, a corner pylon showed depth readings in feet.

  My eyes ran back along the bank, still finding no sign of her. Was he lying? Had I been played again? For six days I’d clung to a hope so ridiculous it strained the limits of credibility. It could all be one horrible deception.

  The time had come, at last, to winnow out the truth.

  “You’re full of it, Newmann.” My grip tightened on the Desert Eagle. “You’ve lied to me from the start.”

  “Are you willing to take that risk?”

  “She’s not down there.” I aimed the barrel at him. “She’s dead. She’s been gone for twenty-one years.”

  “Oh?”

  “And now so are you.”

  My heart pounded in my throat, nerves jangling beneath my skin. My arm began to shake. The only thing keeping me from drilling a round into his smug head was my concern it would endanger my mother. If she wasn’t alive, if this was my psyche coming apart at the seams, then I had nothing to lose. I’d give this man a taste of his own religious psychobabble. The shell would be destroyed.

  The old self into the new …

  Yes, God transforms people. I was living proof. But rebirth didn’t come through my own good deeds or sacrifice. It happened through the redeeming act of God’s Son on the cross.

  So why did I still struggle, wallowing in the sludge of my past? In the guilt? Why did I still feel the old credos dictating my emotions?

  And what was I doing with this gun in my hands?

  “Okay, listen.” I clicked on the safety and laid down my weapon. “I’ll play this your way. Just take me to her. Please.”

  “
She’s there. Try looking from that angle.” He jutted his chin.

  My phone shook in my pocket. I ignored it, keeping an eye on him and craning for a view over the rail. Bushes, vines, and—

  There!

  Through a gap in the foliage, forty feet below, I spotted her. Mom?

  Six years old … helpless … watching her plunge forward …

  Salt-and-pepper strands obscured her face as she slowly twisted at the rope’s end, struggling to keep her chin above the water. Her body turned toward me, her hair parted, and her eyes crept up the slope to mine.

  “Mom!” I yelled. “It’s me. Hold on!”

  In that split second, she dropped, and Newmann’s grunt snapped my attention back. With one upward slice, his blade had severed the taut rope.

  No!

  I dashed forward, my scrambling sending the Desert Eagle out beneath the fence and over the edge into the thick greenery.

  Newmann lurched toward the fence, his foot braced against the creaking post. The cut rope was twined around his other arm, digging into his skin.

  He chuckled, her life now in his hands. “Take it,” he commanded. “I’m starting to slip.”

  As the cord slithered from his grip, he turned aside, yelling in pain, and I grabbed at the rope, twisting my left hand around the remaining length before it whisked away. The fibers tore into my hand and wrist, and though it couldn’t have been more than 130 pounds cantilevered on the riverbank below, it was enough to demand my full attention.

  My feet dug for purchase against the wood post, and I angled back, using the horizontal beam to fulcrum the tension. From this position, I could hold on forever. Till my tendons snapped. Till I sweated blood and it pooled in my shoes.

  “The ring,” Newmann whispered in my ear. “Where is it?”

  “Search me.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, feathering his knife along the hair at the back of my neck.

  I cracked my skull into his cheek.

  He stumbled backward, growled, then moved closer. “You don’t realize the predicament you’re in. Do you want her to drown? Believe it or not, my wife has expressed a desire to see you.”

  “She’s not your wife.”

  “I assure you, she is.” The blade crept along my ear. “I labored for a time at God’s work in the Oregon State Penitentiary, where I met your father.” A hand dug into my back pocket. “Richard Lewis was a parishioner, if you will, who confided in me as though I were his priest. He led me straight to her.”

  I felt the rope slacken a bit, and I wondered if Mom had found a narrow ledge beneath the water to pull herself up against. Hindered by soggy layers of tape, she wouldn’t be able to hold on for long.

  “Did he talk about me?” I asked. I’d never known my biological father.

  “Before the cancer? I don’t believe so. No.”

  “He died in prison, serving time for her murder.”

  “A pitiful irony, since she was very much alive.” His search moved to my front pockets. “An accomplice of his fished her out. The town assumed she was gone—and, yes, she did suffer short-term memory loss due to acute physical and psychological trauma—but she survived. She needed someone to watch after her, in her condition. And I filled that need.”

  “You need serious help.”

  The knife scraped at my cheek. “What I need is your cooperation.”

  I wanted to turn and throw this guy off me, but I couldn’t let my mother slip into the powerful current. The rope was digging into my arm through my sweatshirt, cutting off circulation, and the fingers of my other hand were growing numb. But I had to buy her time. If she went under, if I lost hold of the rope, I doubted I would have time to plunge down the slope into the water and rescue her from the murky depths.

  “Gifts for me?” Newmann was removing my cell and multitool and slipping them into his pocket.

  If he wanted the ring, Jillanne Brewster’s number was in that phone.

  “I’m moving my knife away now, but I’m sure you’re smart enough to keep holding on.” He knelt and patted at my legs, fishing his fingers into my shoes. “In your father’s soul-searching, he told me of a family treasure that had eaten at him with greed. When I realized the historical tie-in to Master Meriwether Lewis, I knew God’s hand had guided me to him.”

  “How appropriate.”

  He ran his hands across my back, staying low to search my abdomen. “The ring was guarded by the Masons and was last known to be in Master Lewis’s possession. When he met his end on the Natchez Trace, it was feared the Templar secrets had died with him.”

  “Until you saw my story on that TV show.”

  He stood and pressed against me. The knife was touching my ear again.

  “The ring, Mr. Black.”

  “I won’t propose till you get tested,” I gibed.

  The razor edge was so thin, so sharp, I was unaware he had cut me until a hot droplet of blood splashed against my collarbone and ran down my chest.

  “Last chance, Mr. Black. The next cut will dramatically compromise your ability to sustain your grip.”

  “A felt bag.” My voice was beginning to quiver from my exertion. “Pull it up by the drawstring on my belt loop.”

  To his credit, he did only as told, then backed up and emptied the contents into his hand.

  “Yes, this is it!” The excitement in his voice suddenly caught. “Wait.”

  I searched the river’s edge below, hoping to catch my mother’s eye again. I wanted to tell her the words I hadn’t been able to say in years—I love you!—but something about the gesture would feel like surrender. Like saying good-bye all over again.

  That was unacceptable.

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?” I said.

  “No.”

  “It’s gotta be. The name, the date—it’s all there.”

  “No!” From behind me, the force of the cry shook my throbbing earlobe. “This is a counterfeit! Nothing more!”

  “How was I to know?”

  “There’s only one way you could’ve crafted such a fake. You had to have seen the real ring. And I don’t believe for a second you would have risked your mother’s life by leaving it behind.” The blade circled round my neck, shaking. “Tell me. Where is it?”

  His voice had a dangerous edge now. His mind was set.

  My eyes ran down the slope once more and locked with my mother’s.

  Mom.

  Somehow she had pulled herself up and was clinging to the edge on her elbows. Dianne Lewis Black. Forty feet of treacherous incline separated us. We were bound together in this moment. Warmth, longing, and fear passed through our gaze.

  Mom, can you hear me? Stay down!

  “It’s gonna be a little harder to get to,” I said.

  He tore at my sweatshirt, lifting it with my T-shirt in one decisive motion. I was defenseless. His other hand slid in from the right, drawing the blood-wet blade up my abdominal ridges. “Is it possible you swallowed it? Perhaps a C-section is required.”

  “I prefer a natural childbirth.”

  The razor crept higher until it jabbed at an angle against my nipple.

  I peered off across the Cumberland. As a small boy, I’d given my mom heart palpitations every time I ran in with a new scrape or bruise. She didn’t need to see this. Didn’t need to see the pain when it flared in my eyes.

  “I’ve played your game, followed your rules,” I whispered.

  “No, you haven’t.” The razor broke the skin, and I felt my blood trickle down. “Haven’t you learned? Don’t you see how Felicia had to pay for her sins? I really thought we might have something, you and I—as father and son. This is your final exam, Mr. Black. Will you do the right thing?”

  The right thing.

  In that last phrase, I found the shred of truth I needed.

  The right thing was to protect my mother, to fight for her life. I had set down my weapon—and that, too, was the right thing—yet I could not let this madman continue unobstructed.
>
  “You win,” I said.

  “I always do. You cannot stand against God’s hand of judgment.”

  We’ll see who’s left standing!

  I flexed one hand over the rope, twisted the other arm through the cord again, and took a short step forward as though losing my balance. The agony was intense where I’d been cut on my chest, but I’d felt pain before.

  “Up here,” I groaned. “Check beneath my left sleeve.”

  Newmann’s breathing quickened in anticipation. He came around on my side and tried to free my sleeve from the coils of rope. With hands clasped around the lifeline to my mother, I heaved my arms upward and dropped them down over my enemy’s shoulders in a suffocating embrace. Surging forward with my legs, I drove our joined bodies into the railing.

  Fence joints popped. The wood cracked.

  Together we plummeted down the incline, caught up in the flailing rope and rag-doll thrashing of arms and legs. Everything was spinning. Lush leaves and veins cushioned us near the cliff top, but protruding stones met us farther down, cracking against ribs and hips.

  The rope, Aramis, Don’t let go!

  A blade flashed, sliced across my sleeve, then ran in a long, blood-spurting track across Newmann’s chest before spiraling through sunlight toward the river.

  Our awkward embrace came undone. Alternating gasps and moans punctuated the final seconds before the Cumberland roared up to slap my face.

  Going under …

  Nothing but bubbles exploding around my head, green-tinged darkness, and a horrible ringing through my battered body. I thought of my dream—the medieval battlefield, my corpse wandering down into the water, the stains washing away. Beside me, another body writhed in the murk and then slipped away, caught in the undertow, the way my mother’s had been all those years ago.

  Air!

  Caught in the current myself, I thrashed toward the surface, fighting the river’s desire to devour me.

  Don’t panic. Act rapidly.

  I carved my hands through the cold depths, pulling my weight toward the dim light above. The rope slithered beside me, still entwined around my arm.

  Desperate for oxygen, I sensed a ring of blackness tightening around my vision. My thigh brushed against something—an old grocery cart? a creature?—triggering another burst of adrenaline.