Then she realized there was an awful lot of strange in the barn. For one thing, she couldn"t ever remember seeing Father alone, not outside the church. And for another thing He was shimmering oddly.
And his feet weren"t touching the ground.
"Answer me, Brooke." His voice was quiet, even gentle, but something about it made the hair on the back of Ruby"s neck stand straight out.
"Why would you want to leave us? Why would you want to leave me?"
"I I wasn"t." Her voice was small and broken.
He pointed silently to the ground beside her, where her bulging backpack lay.
"I I My aunt. I just wanted to go visit my aunt. That"s all. That"s all, Father."
"I don"t believe you, child."
"I I swear, Father. I swear I just wanted to see my aunt."
"I wish I could believe you."
His voice was sorrowful now, but there was something strange happening to his face. Something that made Ruby press her fists against her mouth to keep herself silent when everything inside her wanted to scream.
For the first time, she could see his true face.
The face his soul wore.
And it was something so black and hungry that Ruby had the terrifying notion it could swallow the whole world with room left over for even more.
"I would have much preferred to wait until G.o.d allowed your talents to fully blossom," Father was saying sadly. "Until you were ripe and ready for His holy work. But you"ve made that impossible now."
"Father, pleaseI"ll be good. I promise I"ll be good. I won"t even try to leave, honest, and I won"t say anything to anybody, I won"t tell my parents or my friends, or anybody"
Her words were tumbling over one another in her frightened haste to get them all out, and her legs were so wobbly it was a wonder she was still able to stand on them. She probably would have promised anything in that moment, anything at all.
But it was no use. Ruby could see that, and she bit down on her fist without even feeling it as the scream clawed its way up out of her soul and writhed around inside her, desperate to escape.
"I"m so sorry, child," Father said.
Brooke must have known what was going to happen, or perhaps she felt the first jolts of pain, because she opened her mouth to scream.
The sound was no more than a gurgle, a choked cry of terror and agony. As Father raised his hands, Brooke was lifted nearly a foot off the ground and hung there, her body jerking as though some invisible giant shook her angrily.
Father"s head tipped back, his mouth opened slightly And Ruby could see the power leaving Brooke, being sucked out of her, coming out of her eyes and going into him in crackling white-hot threads, like lightning, sparking and sizzling.
But he wasn"t burned.
He wasn"t burned.
When Ruby saw Brooke begin to smolder, she turned away from the split plank and pressed her back against the other rough boards of the barn, too terrified to even try to run away. Her fist was still pressed to her mouth, and she could taste blood but still felt no pain.
All she felt was horror.
She listened to the awful crackling and sizzling sounds for what seemed like hours but was probably no more than a minute or two. Then, abruptly, there was silence.
Ruby counted to thirty, then forced herself to look into the barn again.
Father was gone.
Brooke was gone.
There was nothing to mark what had happened inside the barn except a scorched place where Brooke had stood.
Sawyer had no reason except obstinacy to return to the Compound late on Thursday morning, and when he called ahead he was more than a little surprised that DeMarco didn"t offer an objection to the visit.
Maybe it amuses him to watch you fumble around and come up empty every time.
But when DeMarco met him at the square as always, he was, if anything, more than usually stone-faced and seemed just the slightest bit distracted.
"What can I do for you today, Chief?"
"You can let me look around. Alone." Sawyer had made virtually the same request every time and fully expected the same polite refusal.
DeMarco looked at him for an unblinking moment. Then he said dryly, "It seems to be the day for it. Reverend Samuel is meditating, and most of the children are at their lessons. The residential floors of the church are, of course, private, as are the cottages; I would ask that you respect those limitations."
Too startled to hide it, Sawyer said, "No problem."
"Fine. Then look around to your heart"s content, Chief." DeMarco half turned away, then paused to add even more dryly, "Say h.e.l.lo to Mrs. Gray for me."
"She"s here?" There were several cars parked around the Square; he hadn"t noticed hers.
"Like you, she wanted towander around. Get a feeling for the place. Ruth didn"t see the harm."
And you were too late to stop her without being obvious about it?
"I don"t suppose you"d know where Mrs. Gray is now?" Sawyer fully supposed he did.
DeMarco almost smiled. "I actually don"t, Chief. Though Ruth did say she believed Mrs. Gray wanted to see what we call the "natural church," where Reverend Samuel preaches when the weather isjust right. It"s up on the hill behind the Compound. Follow the path through the old pasture. You"ll have no trouble recognizing the place."
"Thank you," Sawyer said warily.
"You don"t play poker, do you, Chief." It wasn"t a question.
With deliberation, Sawyer replied, "No. Chess is my game."
"You"ll have to give me a match sometime. Enjoy your wanderings. I"ll be in my office."
Sawyer gazed after the other man until DeMarco disappeared into the church, then set off on a direct path past the church and toward the pasture that lay behind the cottages on the north side of the Compound.
He was under no illusions; escort or no escort, neither he nor Tessa Gray would be un.o.bserved anywhere within the Compound.
He wondered if she knew that.
It took him no more than five minutes to reach the pasture gate, closed despite the lack of stock. Since he"d been raised in a rural area where livestock was plentiful, Sawyer pa.s.sed through but left the gate as he"d found it, securely fastened.
The path up the hill was faint but visible, and he followed it, forcing himself to stroll rather than walk briskly, to pause and look around, not quite idly. At least twice he paused to look back down the hill, studying the layout of the Compound.
It would be expected.
Not that there was anything unusual to see, at least as far as he could tell. The Compound was quiet, peaceful. No kids in the playground, but it was not yet lunchtime and they would be, as DeMarco had said, inside their homes at their lessons.
He had wondered briefly why the church didn"t just build its own school as part of the Compound but had decided it was a simple matter of wanting to avoid the red tape and regulations that even a private school had to contend with. Better to have the children of the church home-schooled by a parent; as long as the children pa.s.sed the necessary state-mandated periodic tests, no one was going to interfere in the matter.
"Bad day?"
He hadn"t realized he was scowling. Even more, he hadn"t realized until she spoke that he had reached the "natural church" just barely over the top of the hill.
It resembled a natural amphitheater, with a wide, solid granite ledge just to his right that would no doubt make an excellent stageor pulpit. On the gentle downward slope below, curving terraces looked to Sawyer as though they"d been cut into the hillside, artificially set with scattered, mostly chair-sized boulders supplemented by numerous rustic benches.
Natural church my a.s.s.
Unlike a true amphitheater, the shape was inverted, so that rather than gazing downward, all his followers would have to look up at Samuel while he preached.
Wonder if he does the loaves-and-fishes bit. And where the h.e.l.l is the microphone?
"Chief?"
She was sitting on one of the larger boulders on the third terrace down. Casual in jeans and a sweater, her cheeks a bit rosy from the morning chill and big gray eyes solemn, she looked even more fragile than he remembered. The sight of her made something inside his chest tighten.
Don"t be an idiot. She"s your dead childhood friend"s widow and a recent widow at that.
"Bad week," Sawyer replied finally. He made his way down to her but hesitated rather than join her on the wide boulder. "I imagine services here would be impressive," he said.
"Probably. And I imagine it cost them a pretty penny to make all this look sonatural. Rather than man-made." Her voice was quiet, thoughtful.
He was a little surprised, but pleasantly so.
So they haven"t quite got their hooks into her yet. At least not completely.
Still, he kept his tone if not his words neutral when he said, "Keep the audience entertained and they"ll be back."
Tessa smiled faintly. "I was just thinking something along those lines. Have a seat, Chief."
"Sawyer."
"Have a seat, Sawyer. Please."
He joined her on the cold and not-very-comfortable boulder, turning just a bit so he could look at her as they talked. The slight breeze brought him a very pleasant herbal scent that he realized must have been her. Her hair, he guessed. He wanted to lean toward her, and fought the urge. "I was surprised when DeMarco said you were up here."
"Did he tell you?" She frowned briefly. "I suppose Ruth had to report to him. They all seem to, don"t they?"
"He does run things for Reverend Samuel," Sawyer replied, still cautiously feeling his way with her. "Security, at least."
Tessa nodded. "She didn"t exactly say so, but I think Ruth was reluctant to let me explore on my own. Without his permission, I mean."
"Yeah, well. I got his permission. Which is unusual."
She turned her head and regarded him, those big eyes still solemn. "Maybe he wants to put your suspicions to rest. Let you wander around on your own, and ifwhenyou don"t find anything, you"d have no reason to come back here."
"Do you believe that would discourage me?" he asked, curious.
"No. I think you"re convinced the church is connected to the deaths of those two poor women found in the river."
Sawyer wasn"t surprised she had noted his suspicion; he had certainly not tried to hide it. Nevertheless, he heard the defensiveness in his tone when he said, "You think I"m wrong to keep pushing?"
"I think," Tessa Gray said, "you should push harder."
"They"re just sitting there talking." Brian Seymour gestured toward the main monitor in the security room. "She said something, he said he was having a bad weekand then he moved away from the microphone, and that"s all we got. They"re just far enough away that we can"t pick up their voices."
"Convenient," DeMarco said.
"Well, the microphone was placed just so we could record Father"s sermons," Brian reminded him. "It wasn"t intended as part of the security system."
"Yes. I know."
They were alone in the security room for the time being, so Brian didn"t hesitate to be frank. "I know you want to keep a close eye on the chief, but Mrs. Gray as well? She walked through the scanner when she came into the church with Ruth, and nothing showed up. No weapon, no electronics. Not that I"d expect her to be carrying anything like that, anyway."
"No," DeMarco said. "Neither would I. But as long as she"s with the chief and within range of any of the cameras, watch her."
"Copy that. I"ll tell the guys as soon as they get back from their break. Should we record if any of the microphones pick them up again?"
DeMarco considered, then shook his head. "As amusing as it might be to listen to the Chief try his hand at courting, I believe we"ll leave them their privacy. That much of it, at least. As you say, audio isn"t part of our security system out there, so we might as well save the tape. Turn the microphones off for the time being, Brian."
Brian grinned a little as he obeyed. "Courting? Way I hear it, Chief Cavenaugh"s slippery as an eel; the matchmaking biddies in town have been trying to hook him up permanent for years without any luck."
"It remains to be seen whether he needs their help," DeMarco said dryly.
"Maybe his taste just runs to wealthy widows, and this is the first real shot he"s had. They aren"t all that common in Grace. Especially young and very good-looking ones."
"True."
Sobering, Brian said, "It could cause problems for us, though, couldn"t it? I mean, if Mrs. Gray decided to remarryand especially the chief?"
"You"re jumping the gun just a bit, Brian, don"t you think?"
"Well, yeah, sure. But"
"I doubt the chief is ready to ask for a date, let alone propose." Without waiting for a response, DeMarco added, "I"ll be in my office. Make sure I"m called if necessary, but otherwise I don"t want to be disturbed."