gaze snapped back to Mordecai’s. “I didn’t—”
“David, David, don’t lie to me. I know it was you. You were the only one, besides Lizzie and I, who knew about the mansion in Virginia. And even if you weren’t, my guides told me who played Judas to my Christ.”
“Jesus, the guides again. Mordecai, you can’t always trust those voices in your head. They aren’t—”
“Aren’t what? Aren’t real? How have I survived, then? I could have been killed at the raid on my compound eighteen years ago. I could have been killed in Virginia last year, when the woman who claimed to love me fired a bullet into my chest. Or later, when the police descended on me. But I wasn’t. My daughter could have been killed, as well, by those bastards claiming to have come to rescue her. From her own father. They called it a kidnapping. Can you imagine?” He shook his head. “I survived. I always survive. The guides see to that. And they tell me all I need to know. Admit it, David. You betrayed me.”
David blinked. He was shaking again, but not from the cold this time. “You’re right, I did tell someone about the Virginia house. Not the authorities. Another prisoner. I had no choice in that, Mordecai. He had clout, a lot of respect. You don’t know what it’s like in prison. They would have killed me if I hadn’t talked.”
“So again, your self-interests outweighed your concern for me.” Mordecai shrugged. “I suppose it’s part of the human condition. Selfishness. Disloyalty.”
David couldn’t hold his eyes, so he looked past him. And then the worry returned. “Mordecai, this looks like the same place where you picked me up. Isn’t this right where we started?”
“Right where you started, perhaps. I’m miles ahead of where I was a short while ago. Goodbye, David.”
Mordecai lifted the gun, as the voices had been screaming at him to do for countless minutes now. It had come to him very clearly why the roadblocks would not be a problem tonight. It was because David wouldn’t be cowering in the back seat when Mordecai’s car was searched. David wasn’t going anywhere—nowhere on this plane, at least. He pointed the gun’s barrel at David’s head, and even as the man flinched and cried out, Mordecai calmly squeezed the trigger.
David’s body collapsed downward like a building when well-placed demolition charges go off. He sank fast, landing in a heap at Mordecai’s feet.
“I promised to free you from your prison, David. And now I have.”
Mordecai left the blanket where it was, twisted around David’s body. It was wet, muddy now, and tainted with blood. He got back into the car, sliding the gun into the holder he had mounted under the driver’s seat, and drove away.
It was time to find Lizzie. It was time to right the wrongs she had done, wash clean the sins she had committed—against him, against their daughter.
Against God.
Chapter One
Thursday
Elizabeth Marcum was running again.
She was always running, it seemed.
One after the other, her powder-blue Nike cross trainers hit the winding road’s soft shoulder, her steps cushioned by a thick, fragrant carpet of leaves. She sucked in the aroma of them with every harsh breath she drew. Sugar maples lined the roadsides, arching overhead like a vivid circus canopy of scarlet and purple and pumpkin orange. It crossed her mind that she loved it here, but she brushed the thought aside. There were a hundred other small towns with country lanes and breathtaking foliage where she could be just as comfortable. Comfort wasn’t love. She could take Blackberry, Vermont, or leave it.
She hit the three-mile mark just as she rounded the curve that brought the old Bickham place into view. The once stately Victorian’s white paint was peeling. A few of the black shutters were crooked, others missing, like neglected teeth in an old man’s mouth. On the porch, Maude waved from her wicker rocking chair. Elizabeth slowed to a walk, her heart rate slowing naturally as she veered off the road and onto the overgrown flagstone path. She preferred it to the driveway, despite its cracks and weeds. The sidewalk started at the tilting signpost, with its weather-worn sign and fading letters—you could hardly make out “The Blackberry Inn” anymore—and wound its way to the porch, forking off in one spot to twist around the old house to what had once been a garden in the back.
At the bottom of the porch steps, Beth leaned over, braced her hands on her knees and took a few breaths.
“Gettin’ older, girl,” Maude called. “You might better walk, like you used to.”
Beth smiled. Every day, Maude began their morning visit with the same remarks. When Beth had first come here—God, had it really been a year ago?—she had started this ritual with a daily walk. It had scared the hell out of her to even leave her house, but that daily walk had been an act of defiance, a way of thumbing her nose at her own fears. It had evolved into a run.
“I like to run, Maude. It makes me strong.”
“And what does a thirty-five-year-old woman need with muscles, anyway?”
Beth grinned and trotted up the steps. “Thirty-six. And I need ’em to fight off all my suitors.”
Maude slapped her knee, chuckling to herself, and rose from the chair. “Tea is just off the burner. Still piping hot. You made good time this morning.” She leaned over the rickety tray table to pour from a china teapot into two matching cups. Antiques, white with pink rosebuds and gold edges. There was an old silver tray with a cover, and an empty hypodermic needle beside it.
“God, Maude, why don’t you get an insulin pump so you can stop sticking yourself three times a day like your body’s a pin cushion?”
Maude waved a hand at her. “I don’t trust machines. And if you could see what they charge for one of those gadgets…”
“You have insurance.”
“That’s no reason to throw good money away on nonsense. ‘The frivolous can waste more by the teaspoon than the frugal can bring home by the wheelbarrow.’”
“Is that one of your originals?”
She shrugged. “You’d have called the original sexist. So I put my own twist on it, just for you.”
“And I’ll bet you’ve been waiting for the opportunity to use it.”
Maude sent her a wink. Then she reached to the tray table and poured from a dewy pitcher into a tall glass. “Here’s a nice glass of cold water. Cool you down after all that ridiculous running.”
“Perfect.” Beth took the glass from the table and tipped it up, drinking half the refreshing, sweet water down before lowering herself into her customary seat, a second wicker chair that matched the first in age and wear, if not color or design.
“Cookie?” Maude offered.
“Chocolate chip?” Beth asked, leaning over the table to lift the tarnished silver lid from its platter.
“How did you know before you even looked?”
“I could smell them baking in my dreams last night.”
