she tried to remember what he looked like before he lay in that casket, before those images of him turned to dust in her memories.
She remembered how terribly frightened she had been seeing him like that. She remembered the crinkle of plastic under his clothes, his mummy-wrapped hands tucked down at his sides. She remembered being concerned about the blisters on his cheek.
“Did it hurt, Daddy?” she had whispered to him.
She had waited until her mother and the others weren’t looking. Then Maggie had gathered all of her child- size strength and courage and reached her small hand over the edge of the smooth, shiny wood and the satin bedding. With her fingertips she had brushed her father’s hair back off his forehead, trying to ignore the plastic feel of his skin and that hideous Frankenstein scar at his scalp. But despite her fear, she had to rearrange his hair. She had to put it back to the way he always liked to wear it, to the way she remembered it. She needed her last image of him to be one she recognized. It was a small, silly thing, but it had made her feel better.
Now, looking down at Delaney’s peaceful gray face, Maggie knew she needed to do whatever she could, so that two more little girls wouldn’t be horrified to look at their daddy’s face one last time.
CHAPTER 5
Eric Pratt stared at the two men, wondering which of them would be the one to kill him. They were seated facing him, so close their knees brushed against his. So close he could see the older man’s jaw muscles clench every time he stopped chewing. Spearmint. It was definitely spearmint gum he was grinding his teeth into.
Neither looked like Satan. They had introduced themselves as Tully and Cunningham. Eric had been able to hear that much through the fog. Both men looked clean-cut-close-cropped hair, no dirt beneath their fingernails. The older one even wore nerdy wire-rimmed glasses. No, they looked nothing like Eric had expected Satan to look. And just like the others now crawling around the cabin floor and combing the woods outside, these guys wore the navy-blue windbreakers with the yellow letters, FBI.
The younger one had on a blue tie, pulled loose, his shirt collar unbuttoned. The other wore a red tie, cinched tight at the buttoned collar of a brilliant white shirt. Red, white and blue, with those government letters emblazoned across their backs. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Of course Satan would come disguised, wrapped in symbolic colors. Father was right. Yes, of course, he was always right. Why had he doubted Father? He should have obeyed, not doubted, not taken his chances with the enemy. What a fool he had been.
Eric scratched at the lice still digging into his scalp, digging deeper and deeper. Could Satan’s soldiers hear the scratching sounds? Or perhaps they were the ones making the imaginary lice dig into his skull. Satan had powers, after all. Incredible powers he could transmit through his soldiers. Powers that Eric knew could easily inflict pain without so much as a touch.
The one called Tully was saying something to him, lips moving, eyes burrowing into Eric’s, but Eric had turned down the volume hours ago. Or was it days ago? He couldn’t remember how much time had passed. He couldn’t remember how long he had been in this cabin, how long he had sat in this straight-backed chair with his wrists handcuffed and his feet in shackles, waiting for the inevitable torture to begin. He had no sense of time, but he did know the exact moment his system had begun to shut down. The exact second his mind had gone numb. It was the instant that David dropped to the floor, the thud of his body forcing Eric to risk opening his eyes. That was when he found himself staring directly into David’s eyes, their faces only inches apart.
Eric had seen his friend’s mouth open. Thought he heard a faint whisper, three words, no more. Maybe it had been Eric’s imagination, because David’s eyes were already empty when the words “He tricked us” left his lips. He must have heard his friend wrong. Satan hadn’t tricked them at all. They had tricked him, instead. Hadn’t they?
Suddenly, the men were scrambling to their feet. Eric braced himself as best he could, closed fists, shoulders hunched, head down. Only there were no blows, no bullets, no wounds inflicted of any kind. And their voices melted together, the hysteria in them breaking through Eric’s self-imposed barrier.
“We need to get out of the cabin. Now.”
Eric twisted around in the chair, just as one of the men pulled him to his feet and started to shove him toward the door. He saw another man, with some weird contraption mounted on top of his head, come up out of the floorboards. Of course, they had found the hidden arsenal. Father would be disappointed. They had needed that stockpile of weapons to fight Satan. Their mission had failed before they could deliver them back to their home camp. Yes, Father would be very disappointed. They had let everyone down. Maybe more lives would be lost, because all the weapons that had taken months to amass would now be confiscated and put under Satan’s control. Precious lives might be lost because they had failed their mission. How could Father protect any of them without these weapons?
The men shoved and pulled at him, hurrying out the cabin door and down into the woods. Eric didn’t understand. What were they running from? He tried to listen, tried to hear. He wanted to know what could possibly frighten Satan’s soldiers.
They gathered around the man with the strange headgear, who brought out a metal box with blinking lights and odd wires. Eric had no idea what it was, but it sounded like the man had found it down with the weapons.
“There’s an arsenal underneath large enough to blow this place to kingdom come.”
Eric couldn’t help but smile and immediately felt a jab to his kidneys. He wanted to tell Mr. Tully, the owner of the elbow in his back, that he wasn’t smiling about them being blown up, but rather at the idea that any of them believed they would ever be allowed into the Kingdom of God.
No one else noticed his smile. They focused on the dark-haired man with the crazy gogglelike contraption now pushed up on top of his head, reminding Eric of some life-size insect.
“Tell us something we don’t already know,” one of the men challenged.
“Okay. How about this. The entire cabin is wired,” the insect man told them.
“Shit!”
“It gets even better. This is only a secondary switch.” He showed them the metal box he held. “The real detonator’s off-site.” Then he pointed to the blinking red button and flipped a switch. The light shut off. Within seconds it snapped back on, blinking again like a pulsing red eye.
The men turned and twisted, craning their necks and looking around them. Some of them had their guns drawn. Even Eric’s head pivoted, his eyes suddenly clear and squinting into the shadows of the woods. He didn’t understand. He wondered if David had known about the metal box.
“Where is it?” demanded the big guy with no neck, the one everyone seemed to treat as being in charge, the only one dressed in a navy blazer instead of a windbreaker. “Where’s the goddamn detonator?”
It took Eric a minute to realize the man was asking him. He met his eyes and stared like he had been taught, looking directly into the black pupils and not blinking, not flinching, not letting the enemy win even one word.
“Hold on a minute,” the one named Cunningham said. “Why wouldn’t they want the detonator inside the cabin, so they could control when and how to blow it up? We already know they were willing to take their own lives. So why not do it by blowing themselves and the arsenal up?”
“Maybe they still intend to blow us up.” And there was more shuffling, more worried heads pivoting.
Eric wanted to tell them Father would never blow up the cabin. He couldn’t sacrifice the weapons. Father needed them to fight, to continue to fight. Instead, he simply transferred his stare to Cunningham, who not only held his gaze but bore into him as if his powers could wrench out the truth with only a look. A knot in Eric’s stomach twisted, but he didn’t blink. He couldn’t show weakness.
“No, if they wanted to blow us up, we’d already be dead,” Cunningham continued without looking away. “I think the real targets are already dead. I think their leader just wanted to make sure they did the right thing.”
Eric listened. It was a trick. Satan was testing him. Seeing if he would flinch. Father wanted to save them from being taken alive and tortured. This was simply the beginning of that torture, and Satan’s soldier, this Cunningham, knew his job well. His eyes wouldn’t let Eric go, but he wouldn’t blink. He couldn’t look away. He had to ignore the thunder of his heart in his ears, and the knot tightening in his gut.
