Megan stood and went to Lyons. She tried to ask the question, but she couldn’t make any words come through her constricted throat.
Lyons smiled tiredly at her and took her hand. “Leslie Hollister made it through surgery, Mrs. Gander. She’s a strong girl. A fighter. She just wasn’t ready to leave us yet.”
Tears filled Megan’s eyes. Before she knew it, Jenny was in her arms, hugging her and holding her tight, and for just a moment everything seemed all right.
Sunshine Hills Cemetery
Outside Marbury, Alabama
Local Time 0418 Hours
Delroy woke lying facedown in the mud a few feet from his son’s grave. Small trickles of water ran past him, only inches from his face. Rain pummeled his back, constant and relentless. After everything he’d suffered through, he hadn’t had the strength to leave the graveyard.
And where would he have gone? He didn’t know. Getting here had been his only mission.
He didn’t know when he’d fallen asleep, just as he didn’t know what had awakened him now. The fecund stink of rotting vegetation filled the small, enclosed area of the makeshift tent he’d made from his rain slicker.
After he’d made his decision not to open Terrence’s grave, he’d remained awake as long as he could and awaited the thing’s return. He had no doubt that it would put in another appearance. The creature was bound to him; it wouldn’t go away until it got what it came for.
And Chaplain Delroy Harte was very certain that what the thing was after was his soul. As trite as that sounded, he believed that with every fiber of his being.
You can fear and believe in a hellish creature that torments and persecutes, he berated himself, and you can’t let yourself believe in God’s mercy. That didn’t seem possible, but there it was.
At the moment, though, Delroy felt there had been little in the way of God’s mercy to believe in. Unfinished business had drawn Delroy from his ship during the fiercest trouble the crew had ever known, and had left him up to his thighs in his son’s open grave.
God, help me to understand, he prayed, because I can’t see the mercy in that.
During the time before he’d fallen asleep under the slicker, Delroy had admitted that maybe he hadn’t returned home at God’s behest. He was more convinced now that in his weakness Satan, not God, had drawn him here. For a time, thinking like that had helped. If he could believe that Satan had led him here, that Satan could take an interest in his life, wasn’t it possible to believe that God did, too?
In the end, he’d had to admit that line of thinking was arrogant and decidedly wrong. He wasn’t Job for God and the devil to fightover. And it was horrible to contemplate that the only way he could believe in God was to first believe that some devilish thing was out to get him.
High-intensity white light blazed onto the ground around Delroy. The light cut into the darkness under the slicker.
Cautiously, Delroy raised his head, exposing his face to the muddy rain that spattered against the ground beyond the slicker’s edge. He felt certain the creature had finally gotten over its vanishing act and come back to torture him more. Despite what it said, Delroy knew he wasn’t going to open his son’s grave. Whatever was in that casket, whatever wasn’t in that casket, Terrence wasn’t here anymore.
A pair of black rubber rain boots with yellow piping followed the light. The light reflected against the shiny black surfaces.
“Hey,” a deep voice said. “Come on up outta that mud.”
Delroy didn’t want to push up from the mud, though. When he’d first lain on the ground, the cold had seeped into his flesh. Now it felt like his body had made peace with the mud, and they shared his warmth between them.
“Get up outta there,” the voice said again. “You’re gonna catch your death laying there like that.”
Delroy ignored the man, thankful that it wasn’t the creature, and closed his eyes. He didn’t know why he’d woken up. There was no reason to. And catching his death in the cemetery? It was a perfect place for it.
The light shifted; someone grabbed Delroy’s left arm and flipped him over, exposing him to the cold rain. Only then did he realize how numb his body was. His teeth started chattering almost at once. His arms shook as he reached for the edges of the slicker to draw it around him again. After one try, he discovered that he was too weak to roll back over.
“C’mon. Get up outta there. Get on your feet.”
Delroy squinted his eyes tight against the harsh light but still felt it stabbing into his brain.
The man holding the halogen light nudged Delroy with one of the rubber boots. “Can you get up?”
“I don’t think so.” Delroy struggled to stop his chattering teeth but couldn’t.
The man sighed in tired frustration. “I’m gonna give you a hand.”
“No.” Resentment at the man’s intrusion bubbled inside Delroy. He’d placed his life in God’s hands by lying here on the cold ground. If there was a God, if He was really interested in saving Chaplain Delroy Harte, then let Him do it. That wasn’t for some stranger to do.
“You lay here much longer, you ain’t gonna be here come morning,” the man promised.
Suits me fine, Delroy thought, but he immediately felt guilty for thinking that.
The light shifted again, dragging up the man’s thickset body. It settled on a badge revealed when the man lifted his raincoat out of the way.
“I’m a sheriff’s deputy, mister,” he said in a flat, no-nonsense tone. “You’re getting up offa that ground. Whether you do it under your own steam or I hook onto you with a set of handcuffs and drag you feetfirst, you’re coming with me.”
“It would be
