Whispers in the Night (34 page)

The world tilted. Sinclair's words and her heightened sensitivity to the present danger were almost too much to bear.

She backpedaled, collided with the wall, and used it for support while she forced her breathing to regulate. A fine sheen of sweat plastered her blouse to her chest and back.

Why was it so hot?

Markham spoke: “She does, does she?” His voice was high, squeaky. It made him no less intimidating. He shot the other blond—Jimmy—a look. “Now, how did that happen?”

Jimmy shook his head frantically. “Nuh-uh, wasn't me. Wasn't Jimmy.”

Karyn didn't need her powers to realize Jimmy was mentally challenged. What the hell was going on here?

“We should call it off,” Sinclair told Markham. “If there's a leak, we shouldn't go through with this.”

Markham gave him an easy smile. “Our objective hasn't changed. Think of the good this will do. It's worth the risk.”

Karyn found her voice. “What are you talking about? Objectives? The
good?
”

“Karyn.” The bishop's eyes begged her to understand. “You've got it all wrong. No one's going to kill me. The bullet's not even real.”

“What?”

“It's supposed to be a blank and a . . .”

“A squib,” Markham chimed in. “It's what they use in the movies to make gunshots look real.” He moved to the worktable and picked up a harness and a bag of what looked like hospital blood. “It's a low-charge explosive and a packet of red corn syrup. Bishop Sinclair's in no danger whatsoever.”

Karyn shook her head. What she saw in her vision wasn't corn syrup. In the future place she could smell the copper stench. It was blood and it was real.

“Why?” she asked. “Why this?”

“Forgiveness, Karyn,” Sinclair said. “It's all about His message. Our congregation is at its peak. And we're going to only rise higher. But somewhere along the way, His message got lost. It became about being in the ‘cool church,' about getting your Heavenly Duty license plate holder. It's about being the Heavenly Duty choir director, or chief financial officer. People have started to look at our church like a country club. The in-crowd belongs to Heavenly Duty, and we don't cotton to nobodies around here.”

Sinclair's eyes glistened. “It never should've come to this.”

“So you're going to fake an assassination?” she asked. “It's come to that?”

Markham spoke up. “It's not the assassination that makes this special. It's the assassin.”

Before she could question him, Jimmy began to bounce up and down like a hyper child. “Point and shoot.
Bam!
”

Karyn could've burned a hole through Sinclair with her gaze. “No. Tell me you don't intend to involve him in this.”

Sinclair spoke with his voice and hands, channeling the energy that made him a world-famous speaker. “If you'll let me explain, you'll see why it could only be him.”

He continued. “People threaten my life all the time. Most recently, members of the Church of King Christ.”

He let that hang and she bit. “That's the Aryan church. It's been in the news a lot lately.”

“Right. The officialdom of the church claims no knowledge of the threats, of course. But it's all semantics, now, isn't it? The lines have been drawn. There have been talks of riots, even among my people.”

She began to understand Jimmy's bottle-blond locks. If Sinclair wanted it to look like the shooter was connected to an Aryan church, Jimmy needed to look Aryan. She got that, but not what Sinclair hoped to accomplish.

“When we do this, there will be horror and panic . . . Old Testament terror,” he said. “The true Christians will be separated from the vengeful charlatans. We'll finally know who's been listening.”

Now Karyn was clear, on one thing anyway: Sinclair was insane.

“You're doing this because you want to weed out the lukewarms?” she asked.

“No. So I can save them.”

“I thought only Christ saved. Or is that just semantics, too?”

Sinclair's eyes flickered. He concealed the anger quickly. “When I ‘survive,' and I
forgive
Jimmy for what he's done, my message will be stronger than ever. My followers will be stronger for it. Don't you see?”

“It won't work,” she bluffed. She knew more than any of them it was going to work better than they'd dreamed. “You'll be seen by medics and cops. They'll find the squib.”

“You'd be surprised how many of our members are in law enforcement and medicine,” he countered.

“What about Jimmy? He's supposed to be ostracized, maybe go to jail, for your ego trip?”

Markham spoke up. “True followers make sacrifices to spread God's Word. Besides, we have strong ties to the legal community, too. Someone in Jimmy's condition will never see trial. This
will
work, miss.”

She shook her head, her resolve hardened. “No. It won't. Because I won't let it.” She made for the door, but was halted by Markham's manacle-like grip.

The heat in the room went nuclear.

Karyn blinked to get her bearings. How long was she out? Seconds? Minutes?

“Is she all right?” Sinclair asked.

Markham watched her carefully. “She's fine now.”

“Wait.” She went to move and felt her arm snatched backward. A silver cuff chained her to the heavy worktable. The table was bolted to the floor and would not be moved.

To Markham, she said, “What are you—?”

Her eyes drifted past him, to the fifth figure in the room.

She bit back a scream.

A black mass of living shadow hulked over Markham. The heat from before—it came off the mass in waves. She saw it radiating from the . . . thing. In all her years—all of her visions—she'd never seen anything like it.

Somewhere in the distance, she heard the voice of Luther Vandross, and then realized it was her cell's ring tone.

Markham came closer, as did the blackness. She cringed.

“He's not going to hurt you, Karyn,” the bishop assured her. The sad thing was, he actually believed it.

Still, it wasn't Markham she was concerned with. Not anymore.

The murderous Nordic reached into her bag and confiscated her phone, slipping it in his jacket pocket. “I'll deal with you later.” Then, to Sinclair: “We need to go.” He gathered up the squib harness. Jimmy led the way out, followed by the bishop.

“We'll work something out,” Sinclair said.

No,
Karyn thought,
you won't.

He left. Then went the Nordic, and, thank goodness, that shadow.

Before the door closed, trapping her, the shadow twisted in snakelike fashion. The mound at the top—the head—faced her, shooting that unnatural heat her way. Then a horizontal crescent moon appeared, perfectly white pointed teeth flashed. The damned thing was grinning.

Then they were gone.

 

 

Reggie hung up his phone. “Where are you, Karyn? Damn it.”

“Can I help you, sir?”

He turned, embarrassed. “Um, darn it. This darn phone.”

The man he faced was massive. Reggie was no small guy; at six feet two, two hundred and eighty pounds, he dwarfed most people he met. Now he knew how those folks felt.

This security guard was Shaq-sized. His skin was tanned bronze, his hair light brown, with eyes like olives. Reggie could honestly say he was the strangest-looking man he'd ever seen.

“You seem lost, sir. Can I help you with something?”

People milled around, on beelines for Heavenly Duty's open doors. Reggie scanned their faces. “I'm not the one that's lost. I'm looking for my friend, Karyn.”

“Karyn Manning?”

“Yeah, how—”

He tapped his earpiece. “I heard her name over the radio. I think she was taken to meet Bishop Sinclair.”

A sigh slipped out of Reggie. “Good. That's good.”

“I should take you to her,” the guard said.

Then something in Reggie flicked on, a sudden need to get to Karyn and get to Karyn now. “Can you do that?”

The guard nodded. “Just stick close.”

They began to move through the crowd with odd ease. People stopped short or sped up to clear a direct path for them, yet no one even glanced their way.

They entered the foyer, detoured down a long corridor.

“Hey, I'm Reggie, by the way. I didn't catch your name.”

The guard turned, and gave him the warmest smile he'd seen in a long time. “Just call me Michael.”

 

 

Moments later, they were on a deserted floor. Reggie knew when he was somewhere he wasn't supposed to be. “Don't you think they're in the sanctuary by now?”

Michael did not respond, but opened a door at the end of the floor. Reggie followed and realized this was the bishop's office.

“Mike, no one's here, man.”

Again, no response. Instead, the guard approached a bare wall and pressed his hand, fingers splayed, against the plaster. He turned to Reggie and placed a small metal trinket in his palm. “You'll need this.”

“What?” He looked past Michael and saw there was a door concealed in the wall. A step closer and there was a familiar voice. “Sinclair, is that you?”

Reggie ran into the hidden room and saw Karyn tugging on a cuff that trapped her wrist to a table. He looked down to the tiny metal in his hand, and understood what it was. A cuff key.

“Karyn.” He rushed forward.

“I had another vision, Reggie.”

He stopped just shy of her. “Just now?”

“No. It's been a while. You're fine.”

Still, he was hesitant. Early on in their relationship, before he understood the nature of her abilities, he'd touched her while she was in the midst of a powerful, ugly vision. That day, they both found out that not only could Karyn see visions of the past and future, but she became a cipher of the visions, for a time.

When Reggie touched her, he saw what she saw.

And his mind couldn't take it.

It was three days before he woke up again, in a hospital with an IV snaking to his arm.

Warily, his hand hovered toward her wrist like she was a hot oven and he was afraid of getting burned. He touched her, snatched his hand back like she was hot, and then touched her again. Nothing. Good. He unlocked her cuff while she filled him in on what was what in Heavenly Duty.

Listening to her tale of Bishop Sinclair's Aryan security chief planning to turn his harebrained scheme against him, he was again reminded of her burden and was secretly glad the ability was hers and not his.

She rubbed her raw wrist. “How did you find me?”

“This guard, Mic—” He turned to introduce his ally and found the entrance to the room empty. He stepped to the door and peered into the equally empty office. “He was right here.”

Karyn pushed past him, checked the wall clock. “Sinclair's going on soon.”

“What do we need to do?”

“Give me your cell phone.”

He handed it over. She said, “Use the desk phone to call the cops.”

“And tell them what?”

“I don't know. Tell them you saw a black man with a gun chase a white girl into the church . . . that might get the whole police department plus SWAT down here.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“Reggie, I've got a date with a rifleman.”

He stiffened. “I'm going with you.”

“No. You're not.”

“Look what rolling solo has done for you so far. Should I go ahead and keep the cuff key in case we need it later?”

She touched his hand. “You can't come with me, Reggie. I know what I have to do and you don't want to be there when I do it.”

He didn't want to, but they'd been down this road before—if she had a plan, he had to trust her. Before he could relent, she was out the door.

 

 

It took twenty minutes to find the entrance to the balcony she'd seen in her vision. She ran into no resistance from security. No surprise there. Markham was the boss on these matters, and since he was the only legitimate threat to Bishop Sinclair, of course he'd want the guards out of the way.

Which leaves me,
she thought, a rodent of fear scurrying along her intestines.

She'd told Reggie she knew what she had to do. It was a lie.

The truth: Reggie was her only friend, and she didn't want to risk him in this business. The image of that smiling darkness was fresh in her mind. It was real, as real as any vision she'd ever had. The forces at work here were sinister, indeed. And they were her load to carry.

Creeping through Heavenly Duty's upper level, she kept low and peered across the length of the balcony. It ringed the sanctuary—what some would call nosebleed seats—currently unfinished and unused.