Darkness Rising (The East Salem Trilogy) (44 page)

“It’s the end of the world,” Ruth said.

Dani went to sit in front of the fireplace in the living room to think. She reviewed the steps in her thinking to see if she might have missed a step, or if her reasoning was flawed, but she kept arriving at the same conclusion. She talked it over with Quinn, who helped her see it from every conceivable angle. Nothing new occurred to them. They’d thought of everything.

A few minutes later, Tommy came in, leaned down from behind, and kissed her on the forehead.

“Come here,” he whispered, so that Quinn couldn’t hear. “I want to show you something.”

She followed him into the kitchen. Quinn said good night and disappeared up the stairs. The others had gone to bed. Tommy and Dani had the first watch. The half-empty jar of pond water sat on the food island.

“The night Abbie Gardener came to visit me—the night Julie was killed—we found her by the pond,” Tommy reminded her. “But I didn’t turn my security system on every night. It was kind of a fluke that it was on
the night she came. I have a ten-foot-high deer fence around my property. That’s a pretty high fence for a 102-year-old woman to jump over. I don’t know how she got through, but she was motivated. Do you remember what she said to me at the pond, when she was holding the dead frog?”

“These are the first to go. You’ll be the last.”

“I couldn’t tell if she meant ‘you, Tommy Gunderson,’ or just ‘you,’ people in general. But she didn’t come to my house by accident.”

“God sent her,” Dani said.

“Well, yeah,” Tommy said. “But she didn’t know who I was. She didn’t leave the nursing home thinking, ‘I think I’ll go see that has-been football player.’”

“She was trying to get to her house,” Dani said. “She wanted to go home. Your house is on a line between the nursing home and the farm.”

“And we thought that’s why she ended up in my yard. But after your little demonstration tonight, I thought—wait a minute. That’s not why she came to my house. She came to my house because it’s the highest point in Westchester County. If you were going to poison the drinking water for New York City, where would you go? Where are all the drinking water reservoirs?”

“Westchester County,” Dani said.

“And if you wanted to poison one body of water in Westchester, knowing that sooner or later, the water in it would run into all the other drinking water reservoirs, where would you go?”

“I’d go to the highest point in Westchester County,” Dani said.

“That pond out back drains from a little stream that empties into Lake Atticus,” Tommy said, “and from there it passes through the Katonah reservoir, the Cross River reservoir, the Croton reservoir, the whole shebang.”

“Okay,” Dani said. She felt her whole body begin to shake, because she knew where this was going. “So we need to guard your pond.”

“Watch,” Tommy said. He took a drinking straw, plunged it into the bottle of Doomsday Molecule reagent, then emptied it into the jar
containing the remainder of the pond water. The water in the jar turned bright red, the color of blood.

“You dropped a capsule of Provivilan into the pond water, added the reagent, and it turned red. I didn’t add a capsule. I just dropped the reagent into the pond water, and it turned red. Provivilan is already in the drinking water supply,” he told her. “Combining to form the Doomsday Molecule. They poisoned my pond. I don’t know how or when, but some night when the security system wasn’t on. Abbie must have figured that out. That’s why she came to my house. That’s what your dreams about water and blood were telling you. They’re not waiting until Provivilan goes on the market. It’s already too late.”

Dani was too stunned to speak. She thought of all the children she’d seen playing on the town green. She thought of Emily and Isabelle, her nieces.

Tommy held her hands and pushed his forehead against hers. “Have faith,” he said. “God isn’t going to let this happen.”

“Can I have faith and still be scared?” she said. “Terrible things have already happened. You saw that list of names. Those evil people . . .”

“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “You and me. Together. We’ll figure it out. Something will turn up, I promise you. Do you believe me?”

“I believe you.”

“Say it with me,” he said, taking her hands in his and closing his eyes. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .”

“Amen,” they finished, just as the intercom buzzed to indicate someone was at the gate.

Tommy jumped up, grabbed his gun and stuck it in the back of his waistband, and punched up the security monitor.

Dani joined him. On the monitor they saw a boy of about fifteen with neatly combed hair, a white shirt, gray slacks, a black blazer with the St. Adrian’s crest on the breast pocket, and a necktie striped in the school colors of purple and red.

“Can I come in?” the boy said. He held up a Bible and placed his hand on it to show them he was telling the truth. “My name is Reese. I’m the one who sent you the pill and the SD card. Please let me in. They’re going to kill me.”

Dani and Tommy exchanged glances, and then Tommy reached for the keypad to open the gate. Dani stayed his hand.

“What if it’s a trick?” she said.

“Fool me once, shame on you,” Tommy said. “Fool me twice . . . how’s it go?”

“Shame on me,” Dani said. “I just want to err on the side of caution— but he’s holding a Bible. I don’t think it’s a trick.”

“Good enough for me.”

“Open the gate.”

READING GROUP GUIDE

1. Why do angels choose to conceal their activities from man?

2. What obstacles do you think the first Christian missionaries in continental North America faced?

3. What actions might humans take to fight demons and their activities? What actions should be left to God?

4. Find a copy of Hieronymus Bosch’s painting
The Garden of Earthly Delights
in a book or on the Internet and study it closely. How would you interpret the imagery in the three panels?

5. Dani and Tommy are driven apart in
Darkness Rising
by jealousy. Where does it come from?

6. What leads to Carl’s capitulation to the forces of darkness?

7. Quinn begins as a man of pure science but finds himself opening his mind to larger thoughts and beliefs. What causes Quinn to change?

8. What was the nature of Tommy’s relationship with Cassandra, and how is his relationship with Dani different?

9. How do you think microorganisms fit into God’s plan?

AN EXCERPT FROM

FACE OF BETRAYAL

www.thomasnelson.com/face-of-betrayal.html

NORTHWEST PORTLAND

December 13

C
ome on, Jalapeño!”

Katie Converse jerked the dog’s leash. Reluctantly, the black Lab mix lifted his nose and followed her. Katie wanted to hurry, but everything seemed to invite Jalapeño to stop, sniff, and lift his leg. And there was no time for that now. Not today.

She had grown up less than two miles from here, but this afternoon everything looked different. It was winter, for one thing, nearly Christmas. And she wasn’t the same person she had been the last time she was here, not a month earlier. Then she had been a little girl playing at being a grown-up. Now she was a woman.

Finally, she reached the agreed-upon spot. She was still shaking from what she had said less than two hours earlier. What she had demanded.

Now there was nothing to do but wait. Not an easy task for an impatient seventeen-year-old.

She heard the scuff of footsteps behind her. Unable to suppress a grin, Katie called his name as she turned around.

At the sight of the face, contorted with rage, Jalapeño growled.

MARK O. HATFI ELD UNITED STATES COURTHOUSE

December 14

A
s she walked to the courtroom podium, federal prosecutor Allison Pierce touched the tiny silver cross she wore on a fine chain. The cross was hidden under her cream-colored silk blouse, but it was always there, close to Allison’s heart. Her father had given it to her for her sixteenth birthday.

Allison was dressed in what she thought of as her “court uniform,” a navy blue suit with a skirt that, even on her long legs, hit below the knee. This morning she had tamed her curly brown hair into a low bun and put on small silver hoops. She was thirty-three, but in court she wanted to make sure no one thought of her as young or unseasoned.

She took a deep breath and looked up at Judge Fitzpatrick. “Your Honor, I ask for the maximum sentence for Frank Archer. He coldly, calculatedly, and callously plotted his wife’s murder. If Mr. Archer had been dealing with a real hired killer instead of an FBI agent, Toni Archer would be dead today. Instead, she is in hiding and in fear for her life.”

A year earlier Frank Archer had had what he told friends was a five-foot-four problem. Toni. She wanted a divorce. Archer was an engineer, and he was good at math. A divorce meant splitting all their worldly goods and paying for child support. But if Toni were to die? Then not only would Archer avoid a divorce settlement, but he would benefit from Toni’s $300,000 life insurance policy.

Archer asked an old friend from high school—who also happened to
be an ex-con—if he knew anyone who could help. The old friend found Rod Emerick, but Rod wasn’t a hired killer—he was an FBI agent. Archer agreed to meet Rod in a hotel room, which the FBI bugged. In a windowless van parked outside, Allison monitored the grainy black-and-white feed, all shadows and snow, waiting until they had enough to make an arrest before she gave the order. With gritted teeth, she had watched Archer hand over a snapshot of Toni, her license number, her work schedule, and $5,000 in fifties and hundreds. She sometimes understood those who killed from passion—but killers motivated by greed left her cold.

Given the strength of the evidence, Archer had had no choice but to plead guilty. Now, as Allison advocated for the maximum possible sentence, she didn’t look over at him once. He was a small man, with thinning blonde hair and glasses. He looked nothing like a killer. But after five years as a federal prosecutor, Allison had learned that few killers did.

After she finished, she rejoined Rod at the prosecutor’s table and listened to the defense attorney’s sad litany of excuses. Archer hadn’t known what he was doing, he was distraught, he was under a lot of stress, he wasn’t sleeping well, and he never intended to go through with it—lies that everyone in the crowded courtroom could see through.

“Do you have anything you would like to say to the court before sentencing?” Judge Fitzpatrick asked Archer.

Archer got to his feet, eyes brimming with crocodile tears. “I’m very, very sorry. Words cannot describe how I feel. It was all a huge mistake. I love Toni very much.”

Allison didn’t realize she was shaking her head until she felt Rod’s size 12 loafer squishing the toe of her sensible navy blue pump.

They all rose for the sentence.

“Frank Archer, you have pled guilty to the cowardly and despicable act of plotting to have your spouse murdered.” Judge Fitzpatrick’s face was like a stone. “Today’s sentence should send a strong message to
cowards who think they can hide by hiring a stranger to commit an act of violence. I hereby sentence you to ten years for attempted capital murder-for-hire, to be followed by two years of supervised release.”