Forsaken (17 page)

“I have given much thought and prayer to my faith and to Kacey during the past week. In fact, I have thought and prayed about nothing else but Kacey and
my faith. I have determined that there is one thing that I simply cannot do, no matter the consequences.” Opening his hand, he lowered his eyes to Kacey’s ring. He ran his other hand over his head. Gripping the pulpit again, he looked back at the audience.

“I cannot let my little girl die.” He coughed and cleared his throat, “So I am here tonight to tell you that it is no longer my belief that Jesus is the Son of God.”

A woman in the back of the auditorium wailed. A wave of whispers washed from one end of the building to the other. Cameras flashed.

Simon lowered his eyes again to the ring. He leaned toward the microphone. “Jesus is not the Savior of the world, and Jesus is not my Savior.”

The woman wailed again. Simon’s shoulders sagged. He bowed his head and stood there in front of the crowd.

A man near the front shouted, “God knows you don’t mean it, Simon! And we do too!” Someone near the man applauded. Others near him clapped, also. The applause edged tentatively back from the front few sections but never took hold. Soon the auditorium was silent again.

Without raising his head, Simon picked up his handkerchief, turned, and walked back across the stage, leaving his open Bible on the pulpit. The auditorium exploded again with camera flashes.

As Simon approached the stage curtain, our eyes met. He shook his head from side to side and tightened
his fist around Kacey’s ring, then he brushed past us and walked down the corridor toward his dressing room.

No one around me moved. I glanced at Elise, and she turned away. In the audience, some stood at their seats; others sat, but no one moved to the aisles. A smattering of whispered conversations built to a low rumble.

I looked at the pulpit. It was wrong for Simon’s Bible to be there. Wrong for him to leave it behind. I pulled the curtain aside and hurried onto the stage, half running toward the pulpit. As I reached the center of the stage, many in the audience looked toward me, perhaps thinking I was going to speak. When I arrived at the pulpit, I looked down at the open Bible. The page was dog-eared, and Simon had underlined a passage in red. I picked the Bible up and shoved it under my arm. Then I turned and ran off the stage.

When I reached the stage entrance I met Elise’s eyes, but I moved past her without a word. I expected her to follow and hoped this wouldn’t turn into some sort of petty competition to determine who could best comfort Simon. I decided that if she followed I would let her go to him, and I would stay outside his dressing room. As I walked down the long corridor, I looked over my shoulder. She wasn’t behind me.

Despite the pain I knew Simon was feeling, I was relieved at what he’d done. A faith that required the sacrifice of a child made no sense to me. At least Kacey had a chance now. He had given her that. We could only wait to see whether the kidnappers would keep their word. If Simon could get her back, the worst would
be past. He could begin to put his life and his ministry back together. Surely God would be merciful enough to forgive him and help him with that.

As for the immediate future, it never occurred to me that the remainder of Simon’s evening would involve anything more than sitting and waiting—waiting to see if Kacey would be freed. After all, this was a kidnapping, and that was the logical next step.

But the world that surrounded Simon Mason was a big one, and logic didn’t always rule.

APPROACHING SIMON’S DRESSING ROOM, I slowed to a walk. I had no idea what I was going to say to him, and it made sense to give it some thought before I knocked on the door. Roger Ferrell, a security guard with whom I’d had a brief fling a couple of years earlier, stood up from a folding chair next to the door, raised a giant hand, and waved. I’d stopped using Roger for security jobs as soon as I got to know him. He was too irresponsible to be trusted. Somehow he had convinced someone at the Challenger Airlines Center that he was up to the job of guarding Simon’s dressing room. That hadn’t pleased me, but it wasn’t my call.

Roger’s charcoal sport coat barely contained his arms, which were as big around as my thighs. “Tough
night, huh, Taylor?” His jacket flapped open for an instant, exposing a holstered Beretta M9. Between his body and his gun, he had plenty of firepower. I hadn’t dated him for his brains. I wondered whether he’d somehow miraculously developed the sort of judgment that ought to accompany a weapon with that much muzzle velocity.

As I stopped and pondered what to say to Simon, I nodded at Roger’s gun. “You like your Beretta?”

He opened his coat and drummed his fingers on the pistol. “It’s what the Army Rangers use. You know your guns, don’t you?”

“I had a good teacher. You weren’t Special Forces, were you?”

“No, but I think it’s cool. Once you shoot one of these, you don’t want to use anything else.”

I rolled my eyes.

“What?”

“Nothing.” I motioned toward the door. “Is he in there?”

“Just went in. Looked pretty grim. I heard his talk—” Before he could finish, something slammed against the door from inside the room.

“What the—” Roger grabbed the knob and rattled it.

Something crashed, and glass broke. Then someone shouted. I couldn’t make out the words or the voice. “Simon?” I shouted.

No response. Something slammed against a wall again, this time farther into the room.

I punched in the code and tried the door. Nothing happened. Roger looked at me. I pointed to the door. “Break it down.”

He stepped back and heaved his body into the door. The frame shattered, and Roger fell face first into the room, shards of splintered wood raining to the floor around him. I hopped over his legs, took two steps, and stopped.

A huge, fat man in a red Hawaiian shirt had Simon pinned against the opposite wall. The man’s back was toward us, and his massive legs were spread and bent at the knees as he pressed his weight down on Simon. In his right hand he clutched a broken juice carafe. The jagged glass glinted in the light, so close to Simon’s face that the last remaining drops of orange juice dripped down his cheek. Something red was also dripping. It looked like blood. It mixed with the juice, streaking Simon’s face red and orange. A vein in the side of Simon’s neck glowed bright purple as he strained to prevent the man from driving the glass into his face.

To my left Roger popped up on one knee, pulled out his Beretta and pointed it at the Hawaiian shirt. I spun and swung my fist down on his forearm. It was like hitting a granite counter top. “You’ll kill them both!” Pain shot up to my elbow, but I moved the gun far enough off line to stop him from firing.

Wheeling back to my right, I ran straight toward the fat man, brought my leg back, and kicked it up between his spread legs. He howled and dropped to his knees. The carafe flipped into the air, descended end over end, and crashed to the floor next to his feet.

Just to Simon’s left was a glass end table with a brushed-stainless-steel lamp. I lunged toward it, grabbed the lamp by its neck, and yanked the cord from the wall. Turning, I took two giant steps and swung the lamp like a baseball bat. The thick base of the lamp slammed into the side of the fat man’s head. He collapsed from his knees to his stomach and lay there like a beached whale. Within seconds, a bloody red circle was expanding on the floor beneath his hair.

I stood over him, sucking air in rapid gulps, and waited. His eyelids fluttered, but he didn’t move. I kicked his side hard. He still didn’t move.

By that time Roger was on his feet, mouth hanging open.

“That Beretta of yours would have gone right through him and killed Simon too,” I said.

He looked at his gun, then back at me. When he finally moved his lips, he said, “I think you killed him.”

I tossed the lamp to the side. “Maybe.”

“Is he breathing?”

“I don’t know. And frankly, right now, I don’t care.” I turned and looked at the shattered door. “How did that guy get in here? Where were you?”

His face flushed. “I don’t know. I only left for a few—”

Before he could complete his sentence, a man in a green golf shirt and thick black glasses stuck his head through the opening where the door used to be.
I scowled at Roger, then pointed at the man at the door. “Simon Mason’s been attacked. Go find a doctor.”

The man looked at the shattered pieces of door frame scattered around the floor. When he saw the man at my feet, his face turned pale. He covered his mouth with his hand.

I waved my arms at him. “I said, get a doctor.
Now!”

He turned and ran away.

Roger took a step toward the door. “I’ll go too. We don’t even know who that guy is.”

I scowled again, knowing full well why he wanted more than anything to get out of that room. He’d probably been under the stairwell with some young thing when elephant man slipped into the dressing room. “Okay, but leave me your gun.” I motioned toward the Hawaiian shirt. “I left mine in a locker behind the stage, and I’m not taking any chances on this guy waking up.”

He handed me his Beretta and hustled out the door. I shoved it in the waistband of my pants and walked over to Simon. He had slumped to the floor, his back still to the wall. The front of his shirt looked as if he’d fed it through a paper shredder. I grabbed it and ripped it away. An ugly red gash ran diagonally from his shoulder halfway across the middle of his chest. The bleeding was slow, and the cut did not appear to be deep. I wadded his shirt and pushed it onto the center of the wound. “Can you hold this?”

“Yeah.” He moved his hand up and took the shirt. “How is it? It hurts like heck.”

“I think it looks worse than it is. It’s a shallow cut.”

He lifted the shirt and tried to look. “Ouch. That was a mistake.” He smiled and pushed it back onto the wound, then leaned his head back against the wall.

For an instant a picture of Dad lying in the dirt flashed through my mind. Without thinking, I dropped to my knees and pressed my head against his.

He pulled back from me, eyes wide, but I didn’t care. I must have looked frantic. When he saw my face, his expression softened. “I’m okay.”

I’ve thought many times about what he said next, because it showed that he already understood me better than he should have. He squeezed my arm. “Don’t worry, Taylor. I’m not going anywhere.”

He shifted his weight and tried to stand. His leg gave out beneath him. “I was afraid of that. I twisted my ankle when that guy put his weight on me.” He put his hand to his head and slid back against the wall. “I’m a little dizzy too. Basically, I guess I’m a total wreck.”

“Just stay where you are. You don’t need to go anywhere. Help will come to you.” I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and speed-dialed Elise. “Simon’s been attacked in his dressing room. Get some help and get over here.”

“Attacked? Who?”

“I don’t know. He’s hurt. Just get over here as quickly as you can.” I hung up and turned to Simon. I motioned toward the fat man on the floor. “Do you know him?”

“Never seen him before. Blond hair—not exactly your classic Arab terrorist.”

“Could be just a nut.” I got up, went over to the table against the other wall, and pulled a bottle of water out of an ice bucket. I took it to Simon and twisted off the top. “Need a drink?” I handed him the bottle.

He took a gulp.

“How did he get in?” I asked.

“I don’t know. He was hiding in the bathroom. I didn’t hear him until he was on me. I was lucky to grab his hand. By the way, remind me never to make you mad.”

I smiled. “You’ve had some day. How does it feel to be the most threatened man in America?”

He touched the cut on his chest with his fingertips and winced. “It doesn’t matter, as long as they let Kacey go. Do you think they’ll keep their word?”

“Yes, I do.”

I went over to where I’d dropped his Bible and picked it up. Stepping back over the Hawaiian shirt, I held the Bible out to Simon. “You left this on the pulpit.”

“I left it there on purpose.”

“You shouldn’t have. What you did tonight . . . I want you to know that I think you’re very brave.” I hadn’t told a man that since the night my father died.

He waved his hand in the air and laughed.
“I’m
brave? You’re the one who laid out Godzilla over there.”

“I was lucky his back was turned. He would have been too big for me to handle.” The Bible still in my hand, I turned my back to the wall and slid down beside him.

He handed me the bottle of water. I tipped my head back and took a long drink.

“I don’t know why I fought so hard to live. Thirty seconds before he attacked me, all I could think about was how much I wanted to die.”

I gave him back the bottle. “Life is funny. We can take it pretty lightly until it’s about to be snatched away. Most people just want to know that when they die, they’re doing it for something that’s worth it.” I nodded toward the Hawaiian shirt. “Letting him slice you in two with a juice bottle doesn’t qualify.”

He poured water on his hands and rubbed them together to wash the blood off. Without looking up he said, “You’ve got an awfully good head on your shoulders for someone so young.”