Sinner (43 page)
The second was that she was more alive than she had ever been. And at this moment she was seeing the kingdom of light.
Darcy began to weep.
HOW MUCH time passed was difficult to tell, because the minutes had either slowed or sped up and Darcy couldn't tell which.
It seemed as though the sum of all Darcy's awareness had been concentrated into a drug and administered to her intravenously. Every synapse, every nerve ending, every sense she possessed was stretched to the limit of its capacity.
There was light, yes, but this particular light wasn't just white beams floating around the town square. It was a warm charge of energy that she could breathe and feel on her skin. It was the complete absence of darkness here in Paradise, Colorado.
Darcy stood and turned slowly, gazing at the town square. Johnny faced the people, frozen in time, eyes blazing white. But it wasn't just his eyes, it was the whole town square, swimming in light. He wasn't the source of the brightness, he'd simply opened their eyes to what was already hereâa prophet showing them the chariots of heaven.
Slow motion. Perfectly ethereal, perfectly real. And silent.
The people were moving, heads turning, tilting, eyes wide as they gazed in wonder at the change. But slow, very slow, at one tenth the normal speed of things.
An older gentleman on the front row had his arms spread wide, his head tilted back, and his mouth wide open in what could only be a scream of pure delight. A silent scream.
Next to him, a gray-haired woman dressed in the brightest yellow dress Darcy had ever seen stood with both hands over her mouth, looking up. Tears streamed from her wrinkled eyes that seemed to cry out on their own.
I knew it. What did I tell you? I knew it!
Darcy looked over the three thousand. To a man, woman, and child they breathed the light, some jumping, some trembling, all gripped in this force that had slowed time and was filling their mouths, their throats, their bones with raw power and pleasure.
Joseph Houde, the newsman who'd first broken the story about Paradise, stood next to two other reporters apart from the crowd, filming, but they were anything but steady. One of them had dropped his camera and was on his knees, face in hands.
But of them all, young Katrina Kivi stood out. She was leaping two feet off the ground in slow motion, flinging her arms over her head and grabbing at the light. Silent words cried from her mouth, like a delighted child who was finally allowed on that ride, the big one that she'd stared at for so many years until she was tall enough to buckle in.
They were all swept up in one overpowering sentiment, Darcy thought:
It's here. It's really here. It's really, really here
.
And it was. So real and vibrant, so heavy with power that she wondered if this was heaven.
Darcy saw all of this at once, maybe in the span of a few seconds, maybe an hour. But there was no transition for her. She knew the moment that the light slammed into her that she'd been wrong about Johnny and the three thousand. About Jesus and the kingdom he'd insistently talked about over two thousand years ago.
And about preventing any human being from placing this light on the top of the tallest mountain for all the world to see.
Darcy wept.
For joy, for sorrow, for regret, for desire of whatever was now coursing through her veins.
And then the light collapsed into itself and vanished, as if someone had pulled the plug. Slow motion fell into real time and the silence was pulled away like a blanket.
Her own scream was the first to reach her ears, and she hadn't even been aware that she was screaming. Then Katrina Kivi's high-pitched cry of delight, several feet away. Then the whole crowd's, a roar of approval and cries, the sound of weeping and moaning, all rolled into one symphony of fascination and bliss.
It only took a few seconds for everyone to realize that it was gone. The only sound came from their weeping, and then even that softened.
They stared around in wonder, stunned by the change. Breathing hard.
Darcy ran her hand through the air, half expecting to hit something. A wisp of light trailed off her fingers and then even that was gone. She faced Johnny, who watched her, eyes now blue.
“None of that was me,” he said.
She knew, but she couldn't manage an answer.
A smile curved his mouth. “Tell them, Darcy.”
Tell them?
“Tell them what you know. Use your voice for them.”
Then she knew, Johnny had his eyes; she had her voice.
She was facing Johnny with her side to the crowd, so she twisted to see them again. They were still shell-shocked, looking around. A murmur was growing.
Darcy looked at Johnny. “Tell them?”
He chuckled. “Tell them, sing to them, scream to them, do your thing, Darcy. I think they deserve it, don't you?”
She strode to the edge of the stage, captured by the idea. “Listen to me,” she said, but her voice came out hoarse from all her screaming.
“Listen! Listen to her!” Katrina Kivi shouted.
They looked up at Darcy.
“I . . . I was . . .”
The floodgates of her soul broke open, and she could not hold back her emotion. She couldn't say
wrong
because her throat wasn't cooperating. Her heart was lodged firmly there.
She began to sob again. Staring through tears at the three thousand, sobbing and sobbing.
Darcy thrust two fingers into the air and spoke as clearly as she could. “The kingdom of heaven actually
is
among us.” The words from the priests who'd raised her filled her mind for the first time in thirteen years. As did the opening from the Gospel of John, the apostle who gave his life for the words he penned.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Any unbelieving soul could have heard the words from her and stared back dumbly, because her voice could only excite what already was hidden in a person's mind. But Paradise was not filled with unbelieving souls.
These were the three thousand who had crossed the country to stand for the truth they believed and now saw. And now the Word reached into their hearts and minds as it never had.
Katrina Kivi shoved her hands in the air.“Tell us, Darcy!” she screamed. “Tell us more!”
Darcy gained strength. “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life and that life was the light of men.”
They began to cry out in agreement, white knuckles gripping the air high over their heads.
Darcy screamed the words.
“The light . . .” She grabbed some breath. “The light shines in the darkness, but . . .”
Their roar drowned out her words, but not their power. They bent their heads back like birds desperate for food, and they screamed at the black sky. The roar ran long, and even though she could hardly hear her-self, Darcy hurled her words into it.
Because she couldn't wait for them. She was as impatient to speak as they were to hear. So she drilled them with her eyes and spoke the truth, knowing that they could hear with their hearts if not their ears.
“But the darkness has not understood it. He came to his own, but his own did not recognize him or receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
She took a deep breath.
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and the Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
She wanted to sing this. To cry it out with more than just words. The power that flowed from her mouth begged to be carried by music.
Trembling, Darcy began to sing the only words that came to mind, but she sang the song in a new melody, not the one the priests used to sing on occasion. A melody she'd heard on the radio once, sung by an artist called Agnew who had a deep, rich voice that had made her chest shake as her hand hovered over the dial.
The voice that sang the words now was hers, soft and light in a high, pure tone. But a thousand times more powerful than any voice that had ever sung the words before.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound;
That saved a wretch like me.
The words, however thin, slammed into the audience as if God's breath were visiting Paradise and had come with the force of a hurricane. They were his words, but they were her storyâand she could barely stand under the weight of their truth.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.
The song thundered from three thousand voices and shook the ground in Paradise.
“HOW LONG has she been on that stage?” Billy demanded, staring at the image Kinnard handed him as the National Guard helicopter homed in on the dark valley.
“Nearly an hour.”
His hands were shaking, and despite Kelly's reassuring hand on his knee, he felt torn apart by the growing realization that Darcy had defected.
“I don't understand.”
“And that's the problem,” Kelly said. “Not that you don't understand, but that Johnny has this kind of power even over someone as strong as Darcy.” She looked out the window. “He's a dangerous man.”
Kinnard sat with arms crossed, stoic in this moment of crisis.“So that's it, then?” Billy said.
He dipped his head once. “So it seems.”
“She's the one who demanded all of this,” he snapped. “Begged me to follow her. Spoke of ruling the world, all that nonsense. Darcy changed the Constitution, for heaven's sake! Now she's joined the enemy?”
“She didn't start this,” Kinnard said. “You did.”
A chill washed down Billy's spine. Yes he did, when he wrote Black, although Kinnard was probably thinking about the decision to destroy Johnny.
“And she didn't change anything,”Kinnard continued.“She just helped things along. It was always only a matter of time.”
An air force sergeant leaned out of the cockpit.“Sir,where do you want me to drop it?”
“As close as you can.”
“I can put it right on top of them if you want.”
“Then put it on top of them!” Billy snapped.
The helicopter wound for the ground. Kelly's insistence that he take out Johnny personally rode up his throat like a black acid. Killing him outright in front of the three thousand would only result in the kind of upheaval that followed a martyr's death.
There was a kind of poetic justice to the plan Kelly had suggested.
What she couldn't know was that the hatred she'd dumped into him left Billy with more than this crawling desire to end the life of Johnny Drake once and for all.
It had also left him feeling the same about himself. And if it was true that Darcy had betrayed him, then more so. It had all started with him and it would all end with him.
But not before he ended Johnny.
THE HELICOPTER seemed to come out of nowhere. Low from the north, thumping just above the trees that surrounded the town square.
Kat jerked her head skyward and shielded her eyes from gusts of wind. It was a green army chopper. Maybe the authorities had seen the change in Darcy and decided to think things over before enforcing their twenty-four-hour ultimatum.
But Darcy evidently didn't think so. She ran to the edge of the stage and cried out to the audience, “Leave!” Johnny was frozen in place, center stage, but Darcy ran to the right, waving the crowd away.
“Get out now, hide, back behind the buildings!”
They might not have followed the demands of any other person, but this was Darcy, and the crowd was running before she finished.
All but Steve, Claude, and Kat.
The helicopter hovered above the lawn, then began to sink, scattering the crowd into the corners of the town like windblown dust bunnies. The microphone on the platform toppled over, and one of the wooden chairs caught a gust and tumbled along the back of the stage before dropping from sight. The chopper settled on the lawn, smack-dab in the middle of Paradise, surrounded by boiling wisps of dust from the street.
Darcy's dress whipped around her calves, but she stood firm beside Johnny, hands now clenched into fists by her side. Kat jumped onto the stage and took a position beside them.
“Johnny?” Claude Bowers had his eyes on the helicopter's door, now swinging open.
“Keep everyone back, Claude. Go with him, Steve. Just keep them back, out of sight.”
“You're sure youâ”
“Go, Steve. Go now.”
They both hurried off, yelling at onlookers who hung close, ordering them back, out of the way, inside.
Now only Kat and Darcy remained with Johnny, and that place of honor wasn't lost on her. Kat and Johnny.
Kelly stumbled out of the helicopter and sprawled face-first onto the lawn, followed immediately by the redheaded man who'd delivered the ultimatum. Billy Rediger. Wearing glasses. A taller man who also wore sunglasses strode around from the other side of the helicopter, looking like a Las Vegas hit man in his black sports jacket.
Billy scowled, grabbed the back of Kelly's collar, and jerked her to her feet. He lifted a gun and pressed it against her temple, drilling Kelly, then Johnny, with a dark glare.
The helicopter's blades roared and lifted the chopper into the night sky.
“Johnny!” Billy cried, frantic. “This is
your
doing, Johnny!”
Kelly had been quiet these last few days, staying clear of the limelight, helping out where needed without propping herself up as Johnny's trophy. And he'd seemed content to allow her to play that role.When Kat hadn't seen her near the stage at the outset of tonight's meeting, she'd thought nothing of it, assuming she was helping behind the scenes.
And judging by Johnny's wide blue eyes, he'd assumed the same.
The beating blades of the chopper faded. The wind settled.
