CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Now unto the King
eternal,
immortal,
invisible,
the only wise God,
be honour and glory
forever and ever.
Amen.
1 Timothy 1:17, King James Version
“It is well settled law that the First Amendment does not protect speech that incites violence. As we noted in Jennings v. California, the evidence considered by the California State Legislature was sufficient to support the Legislature’s conclusion that the speech of ‘archaic’ bibles (as defined in Jennings) incited violence and thus that the California statute banning possession of archaic bibles was constitutional.
“Similarly, we have long separated the social evil of hate speech and fighting words from protected freedom of expression, limitations of which do not ‘creat[e] the danger of driving viewpoints from the marketplace.’
“… And so we hold today that Iowa’s Statute, which classifies attacks steeped in the philosophy of or quoting the text of archaic biblical translations as hate speech, not to run contrary to the First Amendment. Affirmed.”
Carmichael v. Iowa [citations omitted]
Supreme Court of the United States of America
1
It wasn’t every day a man embarked on a criminal career. No wonder he couldn’t stop checking his mirrors. He leaned toward the handlebars of his Kawasaki Concours 14 as the warm wind slid over his arms. In less than a week, the calendar would hit summer, and nights like this would suffocate on Michigan humidity. He should relax. Enjoy the ride.
Right.
So far, Clay’s life as a lawbreaker was limited to misdemeanors. Take his latest crime, for example. Accepting ownership of two Bibles counted as mere possession.
He would cross the felony line in a few minutes.
He coasted the bike into the turn lane and signaled left. Straight ahead, the sun hung a few inches above the horizon, glaring just enough to impede his vision. Hard to tell how fast that granny car was approaching. Fine, he wouldn’t pull out. No matter what his wife said, Clay didn’t have a death wish.
Then again, he had agreed to help Abe distribute illegal Bibles. Only for one night, but still.
He could have turned. Granny was doing about twenty-eight in a forty-five. Clay flexed his hands on the contoured grips, shifted his weight and the bike’s from one foot to the other. The car whooshed past. He revved the bike and passed a lighted subdivision sign to his left, then a row of trees, backlit in pink by the sunset. A low billboard to his right portrayed a young woman with a somber expression and a book in her hands. Leather cover, gilt-edged pages. Bold, red words on a black background: “No Fear. Just Call.” Across the bottom, “Michigan Philosophical Constabulary” and the number for the anonymous tip line, emblazoned in orange.
Last week, that board had advertised a hotline against child abuse.
Clay’s phone vibrated in his jacket pocket. Not now. He turned right into the dark parking lot of Shelby Physical Therapy, a slate-gray structure with an asymmetrical roof. His headlight caught the weathered siding on the front of the building. Even without full daylight, the less-faded pattern was unmistakable. A cross had hung there—not in six years, of course, but for a long time before. Clay sighed. Repurposed churches always held melancholy around them, like gravestones of freedom.
Or maybe he’d been reading too much Poe this week. Who was next on the Lit Philes group syllabus? Willa Cather?
As he and his bike rounded the building, headed for the Dumpster behind it, the phone stopped buzzing against his chest. Then it started back up. Could be Khloe, which could be an emergency. She and Violet wouldn’t interrupt a sleepover to call him unless the house had burned down. He worked the phone out of his pocket, praying not to drop it, and glanced at the display. His world tilted into surreal territory.
Marcus Brenner. The man just happened to call while Clay was on his first and last anti-Constabulary mission.
He opened the phone and pressed it to his ear. “Hello.”
“Eyes on you. Get out of there.”
The call ended.
Eyes … Constabulary eyes. Clay’s heart leaped like an engine on nitro. He leaned into a U-turn, as if he’d pulled in only to turn around.
Fight or flight? Option two, please. He could gun the bike all the way to the highway. The Constabulary could send a whole battalion of squad cars after him there. They were welcome to choke on his dust. But no. He would head home at the same pace he’d ridden here. After all, the Constabulary had no reason to wonder if the side case of a random motorcycle contained Bibles.
If Marcus hadn’t called, Clay might be explaining to Constabulary agents right now why he was leaving Bibles in a Dumpster. “See, I was just throwing them away.”
He turned left. A mile later, the adrenaline rush caught him, buffeted his senses like too much air curled around a windscreen. He was stupid. He’d been minutes away from re-education. But now he sped away from their eyes. The sound that escaped him fell between a chuckle and a sigh, and the wind grabbed it, hurling it back into his face.
Wait a minute.
Marcus had been watching him. How else would he have known to call? Clay mentally rewound his path through the subdivision, trying to recall a dark-blue pickup. As far as he knew, Marcus never drove anything else.
He hoped no one in the Bible business would search that Dumpster for the backpack, not while the Constabulary had it staked out, anyway. Clay braked for the light. No turn on red. Nice.
“Hey.”
He jumped, half-swiveled on the bike, and stared up at the red truck to his left. Yelling across the cab at him, through the open window, was Marcus.
“Home Depot, up at Twenty-Six,” Marcus said.
Clay nodded.
“Pull in there.”
The light turned green. Marcus drove straight, though that wasn’t the route to Home Depot. Clay made the turn toward Twenty-Six Mile Road. Adrenaline still zinged through his system. He darted around a few cars, then glanced at the speedometer. Ought to ease off the gas. But the traffic plodded along, and his bike
glistened and flitted, a dragonfly among a herd of cows. He passed a stodgy sedan and swerved into the Home Depot parking lot.
He shut off the bike, kicked the stand into place, and leaned back. His heart rate settled. He waited.
After ten minutes, the sun dipped away. Dusk smoldered in a purple haze at the roof of the store and darkened higher into the sky, where starlight poked at the clouds. Clay dismounted the bike and leaned his hip against it. Maybe he should call and ask Marcus what the heck he was doing here. Maybe he’d go home, before Natalia got back from that scrapbooking thing. He’d concoct a story, just in case. The truth was not an option. “Nat, you know that illegal church you wish I didn’t go to … Well, the illegal pastor asked for help distributing some illegal Bibles.” She’d throw her scrapbook at his head and have every right to.
He flung a leg over the bike and reached to turn the key. No reason to loiter here and tempt fate. Abe would have to take the Bibles back and find someone else for this job.
The red pickup pulled into the parking lot. Marcus parked a few spaces from him and got out of the truck. The guy hadn’t changed, still possessed a Neanderthal bulk that warned slim literature teachers not to provoke him. But to irritate him—that could be entertaining.
Marcus crossed the parking lot with a deliberate gait and eyed Clay with a familiar, earnest look. “Where is it?”
How much would Abe want him to know about the distributing?
“Where’s what?” Clay tightened his lips against a grin. Marcus’s glare hadn’t changed either.
“The Dumpster’s the drop point. You were going to leave it.” Marcus glanced toward the bike. Yeah, not too many places to hide something there.
“So you’re still in contact with Abe?”
“Abe?”
“He’s the one to talk to,” Clay said. “Broke an ankle at his granddaughter’s birthday party. I’m just filling in.”
Marcus paced, one hand curved around his neck. “I didn’t know Abe was doing this.”
He said it as if he should have. Clay dismounted the bike again and folded his arms. “How did you know I was?”
“Your bike.” Marcus angled his glare at the Kawasaki. “It’s yellow.”
“Yup.”
“Hard to miss.”
“Yup.” Kind of the point. Clay rubbed a thumb over the handlebar.
“But I wasn’t sure. I hoped, and then you left when I told you to, so …” He shrugged. “Had to risk it.”
Risk? Oh. If Marcus had followed Clay and been wrong, the real Bible bringer would be under arrest right now. See, thoughts like these didn’t grow naturally in Clay’s head. He did not belong here.
“You’ve got to find a new spot,” Marcus said. “They’ve been patrolling the neighborhood, might have noticed a pattern.”
“How do you know?”
Uncertainty furrowed between Marcus’s eyes. “Well. You know. This is … what I do.”
Aha. The words confirmed the speculation that had spun around the little church group for a month or two last winter, when Marcus first vanished. Apparently, only Janelle had managed to talk to him before he snipped his life from everyone else’s without warning or farewell. Clay figured he’d grown busy or disillusioned. When he’d remarked to that effect, Janelle had snapped at him. “You don’t know Marcus at all if you think he doesn’t want to be here.”
Clay cocked his head and stared at the big guy in front of him. Marcus met his scrutiny with a point-blank gaze.
“You know, a lot of things make sense now.”
Marcus nodded.
“But if you didn’t know about Abe’s little distributing operation, you must be part of something else.”
Marcus stepped past him and eyed the bike again. “I should take the stuff with me.”
“Marcus, come on. What’s going on with you?”
He sighed. “I don’t deal with …” Habit dropped his voice. “… Bibles.”
“Then what do you—?”
“People.”
“Fugitives? You help them—you move them?”
Marcus studied him, then nodded, one hand clenching his neck again.
“Those network people are the craziest … Who sweet-talked you into that mess?”
Marcus blinked. “Nobody. Never mind.”
“You what, just decided to …” He finally got it, all of it, in one gleaming moment. The timing. The recent lack of Constabulary success stories on the local news. The rumors that someone was warning people before search warrants could be executed, moving people over the state line into Ohio, where Michigan Constabulary agents had limited jurisdiction.
Marcus circled the motorcycle as if he might be inclined to buy it. He jabbed a finger at the left side case. “In here?”
“Level with me, man. Are you saying you’re the ringleader?” The mastermind of an entire network of fugitive-hiding criminals was someone Clay knew personally. Unbelievable.
“I didn’t mean to lead anybody. It just grew.”
“Janelle knows, doesn’t she?”
“She kept … poking. Figured it out. Anyway. You’ve got to give me the stuff.”
“I’ll see what Abe wants done with it.”
Marcus paced the length of the bike. “You can’t take it home. You’ve got a kid. Is it in a bag or something?”
“Backpack.”
“Good.”
Danger prickled Clay’s scalp. He paused with one hand on the side case. “Hey, won’t we look suspicious handing off a backpack after dark in a parking lot? On the security cameras, I mean.”
Marcus’s mouth twitched. “They’re off.”
“How do you know?”
“This is where I stock up. For work. I’ve talked to some of the freight guys.”
“They turn off their cameras for you.” For Pete’s sake, the guy had turned into a con man or something.
“Not for me. Security just never turns them on.”
Well, okay then. Clay’s heart hammered as he popped open the side case, grabbed the backpack, and brought it into the open. Only a few cars dotted the parking lot. The store would be closing soon. No one paid any attention as he relinquished his cargo, transferring ownership of federally prohibited literature.
My First Felony, a memoir by Clay Hansen. Might have a ring to it. Or the clanging of a cell door.
“So this is the latest Constabulary brainstorm—Bible busts.”
Marcus looped a strap of the red backpack over his shoulder. “Tell Abe to find a new site.”
“Will do.”
“Thanks.” Marcus turned toward his truck, then slowly turned back. “Um, how’s … everybody?”
Clay shrugged. “Fine. Phil and Felice got married last week.”
Marcus’s smile revealed creases around his eyes. “They went to the justice of the peace?”
“Well, yeah. But Abe married them too, that secret ceremony thing, ‘a covenant before God and these witnesses’ … We all took communion, and they fed it to each other like wedding cake. Janelle was there, and a Christian friend of Phil’s. It was nice.”
Marcus nodded.
Hungry quiet spread between them. Clay’s mind stretched to remember the tidbits that floated around their midnight meetings, bits and pieces, the lives of friends. “Janelle’s sister-in-law is pregnant again, and the baby seems healthy this time. Oh, and last week some stupid teenagers broke into the store, pried the door apart—”
“She should’ve let me replace that door.”
“She’s got a new one now. They didn’t take much. The cops think they didn’t realize it was just a little country store when they broke in. No idea how they missed that detail, since the sign’s right there: ‘J’s Little Country Store.’”
“But she’s safe? Everybody’s safe?”
“S
o far, so good.”
Marcus nodded. “How’s your family?”
A single guy couldn’t understand how enormous that question was. “We’re going up to Mackinac next weekend. My daughter wants to draw the fort.”
Another nod. Marcus shifted his feet. “Thanks. For the update.”
“You could come back.” Sure, the man was dangerous company these days, but he was still a friend.
“No. But thanks.”
He walked back to the truck. Unlike his old blue one, it didn’t stand tall enough for running boards. Clay followed him, clapped a hand on his shoulder, and Marcus turned, surprise drawn into the arc of his eyebrows.
“Look, if you’re ever short-staffed in this crazy network of yours, let me know.”
Words he shouldn’t say, despite the nobility of this work. He could walk away from it all if not for … well, the something that tugged between him and Marcus. Brotherhood, maybe, of a sort.
Marcus shook his head. “It’s not safe.”
“I get that, and it doesn’t bother me.”
“Right.” Marcus looked past him at the Kawasaki. “You’re not even wearing a helmet.”
“Oh, please.”
“I mean—the thing’s loud, and yellow. At least wear a helmet. So they can’t ID you.”
Yeah … so Clay really didn’t do this covert ops thing well. “Maybe I’ll think about that.”
“Okay.”
“So, uh.” Clay shrugged. “Take it easy, man.”
Marcus nodded. “Sure.”
“Stay out of jail.”
The guy didn’t even twitch a smile, only nodded again. A sense of humor would really improve his personality. Clay grinned for both of them, hopped back on his bike, and left via a different exit. Of course, if Marcus was right about the cameras, nothing they did out here really mattered.
The wind and the miles rolled by.
Would he really help Marcus’s crazy network if the guy called him? Maybe. Helping imperiled believers was the least Clay could do for a God who had died for him. Besides, if Marcus could pull this off, so could Clay. Loud, yellow motorcycle and all.
He coasted up his driveway. Most of the house sat in darkness, but Khloe’s lamp was on. Through her window, he glimpsed the lavender wall—no, iris, she insisted. She and Violet must be in there, draped across the bed side by side, discussing guys and movies and jewelry. Using his credit card to buy more charms for their bracelets. Nah, Violet wouldn’t go along with that anymore.
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