by Ted Dekker
While he delivered nicely for a host of reputable parties, winning their applause and trust, Jonathan Bourque was running dozens of smaller charities, mostly international, that raped the donations of benefactors for his own gain.
In a typical charity operation, at least eighty cents of every dollar donated ended up in actual aid to the needy. Sometimes this figure was as high as ninety-five cents.
Danny doubted that more than a third of the money the Bourque Foundation raised for its own international charities ended up in the hands of those who needed it. The bulk went to covering up the skimming of large sums, often with the application of threats and force. To that end, the man had no scruples.
Bourque was the worst of the worst, a true Pharisee who used his history as a priest to attract hundreds of millions in donations, much of which ended up in his own pocket.
There was no direct evidence that he’d ordered Redding to kill Lamont, but Bourque was guilty nonetheless. Danny had already decided that Bourque would either change his ways or die.
But not until Renee was ready. Not until she followed her own trail that led to him, under Danny’s watchful eye and careful guidance.
“It’s important for you to establish Bourque’s unquestionable guilt in Lamont’s disappearance. Starting with Darby Gordon.”
She turned her head and looked at him with fiery eyes. “I’m paying him a visit alone? Tonight?”
“That’s the idea, yes.”
“Under my new identity?”
“No. As Renee Gilmore. Making Bourque nervous, should he learn of your visit, isn’t a bad thing at this point. And I don’t want you to blow your new identity.”
Her face was flushed with excitement, but she was otherwise calm. Eager, but not nervous.
“How do I get to him? You want me to break into his house tonight?”
“Not this time, no.” He glanced at his watch. Seven forty-five PM. “By nine o’clock you’ll be in his living room, drinking a beer with him, peeling back the layers that hide his secrets.”
“I will?”
“You will.”
“How?”
“It’s really quite simple.”
Danny said it was quite simple, but standing on Darby Gordon’s porch at nine fifteen, I thought insane might be a better word to describe what I was doing.
But then so was jumping out of a plane for the first time, he’d said, and he was right. The first time was always filled with anxiety.
The house was a tiny box, with only two windows facing the street on the main floor, and one above, from what might have been a small loft or an attic. The gray wood siding was in bad need of fresh paint; the lawn was scraggly and worn to the ground in some sections. A plastic Big Wheel tricycle with a broken pedal lay on its side next to a frayed garden hose. The light on the porch was out, probably busted. Mini-blinds blocked most of the light filtering out through the two windows.
Danny was in his car a block down the street, waiting to step in should anything go wrong. He’d given me a small Panasonic recording stick, which I stuck in my bra, where it would capture my conversation with Darby Gordon. If I ran into trouble of any kind, I was to press a small button on the pager in my pocket, and Danny would come.
That was the plan. But I had no intention of running into any trouble because this was me, the meek mouse, here to ask a few questions, close the case on Bourque, and feel out my instincts for doing this sort of thing on my own.
It had only been six days since we’d killed Redding, but I felt like a changed person. I had been born into my new self that night with Danny, and then baptized by blood. Sure, it was Redding’s blood, but that was fine by me. He was the goat on the altar, and we did sacrifice him pretty good.
Things changed after that night. Danny took me seriously I think. He spent hours with me, preparing me by rehearsing interrogation techniques, evasion strategies, law enforcement practices, that sort of thing. It was all about tricks, really, the art of illusion, methods of making people think one thing while something different is going on. Better to trick them into the truth than coerce them, Danny said.
Particularly if you’re not much over five feet and only a hair over one hundred pounds, messing with someone who could flick you in the neck and break your spine.
I think Danny had a crush on me. I could tell by the tenderness in his voice, by the way his hand sometimes lingered on my arm or shoulder. I could tell by the way he talked to me in that soft voice and even more the way he looked at me when he listened. We were poring over critical ideas and details that sent people to jail or worse, but we were also speaking to each other, holding each other with our eyes.
I was becoming like Danny, and I didn’t want it any other way. Because, truth be told, I was falling in love with him. It was strange to feel attracted to a man besides Lamont, especially a priest, but I was sure that in his absence, Lamont would have wanted that for me. I knew that Danny didn’t take all of his priesthood vows seriously. After all, he killed people for God.
I pushed Darby Gordon’s doorbell and took a calming breath. Here we go. Don’t mess this up, Renee. Just act normal.
That’s what I told myself, but then I began wondering what normal really was in this world.
The door flew open and Darby Gordon stood in the frame. He was shorter than I imagined and wiry, with a sloped forehead that made him look like a snake.
He was dressed in a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to expose a large tattoo of a skull on his forearm. He looked like he was about to snap at me, then thought twice as his eyes flashed up and down my body.
Danny had asked me to change into jeans, and I was glad I had. I figured I looked at least a little hot in denim, and I didn’t mind the advantage a little sexiness might give me.
“Darby Gordon?”
A thin grin twisted his flat lips. “Depends who’s asking.”
This was it. “My name is Renee. I was sent by Jonathan Bourque. Do you mind if I come in?”
Danny and I had discussed exactly what I was to say and do, and standing there on the dark porch, it all came quite naturally to me. I watched Darby’s eyes close and looked for whether he recognized that name.
If he knew Bourque, he wasn’t showing it. “Do I know you?” he asked.
“No. But you know Simon Redding, and Mr. Redding works for Jonathan Bourque. I’d rather discuss this inside, if you don’t mind.”
I saw the jitter in his eye when I said Redding. He looked past me, then stepped to one side. I went in. The door closed behind me with a thump.
I stood in a small living room with a large green sofa. This faced a big-screen television that was blaring an action movie with foul language. The carpet was worn and the place smelled like a dirty dog, although I didn’t see any pets. Half-filled plastic glasses and plates dirtied with tomato sauce—maybe from spaghetti—sat on an oak coffee table in front of the couch. A pair of boots with mud on them had been tossed to the floor next to an old crusted jacket. Clothes were draped over the back of three wooden chairs, which seemed to have been set around haphazardly. Lint, matchsticks, and a few cigarette butts littered the brown shag carpet.
The place was a mess by any standard and a toilet by mine.
But I held my blanching in check and focused on my first objective: understanding the theater of operation, as Danny called it.
Okay then. There was a door to my right that probably led into the bedroom. Through a lighted passage on my left I could hear clanking that led me to believe Emily Darby was in the kitchen, hard at work.
Two children, a boy about seven with bleached-blond hair and girl maybe two years older with long stringy hair, stared at me from the couch.
“Out!” Darby snapped.
The two kids scampered away like rats.
“And stay out if you know what’s good for you.” His words chased them through the left passage, where they hooked right and pattered up a flight of stairs.
“Alicia?” A cautio
nary voice, timid with a hint of a tremor, called out the name. This was the wife reacting to her children’s flight up the stairs, wondering what was wrong. There was no response.
The stuffy room fell silent. A nauseating sense of déjà vu sucked the blood from my head. The TV was still blaring, but I hardly heard it. I couldn’t put my finger on what caused this reaction. Maybe it was pity for a mother so frightened for her children in her own home; maybe it was empathy for the children, whom I immediately imagined were being beaten and starved by their father; maybe it was the plight of the woman trapped under the cruel thumb of spousal abuse.
It all struck me as being about me, somehow.
But I ignored the hot rage flushing through my face, stepped over the dirty boots, walked to the middle of the living room, and faced Darby Gordon, who still stared at me from the door.
“Hey!” he yelled toward the kitchen. “Get in the bedroom!”
A slight woman with her dirty-blond hair haphazardly pulled into a ponytail hurried into the room, drying her hands on a dirty shirt. No makeup, white as a ghost. She was wearing pink sweats and a pale blue sweatshirt.
She offered me a sheepish smile, then her eyes darted away and she slipped into the bedroom and carefully closed the door.
“What do you want?” Gordon said, approaching, face flat.
“I need to know when you last spoke to Simon Redding.” These were my lines.
“And who are you?”
“I think you know who I am.”
“No. As a matter of fact, I don’t. Tell me.”
He had a harder edge than I’d anticipated, though I don’t know why I expected anything different. “Jonathan Bourque sent me,” I said.
“And that’s supposed to mean something to me?”
I knew then that the direct approach meant to take him off guard wasn’t going to work as smoothly as we’d hoped.
“Please, man, don’t pretend with me.” Man? I was sounding stupid, so I cleared my throat and bore down with more authority. “We both know that you’ve done work for Simon Redding. Don’t tell me you don’t know who he worked for. Redding’s missing, and if we don’t get to the bottom of this, the whole house of cards is going to come down.”
He glared at me for a few seconds, and I was praying that he would break that stare and smile or laugh—anything that would suggest he was just testing me.
“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” he said.
I lost track of what to do next. Were we wrong about this guy? No, Danny was sure about Gordon’s involvement. It was me…I wasn’t breaking him down the way Danny probably could. He’d have this punk in tears in a matter of seconds, begging for his life. I might not be able to use the same approach, but I wasn’t about to leave without proving that I was more than worthy to work side by side with Danny.
I forced myself to relax. “You have any beer?”
Still no smile. “Sure.” He walked toward the kitchen. “This way.”
I didn’t know why I had to follow him. Couldn’t he just bring me a beer? I followed him anyway, thinking maybe I could regroup in the kitchen.
But the moment I stepped into that nasty room wallpapered with dirty-yellow flowers, the sight of piled dishes and half-eaten food accosted me and I lost track of myself completely. If the living room was the toilet, here was the sewer. I could practically feel the grit and grime crawling up my legs, the microscopic bugs flowing into my lungs as I breathed.
I clamped my mouth shut, and that was when Darby Gordon moved, before I could shift my attention from the ungodly mess back to him.
He snatched my wrist, spun me around, and slammed me up against the wall. I managed to turn my head, but my cheekbone and chest hit the greasy wall in a dish-rattling impact.
“Now you’re going to tell me who you really are, you little skank.”
I panicked and spoke without thinking. “Ouch! You have no idea who you’re messing with. He’s going to kill you, man. You have no idea!”
“Then give me an idea!” He jerked my arm up behind my back to make his point. Pain flashed through my shoulder.
“You’re dead,” I said. “When he finds out you messed with me, you’re dead.”
“Who?”
“Are you deaf? Bourque! The man Simon Redding works for.”
He breathed into my ear, pressing in close from behind. “That’s not good enough.” His breath smelled like beer and pepperoni. “Redding would never send a scrawny kid to check on me.”
“Redding’s dead, you idiot!”
That got him. But only for a second.
I was completely lost, but I didn’t let up. “I’m here to find out if we can trust you.”
“Is that so?” He grabbed the skin on my belly and squeezed hard enough so that I thought I might pass out from the pain. “No one comes into my house and threatens me.”
“You don’t know Jonathan Bourque,” I managed.
Darby jerked me around and pinned my wrists against the wall. A wicked grin on his face defied any fear. “Well now that’s the problem, sweetie. I do. And I got the call from him two days ago, asking if I’d seen Redding. I know Bourque. The question is, who are you?”
I was frozen. My cover was shot! Several thoughts crashed through my head: I should knee him in the groin and run, but he was pressed too close for that. I should smash my head into his face and break his nose, but I knew he wasn’t the kind who would let go.
I had to get to the pager in my pocket!
My eyes must have darted downward, because Darby followed my glance. He saw the small lump in my jeans, held one forearm against my neck in a choke hold, and fished out the pager, which he tossed into a pot of water.
“You a cop?”
“No! You’re making a mistake…” I sounded like a bad movie.
“You wired, too?” He fished his hand up my shirt, found the tape recorder, and yanked it out. It went into the pot as well.
“Okay, okay,” I squealed, mortified by the fear in my voice. It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. “I’m FBI. Let go, I’ll explain. Just let go!”
“Is that so? FBI? Do I look that dumb to you?”
I wanted to say yes, but the forearm against my throat argued for a more thoughtful response. My mind was blank.
“This isn’t FBI equipment,” he growled. “And you’re not from Bourque. Which means I caught me something. Here’s what we’re gonna do, honey. You’re going to tell me everything you know about Jonathan Bourque and Simon Redding. You’re going to tell me, because if you don’t I’m going to hurt you real good in ways that only women can be hurt, you hear me?”
At that point I could have gone one of two ways. I could have lost it completely, started flailing and screaming the way most would at the prospect of suffering underneath that dirty weasel. Or I could dig deep, push aside all thoughts of scratching his eyes out, and play ball until I found a way to flip the tables.
I chose the latter. Base instincts will get you killed, Danny liked to say. After months of thinking scenes like this through, I was smart enough not to do what I wanted to do.
“Fine,” I croaked. “But what I said stands. If you hurt me, you’ll be dead by morning. If you think Jonathan Bourque is—”
His palm crashed against my cheek and I cried out.
Darby shouted over his shoulder. “Emily! Get out here!”
“Please…” I wasn’t able to stop the trembling that had come to my arms and legs.
“Shut up. Emily!”
His wife appeared in the doorway. I could hear the faint sounds of one of the kids crying above us.
“Come here, honey,” he said.
When she didn’t move, he shouted, red-faced. “I said, come here!”
She came, hurrying like a mouse. But she didn’t make it, because he backhanded her with enough force to send her reeling.
“Get upstairs. And keep those brats quiet.”
She whimpered and fled up the stairs.
/> Then Darby Gordon grabbed my hair and propelled me back into the living room. Past the living room, pulling my head back with my hair.
We were headed toward the bedroom. Darby Gordon was going to hurt me and hurt me bad. The room began to spin.
21
THE BEDROOM WAS a pigsty. Under different circumstances I would’ve had to exercise significant self-control to avoid launching into cleanup mode, but at the moment my focus was on the unmade bed.
Darby gave me a shove and I sprawled on the dirty sheets. He was chuckling.
Those base instincts that I’d wisely refused to obey earlier now raged to the surface, and I lost myself to them completely. The mission was shot. All I wanted to do now was survive.
I scrambled to the far side of the bed and rolled off, spinning back to where Darby stood, blocking the exit. I thrust both arms toward him, palms out.
“Stay back! Just stay back!”
“Yeah? Or what?”
“Or I swear I’ll claw your eyes out, you freak!” I screamed.
He seemed amused by that. “You got spunk, I like that.” He walked to the dresser, pulled a gun from the top drawer, and faced me, smile now gone. “There’s a couple ways we can do this. I can shoot your leg now so you won’t be tempted to claw my eyes out. Maybe have a little fun before I kill you and dump your body. Or I can let you talk a little while I decide what to do.”
“Then let me talk. Just take it easy and let me talk!”
He looked me up and down then gave the gun a little wave. “Talk.”
“Put the gun down.”
“Talk!” he roared.
I flinched. “Okay, okay.” I had to get hold of myself. My mind was blank and I wasn’t sure what to say. “I’ll talk, just don’t shoot me.”
He grinned like a serpent. Danny’s voice echoed in my mind: It’s all an illusion, Renee. Sleight of hand, sleight of mind. Get them thinking about anything but your objective.
