Nailgun Messiah (Micah Reed Book 1)

by Jim Heskett

“What are you saying?”

  “Tomorrow, meet me on the main street during the parade. Behind the gem shop, if there is room. In front of it, if you can’t meet there for some reason.” Meeting on the street would put him in the path of protesters, but he couldn’t worry about that. “You and I, and your husband Garrett will gather and we’ll leave. We’ll simply go.”

  “But without the passport, I can’t go home.”

  “No, I would suspect not. But you don’t have to go to Canada to escape this vile woman who’s keeping you prisoner.”

  “I’d rather send her to jail than escape. Rather club her over the head with a baseball bat.”

  This kind of malice was strange coming from the innocent-looking young lady. But he understood her anger, and didn’t judge her for lashing out. “Thinking like that doesn’t help.”

  Hannah’s jaw unclenched as tears rolled down her cheeks. “I just want to go home.”

  He slid next to her and put an arm around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder. She felt so frail and vulnerable while cradled in his embrace, like a frightened child.

  “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, but this is the best we can do.”

  ***

  Lilah seethed. A pile of letters around her on the floor, fanned out like waves emanating from a rock dropped into a pond. Years of correspondence with Cyrus. Years of promises and love and commandments and talk of the past and future. A relationship lived for the last eight years on a theoretical level, based on the combination of history and a set of expectations.

  The faucet in her bathroom sink bled droplets of water into the basin. Tap tap tap.

  She dragged her fingernails along her forearm skin, watching the trail of white appear and then fade. Below the surface, blood rushed through veins, sending information to organs. She could feel the blood pushing, working, making her live.

  The anger inside of her burned so fierce that she couldn’t control it. A headache swelled to make her head an enormous, throbbing balloon, dotting her vision with white.

  And even though it was a bad idea, she opened her laptop and navigated to the True Manna website dashboard, then refreshed the page count statistics. Still abysmal.

  Water in the bathroom: tap tap tap.

  The priest was disgraced and therefore out of the way, yet the website traffic had not picked up. Cyrus had promised that removing him from the equation would take care of that. It hadn’t. How could Cyrus have been wrong about such a thing?

  Was this priest not the cause?

  She turned the key to open the locked side drawer of her desk and removed the revolver. One of two pistols she owned, the other outside in a hidden location on the property. The emergency gun.

  But they weren’t even her guns, were they? Cyrus had bought them for her. There were pieces of him in every part of her being, as if he were a limb she couldn’t imagine losing. A foot. No one thinks about what it would be like not to have a foot until it’s somehow taken from you.

  She rotated the implement of destruction in her hands. It felt heavy, which is how a thing capable of killing ought to feel. It should not be an easy task to lift such a deadly device. Should not be easy to take a life with the flick of a switch or the press of a button.

  Water from the bathroom faucet: tap tap tap.

  Magdalene.

  Magdalene should have been trustworthy. Magdalene should have been solid, but Lilah wasn’t sure anymore. When people change, it becomes too easy to question all your beliefs. View all things through the lens of doubt.

  Her skin crawled, and she put the gun back, then raked her fingernails along her arm again, and the scratch brought a momentary sense of relief. But the burn came back too quickly. Returned to her chair, felt herself sink into the fabric.

  Couldn’t think straight. Burning. Bugs on the skin, crawling. Maggots burrowing deep, pushing themselves into her muscles, making her move.

  Cyrus coming back tomorrow. The day she’d been thinking of for eight years. Red Xs marking days in a paper calendar, counting down to a day circled.

  Judgment day coming soon.

  Lilah leaned back in her chair, pushing breath out of her lungs at the ceiling. She watched the invisible vapor of carbon dioxide mix with the air in this room, twisting and bonding and becoming one.

  Feeling her neck stretch, wanting to scream. Fighting the urge to giggle, for no reason at all. How had her world, which had been so certain, devolved into such chaos?

  Everything was falling apart.

  And Lilah knew exactly who to blame.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Micah sat in the den, staring at the grandfather clock as the pendulum below swung back and forth. The swinging and ticking were more reminders that Micah’s hopes to get Magda out before the ATF raid were over. Rodney’s promises of federal protection were his only chance.

  Rodney was also in the room with him, reading the Bible in a chair a few feet away. They’d wanted to talk about the surveillance, because Micah didn’t even know if Rodney had been able to finish the installation. And they would have to wait to discuss it, since Lilah and Magda were both home right now.

  Eagle hunkered on a chair next to the door, whittling a piece of wood over a trashcan. Scraping a small knife against the yellow bark, dropping hunks into the open mouth of the can below.

  By some miracle, Lilah hadn’t found out Rodney’s real purpose yesterday. But she’d been so mad that she’d screamed for the rest of the day, canceled Bible study for that evening, and locked herself in her room for hours. Every few minutes, the muted sound of shouting murmured through the walls. A chair turning over, a window opening and slamming closed. Micah had never heard anger that fierce sustained for so long.

  Eagle had stayed around, moving into whatever room Rodney had gone into, forever keeping watch. Usually as still as a statue, but with his eyes always alert. Micah had even tried to get up in the middle of the night last night to sneak into Rodney’s room, but had found Eagle nearby at the end of the hallway, reading his Bible under lamplight.

  Even if they couldn’t prove he’d done anything wrong, Rodney’s trust was certainly shot.

  Micah held his breath and tried to listen for Lilah. The house was silent. Eagle stood, set his block of wood on an end table, and trotted up the stairs to the bathroom.

  This was the first time Eagle had left them alone. This might be their only chance to talk.

  “Did you turn everything on?” Micah whispered across the room to Rodney once the bathroom door had closed upstairs. He’d said it so quietly, he wasn’t sure if Rodney could even hear him.

  Rodney nodded, didn’t look up from his Bible.

  “Where’s the bag you took in there?”

  “Still under her bed,” Rodney said. “I haven’t had a chance to go back and get it.”

  That wasn’t good, but as long as it didn’t have Rodney’s ATF business card in it, he could maybe explain that one away too.

  A door opened, and Lilah and Magda appeared in the den, standing together at the corner of the room. There was a look of anguish on Magda’s face, her eyelids shut tight and the corners of her mouth pulled down. Lilah, on the other hand, scowled like a gargoyle. The tiny hairs on her shaved head pointed straight up, and her face was flushed red with fury. Her lips were pulled back, revealing gritted white teeth. A collection of crisscrossed scratch marks trailed up and down both of her arms.

  “You,” she said, glaring at Rodney. Her look cut a path across the room.

  Rodney lowered his Bible. “Yes?”

  “How could you do this to me? How could you do this to us? Cyrus will say that if he had been here, none of this would have happened, but that doesn’t matter now, does it? He’s in prison for one more day, and he can’t do a goddamn thing about it. He might as well be a desk, for all the power he has to save us from your betrayal.”

  Micah and Rodney shared a look. Lilah was quivering with anger, like a time bomb poised to explode.

 
Micah then noticed that Lilah had a hand concealed behind her back. She didn’t keep it there for long, though, and when she showed it, Micah immediately honed in on the pistol. Her finger already wrapped around the trigger. Colt Python .357 revolver. That was a dangerous gun that could sometimes penetrate a bullet-proof vest.

  Micah jumped up out of his seat, and Lilah pivoted the gun toward him. “Sit,” she said, so he did. This crazy bitch would absolutely pull the trigger. No doubt about that.

  She pointed the gun back at Rodney. The nose of the revolver danced in Lilah’s unsteady hand. “She told me who you really are. After everything I’ve done for you. After all the education and counseling I gave you, and it was all lies, wasn’t it?”

  Rodney tried to speak, but Lilah talked over him, jabbering half-nonsense.

  As Lilah ranted, Micah flicked his eyes to Magda. She’d told Lilah. That realization settled over him like the shock of cold water, shrouding all his other thoughts. She’d kept secret about Micah hacking into her computer, but she’d told Lilah that Rodney was an ATF agent.

  He met Magda’s eyes, and he was so heartbroken, he didn’t know what to do. After everything he’d done, he’d failed. She belonged to Lilah, and there was nothing Micah could do about it.

  If Lilah pulled that trigger, it would be Micah’s fault. He never should have told Magda about the ATF, but it had seemed the last available option at the time. And only now could Micah see how selfish and dangerous it had been.

  Rodney shifted in his chair as Lilah finally stopped ranting, and Lilah tensed her pistol arm.

  “Let me explain,” Rodney said. “I’m not sure what you heard, but—”

  Lilah jerked her trigger finger. The blast forced Micah’s eyes shut, and when he opened them, Rodney was flat against the chair, a gaping hole in the middle of his forehead. A tiny wisp of smoke eked from the top of the hole.

  Micah gasped, but he didn’t have time to mourn. Eagle appeared at the top of the stairs, wiping his hands on his pants. Didn’t seem surprised at all by the violence unfolding in the den. He picked up his scarred baseball bat, which had been leaning against the upstairs banister.

  Micah realized he hadn’t taken a breath in fifteen seconds. His chest pounded. His ears rang from the close blast. Not the first person he’d seen murdered, but the ache of witnessing sudden death never diminished.

  Was he next?

  Lilah lowered the pistol, shaking, but rooted in place. For a second, he thought he might be safe.

  Then she rushed at him, stopping a foot short. His body told him to leap forward and throw a shoulder into her chest, but Eagle was now five feet behind her. Bat resting on his shoulder.

  Micah held firm.

  She leaned down, her demon-eyes filling Micah’s vision. Her chest heaved and a spot of drool formed at the corner of her mouth.

  “I don’t know if you knew about this, and I don’t care. I’ve seen you two hiking together, so you are probably just as tainted as him. You are banished from this house, from the True Manna, and from the kingdom of heaven. If I ever see you again, I will kill you. Do you understand? You will never get a chance to spread your poison in this family ever again!”

  Part III

  FROZEN

  DEAD

  GUY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  THE DAY OF

  The sun hadn’t yet risen, and Lilah sat on the hood of her car, with Eagle standing next to her. They watched a deer crunch snow under its skinny hooves as it meandered through the trees near the house.

  “Every one of them,” she said. “I was wrong about every single one of them. None of them were ever supposed to be chosen.”

  Eagle grunted as he slipped his hands into the pockets of his duster. His breath pushed out and then up as his steam puffed into the sky.

  “Do you know what to do?” she said.

  He nodded. “Yes. I’ll take care of everything. It might take me most of the day, but it will be finished before nightfall. That I can promise you.”

  As a tear slid down her face, leaving a warm trail in the cold, she reached out and squeezed Eagle’s shoulder.

  “Don’t cry for me,” he said. “I wasn’t ever anything more than a servant. What’s important is that you and Cyrus continue the work.”

  She nodded. Wasn’t sure anymore.

  Eagle slid a fresh battery into the nailgun on his lap. “What time can you pick him up?”

  “Nine.”

  “Shouldn’t you go?”

  Lilah sighed. She should have left already. “Yes.”

  Eagle gave her that piercing eye. “What’s going on with you? I thought you were excited for him to come home.”

  “I was,” she said as the deer looked up, finally noticing the two humans only a couple hundred feet away.

  She would have to tell Cyrus about Rodney’s real identity, and he would be furious. He would blame her for everything. He would demand to make many changes from today forward, and she would have no choice but to comply with his decisions.

  “How long do you think Magdalene knew about Rodney, before she told me?”

  Eagle cocked his head. “I don’t know. She said she came to you straight away. You think she’s lying about that?

  The world was a puzzle and she didn’t have the box to know where to start. Didn’t have the corner pieces. “I don’t know.”

  Eagle slid a rack of nails into the nailgun. “Do you think the priest was involved?”

  Lilah ran a hand over her stubbly hair. She was unsure of everything, which was a terrifying feeling. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not sure he had anything to do with it. Perhaps believing that and spending so much time pursuing that distracted me from the truth about Rodney.”

  The deer padded through the snow, digging its nose at a half-submerged tree branch.

  “You’re going to have to come clean with Cyrus when he gets home,” Eagle said. “He’ll want to relocate our friend in the basement as soon as possible. If the ATF are watching us, it’s only a matter of time before they move in.”

  “I know.”

  “We can’t pretend no one will notice us anymore.”

  “You’re right,” she said, and the words sounded like they were a recording playback, instead of emanating from her mouth.

  “Do you think Cyrus will make you move somewhere else?”

  Leaving this house. This idea scraped at her heart, threatened to puncture it.

  No. She would not move. She had to have a say, didn’t she?

  A new fire burned inside her, one of rebellion and purpose. She loved this house and had no desire to move. “No, he won’t.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I’m not going to allow it. We’re going to make all decisions together from now on, because that’s how I want it.”

  ***

  Micah woke in the back seat of his Honda, shivering, even with the sleeping blanket wrapped around him. The condensation on the inside of the glass had frosted over, and when he sat up, he wiped a hand across the back window.

  Through the smear of the window, he spied something on four legs, slinking through the trees near the roadside turnout where he’d parked his car. Like a cat, but humongous and with the pointy ears of a rabbit. The thing had to weigh at least sixty or seventy pounds.

  “Hello, bobcat,” Micah said, but the beast was oblivious. “Or lynx, or whatever the hell you are.” It sniffed through some snow and then trundled up a hill, out of sight.

  Micah yawned and swung his legs around so he could stretch them out over the center console. His jaw ached, which meant he’d been tensing it in his sleep. Probably nightmares, but he didn’t remember what he’d dreamed about. He was usually being chased in his dreams, which were never fun dreams to wake from.

  He first thought about Magda. How hopeless his mission had been from the very start, how blind he was not to have seen that she was thoroughly brainwashed by Lilah and her True Manna cult. As long as Lilah was around, th
ere would be no getting through to Magdalene McBriar.

  Next, he thought of Rodney. While it certainly wasn’t surprising that an undercover ATF agent caught a bullet in the line of duty, Micah hadn’t seen it coming. Lilah had been full of venom and spite, but pulling the trigger was a higher level of violence he hadn’t anticipated.

  Lilah with her fluffy omelets and muffins and photo albums.

  Rodney’s death was Micah’s fault. Not directly, but he’d made the mistake that had set it in motion. That guilt weighed on him like a pile of bricks.

  And now that Rodney was dead, his ATF handlers would come looking for him. However soon they had been planning on raiding the house, that timetable would be bumped up. They were probably on their way now, maybe dragging a kicking and screaming Magda out into the cold March morning. Today was Cyrus’ release day, wasn’t it? The thirteenth?

  On instinct, Micah slid his hand down his jeans pocket to check his phone, then he remembered it was hidden away in Lilah’s bedroom, probably in that safe underneath her bed. Even going three weeks without it, that motion seemed so natural.

  And he remembered how bad it would be if they raided the house and found his phone there. Without that, there would be no way to prove he had ever stayed there.

  He slid into the front seat and turned the key, his poor old Honda sputtering to life after a few seconds of labored grinding. He drove back along Caribou Road and parked a few hundred feet from the turnoff to 1623.

  Carefully keeping low, he crept through the trees until he could get a clean look at the house. Rodney’s car was still sitting out front, with at least a foot of snow piled on top. When the other ATF agents observed that accumulation of snow, they would have to know Rodney was dead.

  Lilah’s car was gone, as was Eagle’s. Garrett’s truck sat outside, but Micah didn’t care about that.

  He moved through the yard around to the rear and entered through the back door, which they never locked. He’d dropped his house key in a bowl next to the front door when he’d left last night.