The Switch

by Sandra Brown

  He moved from crib to crib, dispensing love and caring to each child. Actually, he chose to tour the nursery when he was certain that most of the babies would be asleep. He liked them best when they were clean and silent and he wasn't being subjected to dirty diapers or spit-up or wailing for no logical reason.

  He enjoyed watching them while they slept. Moving up and down the rows of cribs, he lovingly touched each one, reminding himself of the Sistine Chapel ceiling fresco that depicted God extending his hand to his most awesome creation, Adam.

  He liked to feel the softness of their baby skin, to compare the size of his hand to their small bodies, and to envision them growing into youths with strong limbs and handsome faces.

  He liked thinking of them growing up to be reproductions of him.

  When he came to an empty crib, he turned to the attendant nurse, who'd been hovering ever since he came in. "It's for Mary's baby," Dorothy Pugh explained in a reverential tone. "She's having a girl. She's due in two weeks."

  "So I hear."

  "This crib is ready for the baby whenever she's delivered."

  Dorothy Pugh had been serving as a nurse for a South Dakota school district when Brother Gabriel heard of her devotion to his ministry. Her mission work was impressive; she'd brought in numerous converts. He contacted her and offered to finance her advanced training in neonatal care. She'd leapt at the chance to live and work at the Temple. After her training, when she heard that her job would be overseeing the care of the babies born to the Program, her gratitude had been so effusive it had embarrassed him. At least to the others present he had pretended it had.

  Her dedication to the Program was unquestioned. He felt comfortable leaving his children in her care until they graduated to the next level, joining those who could crawl and toddle.

  "I want to be notified as soon as Mary goes into labor." "Of course, Brother Gabriel."

  "And should you have to evacuate the children's dormitory in a hurry—"

  "We've rehearsed many times, Brother Gabriel. If ever our enemies threatened to invade us, the children could be relocated immediately."

  "You're doing an excellent job." He stroked her cheek. She blushed, her eyes radiating naked adoration and making her look prettier than she actually was. She was too old for the Program, but perhaps he should reward her loyalty and thereby instill even more. He must remember to have Mr. Hancock send for her one evening soon. She would be desperately anxious to please him. The thought made him smile.

  "Brother Gabriel." Mr. Hancock had approached in his usual unobtrusive manner. "Forgive me. I know you dislike having your rare time with the children interrupted, but I thought this was important."

  Reading the strain in Mr. Hancock's voice, all thoughts of an erotic evening with the nurse vanished. He motioned his assistant out into the corridor. During the day, the wide hallway was bright with sunlight streaming in through the ceiling skylight. It echoed with the sounds of children and the voices of the staff who nurtured their bodies as well as their minds. Now it was dim and deserted.

  Mr. Hancock had a two-way radio in his hand. "Was it your understanding that Sheriff Ritchey was leaving the compound?"

  "Of course. I gave him his marching orders. He's supposed to be keeping an eye on Tobias and Lawson, as well as watching for Melina Lloyd and Hart to show up." Joshua had already informed him that they were indeed on New Mexican soil. He was awaiting word of their containment and wondered now what was taking Joshua and his partner so long.

  Mr. Hancock frowned. "The sheriff's patrol car is still in the parking area."

  "But he left at least an hour ago."

  "He left your quarters. He never passed the guard at the lobby desk."

  "Then where is he?"

  "Security guards are checking all the men's rooms."

  "Men's rooms?" Brother Gabriel exclaimed with increasing acrimony. "It doesn't require an hour to take a leak. Besides, there are cameras in all of them. They could tell at a glance if he's using a men's room."

  "I'm sure there's nothing to worry about."

  "Of course there's something to worry about," he snapped. "What's the matter with you, Hancock?"

  "All I'm saying is that—"

  "An armed man is unaccounted for."

  He wasn't afraid of Ritchey. The man was a coward, a snail. He had no backbone whatsoever. He wouldn't know the meaning of pride if it bit him in the ass, and he had proven himself corruptible when he accepted Brother Gabriel's deal. But he had picked a damned inconvenient time to pull a disappearing act when he had important duties to attend to.

  "I want him found."

  "Yes, sir." Hancock motioned two guards forward. "Just as a precaution, I've ordered these men to stay with you and not to let you out of their sight."

  "That's not necessary."

  "Please, Brother Gabriel. Indulge me."

  "Oh, all right," he agreed impatiently.

  He headed back toward his private quarters with the two burly guards flanking him. He was in a thunderous mood. Alvin Medford Conway was on the brink of achieving greatness. He was going to make history. His name would be immortalized, and he didn't have to be martyred to achieve it.

  An entity of his stature shouldn't have to be worrying about crackpots with grudges against him. He was beyond the

  Melina Lloyds of the world. Even homicide detectives and FBI agents and astronauts were pissants, flyspecks, compared to him and what he would mean to the future of mankind.

  Sheriff Max Ritchey was so low on the food chain as to be negligible. But he had managed to spoil Brother Gabriel's evening, and that was untenable.

  CHAPTER 37

  They hadn't made their deadline to reach Lamesa before dark, but there wasn't that much to see. Downtown was comprised of a few commercial buildings strung like laundry on a clothesline along either side of the state highway.

  Chief noticed that among them were the requisite bank, post office, supermarket, and a pharmacy that doubled as a barbershop. A mobile home had been converted into the public library. The ladies of Lamesa could get their hair and nails done at Marta's, who also sold Indian fry bread out of her kitchen. There was one motel, where a blinking red neon sign informed travelers of a vacancy. This evening only one car was in the parking lot.

  The public school campus, which served grades K through twelve, occupied an acre on the outskirts of town. Small clusters of houses, scattered intermittently here and there, constituted the residential areas.

  "Have you ever had fry bread, Melina?"

  "What is it?"

  "Delicious. Which reminds me how hungry I am." Without even consulting her, he stopped at a carry-out food stand. The structure was barely wide enough to accommodate a stove, but it advertised burgers, chicken, and tacos. "Longtree's breakfast has worn off."

  Melina nodded, but he could tell that her mind wasn't on food. She was focused on the mountain that loomed out of the desert on the west side of town. At its peak was their destination, the Temple.

  Chief tried to shake off a feeling of foreboding and asked Melina what she wanted to eat. "Anything's fine."

  He got out and walked up to the window. Not surprisingly, it was a one-man shop. The cashier who took his order also deep-fried breaded chicken strips and sliced potatoes, then served them to Chief through the window. They ate in the cab of the pickup, from which they had an unrestricted view of the mountain.

  "Ketchup? Salt?" He offered Melina pillows of each. "Thanks."

  Chief was using his straw to break up the ice in his drinking cup, when it squeaked against the plastic lid. It was a rude sound that caused him to laugh.

  "What?" she asked.

  "Nothing. Guy humor."

  "Are you laughing because it sounded like a fart?" "Melina, such language! I'm shocked."

  "You? NASA's poet laureate of vulgarities and obscenities?" He grinned. "I like that you're not too prissy. You can appreciate a man for behaving like a man."

  "Like a boy, you mean."<
br />
  He grinned wider. "You'd be fun to go on a date with." "What?"

  "A date. You know, dinner. In a restaurant."

  "Oh."

  Each was suddenly struck by the absurdity that they'd been as intimate as two people can be, but they'd never been on a date. That was a territory best left unexplored.

  She must have thought so, too, because she kept the mood light. "I remember restaurants," she said as she licked ketchup off her fingers. "I even know how to use cutlery."

  "So do I. On a good day." They smiled at each other.

  But the mountain loomed. Despite their attempt at banal conversation, the mountain was a presence they couldn't ignore for any appreciable amount of time. Even from a couple miles away, the compound on the crest seemed to be aglow with security lighting.

  Chief hated to admit even to himself how daunting it was. He and Melina had been prepared for the Temple of Brother Gabriel to be imposing, but now that they were actually here in its shadow, he wondered how in hell they would ever breach the security. Whether they succeeded or failed, there would be serious consequences.

  Strangely, before going to Dallas, he'd had a cavalier attitude toward his postretirement future. But now, having met Longtree and seen how he lived, having listened to the man's quiet but persuasive convictions, he felt an urgency to do something quickly to improve the lives of the Native Americans who were still ensnared by poverty and despair.

  He'd never been passionate about his Indian heritage. Longtree had changed his attitude, infusing him with a spirit of kinship. Or had it been there all along, lying dormant while he denied it, waiting for him to acknowledge and accept it?

  And then there was Melina.

  What about Melina?

  It was fair to say he was conflicted. Was he attracted to her solely because she was Gillian's double? He had thought so. For a time. Now he was no longer sure that's all there was to it. He wanted to be with her again. He wanted to discover what he'd missed by not kissing her mouth. But how could he desire her and still claim to have fallen in love with Gillian? And he had. That was indisputable.

  What a mess. All he knew for certain was that when it came to his emotional state of being, he was fucked up—to put it in the vernacular. He was accustomed to handling problems in a strictly pragmatic manner. You had a problem, you got to the source and solved the problem. Easy. No emotional element to consider. Not so this problem.

  But before he could confront his future or his emotional condition, he had to deal with Brother Gabriel, who lived in a veritable fortress. "NASA doesn't throw that much light on the shuttle during a night launch," he remarked as he tossed their debris into a trash bin, then turned the pickup around and headed back toward the center of town.

  Even if he and Melina went through the proper channels and got an audience with the evangelist himself, they wouldn't be allowed to roam freely about the Temple, poking into corners and closets. They would see only what Brother Gabriel wanted them to see. And if they went up there without the sheriff's sanction and managed to sneak past security...

  He could envision the world's headlines now:

  ASTRONAUT ARRESTED FOR TRESPASSING. NASA DISCLAIMS DEEDS OF FORMER COMMANDER. SHUTTLE PILOT'S MENTAL STABILITY IN QUESTION.

  That's how they would read, and they would be right. This was nuts. It wasn't too late to back out. He could call Tobias and let the feds take over from here. He could disassociate himself.

  Screw that, he thought, dismissing the idea before it was fully formed. No. Hell, no. He was committed. He was going to see this through.

  The sheriff's office, which they'd spotted earlier on the main drag, was a freestanding adobe building. Chief wheeled the pickup into one of several parking slots and cut the engine. "Now what?"

  Melina drew a deep breath. "I don't know. I guess we should just go in, spill our guts, and see what kind of reaction we get from him."

  "That's your plan?"

  "Do you have a better one?"

  He pushed open the door and stepped out. He went around to help her from the cab, but she was already standing beside the truck, chafing her arms. The temperature was much colder at this higher elevation than it had been at Longtree's property.

  "Want my jacket back?" he offered.

  "I'll be fine inside."

  Scotch-taped to the office door was a handwritten note from the sheriff informing anyone who came looking for him that he would be back shortly. He had thoughtfully jotted down the time he left. Chief glanced at his wristwatch. "He's stretching the 'shortly' part. He's been gone almost three hours."

  "What kind of sheriff leaves his office unattended?" Through the window they could see that no one was inside. "Doesn't he have any deputies?"

  "They could be out on patrol, too."

  Clearly Melina was annoyed by this unexpected delay. "I guess we have no choice but to go inside and wait."

  The door was unlocked. They went inside. The sheriff had apparently anticipated the night to turn chilly because he'd left the central heating on. "Well, you won't be cold. That's for damn sure." Chief shrugged off his jacket and hung it on a peg near the door. "You could bake cookies in here."

  The office was small and square, with a hallway extending from the center of the back wall. It had the usual wanted posters tacked to a bulletin board. A large detailed map of the county covered almost one whole wall. There were three tall filing cabinets, but from the appearance of Ritchey's desk, the office generated little paperwork. The top of his desk was inordinately neat.

  Chief remarked on this atypical tidiness to Melina, but when he turned, she wasn't there. She had wandered down the hallway and was exploring the other rooms. "What's back there?" he called.

  "A small room with a coffeepot, carelessly left on. Rest rooms."

  Then a scream and, "Oh, no!"

  Chief charged into the hallway, banging his elbow on the doorjamb as he went through the opening. It hurt like hell, then caused his forearm and hand to go partially numb, but it didn't slow him down. His long stride covered the length of the hallway within seconds, so that when he pulled up short in front of the single jail cell, his boots skidded on the tile floor.

  Melina was crouched on the floor just inside the cell. She was holding something close to her chest and keening noisily. "What the hell?" He knelt down beside her and placed his arm around her. "Melina?"

  "Oh, Chief, Chief," she sobbed. "I'm so sorry."

  Then she flung her arm wide and swung it toward his head. Whatever she'd been holding connected with the spot on his cheekbone where the skin was just now closing over the original wound. He fell back, landing hard on his ass, legs spread. He pressed his palm against his cheek, which was exploding with pain, and roared, "Fuck!"

  Melina surged to her feet and ran through the cell door, dragging it closed behind her. It slammed and locked with a loud metallic clang that echoed in the empty building. She flattened her back against the opposite wall and dropped her weapon—a brass paperweight in the shape of New Mexico, which she must have taken from the sheriff's desk.

  Sparklers were dancing behind his eyeballs, but Chief managed to pull himself to his feet. His face was bleeding, but he didn't even realize that until he gripped the bars of the cell and noticed that his right hand was red with blood.

  "What the fuck are you doing?" he yelled.

  She was breathing rapidly through parted lips. Her eyes were wide and unblinking as she stared at him with apparent horror over what she'd just done. "I'm going up there. T-to the Temple."

  He shook the bars like a demented inmate. "Let me the hell out of here, Melina."

  She shook her head no and began inching along the wall to-ward the exit door. "Together, they'll never let us in, Chief." She bit her lower lip, but the gesture couldn't contain her sob. "I'm sorry for hitting you. Oh, God, I'm sorry."

  He gripped the bars tighter. "Melina—"

  "No." She squeezed her eyes shut as though that would also close her ears to his
pleas. "I need to do this alone. She was my twin. Revenge is up to me, and... and I don't want you to suffer the repercussions. There are sure to be some. You don't deserve that."

  "Listen to me," he said in his most imperative commander's voice. "You'll get yourself killed if you go charging—" "He won't hurt me. You, yes. But not me."

  "You don't know that. Now let me out of here!"

  "He won't hurt me," she repeated.

  "What makes you so damn sure?"

  She swallowed dryly, then turned and ran down the hallway, shouting over her shoulder, "I have a secret weapon."

  Tobias was feeling the effects of the last couple days. If required, his body was conditioned to function on no more than a few hours' sleep. But the past two days had been exceptionally arduous. He was exhausted from the travel alone. Couple that with the complexities of this case—and maybe the scotch he'd drunk earlier—and it was no wonder that he was having trouble keeping his eyes open.

  This case was so damned multilayered. The outer skin had been the murder of Gillian Lloyd. The next layer had been Gordon's suicide, the next the attack on Melina. Another, Linda Croft's murder. Followed by the discovery of Jem Hennings's duplicity and his eventual assassination.

  Tobias strongly suspected that once all the layers had been peeled away, he would find Brother Gabriel at the core. And if even a few of their conjectures about him proved to be true, this case would have a ripple effect on the scale of a tidal wave.

  An hour earlier, he had dutifully pulled Gillian Lloyd's murder case file onto his lap and opened it. But his eyes could barely remain focused, and several times he'd caught himself nodding off.

  If he knew what he was looking for, it would be like going on a treasure hunt. He'd be motivated by knowing that a search would result in a prize. Instead, he wasn't even sure there was a treasure to be found. Chances were very good that none existed, that there wasn't a clue that had gone undetected. Surely either Lawson or he would have found it by now.

  Desultorily, he flipped through the tabs that separated the particulars of the case into categories and, for the umpteenth time, reviewed the facts he already knew.