She dug into the sand with her bare toes. "And I don't suppose anyone said anything... about how they went?"
He frowned. "Of course not. Dr. Carson will call in a few days." He glanced at her. "Don't worry about it. I'm sure it's fine. I'm fine."
"Passing out, blacking out, whatever it is you're doing isn't being fine, Noah."
"Why don't we wait and see what the tests show, OK?" He covered her hand with his. "Once we have a diagnosis, then we'll worry."
She closed her eyes and nodded, exhaling.
Noah watched as Mallory approached them carrying a bucket half full of broken shells she and Mattie had been collecting along the stretch of beach. The little girl was wearing a pink bathing suit with an old leather belt cinched around her waist and the ball cap Noah had given her the first week he'd returned home.
"Hey there," Noah greeted as she halted in front of his bare feet stretched out in the sand.
"Hey there," she echoed. Then she cocked her head, studying him seriously, the bucket swinging in her hand. "Are you mommy's boyfriend, Noah?"
He glanced at Rachel, who seemed as surprised by the question as he was. "Well..."
"That's really not an appropriate question for a little girl to ask," Rachel said, getting up off the beach towel.
Mallory's face fell. "He isn't your boyfriend?"
Noah got up. "Why are you so full of nosy questions today, Missy?" He took her hand, leading her down toward the water.
"I was wondering," she said, looking over her shoulder at her mother, who was following behind them. "Because if you was Mommy's boyfriend, maybe you could be my daddy. Maria's mommy has a boyfriend and he's her daddy now." She halted at the edge of the water. "I never had a daddy."
He looked up to see Rachel pressing her lips tightly together, trying to control her emotions. "I know, sweetie," he said softly, squatting to pick up a shell to add to her bucket.
"Well, I think you should be Mommy's boyfriend," Mallory declared.
"You'd like me for a daddy?" He squatted in the wet sand.
She set down her bucket. "And Mattie, too, because he don't have a daddy either. The voice killed his daddy."
Noah felt a tingle of fear. "The voice killed his daddy? What are you talking about, Mal?"
Rachel knelt in front of Mallory. "No one killed Mattie's daddy, hon. He fell off a ladder. It was an accident."
Mallory picked up her bucket and started up the beach toward Mattie. "That's not what Mattie says," she sang. Then she waved. "Hey, Mattie! You want Noah to be your daddy? He's going to be my daddy."
Noah stood, reaching out to catch Rachel's hand.
"What's she talking about?" she murmured. "Jack fell off the ladder, right? You were there that day."
"I was there," he said, taking a step closer, meeting her gaze. "I didn't see it, but there was no reason to think it was anything but an accident." He searched her eyes carefully. "The police never suspected it was anything other than an accident as far as I know."
Rachel glanced at Mallory, who had plopped down in the sand beside Mattie. "I'm beginning to worry about her. You think I need to take her to a doctor? A psychologist?"
He slipped his arm around her bare waist, remembering the touch of her warm skin, naked beneath the sheet. "Let's hold off. I got the name of a psychologist up in Wilmington who has some experience with idiot savants. Let's make an appointment, talk with her, and then see if we can decipher where the problem here is."
"I mean, she seems like a perfectly normal child, doesn't she?" Rachel asked, concern in her voice. "She's been healthy since the day she was born."
"I'm sure she's fine. Worse-case scenario, she's got an even better imagination than we thought."
"And she's making up all this stuff about what Mattie tells her."
"It's certainly possible."
Rachel halted, pulling off her dark sunglasses. "What kind of little girl makes up things like people's fathers having been murdered and voices no one else hears?"
"It's going to be OK," Noah insisted, leaning down to brush his lips against hers. "Don't worry. We're going to be OK."
"See, Mattie!" Mallory cried at the sight of her mother and Noah kissing. "I told you Noah was going to be our daddy!"
* * *
"This is a bad idea." Snowden stepped through Delilah's front door.
"So why'd you come again?" she teased lightly. She walked through the dark hall to the kitchen, knowing he'd follow her. She got him a glass of water before she turned to him.
"I keep thinking about you." He accepted the glass of water. "I need to be concentrating on the case and instead I'm thinking about a woman." He raised one hand in frustration, making a fist and drawing it down to his side.
Delilah hated to see him in such anguish over something so simple as coming to her place, sitting on the couch, talking. There'd been nothing between them anyone could possibly say was inappropriate... not that she hadn't had some inappropriate thoughts. But she understood what he meant. As the chief of police, her superior, and the only black man on the force, he was held to a higher standard.
"I think about you, too, Snowden," she said softly. "And I think about the fact that my daddy and my brothers would skin us both alive if they saw us together like this." She held his gaze for a moment, trying to read what he was thinking in those dark blue depths. She smiled. "Fortunately, between thinking about you stripped down to your undershorts and my daddy lynching us, I've been going over this case in my head. Now I know you like the ex-priest. I know what's logical, maybe even the direction the evidence points, what little we have, but I want you to hear me out."
"I just don't want to see you waste your time. Every minute that passes that we don't find this guy, we're moving closer to another killing. We both know he's going to kill again."
"I understand that. But I'm telling you, Snowden, this is getting weirder by the day. I talked to Father Hailey."
"And?"
Snowden didn't appear convinced they needed to look beyond Noah Gibson, but at least he was willing to listen to her. It occurred to her that maybe he was willing to listen to her as long as she was willing to stand in her kitchen in her brother's boxers, but she had a feeling what was going on between her and Snowden was something more than simple lust.
"Father Hailey sent Cora to get the hatchet to cut away some tree limbs hanging over his car in the church parking lot." She rolled her eyes. "Not sure why Cora sent Alice and lied about it. I discovered a couple of interesting things while I was paying my visit to St. Paul's, though." She leaned against the counter, arms crossed.
Snowden sipped his water. "Care to fill me in?"
"Had quite a scare, for one thing. Seems Father Hailey cuts passages out of Bibles."
Snowden arched a dark brow.
"I'm standing there in his office, flipping through the pages of a Bible and I come to a page that's been cut up." She shook her head. "Yeah, I was hoping for an instant that we'd gotten lucky. No such luck. Not the verses we're looking for, and he was able to show me a scrapbook he keeps of them."
Snowden frowned. "Why would a priest be cutting verses from a Bible and keeping them in a scrapbook?"
"Apparently, it's for his little book of temptations. Something tempts him, a bad thought, bad desire"—she gestured—"he cuts the passage out and adds it to a scrapbook."
Snowden drained his glass and crossed the kitchen to place it in the sink. "That's a little weird."
"I thought so too." She shifted her posture slightly so that she was turned toward him. "But that doesn't make him a killer."
"What else did you find out?" He leaned against the counter beside her.
"That Joshua Troyer helped do some work on St. Paul's a few years back when Gibson was the priest there and was counseling people in his office."
"So?"
"Apparently he moved some walls to make room for a new central air conditioning system, but get this." She raised her hand to hold her finger practicall
y under his nose. "He helped install heat and air ducts. The project must have taken months." She shrugged. "A person wonders what could be heard through those ducts."
"Joshua Troyer is a peaceful man. I've never heard him say a cross word about anyone in my life. Never heard him so much as even utter a curse word."
"OK, but you still have to admit, he's a little weird, and so's the wife with the doily on her head." She thought for a moment. "They ever have any children?"
He shook his head. "She's not able to conceive. It's been a difficult issue in their lives. Children are very important to the Mennonite community."
"And they didn't hit the in vitro clinic like other infertile couples? Adopt?"
"God's will, Joshua says."
Delilah let that idea settle in her head before she went on. Snowden didn't seem to mind the silence. "You never told me that someone died working at the church when Noah Gibson was there."
"Jack McConnell, Mattie's father. He fell off a ladder. That has nothing to do with this case."
"I know," she thought out loud. "Just interesting, I guess. That's all."
"Interesting, yes, all of it is. Maybe even a little questionable, but..." He reached out to touch her hand with one finger. "None of this information takes us in any direction."
"Maybe not." His finger brushed hers, and she found herself holding her breath. "But it tells us that we need to be careful not to be so confident it's the ex-priest that we don't see someone else right under our noses. I mean, honestly, what have we got on Gibson?"
He took her hand in his, but he was still leaning back against the sink. He didn't look at her. "What we've still got is the fact that he, to our knowledge, is the only person who knew about the 'sins' the victims committed."
"OK." Delilah exhaled, her mind divided between the feel of Snowden's touch and the subject at hand. "So he knew about the sins, but—"
"And motive." He turned toward her. "I'm telling you, the guy has motive."
"Maybe." She swayed her head one way and then the other. "It's just that, besides you, he seems like the most ordinary, sanest guy in this town."
Snowden half smiled. "I should go."
"Why?" She tugged on his hand, wishing he would kiss her or she'd get up enough nerve to kiss him.
He searched her gaze for a moment and she found herself lost in the gentleness of his eyes. "You know why," he whispered.
Then he let go of her hand, walked out of the kitchen, and out the front door.
* * *
Azrael moaned, gripping the bed sheet, forehead beaded in sweat. The dream had begun so pleasantly. Sunshine. Warmth. The comforting touch of a hand. It felt so good to be loved, to be wanted, that a joy filled Azrael's heart.
Then, suddenly, the sun grew brighter until it was a spotlight overhead, so intense the angel could not see. The bright white room filled with voices. Strangers. The joy gave way to terror and an overwhelming sense of being alone in the world.
Azrael had disappointed God.
The angel cried out, twisting in the sweat-soaked sheets, the pain now excruciating. "No! No..."
Waves of blood. Waves of pain. Sin washing down on God's chosen one.
From the blood tumbled a baby. Not a baby at all, but a two-headed monster.
Azrael screamed and awoke to a dark room and the pleasant hum of the air conditioner.
Chapter 27
"Dr. Carson." Irma Jean walked into his private office, with its rich, dark wainscoting and diplomas and medical degrees framed grandly on the walls. "You're certainly in early." She glanced at her watch, a gift from Edgar many years ago, before they'd both become widowed, before they'd become lovers. "Your first appointment isn't for another half an hour."
He glanced up from the open file on his desk. He looked tired, the lines around his mouth more pronounced than usual. "I know. I couldn't sleep, so I came in to get some paperwork done." He tapped on the file with his pen. "I'm concerned about this patient."
She glanced down at the record noted the patient's name, and walked to the windows to open the mini-blinds so that the sun poured through the cracks but wasn't blinding. "Test results?"
"They showed nothing organic." He sat back in his chair, tucking his hands behind his head. "I just keep going over the conversation we had during the initial exam, and something troubles me, but I can't put my finger on it."
"You don't often miss a diagnosis." She straightened several large medical textbooks that had begun to slide on a shelf under the windows.
"I'm not thinking medical so much as psychological. This isn't the first patient I've had this summer to complain about nightmares, but there's something odd here. I feel like I'm missing a red flag or something."
"You think there could be an undiagnosed psychological disorder?"
He thought for a moment. "Very possibly."
"You've always been honest with your patients, and they've always trusted in that honesty." She moved to the door. "Maybe you need to express your concerns to the patient and suggest an appointment with a physician who deals with this type of thing."
He removed his bifocals and rubbed his eyes. "I suppose that wouldn't hurt. I just don't want to offend anyone. I mean, we all say odd things, act a little crazy sometimes, rationalize inaccurately. The deaths in the town this summer have everyone on edge. I know I'm not myself." He gestured toward her. "Even you said you've been doing things you never did before—checking the locks on the windows and doors five or six times a night."
She rested her hand on the doorknob. "It could very well be nothing, but you've always been good about your gut instinct. If your instinct tells you something is wrong, Edgar, you need to address the matter with the patient."
He thought for a moment. "You're right." He nodded. "You're absolutely right, Irma Jean."
She smiled. "Coffee?"
"Please." He put his glasses back on, and as she closed the door behind her, he made a note next to his list of phone calls for the day.
* * *
"Hey, where is everyone?" Rachel walked out onto the front porch, barefoot but dressed, cup of coffee in her hand. It was overcast and a light rain was falling. Though it had cooled off slightly, the air was still heavy with the July humidity of southern Delaware.
Noah glanced over his shoulder, smiling at the sight of her, a smile that she had to admit made her warm from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. As crazy as it sounded, she was in love and there was no denying it. In the week and a half since the first time she and Noah had made love in more than five years, they had been tentatively working through their new relationship. Testing the waters, as it were.
Rachel wasn't foolish enough to think they could ever go back to the early days when they were first married and so happy together, before all the bad stuff began, before Noah's drinking, but she was hopeful that maybe, just maybe, they could make this new relationship work.
He was not, of course, the man she had first fallen in love with in high school. How could he be? Everything he once was, in his mind, was gone. He had lost the church. He had lost his children. His parents. He had taken lives and given up five years of his life as payment. The new Noah was not as trusting of himself or others, certainly not as sweetly naïve. He was quieter, more introverted, at times. But he also spoke up sooner when it came to expressing his thoughts and feelings. He was more focused. More intense in many ways.
There were things about Noah that hadn't changed too. She reveled in those attributes—his tenderness; his work ethic; his interest in anything new, different, or challenging; and his solid belief in family. Watching Noah with Mallory sometimes brought tears to her eyes. Noah was becoming the father Rachel had always dreamed her daughter would have, and it was becoming obvious she adored him. Finding a father for Mallory certainly wasn't a good-enough reason to make a commitment to Noah a second time, but it would be impossible for Rachel not to take that into consideration.
She and Noah, and later, she as a single pa
rent, had always believed in the importance of two parents in a child's life, and right now she couldn't imagine a better father, a father who loved Mallory more than Noah.
Noah scooted over from where he sat on the top step of the porch and made room for her. She sat down beside him.
He gave her a quick good morning kiss on her cheek, which was more endearing than a kiss on the mouth first thing in the morning, because it wasn't a kiss of desire, it was a kiss of commitment, of friendship and trust. A kiss of love.
"Let's see, it's Friday, so it's Mrs. Santori's day off. And Mattie and Mallory are lying on the living room floor, putting wooden puzzles together. And I'm here." He raised both hands and then reached down to pick up his coffee cup with his left hand. "Just watching the rain fall, thinking how lucky a man I am."
He turned to face her, and she couldn't resist brushing her lips against his. Last night, she'd sneaked down to his room in the middle of the night, after another one of her nightmares, and she'd woken him and they'd made love. When she closed her eyes, she could still feel his hands on her breasts, and the tremors of pleasure they yielded.
Rachel rubbed his knee through his blue jeans and sipped her coffee. "It was nice of you to let me sleep. I guess Mallory and Mattie already had breakfast."
"Well, you didn't go back to bed until almost six." He grinned. "I thought you could use a little sleep. And yes, they have eaten. Cap'n Crunch with Crunch Berries."
She wrinkled her nose. "Yuck. Glad I missed that."
He gazed out at the rain again, quiet for a moment. "Mattie was sitting on the porch this morning when I let Chester out at six-thirty. I don't know how long he'd been out here."
"That's the third time this week."
"I know. It's as if, all of a sudden, that room that has been his sanctuary scares him." Noah was quiet again. "I was wondering if we should consider bringing him into the house."
She exhaled, drawing her hand over her head, pushing her hair back. "I know, I was wondering the same thing. I only wish we didn't have to wait so long for that psychologist's appointment. September seems like a long way off right now."
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