Page 21

He grinned and opened two packets of horseradish sauce and squeezed them all over his first sandwich before taking a bite.
Wyrick squeezed a packet of the same sauce on hers, and then they settled into eating.
The office phone rang while they were eating. But when she started to get up to answer, Charlie stopped her.
“It’s lunchtime. Let it go to voice mail.”
So she did, reaching instead for another curly fry. She tilted her head back, and dangled it over her mouth before dropping it in.
Charlie glanced at the soft curve of her lower lip, and as he did, saw a single grain of salt glistening beneath the lights from the chandelier hanging over the conference table. At that point his thoughts flooded with interesting ways to remove it, none of which needed to be voiced. Then she picked up a napkin to wipe her lips and solved the problem for him.
He looked down at his sandwich and took another bite and gave himself a talking-to.
Just fucking chew it, Charlie, and don’t go there.
So he did, then sauced up his second sandwich and finished it, too.
Wyrick went back to work while Charlie gathered up their refuse and tossed it into the trash.
Jeremiah Raver was the fourth generation of a family who’d lived out their lives in the Louisiana swamps, subsisting on whatever they could hunt or grow. But from birth, Jeremiah had been scared spitless of the swamp and its critters—from snakes to gators, and everything in between.
He had been the butt of jokes in the Raver family his entire life, until he announced, at the age of seventeen, that God had called him to preach. At first, the news was shocking to the family. But his mama grabbed on to that with both hands. He wasn’t a coward, after all. He was a warrior for the Lord, and that was that.
Now his mama and daddy were long gone, and he was nearing his fiftieth birthday, and still preaching The Word every Sunday. He founded the church over thirty years ago, but after witnessing Jade Wyrick’s live press conference some months back, he’d been horrified by her appearance. And after a dream he’d had about her, he’d awakened with the belief that it was his mission to cleanse the world of her presence.
He began the online posts about her without thinking of the possible consequences, and took their war with the devil to the virtual world. As the months passed by, his fervor grew.
Finally, he chose three men from his congregation that he felt would be willing warriors for God. He chose each of them separately, speaking to them in confidence, and then gave each a picture of her, the location of her place of work and where she lived.
Barrett Taylor was the first man he sent, because he knew Taylor was a convicted felon. He’d been so certain Taylor would succeed. Then Taylor got himself caught and jailed, and now Raver was worried.
He called in Jessup Wallis, and gave him the same orders, and then as insurance, called in his last man, Farrell Kitt, and gave him the same instructions. They did not know about each other, or that Barrett Taylor had already failed and was in jail. All they knew was that they were on a mission for the Lord.
Now that Jeremiah had reset his plan, he felt it was time to make himself scarce. The cops knew he was the pastor of the church attached to Taylor’s charges, and Taylor had already threatened Raver, if he didn’t get out of jail.
Jeremiah knew there was only one place he could go and disappear. Back where he’d grown up. He grabbed a suitcase full of clothes and some canned goods, and headed to his brother’s place in the bayou.
Wyrick had everything she could find on Rachel Dean in a file. Now they were just waiting for the sister to show up and hire them. And while Charlie was in his office on the phone, she pulled up The Righteous website to see if there was any chatter about Barrett Taylor’s arrest.
To her dismay, no one knew he had failed, so there was no deterrent for the others. No fear of also being caught. But there was more than chatter. It was an outright call to war to destroy her. She needed to get to her own computers and stop this before it got out of hand. The underlying tone of the comments, no matter how vague they tried to word it, was plain for her to see. She was world-weary and heartsick as she stared at the monitor, trying to figure out how to protect herself now.
And that was how Charlie found her. He knew by her body language something had happened.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Wyrick jumped. She hadn’t heard him come out of his office.
“I need to go home and get to my computers. If I don’t stop The Righteous now, it’s going to be Universal Theorem all over again.”
“Are there others coming now?”
Wyrick looked up, a little surprised that he’d already figured that out.
“Taylor said there were,” Wyrick said.
“Then go. Do whatever you have to do. I’ll close up and be right behind you.”
She wouldn’t look at him for fear he’d see the tears in her eyes. She was so sick of this. The war was never going to be over, but she was going to make them sorry that they’d fired the first shot. She turned off her computer and picked up her things, but when she started out the door, Charlie was right behind her.