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In that sense, a house party could be a poor choice of venue for this murder. Parties meant an assortment of unknowables and uncontrollables; extra hazards, drunken guests wandering about the grounds and the house, more eyes to witness, more ears to hear.Pastor Whitfield adored the company of the famous; he seemed to feed off the nectar of their heat and their light, and no episode of his twice-weekly tv show and podcast was complete without a visit from a film star or a sporting legend. For all Jakes knew, there would be people like that at the party.And maybe they’d have their own security people with them…
He shook his head, as if trying to dislodge the thought.It was unrealistic that they’d turn up to a party with a whole outfit of bodyguards in tow.Only the President got that sort of treatment.Besides which, you only had to sit through a single episode of Whitfield’s show to realise that his connections were considerably less dazzling than they’d initially seemed. That Hollywood ‘star’ hadn’t actually been in a movie since 1992, and she was only recognizable now because she featured in a long-running tv commercial for auto insurance. As for the sporting ‘legend’, well, people remembered the DUI, the cocaine with intent and the battery charges more readily than his brief flash of magic on the basketball court.
But,de nada, everything was going to work out fine. He knew that from the silent voice inside, the one he now knew to be God’s.The Prophet had told him that.And that his time was now.That he’d been chosen, by the Almighty Himself, to exact justice and vengeance.Him. Chosen.He’d been overlooked for so much of his life.Overlooked or pushed around, ignored or taunted, dismissed or despised. All of those people would be shocked when they saw what he had become.
He started to pack the knife away, his hands trembling slightly.With anticipation now, excitement.A face came back to him across the decades.Emmy Lou, all sweaty in her farm clothes.The smells in the barn.You told me you knew what to do.Come here.
A verse from Revelation bubbled up without effort.And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormentedday and night for ever and ever.
It was so, so simple.You took all the hurt that had been done to you, all the pain and rage and humiliation, and you threw it at the people who hate God. Hurt gone.God praised.Man blessed.
CHAPTER ONE
Margaret Whitfield had never liked using the side door.
It was narrow and dim, wedged between the little church kitchen and the utility closets, smelling faintly of Pine-Sol and something damp that never quite dried out.A place for staff, not the worshippers.But she carried the spare key Jonathan had given her, slipped on a little cross-shaped fob, and when she arrived at 6:50 a.m.that Friday to help set up for the women’s prayer breakfast and found the gleaming glass main doors still locked, she just dug the key from her purse and let herself in.
Beyond, in the main building, she could hear the staff cleaning up after last night’s reception.Occasional, desultory scrapes of chairs and tables, the tinny, scratchy sound of music from a mobile phone. She’d permitted herself a peek into the Great Hall on her way over, taking in the debris of a hundred and twenty guests, a cargo-boat’s worth of canapes and Lord-knew how many bottles of French champagne. Half a dozen, stout Hispanic women were just standing there in the midst of it, trash bags hanging loosely in their hands, dappled rainbows of light shining through the huge, arch-shaped picture windows. They could have been receiving a vision.But really, they just barely knew where to start.
Or they knew, but they felt hugely disinclined to get started.
And who could blame them?The floors were sticky, someone needed to fetch the ladder to open the windows, let fresh air replace the old perfume and spilt booze. Only one of the women had a plan, it seemed: she was plugging a radio into one of the sockets at the edge of the vast room, so they’d have non-stop salsa tunes to work to.Margaret had to admire their sense of priority.
The lock was stiff, darts of pain shot through her knuckles as she turned the key. If she took her pills before she ate, she felt sick.But the pains in her fingers and her wrists… they made her feel sick, too.Healing Prayers, the laying on of hands… none of her brother-in-law’s prescribed remedies had worked against the rheumatoid arthritis. Because, apparently, she didn’t have faith.She didn’t have enough of it.Or she didn’t have enough of the right kind of faith.Jonathan had explained it, and it had seemed reasonable at the time, as it always did when those eyes of his gazed right down into her soul, and the rhythm of his voice rocked sense and peace and understanding into everything.And yet she couldn’t quite remember what he’d said.
In fact, she realised, she could hardly remember anything he’d said to her, ever.The thought alarmed her briefly.Did he put her in some kind of trance? Another, even more frightening thought entered her mind; so shocking, so heretical that she quickly shut it down.
What if the Pastor never said anything that was truly worth remembering?
“Jonathan?”she called, forcing brightness into her voice.
Her brother-in-law was a creature of ritual.Every Friday morning for the last decade, he’d been in his office by dawn, praying, scribbling, polishing the sermon he’d deliver at Sunday’s mega-service, watched by tens of thousands of the faithful, planet-wide.Margaret would fetch him coffee sometimes, watching him hunched over his desk, lips moving silently as he rehearsed.This morning she had every reason to expect the same: his door cracked open, the warm smell of French roast drifting down the hall, maybe a faint growl from his throat as he tested a line of scripture aloud.
But the corridors yawned with silence.
She let her heels click against the polished marble, a deliberate sound to chase away the eerie stillness.The atrium remained dark, chandeliers off, sunlight only barely prying through tinted panes high above.The megachurch always felt too big before the crowds came—like a stadium waiting for a team that might never arrive.
She told herself not to be silly.She’d seen all the cleaners, busy in the hall, or about to be.Jonathan’s secretary had been at the reception, and if she’d been pulling the trick she usually pulled at these events – one glass, topped up endlessly, so that ‘just the one’ became enough to sink a battle-ship – then she’d be in well after eight this morning.Meanwhile, the prayer-breakfast stalwarts never showed up until just before nine.Of course everything was going to be quiet.What did she expect?
Still, she called his name again.
“Jonathan?Are you in your office?”
Her voice bounced back at her from the plaster columns.
Sometimes, he could be peculiar about how he was addressed.So she cleared her throat and tried again.‘Pastor?’
Nothing.
She passed the bookstore, its ranks of devotional paperbacks and prosperity-gospel textbooks locked behind glass.Past the little café counter where volunteers would later brew gallon after gallon of coffee and unload boxes of muffins.Everything in order.Everything waiting.
She told herself to hurry—there were tablecloths to spread, the urn needed switching on.For some reason, most of the breakfast ladies drank tea, and gallons of it.But her feet carried her deeper down the corridor, toward the wing where the Pastor and his ever-shifting team of associates had their offices.Jonathan’s door at the end, larger and heavier than the rest, brass plate glinting: Pastor The Rev.Jonathan Whitfield.
The handle gave as she pushed.
At first, she only saw the glow of the desk lamp.A yellow circle spilling over paper, polished wood, Jonathan’s broad shoulders.Relief began to rise—hewashere, just working too hard to answer.
Then the details caught up with her eyes.