Page 49 of The Sister's Curse

I wrinkled my nose. I had little use for organized religion, and prosperity gospel, in particular, rubbed me the wrong way. But it looked like the people whose cars were in the parking lot could afford to lay down some cash for Christ, and who was I to say what they should do with their money?

But I sure as hell was gonna judge them for how they treated their young women—especially if one of them was in trouble.

Detwiler pulled in after me. We nodded at each other, and approached the church.

We crossed the parking lot to open the heavy front door, andwere immediately hit with a wall of frosty air-conditioning. We walked down a hallway that reminded me more of a school than of a church, then turned right where a sign listed today’s worship times. The door to an auditorium was propped open.

A scream sounded.

Detwiler and I swept into the auditorium, calling for backup.

The auditorium was dark like a movie theater. There were a dozen people up front, circling a stage lit by nothing more than a ring of guttering candles. In the center of the ring was a girl on her knees before a large washtub. Her face was buried in her hands. Her head and shoulders were soaking wet. Quentin Sims stood before her, shaking a Bible.

“Repent of this evil!” he bellowed at her. “I cast out the devil in you!”

He grabbed her neck and plunged her head into the tub. The girl struggled against him, her fingers clawing at the tub’s edge. They were trying to drown her.

“Police! Let her go!” Detwiler and I shouted in unison.

Sims turned toward us, his face twisted in wrath at the interruption. But he didn’t let her go.

Detwiler and I stormed the stage, scattering candles and shoving aside people in the circle. Detwiler grabbed Sims and dragged him off the girl. I pulled the girl from the water. She was gasping, her hair stuck to her cheek.

“Breathe.” I pushed her hair back. I recognized her as Rebecca, one of Leah’s friends from Sims’s house. “Deep breaths.”

Her face crumpled, and she sobbed against my shoulder.

Detwiler had Sims down on the stage, his arm behind his back. The surrounding people, who I assumed were parishioners, had begun to back away, turning toward the exit.

“No, you don’t!” I shouted. “Everyone freeze.”

The exit was darkened by deputies sweeping in, Monica’s horrified face among them.

I looked down at the girl. “What happened?”

She couldn’t be more than fourteen. She was capable only of sobbing.

A man elbowed forward, one I’d seen in the surrounding circle, not intervening. “That’s my daughter. She’s fine.”

I turned on him. “She’snotfine. What’s the matter with you?”

“She needs to submit to authority—”

“The only one who’s going to be submitting to authority around here is you,” I snarled, rising from the girl. “Sit down and put your hands behind your back.”

Soft laughter hissed behind me. I wheeled to see Quentin Sims chortling under Deputy Detwiler’s knee in his spine.

“What’s so funny?” I demanded.

His glasses had slipped down his nose. He said it loudly, loudly enough for his followers to hear and murmur in agreement: “It’s just a baptism. You’ve interrupted a baptism.”

“It sure looked like child abuse to me,” I growled at him.

Sims smiled at me beatifically. “The Lord’s work is invisible to the evil of the world.”

I wanted to throat-punch him.

Instead, I called EMS and CPS. EMS determined that the girl’s vitals were stable, and swept her away to the hospital.