Heartbreaker (37 page)

“You are not.… I mean, you are?” Marty looked uncertain.

“Just reactivated over the phone,” Jess said. “You can check it if you want, but we have only three hours until we’re going to be the victims of an act of domestic terrorism so huge it’ll blow your socks off. Literally.”

That last word almost made Lynn smile.

“Did something go wrong?” Louis gaped at Jess. Jess released his stranglehold on Louis’s hospital gown.

“I’d say so. We need to get together and brainstorm, you and Theresa and I. Put your pants on, Louis. Marty, you wouldn’t happen to know where Theresa is, would you? The girl with the baby?”

“She’s, uh, she’s, uh …” Marty was clearly wavering between shooting Jess and cooperating. Louis was stepping into and then yanking up his pants.

The door burst open and the security guards rushed into the room. Like Marty, they had drawn their guns.

Three weapons pointed at Jess.

It’s all over, Lynn thought, cringing. She took care to shrink back out of the way.

“It’s all right, it’s all right, he’s a federal agent,” Marty said, holstering his gun. Then to Jess, “That girl’s in the pediatric ward with the baby. Second floor.”

“Good job, Marty. Your country is going to be proud of you.” With those words of praise Jess had a convert, Lynn saw. Marty’s chest swelled visibly.

“Louis, you ready? Let’s go get Theresa.” Hitching up his sheet again, holding it in place with his injured arm, Jess wrapped a hand around Louis’s elbow and hauled him toward the door. The security guards and Marty stood aside to let them pass. All of them, including Lynn, fell in for the race to the second floor.

Theresa was awake, sitting beside Elijah’s crib, watching the baby as he slept. Elijah was sprawled on his back, one arm flung over his head, his lips busy nursing even in sleep. Though he was hooked to an IV line he looked content.

Careful not to disturb the baby, Jess beckoned Theresa out into the hallway.

“We need to talk,” he said to her. Theresa glanced around, her eyes widening at the size of Jess’s entourage. Lynn smiled at her reassuringly.

“There’s nobody in this waiting room,” one of the guards said, having glanced inside and now holding open the door.

“Come on.” Jess ushered Louis and Theresa inside as the two exchanged hostile glances. The others crowded in behind them.

Theresa turned to Jess. “What is it?” Her eyes betrayed her apprehension.

“Just sit down for a minute, and I’ll be right with you. Louis, come over here.”

Theresa obediently sat in one of the waiting room’s green vinyl upholstered armchairs. Jess hauled Louis over to a corner and loomed above him, hemming him in. Trailing in Jess’s wake, Lynn saw Louis’s shoulders hunch from the effects of severe intimidation as he looked up into Jess’s face.

“There’s something that’s been bothering me, Louis, and I want you to give me the answer,” Jess said, low enough to prevent Theresa from overhearing. “
Why
was the Lamb so determined to destroy the Michaelites? Why not just let them go?”

“I—I only followed orders. I don’t know. Because Michael was a Judas, I guess.” Louis crossed his arms over his chest as though he were cold. Clad in the open-backed hospital gown over his own imperfectly fastened black pants, Louis looked uncomfortable. His gaze shifted sideways.

“Why’d you torture him, then?” Jess’s voice was sharp but still low. Standing behind him, having carefully positioned herself to block Theresa’s view of Louis as she caught the tenor of Jess’s questioning, Lynn had to strain to catch his words.

“We … we …” Louis looked guilty and scared. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The other victims were all neatly laid out. Except for having their throats slit there was no other visible trauma to the bodies.
They were fully dressed, down to their shoes
. Michael, on the other hand, was naked. He’d been roughed up, hadn’t he? You didn’t just string him up on that cross for fun, now, did you? You and your buddies did it for a reason. What was it, Louis? What did Michael know, or have, that the Lamb wanted?”

“Nothing! I—I don’t know.”

“Louis, listen carefully here: Federal agents raided the compound in South Dakota. The Lamb was not there. He’s somewhere out there, Louis, getting ready to push the button that will blow us all to kingdom come. Women and children, Louis. Little babies. You said Yahweh came to you in that air pocket in the mine and told you that the Lamb had the time wrong. We can’t find him to tell him that, Louis. So all we can do now is try to stop the bombs from detonating.
It’s Yahweh’s will that you help us, Louis, don’t you see?
”

Louis was breathing fast now, his eyes darting to and fro. His feet shifted, and he grimaced more than once.

“What were you trying to get from Michael, Louis?” Jess asked.

“The plans,” Louis said, seeming to shrink. “When he ran away Michael took all the plans. They told how to build the bombs and how everything was to happen.”

“Written plans?”

“Records, is what we were told. Some kind of records. The Judas had been trained as a scientist, you know. He was meticulous. He kept excellent records.”

“Thank you, Louis,” Jess said, very gently.

As Jess turned away, Lynn saw his face. It was grim and strained. She had never—throughout all the crises they’d endured—seen Jess look like that.

A glance at the clock on the opposite wall told her why. It was 6:25.

Two hours and thirty-five minutes left.

As Louis slumped into his chair, Jess crossed the room to Theresa and sat down beside her. She looked at him without speaking.

“Louis just told me that your dad took some records with him when he left the Healers,” Jess said, his tone to Theresa far different than the one he had used to Louis. “Do you know anything about that? Did your dad keep papers around, maybe some kind of journal or a notebook? Or a file of some kind?”

Theresa shook her head. “Not as far as I know. I never saw him with anything like that. If he did, he didn’t keep it in the cabin with us. It was so small, I would have known it. Since I was the oldest girl I had to do most of the housekeeping.”

This was such a typical teenage complaint that Lynn almost smiled.

“Did you?” Jess seemed in no hurry. Lynn, watching, wanted to jump out of her skin. Time was running out, seeming to speed by faster and faster with every second that passed. If she had been asking the questions, Lynn thought, she wouldn’t have been able to stay quite so low-key about it.

“Where did he keep important papers, Theresa? Like his children’s birth certificates, and his and your mom’s marriage certificate, and things like that? Were those things in the cabin?”

Theresa shook her head. “He was always afraid we’d have to leave fast and lots of things would get left behind. All that stuff was in a safe-deposit box.”

“A safe-deposit box.” Jess drew a deep breath. Lynn’s pulse raced. The tension in the air was so thick that she was surprised she could still catch her breath.

“Do you know what bank it was in by any chance?”

Theresa nodded. “Daddy took me with him the last time he went. The Second National Bank branch on State Street in Provo.”

“That’s where we look first then.” Jess smiled at Theresa and stood, hitching up his sheet as he moved across the room. His gaze touched Lynn’s, then slid past her to find Marty.

“Where’s that helicopter? And can somebody please find me a pair of pants?”

S
EEN FROM THE AIR
, the streets and homes and businesses of Salt Lake City twinkled through the darkness like thousands of tiny white Christmas-tree lights. By the time they reached Provo, though, there were no city lights anywhere to be seen. Dawn had broken on a new day, obliterating them.

The helicopter landed in the street right in front of the bank. Two state-police cars were waiting for them in the parking lot. More police cars blocked either end of the street. A stocky, white-haired man dressed impeccably in a dark business suit stood by the steps leading up to the main entrance, flanked by a pair of uniformed police officers. Lynn assumed he was a bank official, summoned to open the bank and the vault where the safe-deposit boxes were kept. Jess had called the number on his hand before leaving the hospital. On the other end, Ben Terrell, speaking from somewhere in the air between South Dakota and Utah, was apparently powerful enough to get results in a hurry. And the result Jess had wanted was to be met at the bank by an official with access to the safe-deposit boxes and a list of the people who rented them.

As the helicopter rocked down onto its runners, Jess—clad now in green surgical scrubs scrounged from a hospital supply closet—jumped to the ground, ducking his head as he ran under the still-whirring blades. Lynn, Theresa, and Louis followed. Marty brought up the rear. All had been brought along on Jess’s orders in case he might find them useful.

Jess converged with the troopers and bank official at the curb, shaking hands with the latter as they all rushed across the sidewalk and up the steps. A key was produced, the bank door was opened, and they entered. To Lynn the lobby smelled like bank lobbies always did: of other people’s money. The air-conditioning had been left on overnight. The coolness was amplified by marble floors, and without any customers the deserted bank felt as frigid as the inside of a refrigerator. Even in Jess’s flannel shirt, Lynn was chilled.

As they were leaving the hospital someone had handed her and Theresa pairs of terry slippers. Lynn was thankful not to have to stand on the cold marble in bare feet.

“Do you have the list?” Jess demanded as soon as they were inside.

“The names are in alphabetical order.” The bank official—Lynn hadn’t caught his name, though he had introduced himself to Jess—handed over a loosely folded computer printout with no more than a single I-hope-I’m-doing-the-right-thing glance at the trooper nearest him. He had already cast a jaundiced eye over Jess’s motley retinue. Lynn found it a new experience to be dismissed with a verbal sniff.

Standing, Jess flipped pages and scanned through the list of names. A frown darkened his face when he glanced up.

“Theresa, are you sure this is the branch you and your father visited?”

Theresa nodded. She was still wearing her torn nightgown, though her face and hands were clean and she had taken the time at some point to brush her hair and twist it into a knot at her nape.

“I remember the roses.” She gave Jess a sad little half-smile. “Only last time I thought they were real. I guess they’re not, or they wouldn’t still be here.”

Lynn followed her gaze to a crystal bowl of roses on a credenza opposite the entrance. The roses were a mix of yellows and reds. While some blooms were lush and full, at the peak of their beauty, others were faintly brown at the edges and overripe, as if they were on the verge of losing their petals. Theresa was right, Lynn thought. They made a memorable arrangement.

“There is no Michael Stewart on this list.” Jess’s voice was sharp. He would speak to Theresa like that only if he were under tremendous stress, Lynn knew. She watched as his gaze dropped back to the computer printout, which he flipped back to the beginning. As he read through the list of names from beginning to end, his face was a study in growing tension.

“There is no Michael Stewart listed,” he said again. He looked at Theresa once more. “The three Stewarts listed are William T., Bruce H., and Virginia R. Do those names mean anything to you?”

Theresa shook her head.

“We may have to look in those boxes anyway,” Jess said to the bank official, whose eyes widened with alarm. “Hell, we may have to look in them
all
.”

The bank official took a step backward and shook his head. “It’s against policy. I was told to open only one box. I—”

“It’s seven twenty-eight, Mr. Thompkins,” Jess said after a quick glance at his wrist, which still sported Louis’s watch. “You do know what happens at nine
A.M.?
”

The bank official nodded unhappily. “I’ll open anything you want,” he said. “But we have over eight hundred boxes here. Do you know how long that’s going to take?”

Jess groaned and glanced at Theresa again. “Did he ever use an alias, Theresa? Another name?” This time his voice was patient. Lynn realized the control he was exercising to make it so.

Theresa shook her head. “I never heard him use one.”

“Okay.” Jess passed his hand over his face. “Theresa, you sit down at one of those desks over there and read through this list of names and see if any of them strikes you as something your father would be likely to use. Lynn, kind of keep her on track, would you? Time’s growing short here. Mr. Thompkins, you and I better start opening boxes.”

Lynn accepted the printout from Jess, led Theresa over to a desk, and sat down beside her. Jess and Mr. Thompkins, accompanied by a state trooper, disappeared into the interior of the bank. Marty hovered behind Theresa and Lynn. Louis, clad in borrowed surgical scrubs like Jess, found a comfortable-looking couch and slumped down on it.

A list of eight hundred names, Lynn discovered after just a few minutes, made for dull reading. Having no idea what she was looking for, she scanned page after page nonetheless, her gaze following Theresa’s finger as it slid from name to name.

Theresa was a slow reader. Lynn was glad there was no clock anywhere in sight. If she had been able to watch the minutes tick past while they performed this interminable chore, she would sooner or later have had to jump up from her chair and scream.

Marty abandoned his vigil to join Louis on the couch. Unlike Louis, though, who was as motionless as a rag doll, Marty chewed a thumbnail, jiggled his leg, and tapped his toe.

More than once Lynn felt like yelling at him to sit still.

They were near the bottom of the last page when Theresa’s moving finger stopped.

“Here,” she said, glancing at Lynn. “This is something he might have used.”

Lynn read the name just above Theresa’s finger. “Wormwood, Star. Star Wormwood?”

“It’s from the Book of Revelations, I think. Wormwood is the name of the star that is going to fall on the earth and wreak great destruction when the world ends.”