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Kingston was crying harder now, and from that distant place—from the labyrinth—Shaw could appreciate, in a clinical way, his distress. He’d given himself to the Moss family, and they’d repaid him by turning around and shattering his faith: one brother a blackmailer (since there was no doubt in Shaw’s mind that was why Jed had approached Adam), the other a sexual predator, taking advantage of helpless women in prison, and then the brothers working together to murder Adam Ezell.
But all of that registered like something Shaw had read in a book somewhere. In his mind, he was still following those branching footpaths, trapped in the high walls of that place inside himself, where each turn brought him to the sound of Ambyr’s body as she bucked, the squeak of the table legs over bare concrete, Gid’s breathy grunts as he struggled with her.
“Enough,” North said in a voice meant just for Shaw, and his fingers dug in harder.
Tears sprang to Shaw’s eyes, but he wasn’t crying. The tears were fresh and stinging, and like North’s fingers, the pain helped. He breathed. He let the weight of the pain settle through him, giving his body heaviness, solidity. When he felt like he could, he nodded.
If Kingston had noticed, he gave no sign of it. He was still wrapped up in his own tragedy.
“We’re going to take this,” North said.
Kingston nodded and wiped his face.
“I’ll send a copy to Chief Somerset, but you should go to the station and make a statement.”
“Yeah, ok.”
North stood, pulling Shaw to his feet as well, and the hardness in his face eased as he considered Kingston. “I’m sorry about your brother.”
“They said it was for the ministry,” Kingston said, running his arm across his face again. “What was I supposed to do?”
25
North pressed the Sebring as hard as he dared, but something was definitely wrong with the engine—it was straining, the RPMs way too high, and every once in a while, there was the faintest sensation like a shudder. Like a buck, his brain said, and then he saw again the way Ambyr Hobbs had bucked, her back arching in that last, final struggle.
He shut that thought down and focused on the wind raking them. With the top down, pressing sixty, the noise was tremendous, and strands of Shaw’s hair, loose from their bun, whipped wildly behind him. Shaw, though, said nothing. His face was pale, his features frozen. It wasn’t as bad as it could get—North had seen how bad it could get—but it wasn’t good either. And all the usual tactics, all the ways he tried to help, wouldn’t work when you couldn’t talk because of the wind, when you couldn’t stop, couldn’t hold him, couldn’t even hold his hand because this fucking wildebeest of a car kept threatening to lock up at sixty miles an hour.
But North had to do something.
He freed one hand from the steering wheel, just for a moment, and pulled Shaw’s hair until Shaw shouted and slapped him away. Then, fighting with the wind, North bellowed, “Call John-Henry!”
Scowling, Shaw massaged his scalp. But some of the color had come back into his face, and he took out his phone. After a minute, he placed another call. Then he shook his head.
“They’re not answering, neither of them.”
Of course they weren’t, North thought. Because for this whole investigation, from the minute North and Shaw had signed on, Emery and John-Henry had been riding their asses. And now, when it was important, the two were probably duck-fucking each other in a station-house closet.
The problem was that Kingston Ezell was clearly feeling pretty torn up about getting his brother killed. But at the same time, he hadn’t gone to the police with the video, had he? And so North thought it was even odds whether Kingston went to the police, the way North had instructed, or panicked and called his beloved Pastor Moss. And if Kingston was going to make that phone call, he’d make it soon—which meant North and Shaw didn’t have time to wait until they could get in touch with Emery and John-Henry.
When North glanced over, he saw the same resolve in Shaw’s face. It was a good change; some of the lost horror in his expression had faded, and maybe, if God were good, it wouldn’t come back. This time.
The drive carried them through central Missouri, the air hot and ripping at them, humidity and bugs and the roar of their passage. Shafts of sunlight poked through the clouds, spotlighting fields of—well, as far as North knew, they could have been anything from corn to magic beans. Then the clouds began to shred, and more and more sky became visible. It was like someone raising the light on a dimmer switch. It was hot.
The outskirts of Auburn looked pretty much as North remembered them: the quiet two-lanes, the strip malls, the fast-food chains and convenience stores. When they reached the Epiphany of Light campus, the gates stood open. No guard. They rolled through—well, as much as the Sebring could roll anywhere, with those ominous hitchings and wheezings—and drove past the main building. They turned at the sanctuary, and a few moments later, they were pulling across the wide arc of pavement in front of the Mosses’ home.
In late afternoon, the house looked dark and empty. North took the stairs two at a time and rapped on the front door. No Kingston Ezell-wannabe popped out to take them captive again. Nobody came at all, in fact. What day was it? He tried to do the math. Could it be Sunday? Then he checked his phone. Friday. That seemed impossible. He knocked again, and still nobody came.
“Want to get inside?” Shaw said. “Take a look around?”
North shook his head. “With this video, John-Henry can get a warrant to toss this place.”
“And we’d just fuck everything up.” Frustration twisted his words. “I should have thought of that.”
“We’re both tired.”
Shaw nodded, but he rubbed his eyes. “The church?”
So, they got back in the Sebring, and the car took them back down the drive toward the Epiphany of Light building. By the time they parked, the Sebring was rattling so hard it felt like it was going to fall apart.
