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“Where the hell do you get off?” Jed shouted.
“Watch your language,” Mrs. Moss said, and Jed flinched. “Call for security.”
Glaring, Jed reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a walkie-talkie.
“Go ahead,” North said. “It’ll be good to have an audience for this video.”
Whatever color still remained under Gideon’s spray-on tan drained out of him now. Jed’s tan was better, but he froze, the walkie halfway to his mouth.
Mrs. Moss only watched. The silence had a sound to it—the almost imperceptible hiss of an enormous HVAC system circulating air quietly and efficiently.
“He’s talking about the videos you paid Adam Ezell to get for you,” Shaw said, directing the words to Jed. “The ones you were going to use to blackmail your brother into leaving the ministry.”
Gid stood up so fast the director’s chair toppled over. “What?”
Mrs. Moss took a deep breath and said, “Call Chief Cassidy.”
“What the fuck are they talking about?” He spun toward Jed, and he must have seen the guilt on his brother’s face—it was pretty clear to North, anyway. Jed gaped at Gid, still clutching the walkie. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Watch your mouth, Gideon,” Mrs. Moss snapped. “Jedidiah, call Chief Cassidy right now. Tell him to be discreet.”
“You?” Gid shouted at Jed. “You were going to blackmail me?”
Jed seemed to have recovered. As he traded the walkie for a cellphone, he shook his head. “Give me a break, Gid.”
“I get half! That was always what Dad said!”
“Jesus.”
“I get half!” The scream rang out in the sanctuary. “I earned it! It’s mine!”
“It’s yours,” Jed said, and he seemed to forget the phone as he turned his attention on Gid again. “You earned it. What the fuck did you do to earn it? Jack off and smoke meth and pay for pussy because you can’t get it on your own?”
“Jedidiah—” Mrs. Moss began.
“He was dipping it in the girls at that jail, Mom. You didn’t ever wonder about that? Why he had to drive halfway across the goddamn state for that stupid prison ministry?”
The shock on Mrs. Moss’s face, at least, seemed genuine.
“Oh, we were going to—” Shaw said. “I mean, that was actually kind of our big reveal. One of them anyway. So, you know, if you could say, ‘Spoiler alert’ next time or—”
Mrs. Moss rounded on Gid. “How stupid are you?”
But Gid was still fixed on Jed. “What about the time you got that Maddox girl pregnant, huh? What about that? Who got her that fucking abortion?”
“You don’t show up for services,” Jed was saying back, his volume competing with Gid’s. “When you do, you’re drunk. You can’t be bothered to prepare anything, so when we put you on stage, you mumble and ramble and nobody has any idea what the hell you’re saying—”
“Boys!” Mrs. Moss clapped her hands, and maybe for the first time in her life, it didn’t work. North wondered if next she might bring out the wooden spoon.
“You piece of shit!” Gid’s shout echoed through the sanctuary. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Wrong with me?” Jed laughed. “You know what, Gid? You’re a joke. Out of your head on that damn pipe and then jamming pills down your gullet to keep your heart from exploding in your chest. Half the time you’re gone to that club, and we’re all supposed to pretend we don’t know what you’re doing, what goes on there.” His voice softened to weary familiarity. “Come on, Gid. You hate doing the preacher bit. You’ve always hated it. I was doing you a favor.”
Gid swung. It was a wild blow, and it went wide. Jed scrambled back, eyes huge, his own hands coming up like he might ward Gid off. But Gid didn’t go after him. He stood there, panting, his face that awful, bleached white.
A laugh slipped free from Jed. It was a crazy sound, like something with its tail cut off. He rubbed a hand over his hair. But he turned away from Gid, obviously having decided that his brother wasn’t going to press the attack. To North and Shaw, he said, “You guys can go on and blow. Gid’s not going anywhere, and he’s certainly not talking to you. If the police want to talk to our lawyer, they can, but it’ll be a waste of time. He had sex with those women, that’s all. What are they going to do? Tell him he can’t go back?”
“It might be a bit more serious than that,” Shaw said. “Sexual relationships with inmates are illegal because inmates can’t give consent. I think once Chief Somerset has time to interview some of those women, they’ll tell a different story about what happened to them, and Gid will probably be looking at sexual assault charges.”
