The Firstborn (41 page)

“And He shows us more.”

Morris shook his head. “Not always. Sometimes He remains silent.”

“Why?” she asked, certain her brow was furrowing.

“So that we will reach out.”

“To what?”

Morris looked her over, considering for a moment. “Close your eyes.”

She looked him over for a moment, then complied. Her eyes drifted shut, darkness overtaking her.

A world of black.

“Now think of something from your past,” Morris said, his voice coming from some disconnected place, the tones humming off the cellar walls.

Her mind searched for something to dwell on—her grandfather. She saw his face, gray and warm. He smiled at her.

“Now reach out,” Morris said.

“What?” Hannah said, eyelids lifting.

“Keep your eyes closed. Reach out…with your soul.”

“How?” she asked, totally uncertain.

“Do you know what eternity is?”

“I guess so.”

“It’s the world free of time. Touch eternity.”

Her thoughts went dark. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She felt a hand touch hers. “Listen to what I say. Your body takes up only a fraction of this room. One room in one house on one continent. Seven billion people live on this tiny planet—one planet in an entire solar system. One star in millions that make up a galaxy. One galaxy in thousands—all in an endless expanse of space that goes on and on without fathomable measure. And it’s all simply a fraction of eternity.”

Hannah’s heart rate picked up as she considered how small she really was.

“It’s all the work of an eternal God,” he said softly. “He’s reaching out to you—simply…reach back.”

She felt her body shudder, her thoughts numb. Hannah’s mind flooded with thoughts of her grandfather.

Thoughts from her childhood.

Her adolescence.

His home.

His words.

His murder.

Hannah felt herself trying to claw away from the thoughts in her mind—but some other part of her was still reaching out.

Blake and her grandfather.

Anger.

Shouting.

Shoving.

Tumbling. Down. Down. Down.

Blake seething, panicking.

Then she saw something else—something that confused her, unsettled her—a sensation of sickness coming over her.

A figure—not a man, something else.

Like a man but drenched in shadow.

Blake did not acknowledge the form.

It simply whispered in Blake’s ear—compelling him to—

Something.

Hannah’s thoughts broke and she looked up at Morris.

“You saw something,” he said with a nod.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Reach out,” he said again, “and He’ll reach back.”

Chapter 23

I
T WAS NEARLY DAWN
.

A soft glow was just starting to creep over the horizon, the darkness becoming more penetrable.

Devin Bathurst rubbed his eyes. He was wide-awake, but his eyes itched. He imagined the stressed blood vessels that crisscrossed over the surface of his eyes bulging with the strain of overwork, their outer walls pressing against the interior of his eyelids, teasing the soft flesh. It felt like sand.

He was almost there.

He’d driven the rest of the night, from Pennsylvania to upstate New York.

Morris Childs’s house was less than ten minutes away. He needed to get there before dawn—his operation would go more smoothly under the cover of darkness. Devin glanced at the green glowing numbers on the dashboard clock. Just after 4:00 a.m. He had a few more hours of darkness—he hoped.

By the time he glanced at the clock again, his ten minutes had passed, and he could see the familiar turns leading up to Morris Childs’s house. He parked the car along the side of the road and walked toward the edge of the outside fence.

The house was big, nearly four thousand square feet, a luxury Morris had afforded himself after years of successful business practice.

Devin stood at the outside edge of the house, looking through the fence. There were probably half a dozen guards patrolling around outside. It was like a movie. But Devin knew the odds better than that. One did not simply march into a place like this when he wasn’t welcome.

If this were a film, he’d have snuck up behind a patrolling guard, dealt a swift karate chop to the back of the neck, dropped the man like a sack of potatoes, taken the man’s uniform, and slipped in.

But this was real life.

If you try to sneak up on a guard and he spots you, there is no second chance. He radios for help, and where there had been one, there would now be five—and in real life people don’t shoot for dramatic effect. Every bullet is meant to kill.

This was stupid, he thought. A ridiculous thought that wouldn’t work. It was hopeless to think that he’d get in. But the future of the Firstborn was at stake. He had to end Overseer—

—and that meant dealing with Morris Childs.

There was only one thing left that Devin knew to do.

Devin draped his black sport coat over a branch and rolled up his sleeves. He dropped to his knees in the soggy dirt, back straight, hands clasped—the way his grandmother had taught him to pray. His breath came in and went out, his body relaxing, joints easing.

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

It wasn’t a complicated prayer, the simplest of all—and the most routine of any ever learned, and yet it meant the world.

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses…”

Devin’s voiced stopped. He was beseeching God to help him break into another man’s property—to trespass literally.

“As we forgive those who trespass against us…”

He thought of John’s words.

His lips stopped, unable to continue.

“Hey,” a voice announced, a flood of light washing suddenly across the landscape from behind, “what are you doing here?”

Devin lifted his hands slowly, a sign of surrender. He lifted his body up to his feet and turned around, staring into the flashlight. “My name is Devin Alexander Bathurst. I’m here to see Morris Childs.”

“Bathurst?” the guard said. “Somebody said you were dead.”

“No.”

The flashlight flicked off and the guard approached. “I’m Shawn,” he announced, thrusting out a hand.

Devin looked down, confused, then shook the hand. “Are you a member of the Domani?”

“Prima, but Henry Rice told me what you did for his granddaughter. That was pretty gutsy.”

Devin nodded. “Thank you.”

Shawn scratched the back of his head, adjusting the SPAS twelve-gauge slung across his chest. “Look, if Blake knew you were alive, he’d see to it that it was temporary. I’m supposed to shoot you on sight if I see you, but I don’t want to. I know who you are and what you’ve done. I’ve always respected you. So, just make it easy on both of us and get lost for a little while, OK?” Shawn grimaced. “Put your head down. Find someplace to hide for a couple of weeks. This whole thing will have blown over by then, right?”

“No,” Devin replied flatly.

Shawn shook his head. “I’m not saying I agree with them, but they really will kill you if they catch you.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to deal with that.”

Shawn balked. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“As I said, I’m here to see Morris Childs.”

The guard shook his head. “That’s not a good idea. These people want you dead.”

“Do you?”

A scoff. “No, I don’t want you dead, but Blake’s Overseer now. We do what he says.”

“Why?”

“Authority placed on Earth by God. We don’t question that.”

Devin was silent for a moment, speechless. Could this man really think that it was the will of God to simply do what he was told—to ignore the tiny voice inside of him that made him think that maybe this was a bad idea?

After a moment he spoke. “You really won’t question Blake, will you?”

“Nobody likes a naysayer.”

Devin shook his head as he considered the words he was to say. “The world needs people who are different from us, who disagree with us. We have to consider that they may be right.”

Shawn blinked. “Why?”

“Because it keeps us humble. It’s not comfortable, but holiness and comfort don’t live in the same place.”

Shawn took a moment to digest this new information, then opened his mouth to speak. “Look, as far as I’m concerned, I never saw you. If you leave now, then nobody ever has to know you were here. OK?”

“Groupthink,” Devin said with a scoff.

“What?”

“Groupthink is when people stop challenging the way things are being done. It becomes easier to go along and get along than to stand up and consider if any of this should actually be done.”

Shawn looked thoughtful. “What about the leaders? They take a stand, don’t they?”

“Oh, sure. They make up their minds and punish those who disagree. Soon all of the discontents scatter or shut their mouths. The system thinks that it’s impervious—that it cannot fail. Underlings lie to their superiors, telling them that nothing is wrong, that everything is under control, and the system continues without regard for the chinks in its own armor—until the day something goes wrong.”

“And then?”

“Pride comes before a fall.”

Crickets chirped through the night air. Neither spoke for several moments.

Devin spoke, “I need your help.”

Shawn ambled across the lawn, looking back at the trees as he moved. His eyes shifted forward again, toward the other guard. Domani Paramilitary. He didn’t know the man—most of them didn’t know each other. Most were still reeling from the thought that they were now expected to start trusting one another—or at least trust that Overseer knew what he was doing when he threw them all together. The man was patrolling near the side of the house, looking bored.

“Hey,” Shawn announced loudly across the grass, drawing the other guard’s attention.

The other man raised a gloved finger to his lips, exasperation covering his face. “Quiet,” he hushed back. “There are people sleeping.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s OK,” the guard replied, rubbing at his drooping eyelids. “What do you need?”

“There’s something I think you should take a look at.”

The Domani man looked around. “Can it wait?”

“Just come with me.”

The guard opened his mouth to protest, then shrugged. “All right.”

Shawn led the guard toward the trees…away from the house.

Devin watched as Shawn led the guard away from his position, leaving the entire side of the house unpatrolled for a moment.

He’d been studying the movements of the guards. They weren’t precise, or clockwork of any kind, but they were regular. It would be only a few minutes before the next guard came around the corner.

A brief window of opportunity.

Shawn and the guard were out of sight.

He moved. His black shoes nearly slipped as he moved his way across the wet grass. The house was getting closer by the moment, the structure looming over him. He stopped, dropping to a knee, cringing at the thought of yet another grass stain on his dress pants. Devin dropped to his chest and looked around—no guard yet.