Mighty and Strong (The Righteous) Read online

  “Four.”

  He blinked. It took a second for his mind to catch up.

  “I'm pregnant.”

  He pulled back, stared with his mouth hanging open. “Are you sure? How did that happen?”

  “It would seem that I ovulated. Your sperm entered my fallopian tube. . .your medical training can fill in the details.” The smile on her face looked forced.

  “Fernie, what about the birth control? Did you miss any days?”

  “Can we please not talk about that now? Please, Jacob, I can't. I'm in trouble, such big trouble. And tonight I need you to be patient, to love me. We'll take these problems slowly, and we'll get through them.”

  She stroked his cheek with her hand. That naked vulnerability, the absolute need. The way her breath rose and fell, and her cheek flushed. She'd changed to a nightgown before he came from talking to Brother Timothy and Brother Clarence and now his eyes were drawn to the soft swell of her breasts. And he wanted her with a crazy, dizzying need that shoved aside his fear, his worry, his anger and frustration.

  “Jacob,” she said. Her voice was low in her throat. “Make love to me.”

  “No, I can't. Not tonight.” He tried to disengage, but she put her hand around his neck and her other hand grabbed his shirt.

  He couldn't resist her, he never could. During those horrible years, when she'd been given to Elder Taylor Kimball, he had been unable to put her out of his head.

  As a teenage girl, she'd had a young, boyish figure, slight breasts that he'd often dreamed about touching. Now that she was older, with children, her body had filled out. The way she smiled with a quirk of the lips was the same, the glint in her eyes. And the way he still thought about putting his hands on her breasts.

  They were there now, before he realized what he was doing. He tugged open the drawstring at the top of her nightgown and slid his fingers down her collarbone, to the swell of her breast. Lower, until he brushed her nipple. It was hot between his fingers. It tightened and she drew in her breath.

  “Your hands are cold,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Put them on me. Make them warm.”

  She reached over to dim the lamp. He wanted to look at her, see her body as he drew her nightgown over her head. But there were children sleeping in the corners of the room, so instead, they crawled beneath the blankets.

  They took it like new lovers, tentatively kissing, touching, exploring. Once, he thought she was crying, but a moment later he thought it was gasps of passion.

  “It will be okay, everything will turn out,” he said. “You'll see.”

  “Put yourself inside me.” Her hand reached down to guide him.

  He wanted to wait, to make it last, but she was on top of him and he didn't resist as she rocked her hips back, pushed down onto him. He slid inside.

  #

  Later, on top and spent, Jacob collapsed against Fernie. She stroked his hair, now damp with sweat. He felt himself drifting, almost sinking with his own weight into the bed. It was that rare moment when he could feel the world blur around the edges as he fell into sleep.

  “Brother Timothy asked me about sister wives,” she said.

  With that, he was awake. He lifted his head. “What did he say?”

  “He asked if I was humble enough to share my husband, said that his counselor should be sealed in plural marriage.”

  “And?”

  “I said of course, if it were the right woman. He promised she'd be young and teachable. He'll bring me two girls, let me choose one or both.”

  “How about neither,” Jacob said. He rolled onto his side.

  “It's what the Lord wants.”

  “How can you talk about sharing me, after what just happened between us? I can't imagine you with some other man, not again, not after all those years with Taylor Kimball, it would tear me up. I can't share you.”

  “You won't have to. I'm the one who'll be sharing, and I'm at peace with that, because it's what the Lord wants.”

  “But can't you understand? I don't want to share and I don't want to be shared. I'm not made that way, I'm made for one person, and that person is you. Isn't that enough?”

  “Let's meet these girls,” Fernie said. “And then we'll talk.”

  “And what if one of them is Emma Green?”

  “The girl from the hospital?”

  “She threw herself at me again yesterday. She thinks the prophet will give me to her and for all I know he will. She's sixteen. No, she hasn't even had her birthday yet. She's still fifteen years old. Fifteen!”

  “That could be perfect,” Fernie said. “We'll say yes, but only when she's eighteen. I'll feel better, knowing we're moving in the right direction, and you'll have a couple of years to get used to the idea.”

  “She's so young. Foolish, naive. I can't imagine being with someone like that.”

  “I was young when we fell in love, remember? I grew up and so will she.”

  “You were young and they married you off to some old guy, not me, remember? How did that turn out?”

  “Jacob, please.”

  “And two years? The Church of the Last Days doesn't have two years. It's going to burn hard and fast, and then it will be gone.”

  “Unless Brother Timothy really is the One Mighty and Strong,” Fernie said. “Don't forget that.”

  “Fernie, if he is the One Mighty and Strong, then the end of the world is at hand. Either way, I'm not marrying that girl.”

  #

  Someone slipped a note beneath Jacob's door while he slept. He read it with suspicion, then growing worry

  Jacob, I need your help. Please, please meet me right after breakfast. URGENT.

  He pocketed it with a glance over his shoulder. The children were stirring, Fernie made the bed. She did not appear to see the note. Later, waiting in the queue outside the men's bathroom with Daniel, his hand stole into his pocket.

  “Are you ready, Brother Jacob?”

  Jacob turned, startled. There were a dozen men ahead of him in line, and another ten or fifteen behind, all waiting for one of the three solar-heated showers. They wore pajamas, held towels and bars of homemade soap.

  It was Brother Timothy, a few places back. He stood with his son, maybe seven years old. Daniel and the prophet's son exchanged shy glances.

  “Good morning, brother,” Jacob said. “Ready for what?”

  “You've been here three days. Your wife and children came. You've had a chance to see the work. It's time to ordain you as my second counselor.”

  The men between them watched, and more glances came from up and down the line. Nobody looked surprised. Yesterday evening, when Jacob roiled with emotions at seeing his family across from him at dinner, an elderly man from Blister Creek approached, patted his shoulder and said, “I always knew the Lord had set you apart for great things, Brother Jacob.”

  These were his allies in Zarahemla, the refugees from Blister Creek, Harmony, White Valley. Many had known him since he was a child, were cousins or friends of the family. He'd heard similar comments since he was a child, when adults confused his knowledge of the scriptures with belief and testimony.

  “I thought you might ask me,” Jacob told Brother Timothy. “Which is why I'd decided to skip breakfast this morning so I can fast and get in the proper frame of mind.”

  “And prayer?”

  “Of course. I've got a few patients to see and then I'll take my questions to the Lord. I'm almost ready, but before you ordain me, I need personal confirmation.”

  “I can keep the chapel clear, if you'd like.”

  “I'm thinking about hiking into the hills for a couple of hours. I get my best inspiration outside, in nature.”

  He kept his voice confident. If Brother Timothy had the gift of discernment, now was the time to use it, because Jacob was lying about his reasons for leaving the compound. He removed his hand slowly from his pocket, where it had wrapped around the note.

  “Of course, take as long as yo
u need.”

  “Is this your son?” Jacob asked. “What's his name?”

  “This is Aaron. He turns eight next week.”

  “Hey, you're going to be baptized. That's exciting.” Jacob nodded at his own son. “This is Daniel. He turns eight in October. You guys will be in the same Sunday School class.”

  “Do you ever see any lizards around here?” Daniel asked.

  “Yeah, my brother and I caught two blue bellies,” Aaron said.

  “Cool, you still have them?”

  “We tried to feed them crickets, but they wouldn't eat, so my dad made me let 'em go before they died. You know how to get them to eat?”

  “Maybe they didn't get enough light, I don't know.”

  The two boys continued to discuss the care and capture of lizards as the line moved forward. Jacob reached the bathrooms, but Brother Timothy motioned for him to hold up and let someone else go first.

  “I told Sister Fernie I'd introduce your prospective wives and let her choose,” he said in a quieter voice. “Why don't we get together this evening, break bread as families, apart from the group. I'll show you who I have in mind.”

  Jacob nodded. “Sounds good.”

  “After we get those things resolved, I'll bring you up to speed with our plans to establish the kingdom.”

  “Okay.”

  “It's hard to take in all at once, and I don't want to rush you. As soon as you're ready, you'll know everything.”

  #

  As Jacob hiked along the irrigation canal, he reread the note.

  Jacob, I need your help. Please, please meet me right after breakfast. URGENT.

  And signed, not by Sister Miriam, but “Haley Kite.”

  And then directions for following the irrigation canal, turning right on the overgrown ranch road and continuing until the outcrop of rock with an X scratched into it. Left up the dry wash.

  He'd been caught up in worry for his wife and children, the turmoil of learning Fernie was pregnant, and schemes for how he could get them out of Zarahemla, and hadn't given Sister Miriam much thought.

  Good thing. The conversation in Price had been like a brush with poison oak. He couldn't open his mind wide enough to explain how an outsider, trained to infiltrate drug cartels and polygamist cults, had got sucked into the belief system.

  Unless he was wrong. Unless he'd misread her, that she was, in fact, such a good liar and so far underground that she'd simply added another layer to her story and fooled him, too. The note, signed by Haley Kite, seemed to indicate as much.

  He reached the old road. A jackrabbit exploded from the brush, then was gone. It gave him a start. The road curved around a hill. The sun felt like the heating coil of an oven as it rose relentlessly in the sky.

  Brush choked the wash, taking advantage of the extra water in its sandy soil. It didn't seem the sort of place to draw hikers, but several other sets of footprints traversed the sandy spots. He rounded the corner to see Sister Miriam in her dress, squatting with her back turned.

  “Well, here I am,” Jacob said.

  She turned, startled.

  “You did leave me a note, right? You were expecting me.”

  “You won't be smiling when you see what I found,” she said. “Stop, wait.”

  He held up, confused.

  “See my footsteps? Can you follow them in?”

  Jacob didn't like her tone of voice. She had a pair of trowels and was digging at something. An edge of blue fabric emerged from the ground and he could see a larger disturbed area. “Tell me that isn't what I think it is.”

  “I'm afraid it is.”

  “Who?”

  “I don't know, that's what I'm trying to find out.”

  “Do you know what happened?” he asked.

  “That's why I need your help.”

  Jacob picked his way across the ground, following her footsteps. “It doesn't look good.”

  “No, it doesn't. It's a woman, and you can see her hand here, it's not an old woman. Best case scenario, she died in an accident, and someone feels guilty enough to hide it.”

  She bent and started digging where the hand, already white and discolored, came out of the sand.

  “Don't you think we should call in the experts?” Jacob asked.

  She wiped the back of her hand against her forehead, cleared away a sheen of sweat, and left a sandy trail in its wake. “And you know what they'll do, right? They'll come in hard and fast, seal off the compound, provoke a confrontation. Don't you want to be sure, first?”

  “This isn't the first time I've heard that argument,” Jacob said. “When I was just a medical student, church leaders called me to look into a suspicious death in Blister Creek. I should have known better, but I couldn't keep away. And you know, if we'd just gone to the police in the first place we could have avoided a whole lot of ugliness. By the time it was over, we'd turned up every dark secret in town.”

  “This isn't like that, it's different.”

  “It's always different, that's what people always believe.”

  “I don't know what happened in Blister Creek, but this isn't like that. Satan has infiltrated the church and is doing his best to stop the work from going forward, that's what this is about.”

  “And here I thought you'd fooled me,” Jacob said. “I thought you really were on the case and just didn't trust me. But no, you actually believe it all.”

  “Of course I believe, you jerk. And are you really that blind? Can't you see how good these people are, how sincere?”

  “I don't have time for this crap. There's a dead body buried here. Where's the sincere in that? So what if most of them are good? Someone isn't, and he's using the church as cover to murder people.”

  “Just shut up for a minute and let me explain,” Miriam said.

  “You don't have to explain. You think the prophet can walk on water—and that's not a metaphor. You think this is the Lord's only true church. So there couldn't possibly be anything rotten inside.”

  “Obviously, there's something rotten. That's not what I mean. Just help me exhume the body and tell me how she died and how long ago.”

  “You'll lose your job for this.”

  “I already quit, remember?” she said. She returned to her knees and dug around the edges of the body. Going at it all wrong, of course.

  “Okay, then, I'll lose my job. Wait, I already lost mine, too. Oh, shit.”

  “Please watch the profane language.”

  “Profane language? Are you out of your mind? Your last job you were giving a blow job to a drug lord when your buddies came in with drawn weapons. So please, enough with the lectures already.”

  “That was someone else. That was not me.”

  “Whatever.”

  “You would never understand because you—oh, never mind. Are you going to help me?”

  “Fine, I'll help. But stop what you're doing, just don't touch it anymore.” He picked up the second trowel. “If we're going to do this, let's at least do it right.”

  Chapter Twenty-two:

  The conspirators came together one at a time outside the capitol building. From here you could see down to Temple Square and in the early days of the plot—way back in early March, when snow stood in mounds at the edges of the parking lots, rotting under the weight of the spring sun and the gunk the city threw down to keep the pavement from freezing—they had met here to plan their assault on the apostate church's illicit control of holy ground.

  Fear-Not came first, strolling across the grass in front of the domed building that seemed massive, permanent, but would soon lie in ruins. Zeal came next, his eyes narrow, hard.

  “What is it?” Fear-Not asked. “What is that look?”

  “Have you ever killed anyone?”

  “Why, have you?”

  “The Lord's ways are not always easy.”

  That one sentence held more depth than Fear-Not expected of the young man. “Tell me again, did you kill someone?”

  Vigilant was a
pproaching now and the two others turned, shook his hand.

  “That's between me and the Lord,” Zeal continued.

  Fear-Not hardened his voice. “Listen to me. The Lord's house is a house of order.”

  Vigilant looked between the two of them with a frown. “What is it, what's the matter? Did something happen?”

  Fear-Not said, “Zeal has killed someone, or is thinking about killing someone.”

  “Aren't we all?” Vigilant said. “That's what this is about. Killing. Lots and lots of killing.”

  “Not randomly. It needs to be under my direction, not when someone feels the whim.”

  “You have that backwards,” Vigilant said, surprising him. “It's the Lord who decides who lives and dies.”

  Fear-Not glanced over the man's shoulder at a police cruiser that circled the Capital Building before heading harmlessly down the hill into the city. “Are you afraid? Is that it?”

  Vigilant lifted bushy gray eyebrows. “Who is in charge, you or the prophet?”

  “I'm Brother Timothy's agent.”

  “Are you? Are you sure?” Vigilant asked.

  “Fear and doubt are Satan's plan,” Fear-Not said. “They do not bring about the Lord's righteous purpose. Do you remember the day we retired to the hills and formed a prayer circle? There was a divine presence in our meeting that day, my brothers. It was clear what we had to do.”

  “Right, but we thought we were going after this senator and his brother. Enemies of the church.”

  “This is the same thing. It will provoke the confrontation we need.”

  Vigilant shook his head. “I've seen them, I've watched them. If we go after the FBI we might not survive. These agents are smart, dangerous.”

  “Did you expect Satan to send someone stupid and weak?”

  “This whole conversation is stupid, that's what,” Zeal said. “Standing around talking, when we know what we have to do. Let's get down there and do it. If they kill us, they kill us. Then we'll know, won't we? And we'll be in the Celestial Kingdom, so it won't matter.”