The Blessed and the Damned (Righteous Series #4) Page 7

She opened her mouth as if she was going to deny it, but must have thought about how silly that would appear. “I needed a four-wheel drive. He let me take it. I didn’t tell him where I was going.”

  “Sure, because my father would never ask questions. Anyone can walk in off the street and borrow whatever. Even gentiles. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Let’s go,” Rebecca said. She nudged her companion, and the man led the way down the trail toward the other three. The man’s face hardened as he sized up Jacob.

  Miriam stepped forward. “I’d stop if I were you.”

  They drew short, and without looking, Jacob could tell Miriam had taken out the gun.

  “We’re armed, too,” Rebecca said. “Do you really want a shootout?”

  “It wouldn’t be a shootout, because you’d never reach your guns,” Miriam said. “I’m former law enforcement and I know what I’m doing.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that.”

  “You should also be aware that I’ve killed people before,” Miriam continued. “I don’t like it, but I’ll do it if I have to.”

  “Come on,” Jacob said to Rebecca. “Let’s be reasonable. You step back and Miriam will lower her weapon. We’ll sit down and talk and you can tell me what you’re doing here, who is up there, and what you’re doing for my father.”

  “No,” Rebecca said after a moment, her tone cool, her posture relaxed. Her companion didn’t look so certain. “But I’ll tell you what we’re going to do so there will be no mistake,” she added. “We’re going to walk past. If you step to the side of the trail while we pass—over by that tree—we’ll be out of each other’s way. Nobody will make any sudden moves. Got it?”

  “I can’t let you past,” Jacob said.

  “It doesn’t matter, because we’re going. If anything happens to us, it will be murder. You’ll have to live with that on your conscience. Ready? We’re coming.”

  And because there was nothing to do besides either offering weak threats or carrying them through—which was even more unthinkable—Jacob, Miriam, and David stepped to the side, by the tree, just as Rebecca had instructed. The other two approached with their hands out, nonthreatening. They edged sideways to get by on the trail.

  Jacob clenched his jaw in frustration as they passed. When they’d disappeared around the next bend, Miriam slapped out the clip and checked the chamber of her gun, before putting it all back in her backpack with a scowl.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” David said. He was pale, but it looked more like exhaustion than fear. “Really, it doesn’t change anything. We were on our way up to spy out the Kimball camp. This doesn’t change that.”

  Miriam got out the binoculars and scanned the mountainside ahead of them. “It might, if that woman is working with the Kimballs and there’s another way to get to the camp. She might go around, warn them that we’re snooping around. Wreck our truck while she’s down there so we have no way to get out. Then we’re cooked.”

  “You saw that guy in the tank top and shorts,” David said. “He’s no Mormon. And she’s no polygamist, either, whether she’s from Utah originally or not. Is Taylor Junior so hard up for henchmen that he’d bring in gentiles?”

  “I’d agree,” Jacob said. “But the same argument goes for Father, too. Why wouldn’t he send Stephen Paul or Elder Smoot and his sons? But she’s driving Father’s truck. What are the odds that he didn’t know exactly where she was going and why?”

  “So your father is working with the Kimballs now?” Miriam asked.

  “That cunning bastard, what’s he up to?” David asked.

  “No,” Jacob said after a moment of reflection. “Father is one of the most righteous men I know.”

  “Righteous?” David said with a snort. “Guy wanted me to OD on heroin to prove a point.”

  “I don’t mean he’s always right. Or that he never resorts to underhanded tactics. But he has a sense of right and wrong, and his actions have a certain internal consistency. He’d never work with the Kimballs.”

  “Then how do you explain this?” Miriam asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jacob admitted. “I need to ask him. And I want some answers about what happened to Eliza and how she ended up at the dump. I’ll bet he knows about that, too.”

  Rebecca had pretended to be Madeline Caliari’s mother so that Eliza would go to Caleb Kimball’s desert compound. And if Father had been working with this woman, did that mean he’d known what would happen to Eliza? Caleb had tried to rape Eliza, had thrown her in a pit to starve. She’d almost died out there. Did Abraham Christianson know about that?

  “Maybe I should go back,” he said.

  “What could that possibly accomplish?” Miriam asked.

  “There’s something wrong. My father—what does he know? He’s mixed up in something, and did you see Rebecca? Did it seem to you she was surprised to see us?”

  “Maybe a little surprised,” Miriam said. “Didn’t last long.”

  “What if she’s playing both angles, us and Taylor Junior?” he asked.

  And then another, even darker thought came into his head. Fernie was on her way to Blister Creek, to be with her mother when the baby came. At his father’s house and with that woman lurking around. Who may or may not be working with Taylor Junior.

  David took off his backpack and set it against the tree, then leaned against it as he sank to the ground. “Goodness knows I’d love to sleep in a real bed tonight—assuming we could make it back to the truck before dark—but what has changed, really? You still want to get those other people out, and now it’s obvious we’re on the right trail. We’ve got maps, supplies, and we’re armed. Well, two of us are armed.”

  “You brought a gun, too?”

  “I don’t drag him out to the shooting range for the company,” Miriam said.

  “Look, I say we keep going,” David said. “It could be we get the answers to your questions up at Taylor Junior’s camp.”

  “I can’t see how.” Jacob shook his head. “No, I’ve got to go to Blister Creek. I need answers. We’ll come back in a couple of days.”

  Miriam shook her head. “If Rebecca tips them off, they’ll be gone by then. I’m with David. Let’s press on.”

  But Jacob couldn’t let it go. Not with Rebecca on her way to Blister Creek. Not with his wife headed there, too.

  Miriam must have sensed his decision hardening. “What if we split up? We’ll divide your food. And give David the map and compass. Oh, and the water purification tablets.”

  Jacob eyed David, dubious.

  “I can handle myself,” his brother insisted.

  “And what about the so-called spiritual leadership?” Jacob asked Miriam. “And the negotiating?”

  She shrugged, and he saw her watching David with a curious look on her face, as if she wanted Jacob’s brother to make the case.

  “We’ll scope out the camp, but we’ll stay out of the way until you come back,” David said. “I’ll leave a path for you to find us. Do you remember the rock cairns Grandpa Griggs used to leave when he’d take us camping in the Uintahs?”

  “Sure, I remember. They can be pretty obvious, though.”

  “I’ll be careful, and you’ll be attentive. When I can’t leave a pile of stones, I’ll snap a few branches or leave some other obvious clues. We’ll camp somewhere hidden, secret.”

  Jacob said, “I don’t want to send the two of you in alone. It’s not safe.”

  “Hey, worry about yourself,” David said. “You get in trouble, there’s nobody to bail you out.”

  “Fair enough. Okay, it’s a plan.”

  They spent a few minutes swapping out gear. Jacob’s pack was considerably lighter by the time he hefted it back up. He double-checked his water.

  “Want to take one of the guns in case you run into those two on the way back down?” Miriam asked.

  “I’d rather not. And I’m not planning to get anywhere close to them, anyway. I’m going to kee
p my distance until I see them drive off in my father’s truck with my own eyes.”

  “What if they’ve trashed our truck?” David asked. “Slashed the tires or something.”

  “I’ll hoof it to the highway and hitchhike.”

  “Be careful, Jacob,” Miriam said. “Don’t twist an ankle or get bitten. There won’t be anyone to get you out.”

  “I’m a careful man, you know that.”

  He embraced both of them in turn, and then they broke apart, Miriam and David continuing higher into the mountains toward Taylor Junior’s hidden enclave, and Jacob following the trail down the mountain, on his way back to Blister Creek.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The stalkers arrived the day after Eliza returned to Salt Lake City. She saw them first in the gray hour of predawn, a pair of bearded men standing on the sidewalk, staring down at her basement apartment. Her first inclination was to shrink back from the window, but instead she stared up at them until they turned and walked away.

  Eliza hoped they were the same strange men before she went to Las Vegas, and easily chased off, but they grew more aggressive that evening when they fell in behind her as she was leaving her job at the Red Butte Gardens. They followed her from work to the bus stop and waited outside the covered, heated canopy in the rain. When the bus arrived, they moved to flank her. “Back off,” she warned. They crowded, as if to follow her onto the bus, then stepped back at the last minute. She glanced out the window after taking her seat to see them standing on the curb, staring at her through the rain-splattered window.

  That night, she left home through the back entrance and climbed the chain-link fence into the neighbor’s yard. Emerging on the opposite side of the block, she walked two blocks to the army surplus store, where she bought a collapsible steel baton for her purse. Back home, she drew the curtains and practiced flicking out the baton and swinging at imaginary heads.

  I’ve killed two men, she told herself. I’ll kill again if I have to.

  Eliza took a closer look the following day and recognized one of the men. She was walking through Main Street Plaza, the LDS Church–owned pedestrian mall that stretched from the temple, past the church office building, and up to North State Street. A tall, long-limbed man fell in by her side. Alone this time. She refused to be intimidated, but kept walking. And then she glanced over and felt a jolt of surprise when she saw his face.

  Aaron Young.

  The man had matured, lost the pudgy look he’d carried the day they’d murdered her brother Enoch in the temple. The day she’d killed Gideon Kimball by crushing his head with a chunk of sandstone. Aaron’s face was long and tan, his eyes hard. A scar—had that been there before?—left a pink gash across one cheek and disappeared into a blond beard. Aaron’s older brother, Stephen Paul, was one of Father’s elders in the Quorum of the Twelve. At one time—maybe still, for all she knew—Father had wanted Eliza to become Stephen Paul’s youngest wife. His brother Aaron had been in federal prison last she’d heard. Could he be out already?

  Aaron smiled. “Do you mind the company?”

  “Stop following me—just leave me alone.” She didn’t know whether to pick up her pace or to stop here, in the plaza. Everything was ordered on the pedestrian mall, from the flowers in the planters groomed to the last, perfect blossom to the men in dark suits who stood at intervals, watching. LDS security. She slowed down.

  Aaron matched her pace. “Clever trick, staging your own death. A funeral and everything. Bravo. Too bad the Spirit told us it was a lie.”

  She turned. “I told you to back off. Leave me alone, or—”

  “Or what?”

  “Gideon. Caleb. Do those names mean anything to you?”

  Aaron reached for her arm. She jerked back and made a line to the nearest man with an earpiece and a dark suit. Aaron veered to one side. The security officer stood next to the fountain in front of the LDS Church office tower. He’d be tasked with chasing off any unsavory types who might disturb the ambiance of the plaza: skateboarders, litterers, gay couples, and goth teenagers. Fundamentalist stalkers.

  The guard must have seen fear on her face. He frowned. “Are you okay?”

  Eliza turned to gesture at Aaron Young, but the man was fifty feet away now, walking in a brisk stride and almost off the plaza and onto the public street. She said never mind and sat down on a bench a few feet away, feeling the sun beat down on her face. Her hand crept into her purse and rested on the comforting weight of the collapsible steel baton.

  That evening, when it came time to leave work at the gardens, she stopped her boss, who was also her bishop in the ward. “Could I ask you a favor? Would you walk with me to the bus stop?”

  “Is everything okay, Eliza? Has someone been bothering you again?”

  Eliza half regretted telling him about the creeps who’d come through the gardens, while the other half wished she could tell him the full story. But he knew enough about her polygamist background that he’d go into full-protect mode. She didn’t want him to call the police or send people from the ward to hover over her. Eliza had come to Salt Lake precisely to get away from that level of smothering concern.

  “It’s probably nothing. But I just—well, would you mind?”

  He didn’t mind. In fact, he insisted on driving her home himself. On the way to the parking lot, he spoke to her in even tones, reassuring her that she’d be fine, and then suggested she get a roommate or move into student housing closer to the university.

  “I’m okay where I am, really.”

  The University of Utah stretched below the Red Butte Gardens, and below that lay the Salt Lake Valley. It was a clear evening, and she could see all the way to the Great Salt Lake, then south to Point of the Mountain. The valley was a vast, flat-bottomed bowl, with mountains defining the horizon in every direction. Thousands of lights twinkled, with a bright, floodlit center downtown at Temple Square.

  Bishop Larsen fished out his keys and unlocked the door to his car, which sat by itself on the far side of the lot. “Or maybe find a nice returned missionary who is ready to settle down. You know Tyler McIves was asking about you. He’s in his second year of law school. Bright kid, you need someone like that. I could—”

  Eliza grabbed his arm. “Look.”

  A man crossed the parking lot toward them. She recognized him as one of the men who had stalked her to the bus stop. And when she turned, a second man was walking from around the side of the building, where he must have been waiting for her to exit.

  “We’re closed,” Bishop Larsen said. His voice was loud, but pinched and higher than his normal range, and she felt his arm tremble under her hand.

  The second man stepped into the parking lot, beneath the streetlamps. Aaron Young again. “We came for the girl. Walk away, old man, this doesn’t concern you.”

  “Leave her alone,” Larsen said. He stepped in front of Eliza, held out his arms, and looked from one man to the other as they approached, as if trying to protect her from stray dogs. But his arms constrained her own movement. She took two steps back, put her hand in her purse, and wrapped it around the heavy steel baton.

  The two men must have seen her move, because they stopped about ten feet apart, flanking Eliza and her would-be protector. “What have you got there?” Aaron asked. “A gun? Are you armed, Eliza?”

  “Take another step forward and you’ll find out.”

  “Let’s see it, Eliza. Show us the gun.”

  But of course she couldn’t show it to them, because she didn’t have one. They started forward again. The delay had given her the chance to settle her nerves, and she made a sudden decision. She let the purse fall off her shoulder to the ground, but kept the baton in hand. A flick of the wrist and she had it out. She swung at Aaron. He danced away from the blow, but she whirled around and caught the other man on the shoulder as he charged. He grunted in pain.

  But before she could hit him again, Aaron had her by the wrist. He twisted her arm behind her back and forced it loose. She br
ought her other elbow back into his gut and temporarily fought free.

  “Leave her alone!” Bishop Larsen screamed.

  The attackers ignored him and pinned Eliza’s arms. Bishop Larsen waded in and took a sluggish swing, but Aaron knocked it out of the way, drew back his fist, and smashed the older man in the nose. Larsen fell, came up with blood streaming from his nose.

  “Stay down. This has nothing to do with you.”

  But Bishop Larsen, overmatched as he was, rose shakily to his feet. His voice came out even weaker than before. “Somebody, help! Stay away from her, or you’ll be sorry. Help!”

  The two men fell back. Eliza snatched up her steel baton, but they’d already turned and now walked away in long strides. When they were down the hill and out of sight on the main sidewalk, she collapsed the baton.

  “See,” Bishop Larsen said. “We fought them off.” He wobbled and she grabbed his arm to steady him. “Now we should probably—” He spit blood. “We should call the police.”

  Eliza retrieved her purse, put away the baton, and fished out a handkerchief, which she used to wipe at the blood on his face. “Thank you for that,” she said, “but I want to go home, please. Press it against your nose. No, like this.” He did as she said, and then she led him toward the car. “Are you good to drive?”

  He nodded, seemed a little steadier as he said, “Give me a second. I’ll be okay.”

  But he was still wobbly, so she drove. She was silent on the way to her apartment. What was going on? She’d assumed that Aaron would leave her alone now that he’d punctured their little game with the fake funeral. So why escalate matters? And if the men had meant to hurt her, why had they stopped?

  They arrived at her apartment. She lived on a well-lit, quiet street in the Avenues. One of the neighbors was wheeling out her garbage cans, and another neighbor across the street chatted with two elderly men, probably home teachers from the ward. Bishop Larsen didn’t offer to walk her to the door. When she got out, he slid across into the driver’s seat, rather than get out and go around. Maybe he was afraid the ward members would recognize him and he’d have to explain the blood on his shirt and why he was out at this hour with a young, single woman from the ward, instead of home with his wife and children.