The Caleb Collection Read online

He had come back to his son.

  “Hooting and hollering? Sounds kind of like what we did yesterday.”

  “I know. I became a hooting and hollering redneck Christian yesterday, and it makes me cringe. I don’t have a clue what that means.”

  “It means you will follow Christ.”

  “And what does following Christ look like? That’s the point: most Christians I’ve seen do their thing in the church maybe, but they don’t follow the teachings of Christ. Do they?” He shook the Bible. “They don’t do what he did.”

  She thought about that. He was right, but his line of reasoning bothered her. She’d spent the day yesterday releasing all the voices that questioned God, and he was bringing them back.

  “So not all people who call themselves Christians follow the teachings of Christ. So every movement has its pretenders. I’ll give you that. Are you saying that just because a person doesn’t walk around healing everyone they touch like Caleb does, they aren’t a true believer?”

  “Of course not. Dr. Thompson doesn’t walk around like Caleb, and I have no doubt he follows Christ. But how many Christians have you met that show any power at all? I mean any?”

  “Depends what you mean by power. Dr. Thompson seemed to suggest that what we see with our eyes isn’t the half of it. Whoever said that a straightened hand—”

  “—is any greater than a healed heart,” he finished for her. “I know.”

  “And yesterday we saw some of that, didn’t we?”

  “Yesterday was just a bit unique.” He cocked his head, challenging.

  “I’ve seen other good people who call themselves Christians.”

  “Some. In a nation supposedly half filled with them. And how many of those showed any power at all that couldn’t be explained by a third grader?”

  She didn’t have an answer for that.

  “All I’m saying is that it casts questions on the whole crowd. God is real, and I’ve met him. He’s Christ. But who is he? And where are all his followers? Besides Caleb and Dr. Thompson and a few dozen others?”

  “It all comes back to your son, doesn’t it?”

  He sat back and sighed. “Maybe.”

  His face looked haggard in that moment, as if a load still hung around his neck. He diverted his eyes and took another sip of cola. It occurred to her that she had become quite used to his company over this past month. She almost enjoyed a good argument from him. He was as sharp as she, and they complemented each other well. And in these last two weeks his bright blue eyes had been speaking a language that was totally unfamiliar to her.

  Well, not totally. She’d nearly married once, before the accident. But it had been long enough ago that she hardly remembered. And the thought of being intimate with anyone now brought a shiver to her spine.

  If there ever were a person, though, it would be someone like Jason.

  “I’m surprised you don’t feel the same way,” he said.

  At first she didn’t know what that meant. And then she did. He’s talking about your burns, Leiah. She stiffened.

  “Not just you, of course, but anyone who’s felt pain or suffering.” He had seen her stiffen and was digging himself out. Leiah picked up her glass and crossed her legs. Heat washed down her back, and she wasn’t sure why. What he said wasn’t wrong.

  “I mean especially people like you and me who’ve faced pain.” He followed her lead by picking up his glass.

  Leiah felt herself slide into a place she hated being. A cocoon that made no sense. A place of anger and fear and strange comfort.

  “Don’t you agree?”

  She wanted to turn to him and answer, but her mind was suddenly swimming in its own brew of self-pity. Because he was telling her that she was no different than Stephen, wasn’t he? She, too, had been passed over.

  “Leiah, please. I didn’t mean anything offensive.”

  “I didn’t say I was offended.”

  “No, but you are. Either offended or scared or both.”

  “I wasn’t aware you knew me so well.”

  “I don’t. You won’t let me get that close, remember?”

  Oh, Jason. Dear Jason, what are you saying? “Please let’s not take this any further,” she said.

  He unfolded his legs and leaned forward. “Why not? I feel different, you know. Ever since yesterday. Pretending isn’t sitting so well anymore. I feel like saying what’s really on my mind.”

  Leiah wanted to leave then. She’d never seen him so open and it did scare her. Not that it should scare her—it should have her laughing. But it didn’t.

  “You know what’s really on my mind?” he asked. “Well, let’s start with the fact that I don’t know how in the world this happened, but I think that maybe, just maybe, I’ve fallen in love with you. And I’m tired of pretending that I haven’t. Because now that I’ve said it, I know it’s a fact. I’m in love with you. And it scares me to death.”

  A chill snaked down Leiah’s back. For years she had secretly hoped for just this. For a strong, independent man to love her for who she was, burns and all. She’d dreamed his face a thousand times, smiling tenderly and saying those words: I love you, Leiah.

  And in the last three weeks that face had blue eyes and blond hair and spoke like Jason. Not in a hundred years had she dared to dream her independent man would be so handsome and so kind.

  Yet now, hearing him say it, she wanted to shrivel up and vanish. But she wasn’t the kind to cower; she was the kind to snap. It came without warning.

  “How dare you play with me?” she snapped.

  “Playing? I’m not—”

  “Do you have any idea how cruel you can be?” She was beyond reason now, and by his wide eyes he knew it as well. “You don’t just take salt and dump it into a wounded heart for the sport of it!”

  “I . . . this isn’t just sport.”

  “And you don’t toss a woman’s heart around as if it were a ball!” She was fairly spitting the words. “How dare you?”

  Jason stood and threw both hands up like a policeman. “Stop it! Just stop it. I love you! Do you hear me? I love you, Leiah!”

  He was breathing hard. They were both breathing hard. And Leiah had no idea how they’d gotten here, only that they were indeed, right here, in the most uncomfortable place imaginable. Her skin was crawling, and the thought that it was burned and wrinkled strung through her mind.

  A tear slipped from one of his eyes. He was crying.

  She closed her eyes and tried to grab for reason. What on earth are you doing, Leiah? He’s pouring his heart out for you, and you’re screaming at him! You’re a fool!

  A hand touched her arm and she started. He was sitting beside her now.

  “Listen to me, Leiah. I know this is new territory. For both of us. But I’m crazy about you.” His eyes searched hers, and she stared at the black television screen. His hand was on her arm.

  “I’m in love with you! Not your arms or your legs or your body. You.”

  He couldn’t have meant it the way it sounded. He could never be so dense. But it was the fact of the matter, wasn’t it? He could never love her for her body. Who could possibly love such a twisted mess of flesh?

  Leiah lowered her head and began to cry. All the grief and self-pity she’d stored for so long oozed to the surface and she couldn’t contain it. She let her arms go limp in her lap and she started to sob.

  “Leiah?”

  The poor man had no idea. He might think that he loved her now, but one touch of her flesh and he would be swallowing. One accidental peek at her rippled belly and he would be running for the door.

  The sorrow racked her body, and it felt good. In a way it was her only friend. This and God now.

  But even God had passed her over.

  “Leiah, please.” He was crying as he said it.

  She had been in meeting after meeting where thousands around her were made whole. But she? No, not Leiah. Leiah is strong enough. She doesn’t need normal flesh. She doesn’t need soft, ten
der skin to make a man melt in her hands, because she will never have a man in her hands. Ha! Leave her with the bark for her skin. God was mocking her. Even Caleb, in his power to heal or not to heal, was mocking her. She was the brunt of their cruel joke. Her skin was.

  Leiah suddenly stood, furious. She took three steps and whirled back to him. “You have no idea what it’s like to live in my skin! Let me tell you. It’s hell! It’s hell every minute, every day! I wake up feeling like a monster, and it takes every bit of strength I have to walk out the door to face the world.”

  She reached up and ripped off her scarf. She popped the top two buttons of her shirt and exposed her collarbone. She did it in fury, without thinking. And the moment she realized what she’d just done, she felt the deep pain of humiliation ripple through her body.

  “Nobody can love this.” Her voice was failing her, and her face wrinkled with anguish. “Nobody!”

  Jason stood slowly. She was suddenly sobbing, staring at him, and he stepped forward. Tears streaked his face, but it wasn’t sorrow that flooded his face. It was empathy. And love. Tender love.

  Which was not humanly possible.

  He walked slowly up to her. He stopped within arm’s reach and shifted his eyes to her chest. To Leiah it felt like someone had opened her skull and poured boiling water over her mind. His eyes were as scalding, fixed on the flaps of skin that covered her breastbone. She swallowed. He just looked at her, and she just let him, powerless to move.

  Oh, dear Jason, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You didn’t ask for this. I don’t mean to hurt you. You can do what you want and I won’t be angry. I won’t blame you.

  Jason lifted his eyes, and they had stopped their watering. He looked at her simply, neither with empathy nor with sorrow now.

  “I love you,” he said. “And I love you the way you are. I think you’re beautiful the way you are.”

  Leiah could barely breathe. How could he stand there and say such a thing? She closed her eyes. I love you too, Jason. I love you so much.

  “I’m scared,” she whispered. She dared not open her eyes. “I’m so—”

  Warm lips covered hers and she gasped.

  She froze, desperate and terrified at once. His lips pressed hers lightly, and they did not release her.

  His right hand touched her side lightly, and he pulled her to himself. His other hand encircled her back and held her gently.

  It wasn’t until that moment, when his fingers felt through her thin blouse to the scarred flesh beneath that she began to believe him. And then she abandoned herself to that belief in a sort of mad desperation.

  She groaned and kissed him back, surprising herself. She threw her arms around his neck and pulled him tight against her body. He kissed her with an equal passion.

  It was like being dehydrated bone dry and then diving into a pool of crystal-clear water. She drank deeply, and for a moment she thought she would spend the rest of her life here, in this embrace.

  But then she remembered where she was, and she pulled back, breathing heavily.

  They stood staring at each other, dumbstruck.

  A grin cracked his lips. “Wow.”

  Slowly a smile settled on her own lips, and she felt heat wash over her face. She put her hands together and fiddled with her fingers, unsure what she should do.

  “Wow,” he said again.

  Wow. He’d kissed her and said Wow.

  “Wow,” she said.

  Jason laughed like a child and reached for her hand. “Come here.” He pulled her to him and put both arms around her. She rested her cheek on his chest.

  Leiah wasn’t exactly sure what had just happened, but she did know a few things.

  She knew that she was in the arms of a man.

  She knew the man was Jason, a man too good for even her dreams.

  She knew her face couldn’t seem to relax the dumb smile that curved her lips.

  And she knew that her heart was beating like a tom-tom.

  It was enough knowledge for the moment.

  27

  Day 31

  THE GUN WAS A SILENCED RUGER MINI-14, and Banks could pick a cherry off the nose of a rabbit at one hundred yards in his sleep with it. Not an assassin’s most obvious choice, but it was light, reliable, and at close ranges, deadly accurate. In some settings the rifle was a perfect killing tool. Settings like the Old Theater in downtown Los Angeles.

  The plan Banks had suggested to Roberts was brilliant, not in its execution, but in its preparation. In some kills you had to pull off the perfect hit, in others you had to set up the perfect hit, and in the case of the ten-year-old kid they wanted to knock off, it was definitely the latter.

  The plan was almost identical to the one he’d pulled in Rome four years earlier. Then it was a bishop meddling in the wrong affairs, tonight it was Boy Wonder here, but both were cut from the same playbook. The trick was to place motive squarely in one corner and then pop the subject from another corner. Simple. It was the setup that counted.

  Banks stood in the shadows behind the last row of cheap seats and gazed past his hood to the auditorium below. Several thousand people waited eagerly on the main floor, but the upper tiers were nearly empty. Starks and his gang stood exactly where they always stood on the opposite side of the auditorium, dressed in black robes just like his own, staring like maniacal religious fools at the stage. It had taken a few weeks, but Starks had delivered as promised. His mug was on the tube nearly as often as the kid’s, spewing his nonsense about how the Antichrist had come. His group had grown to over a hundred unsuspecting souls, but tonight they’d come only with the original dozen. At a thousand bucks a pop, Banks wasn’t about to pay for the whole load.

  Of those twelve standing at the rail with their antichrist signs, only Starks knew the true purpose here, and he’d been paid handsomely for his part. Ten others were rabble-rousers who would do anything to get some airtime. And one—the one who stood nearest the exit now—was a true believer. Some junior who’d joined the group of black-robed avengers because he really believed this trash about the kid being the Antichrist.

  Well, tonight Junior would get his due. On cue he would be sent out the back and over to where a black-robed Banks stood in the far bleachers. Purpose? To deliver a note. By the time he got here, Banks would be gone, and the kid would be dead, and Junior would be left holding the bag. They even had his fingerprints on the gun, compliments of the kid’s curiosity at a party a week earlier. And the note in his hands would seal the case.

  Good enough.

  Banks ran his hand along the rifle under his robe and fingered the safety. The minute this went down, he was out of here. He would take the two hundred K and spend some time in the East. Bangkok. They went for skinny rednecks like him in places like that. They even went ape over the red hair. And two hundred thousand would go a few rounds in Bangkok. Not as far as three million, which is what he figured the Reverend Greek running this show would pull down tonight. Now, there was some quick thinking. But then the Reverend Greek had a little surprise coming tonight. It would be his last three million. And maybe he oughta pop the Greek while he was . . .

  The lights suddenly dimmed. Organ music began to throb.

  That was the cue; the kid was coming out. Banks pulled farther into the shadows and glanced around quickly. Not a soul sat in his section. The exit to the main hall waited ten feet to his left. He rehearsed his escape one last time, eased the rifle to his right side, and looked at Starks and his flock. As soon as Junior left to deliver his note . . .

  His cell phone suddenly vibrated. He snatched it off his belt, saw that it was Roberts, and flipped the phone open. What was the fool doing calling him now?

  “Yes?”

  “Is it done?”

  “No.”

  “New plan. We have reason to believe he’s dying. We would rather let him die than kill him,” Roberts said.

  “The poison? It’s been two weeks—”

  “And now it’s working. You take
him only if he begins to talk about anything that sounds even remotely threatening. Follow?”

  Banks glanced down at the antichrist flock. Junior still hadn’t left. “That’s complicated,” he said.

  “So is covering up an assassination. If we can help it, we let the poison work, you got that?”

  He would have to risk Junior getting to him early. Banks closed the phone without answering. It was a scrambled signal, but he didn’t like talk much anyway.

  The curtains suddenly parted below, and a faint gasp ran through the crowd. Three thousand people fortunate enough to get their hands on the pricey tickets, many of them in wheelchairs or hospital beds, waited in breathless anticipation for the prospect that they would leave tonight forever changed. And Banks held the instrument under his robe that would dash their hopes.

  It was almost enough to evoke pity. Almost. But when you’d spent fifteen years in his profession, slicing a couple dozen throats, the pity was hard in coming. He knew that and he didn’t care.

  Junior still hadn’t left his post by Starks.

  The wonder kid stepped from the side stage entrance. Banks’s pulse quickened. He’d been here that first night when they had all been knocked over, and it had taken him a day to get over the feeling. Just went to show how powerful the human mind could be. He’d always thought his own mind was stronger than most; it allowed him to take life without weak knees. But knocking someone over with your mind . . .

  The boy walked out onto the stage. Correction: the boy dragged himself out onto the stage. Something was wrong. Maybe Roberts was right.

  The kid’s shoulders drooped and his chin hung low, like a vulture. He took four slow steps and then stopped. Then he made what looked to Banks like a death march out to the microphone. All around him palm trees stood tall and stately, but the kid wavered on his feet, thin and weak. The whole auditorium seemed to sense that something wasn’t right with their wonder boy.

  Caleb stood for a full minute without moving. A man to the right of the stage suddenly wheeled a blue chair forward, hoisted a boy about Caleb’s size out of it, and set the child on the edge of the stage. Both of the boy’s legs were in braces.