A Sounding Brass (24 page)

She had thought a lot of things that probably weren’t true. That Luke was attracted to her, for one.

Ha. Even if he was, she most emphatically did not return the feeling. The kind of man she could care about didn’t loom and
threaten and yell when he didn’t get what he wanted. Her ideal man made her feel safe. A little delirious with desire sometimes.
Tongue-tied, maybe. Excitingly unsettled. But safe.

The way Ray had made her feel.

Right, and you managed that so well that he left town.

Margot stopped the car at the same cattle gate that Claire had opened for Ray and looked over at Claire in the passenger seat.
“Would you mind hopping out and getting that gate for us?”

Claire double-checked the landscape. Crazy Jack Road. Same long, potholed approach. Same pines and golden grass waving in
the breeze. The only thing that had changed between now and the day she and Ray had been here was the deep blue in the sky
that proclaimed October was nearly here.

She got out and did the gate routine, and when she got back in the car, she said, “I don’t think this is the place, Margot.
I was here once before and there’s nothing down there.”

“There isn’t supposed to be anything. We haven’t approved the loan yet.”

“But then, why—” Claire stopped herself. Some wires had gotten crossed somewhere. Maybe work had started in advance of the
loan, in the form of getting materials and equipment ready to go. A little imprudent, maybe, but she was no expert on the
construction business. She should be proactive and do some research on it. Maybe call up Brandon Brothers and ask to speak
to someone other than that girl who—

“Ow!” The car, a sedan definitely not built for potholes the way Ray’s truck was, jounced into and out of a hole in the road.
Claire grabbed the armrest, and Margot gripped the steering wheel a little more firmly.

“Sorry.”

“We parked here.” Claire pointed out a flat spot in the grass where the track degraded into something only dirt bikes could
navigate.

“Lucky thing we changed.” In khaki pants and a practical windbreaker, Margot got out of the car with the roll of plans for
the worship center. She locked the doors, even though there was nothing but cows for a mile in every direction. “I knew it
was undeveloped, but I was at least expecting reasonable access.”

“The tractors and trucks must have found a different way in,” Claire said as they set off down the hill. “Luke says the trenches
have been dug and there are surveyors’ tapes and stakes everywhere.”

“That can’t be right. Surveyors’ marks I can believe. But no actual work, including drainage and trenches, can start until
we’ve funded the purchase of the land.”

Claire lifted her hands in an “I-don’t-know” gesture. “I’m already paying invoices out of the listener contributions.”

“Well, hopefully we’ll see in a moment.” Margot’s tone was noncommittal.

But when they emerged from the belt of pines, all there was to see was the broad blue expanse of the lake and the acres of
cattails, willows, and water-bird habitat that lay between the lines of barbed-wire fencing. Margot unrolled the plans and
oriented herself so that the lake lay on her left, as it did in the drawing. Claire looked over her shoulder at the blue lines
of the elevations and then at where they should be.

“That’s where the creek empties into the lake.” She pointed. “The cabins should be over there, where that big clump of willows
is, and the worship center itself beyond them.”

Margot looked from drawing to swamp and back again. “Hm. Let’s have a closer look.”

Her mosquito bites from last time were barely healed. Claire bit back a groan and followed her former boss into the swamp.
They jumped from tussock to tussock of thick grass and took turns holding back the long, whiplike willow branches for each
other. Finally Margot stopped when the ground got too wet and a bank of cattails, fluffy with unreleased seed, reached above
their heads and blocked the way.

“If I’m reading these plans correctly, we should be standing about where the worship center’s sanctuary would be. And if your
information is correct, we should be seeing orange tape and stakes.” She lowered the plans and rolled them up again. The edges
on one side were wet where she’d slipped and instinctively used the thick roll as a walking stick to hold herself upright.
It hadn’t worked, which hadn’t improved her temper much. “But I don’t see any such thing here—including a buildable site.”

“There must be a mistake.” Claire shivered in the wind off the lake. “Are you sure we’re—” She stopped. Of course Margot was
sure. It was her job to be sure they were standing where the county assessor said they should be. “I’m positive Luke said
work had been done. Let’s look around a bit, okay?”

But looking around netted them nothing but more insect bites, some scrapes, and a lost shoe that had to be rescued by Margot,
sticking her arm elbow deep in the brackish water.

“This is ridiculous.” Margot wiped mud and decomposing leaves from her forearm and shook her fingers in distaste. “This is
no building site. I don’t know why anyone would imagine they could put a commercial enterprise on such a property. Any fool
could tell it was unbuildable. Look at the asking price. It’s 70 percent below the going rate in this valley, for heaven’s
sake.”

“Does—does that mean—” Claire couldn’t form the words.

“Yes, it does. I’m sorry, Claire. I’m going to have to deny your church the loan. You might be able to put up a duck blind
here, but it’s no place to build a worship center.” She pushed at a thicket of willow in irritation. “Not only that, I’d be
interested to know just who you’re paying for all this so-called construction.”

* * *

WHAT WAS IT
about the Elect that would make a woman like Claire Montoya put it first before—well, him? Or anything?

Ray Harper dug into Julia Malcolm’s excellent beef stroganoff and wondered whether he’d survive asking that question aloud.
Ross would capitalize on it and rib him for months. Julia would probably get on the phone and tell Claire in excruciating
detail just what she’d done to his reputation as the local commitment-phobe.

The problem was, he really needed to know.

So he asked.

Julia’s eyes widened and she glanced at Ross in a way that clearly said “I told you so.” Then she sat back with both hands
cradling her heavily pregnant belly and said, “Because we’re taught to put the Elect ahead of everything, Ray. Family, friends,
jobs—everything. But I learned that’s a mistake. The Elect have the system and God all confused and mixed up together. It’s
God we’re to put first, not the system of worship.”

“That still isn’t going to help me figure this out,” Ray said. “My mom got four churches off the ground, and to this day I
don’t know if it’s God she loves, or starting churches.”

“The thing is, what’s important to you?” Ross asked.

“You guys,” Ray said simply. “Claire. The OCTF. My sisters. Probably not in that order, though.”

“Have you ever thought about where God fits in to those priorities?” his partner asked quietly. Which felt a little weird.
He and Ross could talk about everything from the consistency of pure cocaine to the best life insurance to take out when the
baby came, but when it came to talking about God, they were treading in uncharted territory.

“Up until recently I’ve avoided thinking about God,” he said. “He just complicates things.”

“He simplifies things for me.” Julia heaved herself out of her chair and began to clear their plates. “Kailey, can you help
me, please?” The eight-year-old hopped down and carefully carried a single dish over to the sink. Then she returned for another,
treating each plate with solemn reverence.

“How’s that?” Ray asked Julia.

Julia and Claire had more in common than their experiences with the Elect. They had the same kind of smile, the kind that
warmed a man and made him want to fall into that warmth forever. The ache under his ribs that had been there since he’d gunned
his truck down the freeway away from Hamilton Falls throbbed as if to remind him of what he’d lost.

“It starts with joy, I think,” she said. “And gratitude, and love. You find yourself permeated with it, and it makes you want
to just give whatever you can to God in return for what He gives you.” She glanced at him. “It’s a bit like a marriage.”

“Yeah, Ross always did have a God-complex,” he cracked.

“You know how it is, Ray,” Ross said, his grin fading. “It’s like love, right? It simplifies everything—all you want is to
be with that person. And yet it complicates everything—you have to change things to make it happen.”

Now, that was something he could relate to. Something he could understand. “It’s all about love, isn’t it?” he said, almost
to himself. “It’s not about what group you belong to. Or clothes or buildings or practices or any of that. It’s about the
love.”

“Going and coming,” Julia said softly. “God loves us, and we love Him. When you get right down to it, it’s really not that
complicated, is it?”

When you got right down to it, he supposed it wasn’t. The thing was, he couldn’t just leave it hanging, as he’d done for as
many years as he’d been fighting his mother’s wacky ideas. He was a man of action. Make the plan, implement the plan. That
had served him well in law enforcement and in life. So just what was he going to do about God? And once he’d figured that
out, what was he going to do about Claire Montoya?

* * *

RAY WAS STILL
pondering this several hours later, back in his apartment. He’d never paid much attention to his space. It was in a modest
building in a middle-income neighborhood, with nothing much to recommend it but great freeway access and a low probability
of running into the OCTF’s targets in the local restaurants. He was thinking about it now. About how quiet it was. About how
it had no feminine touches. Claire’s little apartment had photographs and odd bits of brightly colored pottery, and even though
her furniture was secondhand, it was comfortable.

He didn’t even own a couch. He watched TV from his dad’s recliner, which was probably as old as he was but still smelled like
the old man. It comforted him, like a big hug from a guy who’d died too soon, before Ray had had a chance to tell him he loved
him. Or that he’d forgiven him.

If Claire had been here, he could have told her stories about his dad. There would have been laughter instead of silence,
and the sight of her eyes and smile instead of bare, empty walls. There would be companionship and possibility, not this sense
that big chunks were missing out of his life that could be filled if he would just give in and let them happen.

Like this God business, for instance. Maybe there was something to it if you just kept it simple and focused on the love,
as Ross and Julia did. Maybe it wasn’t all about a bunch of brainwashed people acting out of character. Maybe they acted the
way they did because they
weren’t
in it for themselves, like 99.9 percent of the people he knew. Ross and Julia hadn’t had to offer Tamara Traynell a home
when she’d arrived in Seattle, desperate and grim and soaking wet because she’d walked from the bus station in the rain. Matthew
Nicholas didn’t have to be a father to the child of rape that didn’t even belong to his fiancée. They did it for love. He
had a feeling if he asked her, Claire would say, “and because Jesus would have done it.”

Oh, he knew plenty about Jesus. No one who had grown up with his mom could help it. But the Jesus he saw reflected in these
lives—so different, and yet knit so tightly together—wasn’t the one his mom seemed to know. Or, for that matter, the one the
Elect seemed to think they knew. If he had a choice, he’d take this one.

And he
did
have a choice. It was just up to him to make it.

It was after eleven, and he was still sitting in the recliner, pondering what the will of God really meant and missing Claire
and generally—okay, he admitted it—moping, when his cell phone rang.

At this time of night, it probably wasn’t good news.

“OCTF, Harper.”

“Investigator, this is Bellville from Hamilton Falls PD.”

Uh-oh. He knew he’d left too soon. Swinging his feet to the floor, he said, “Working swing shift, sir? Don’t tell me Luke
Fisher slipped up, and you slapped a charge on him.”

“No, it’s not Fisher at all. It’s the other one.”

Lightning fast, Ray ran through all the names in his case file and came up blank. “What other one? There is no other one.”

“Yeah, turns out there is. This individual has been siphoning off the funds Fisher’s been raising since the beginning. Taking
advantage of the position of trust.”

“Who?” It had to be someone new. Some accomplice Ray hadn’t run into yet, who had been operating in the shadows to pull off
the crime Ray had known in his gut was going to happen.

“What really gripes me is the whole holier-than-thou angle,” Bellville went on. The objective viewpoint of the career law
enforcement officer was obviously a struggle, judging from the anger in his tone. “If you’re going to be a crook, fine. Be
a crook. But don’t masquerade as a person of faith and all the time laugh at everyone else who’s really trying to do the right
thing while you do your dirty work.”

At last Ray understood. “Lieutenant, what are you telling me? Surely not Toby Henzig. I would have bet two weeks’ salary that
guy was solid.”

“Well, you’d win your bet. Not him. The other one.”

“
What
other one?” Ray repeated.

“The girl. The accountant or whoever she is. Montoya. I’ve got her in my holding tank until I can figure out which I’d rather
charge her with—grand larceny or dragging the God I love through the mud.”

* * *

CLAIRE HAD ONCE
thought that the worst thing that could happen to a person was to be Silenced. In that ceremony, which was called when a
person had committed a serious spiritual crime, he or she was barred from fellowship with the Elect, and no one could talk
to them for a period of seven years. People generally didn’t survive the pain of being Silenced; the majority went Outside
and were lost to their loved ones forever.