I texted Jack once I got home, sending the number he’d left me on that sheet of paper an innocuous message that seemed to mean nothing: The weather’s turning cold here. But it was a warning. It was the best I could do.

Sleep was becoming something other people did. I spent my nights wrapped up in my thoughts, my fears burning holes in my stomach. Literally. I was pretty sure I was developing an ulcer. And the broken ribs? I was convinced they were never going to heal.

I found myself staring at myself in the mirror some mornings, not so much to watch the swelling go down and the bruises turn to green and then fade to brown, but to see if I could actually look myself in the eye and not flinch. I knew I was doing what I could to stop this thing, but there was a part of me that still felt complicit, a part that knew I was as much to blame for where this was headed as the crazy men behind it. If I hadn’t been a part of the original group of Guardians, if I hadn’t gotten into that car with Tyler that night, if I had been better able to stop Harry’s death…

If, if, if…

Familiar blue eyes, short blond hair, an angular jaw that was more angular now that it was thinner, than it was months ago. I was the same man I’d been before the Guardians came to town, but different in ways that would never be visible in this mirror. Except maybe for the shadows that hadn’t been in my eyes until now.

I thought about Crispin and Alli a lot lately. He was a cop, but he’d lived in this town for twenty years, almost as long as I’d been alive. And Alli? She might sell sex toys for a living, and she might be a single mother with two failed marriages under her belt, but she was the smartest, sassiest, kindest woman I’d ever met. My father always told me that sinners were manipulators, that all they wanted was to allow the serpent of evil to enter into my mind. But Alli had never done anything to hurt me. Hell, she’d even tried to help me a few times.

There was one afternoon when I was sitting on that stool in her shop, watching her customers for any sign of trouble, and she came over, a cup of tea in one hand and a plate of cookies in the other.

“You look like you could use some TLC, Matthew.”

That was all she’d said. She handed me the snack and walked away, never mentioning it again. It was a simple gesture, but it had brought tears to my eyes because it was something my mother might have done. It was kind and thoughtful and one of the most generous things a person could do for another.

Alli wasn’t a believer. She didn’t attend our church—or any church—and she made her living selling corruption to the people who did.

Did she deserve to die for that?

I couldn’t make myself believe that she did.

What about Crispin? He had been a cop for more than twenty years. He was married to the same woman for almost all that time, stood by her when she got sick and nursed her until her death. He was a good man, a solid man. I could almost see him and my father becoming friends, they were so alike. But he wasn’t a religious man.

Did he deserve to die?

Patrick, it turned out, had been raised Jewish. He didn’t attend synagogue, but with that information I could see in some of his actions the teachings his religion had ingrained in him. He was a kind man, fair in his job assignments even though I knew he didn’t trust me.

Did he deserve to die?

And Quentin. He’d been a few years ahead of me in high school, but I knew of him. He was on the football team, like me, and dated a few cheerleaders, like me. He went to his prom, graduated, and went into the military, like me. Our lives were nearly parallel in their similarities. But he wasn’t a believer.

Did he deserve to die?

And Jack.

Where did I begin with Jack? He was a wealthy man, born into privilege to parents who taught him right from wrong, who raised a young man who took generous care of the men who worked under him. I had no idea what his religious beliefs were, didn’t even know if he had any. But I knew he was the definition of manhood that my father had tried to teach me when I was young. He stood up for what he believed was right, and he protected those he cared about. He would die for my sister, and that alone was enough for me to know he was a good man.

Did he deserve to die as the Guardians believed he did?

When had my core beliefs become so corrupted? When did I lose sight of what the Scriptures taught about right and wrong, about fairness and the way in which a man should treat his fellow man? I thought we were supposed to turn the other cheek, to love our neighbors and forgive our enemies. When did we become militant? When did our religion become the only right one? When did our beliefs become so twisted that we imagined it was okay to break one of the Ten Commandments so blatantly and openly?

Had we twisted the meaning of the Scriptures so completely that this insanity was okay?

It drove me crazy trying to reconcile the beliefs that were pounded into me as a child with what was happening around me. And when my mind grew tired of trying to make sense of it all, it drifted to Whit.

And there was another whole set of conundrums.

Was she using me? Did she really care about me? Had she lied when she said she’d saved herself for me? When she said that she’d always known I was the one for her? Was it all a lie, or just the lie of omission when she failed to tell me why she was really in town? Could I blame her for lying?

I wanted to see her. I wanted to ask her these questions and look her in the eye, see the truth in those windows that could never truly lie. I wanted to know if I’d begun to hope based on a lie.

I wanted to know if I still had something to look forward to when this was all over.

I eventually lay down on the bed and closed my eyes, my thoughts going back to that night in her motel room, the night she whispered those incredible things to me, the night we danced for a second time, holding each other beside the bed. I didn’t need any more than that. All I needed was the feel of her in my arms, the security of knowing she was real, she was solid, she was alive and happy and falling as deeply in love with me as I was with her.

I believed that moment was genuine, and it was what was getting me through this nightmare.

I had to hold on to something.

 

 

My father looked as exhausted as I did the morning after my mother left on her little trip. He was sitting at the breakfast table when I entered the kitchen, a bowl of bran flakes in front of him.

I couldn’t remember another time when I’d ever seen him eat anything other than a hot breakfast.

“There’s cereal in the cupboard,” he informed me.

“Thank you.”

I could feel his eyes on me as I moved around the kitchen, careful not to block the television from his view. I got the feeling he wasn’t too terribly interested in the news this morning, however. He seemed more interested in what I was doing.

“You need to be in Crosbyton by ten,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“The crew will meet you there. The address is on a piece of paper on my desk.”

I glanced at him. He normally had his new foreman text me that information. He was still watching me, his eyes darkened by lack of sleep. He raised his eyebrows, but I had no idea what he meant by that.

“I’ll be on time,” I said, not sure what else to say or do.

He nodded, picking up his bowl and setting it in the sink. “I’ll pick up something for dinner. Be sure to be home on time.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He laid his hand on my shoulder, the heft of it unfamiliar. My father rarely touched me. He was not an affectionate man.

He left a moment later, the closing of the garage door gentle and silent. I stared at it for a long moment as though its dark depths would tell me what the hell was going on here.

I had to force myself to stand there and eat slowly, reminding myself that there was a listening device in the air vents. Maybe a camera. I had no way of knowing for sure.

Where had they gotten these devices? Who had put them in? How long had they been there?

They were questions I wasn’t sure I’d ever have answers to.

I rinsed out our dishes and put them in the dishwasher before I finally felt safe going down the hall to my father’s study. The door was open, an unusual thing for my father. He was always careful to close it when he wasn’t in there. He was careful to close it when he was in there.

A slip of paper sat in the center of the desk, an address scrawled across it. But what was more interesting was the file that it sat on top of.

“Doomsday,” was written on its tab.

I glanced around the room, wondering if there was a camera in here. I was sure there hadn’t been because no one had confronted me about scanning my father’s church financial paperwork, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t installed one since. I was just going to have to take a chance.

I moved around the desk and took a seat, slipping out the little scanning device I’d been carrying in my pocket every day for weeks. If my father thought this was something I should see, I was sure it was something Jack would need to see.

I opened the file and was immediately confronted with a photograph that looked like something taken after the liberation of the prison camps at the end of World War II. Bodies were piled together, clothed and healthy victims, but clearly dead. There was foam around their mouths, blood coming from their noses. Their eyes were open in almost every case, the few exceptions victims that lay near the top of the pile, their eyes likely closed by whoever took the photographs.

The poison. Clearly.

More photos were underneath, each one more graphic than the one before, until I reached the last, a photograph of the vagrant I had personally watched die. It brought back all the rage and horror that had filled me that night.

What was this? And why did my father have it?

Below the pictures were papers filled with words that I couldn’t quite focus on for a long few minutes. When I managed to pull myself together, I began to read reports on how quickly the poison worked, on the possible uses of this chemical, on the composition of the chemical. There were lab reports, memos, information that had clearly been taken from whatever lab had developed and tested this stuff. I scanned each one, pushing the appropriate buttons to send the information through the air to Jack and his team, to the people who could figure out where these had come from and maybe why my father had them.

And then I came to the final page.

It was a list of names. The same list of names I’d seen on the desk in the church office the day I went to put the virus on their computer system.

I studied it a little closer this time, my stomach hurting as I recognized multiple names.

Crispin’s name was on it.

Jack’s, too.

But what really hit me hard was some of the names at the bottom of the page. Kari Lawson was listed there, her name above that of a woman I vaguely recalled was a teacher at the high school. A guy I’d gone to high school with, a fellow church member who’d converted our senior year. I didn’t know what the teacher had done, but I knew the guy I went to school with had gotten a divorce, a big no-no in the eyes of church leaders.

At the very bottom, someone had added one last name. It was this name that made the bile rise in my throat, that forced me to run to the toilet before my breakfast could make a second appearance. The list was a hit list. They intended to use that poison on each person whose name was written there. Outsiders or traitors of the church, people who’d broken the promise of piety they’d made to church leaders.

Or who hid a secret the church leaders had learned somehow.

It was no longer a crime to be gay in this country. Gay marriage had become legal, leading to more acceptance despite the outcry from highly conservative sections of the country. But our church still saw homosexuality as an abomination and a sign of disrespect to God himself. Older members of the church saw it as a crime worthy of excommunication.

Apparently, Todd Lawson saw it as a reason for execution. Of his own daughter.

But that last name…

She was just doing her job. She was just doing what reporters do.

Whit.