JACOB
After leaving the parish, I paced the city streets, weaving and winding down the numbered avenues, avoiding the people that walked beside me. While they rushed off to whatever job, doctor appointment, lunch meeting or other obligation they were headed to, I found myself stuck inside my own thoughts, growing angrier with each hour that passed.
I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, wanting on one hand to feel sorry for my brother, while on the other I wanted nothing more than to stop the bastard in his tracks, to expose him and destroy him much like he’d attempted to do to me.
Guilt flooded me for not protecting him more when we’d been children, but I eased the pain of it by reminding myself I hadn’t known what the priest and music director had done. Never as faithful as my brother had been, I avoided the choir and the Christmas plays the parish put on. I never had much of an opportunity to know the music director, and I’d hated the priest. He was an old man with slimy eyes, the type that made my skin crawl every time he came near. When I was young, I’d believed it was because I was angry with God, and thus angry with what the priest represented. But now, thinking about it as I continued walking at a clipped pace, I realized that I’d somehow instinctively known that the man was a monster hidden behind his black clothes and crisp white clerical collar.
How I had picked up on that and Jericho hadn’t, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps darkness calls to darkness, and thus I’d recognized it instantly in the priest. As children, Jericho had wanted to believe good existed in the world. He’d wanted to worship God and be a good boy just so he could earn our abusive father’s love. That desperation to please was what trapped him in its iron grip, it’s what destroyed him as all the people he’d wanted to love him had let him down, one by one.
I was just another name on that list and perhaps he’d played his games against me to get even. But now that I knew he was now pretending to be me, I understood that his games had a deeper purpose.
What could be gained from pretending to be a priest? The question hadn’t bounced around in my head for longer than a second before the answer shot up to slap me in the face.
Was Jericho getting even for the abuse he suffered? Was he preying on the faithful to cope with having been preyed on himself?
The thought terrified me as the faces of my former parishioners flashed in my head. The adults would be fine, I was sure about that, but what would Jericho do to the children?
With that concern in mind, I quickened my pace and didn’t understand where I was headed until the bold lettering of the company’s name was staring me in the face.
Like all the buildings in the city, the glass doors were freshly scrubbed, the company name positioned with pride. I hated these bastards, and hated having to talk to them, but if I had any hope of stopping Jericho, I needed money.
Slamming my hand down on the metal rail that cut the center of the door, I pushed the glass partition open and stepped inside.
The receptionist was a friendly thing with big brown eyes, blond hair and tits filling out her sweater. Not exactly my type, but I didn’t mind the view as I told her who I’d come to meet.
“I’d like to cash out my inheritance held by my father’s estate. I need to speak to Eric Cotter. He’s managing it.”
Her fingernails clicked over the keys of her computer, her hips wiggling over her seat. Even without looking at me with desire behind her eyes, she managed to flirt without saying a thing. Body language is always the most telling, and it was a good thing most people didn’t know how to read it. If everybody in the world paid attention to their surroundings and other people as much as I did, there would no longer be any such thing as surprises or secrets.
“Mr. Cotter,” the receptionist spoke into the little microphone sticking down from her headpiece. “A gentleman is here to see you regarding cashing out his estate.”
Her cheeks tinted with a faint pink in response to what Eric had said, her lips parting on a soft giggle.
“Of course, how stupid of me. Give me one second to find out his name.”
She must have been new on the job. Most seasoned receptionists knew that the first thing you did was find out who was standing in front of you.
Peeking up at me with shy eyes, she parted those pretty pink lips to ask, “What is your name, Sir?”
I loved the way the word Sir rolled off her lips, but I didn’t have time to show her just how much I appreciated it. “Jacob Hayle.”
“Thank you,” she whispered before repeating my name to Eric Cotter. The receptionist glanced up at me a second later. “He says you can meet him in his office. It’s room 203 on the second floor.” Pointing to the right, she directed me to the elevators.
Thanking her, I didn’t bother telling her I’d been here before and knew exactly where to find the office of the estate managers. It didn’t take long for the elevator to climb to their floor and ding as it opened the doors.
The hall was well lit, the lights a bit too harsh and glaring. But once I’d stepped inside the office of Cotter and Baxter, I found the lighting much softer and more to my liking. Another pretty woman sat at a desk, but rather than asking my name, she simply pointed down a hallway I knew led to Eric’s office.
He lifted his face when I stepped inside, and as I closed the door behind me, he pushed to his feet. His hair was silver in areas, turning to white in others, which gave away his advanced age. But even older than me by several decades, his sharp brown gaze was focused and attentive, his body several inches shorter than me, and his belly more soft and rotund than mine. Money had the ability to overfeed a man, usually leaving him as soft and round as an overweight baby when he died. It was obvious Eric Cotter had lived a life of luxury and ease in this large city.
“Jacob,” he greeted me with a deep, friendly voice that was smooth and cultured. “I’m surprised to see you again. You were adamant the last time we spoke that you wanted nothing to do with the inheritance.”
“Circumstances have changed,” I explained as I shook his hand. He squeezed my fingers a little too hard, but I ignored the attempt to size me up as a man. Pulling my hand away, I wiped my palm down my pants. It felt slimy and sleazy to be here accepting the blood money my father had left behind in his death.
Motioning toward the chairs positioned in front of his large glass desk, he suggested, “Why don’t you take a seat so we can get you what you need? All it will take is for you to give me your bank account information so that I can transfer the money.”
My brows shot up in surprise. “It won’t take longer? I thought this would take several days.”
Shaking his head, he rounded his desk and dropped his weight into the overpriced executive chair. “That’s it. A click of a few buttons and the money is yours. Technically, it’s been yours since the day the estate was closed, but you never gave me a way to send the money over. Neither you nor your brother seemed interested in it. The only reason I was able to find you through the years was due to your affiliation with the Catholic Church. Your brother, however, has been more difficult to find. It’s like he dropped off the face of the planet. You wouldn’t know where I could find him, would you?”
“Nope,” I lied. “I have no idea at all. I haven’t spoken to Jericho in years.”
I had to admit it was much easier to lie now that I wasn’t strangled by my old clerical collar.
Nodding his head until the triple chin beneath his face shook with the movement, Eric slipped me a piece of paper and a pen. “Just give me your routing and account numbers and I’ll see that the money is in your account within the next hour.”
It took a full thirty minutes for the transfer to go through, and I left without bothering to thank the man for his effort. My head was swimming with all the conflicting emotions I had for my twin.
The last thing I wanted to do was return to that town, but I knew those parishioners were in trouble. With the amount of months that had already passed since I ran from the parish, I wondered how many of the young, faithful women in town had already fallen prey to Jericho’s attention.
Gritting my teeth, I ran out of the building and paused as my feet hit the sidewalk. Like a statue standing in the middle of a throng of rushing bodies, I remained motionless as I forced myself to stop and give myself time to think.
Getting to Jericho wouldn’t be easy, and entering the compound would be damn near impossible. If he had people watching the parish, I was sure I’d have a gun pointed in my face before I could cross the large lawn.
No. I had to think like Jericho if I wanted to discover what he was doing, and I needed a way to protect myself from his family.
I needed guns, and I needed stealth, and if I hoped to do anything to end Jericho’s games, I knew I needed to take my time, rather than rushing in there with guns blazing.
It would take a few days to put a decent plan together, possible a few weeks. But I knew when the time came to travel to that small, rural town, it would take everything I had inside of me to decide whether to let my brother live, or whether to kill him as soon as I saw him.