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“You and all those Beatles songs, man. What was with that? What did the Beatles have to do with God? You’re full of shit, you know? Yellow Submarine, my ass. Where were you when Helter Skelter started? Safe at the ranch.”
Did that mean Ethan would be a different kind of leader? One who actively participated instead of watching from afar?
“The only thing you had right were the women. The women are where it’s at.”
Twisting her new wedding ring around her finger, Rachel read that line for the third time. Ethan had a fascination with women, probably because he felt more capable of bending them to his will. His mother had defended him and protected him against his father’s criticism, hadn’t she? Maybe he thought he could manipulate all women as easily as he’d manipulated his mother.
That was why she should do this job by herself. She had a better chance of appearing pliable without a hulking male at her side. And once she gained Ethan’s trust, it’d all be over. She’d bust him like she had so many drug dealers, shut him down as quickly as possible, so none of the other women in his commune would suffer as Martha Wilson had suffered.
She could imagine victory, but the satisfying image dissipated as the clock on the wall continued to tick. Five hours and counting…
It was too late to fight Milt’s insistence that Nate go with her.
In this part of the desert, night was nearly as hot as day. And the air hung heavy. There wasn’t so much as a slight breeze or a rustle—just the scrape of Bartholomew’s shovel. His efforts, sounding abnormally loud because of the silence and the rockiness of the soil, made him wince with each scoop. A tent filled with his fellow Covenanters stood only a few yards away. If someone woke and heard him, came to investigate, he’d have an even bigger problem on his hands….
But he wasn’t accustomed to this type of labor, and at forty-seven he was no longer young. Digging strained his back and made his arms feel so weak he could hardly keep going.
Taking a break to conserve his strength and catch his breath, he leaned on the shovel and gazed toward the little cemetery on the hill, half a mile or so away. It’d been established when Paradise was built as a mining town back in the early 1900s and it still had some of the old headstones jutting out of the bare soil beneath a paloverde tree. Thanks to a bright moon, Bart could almost make out the largest one. Except for the fact that the ground would be even harder, he wished he could dig this grave out there.
But burying Courtney Sinclair beyond the fence that encircled the commune wasn’t safe. It would be much more difficult to keep track of who came and went. What if someone noticed the disturbed earth and told Courtney’s parents? They’d already come to Paradise several times, looking for their daughter. Ethan had covered well, but Bartholomew had a feeling the situation was far from over. The Sinclairs weren’t going to give up and go away. Maybe Courtney claimed to have been unloved, that her parents were the worst parents ever, but her mother, at least, seemed quite devoted.
That just went to show that the girl didn’t have a clue about people. She was—had been, Bartholomew corrected as he glanced with distaste at the limp figure wrapped in a blanket at his feet—barely seventeen.
But he’d tried to warn her. She wouldn’t listen. The Sinclairs no doubt had the same problem with her. The black lipstick, fingernails and clothing, the earrings lining the rim of each ear and the metal rod through her nose—they all designated her as a rebel. And the scars from the cutting she’d done on her arms took it to a rather desperate level. She’d been deeply unhappy, hadn’t acclimated when her family moved from Texas. A lot of children, forced to take a backseat to a step-parent, resented it. Bart had been raised with a step-father himself, knew what it felt like to deserve more yet receive less. But he’d left that old identity behind. There was no more Francis Williams. He was simply Bartholomew now. An apostle to the Holy One.
Courtney had been offered a home in Paradise. She could still be here, as alive as he was, if only she’d played by the rules.
A light went on in the Enlightenment Hall where he lived with the Holy One. Twisting around, he stared up at it. Was Ethan worried? Was he frightened by what had occurred with Martha and then Courtney?
He hoped not. Ethan needed to remain stable or they’d both lose everything.
Drawing his exhaustion and concern inside himself, he returned to his digging.
3
Ethan paced inside his room. The Brethren were still meeting in the pit. He’d put in an appearance earlier, but he’d been too anxious to stay long. Watching them argue wasn’t any fun. It made him feel as if this was the beginning of the end of everything he’d created. Were they right? Was the paradise he’d built about to come tumbling down? With all the bad publicity, it felt that way. The rest of the world seemed to be pressing closer, crowding him, banging at the gates. The Brethren, the twelve he’d designated as Spiritual Guides for his people, had tried to tell him that a local girl going missing on the heels of what Martha had told the press wouldn’t be good. But he hadn’t listened. Sometimes he felt as though he could get away with anything. Other times…
What had he been thinking? Of course they’d been right! The attention his actions had drawn would only hasten the confrontation he’d been preparing for from the start. That was what the Guides were discussing now. They were hashing out plans for the final battle. But had it really come to that?
He wasn’t ready. He should’ve left Martha and Courtney alone. He’d screwed up, indulged himself one too many times….
It was the drugs, he decided. When he was tweaking, he made mistakes, and he tweaked too often these days. But the thought of getting high only made him want to do it again.
Crossing to the bureau, he found the quarter gram of meth he kept close at hand, took his pipe from the same drawer and lit up.
When that first anticipated rush of euphoria hit his brain, he dropped onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Courtney came to him immediately, like a ghost. Or a memory. He knew what he was seeing wasn’t real, that he was hallucinating, because there was no lust, no anger, no betrayal. He was completely objective, an indifferent bystander observing the unfolding of their relationship—until the final moment when he’d strangled her.
Another memory surfaced—the day he caught his father grimacing when someone said, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” The person who’d spoken hadn’t been able to see past their physical similarities long enough to realize they couldn’t be more different if God had intended to make them enemies. Conservative and self-disciplined, Robert loved sports and business and took great pride in his financial success. Ethan preferred music, art, literature, fashion. Nothing he did could ever match what his father had accomplished. Even worse, he was emotional and high-strung, which irritated and angered his father.
