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“Yes,” I reply. “Just passing through.”

She hands me a bulletin. The paper slightly damp from the cold, and nods. “Stay warm in there,” she adds. “Heater’s still broken.”

I step inside.

The sanctuary breathes cold. She wasn’t kidding. The air has a stillness to it that reminds me of attics and crypts. A feeling preserved for spaces meant to keep secrets. Stained-glass windows fog at the corners. Frost lines the baseboards. My boots thud against the runner as I make my way to a pew near the back, careful, methodical.

I don’t do this. Not like this. Every other name on my list I’ve taken in the dark, alone, on ground I chose and scouted and knew better than my own hands. Never in a room full of witnesses who could put a face to mine before I’ve even decided how the day ends.

Six weeks of tracking got me here, and some cold, methodical part of me knows a pew in a strange church, mid-service, in front of forty strangers, isn’t methodical at all. It’s the opposite.

I stay.

The wood is cold, biting. It sinks through my jeans, up into my spine, into my ribs. I sit anyway, folding the bulletin in my lap and watching the congregation filter in. Winter coats stay on. Some wear gloves. Their breaths rise in tandem, pale ghosts dancing between pews. Despite the temperature, they smile. They chat. They act like this is normal.

Like this is holy.

Trent Miller stands at the front. He’s in a black wool coat, speaking with a deacon. Calm, composed. His Bible rests beneath one hand. His face looks softer than I expected. More grandfather than monster. But monsters age, too. They molt into new shapes to blend.

He turns just slightly, and for a moment, I think his eyes skim the room. My breath stills.

But he keeps speaking. Keeps smiling.

I study every movement. The way his jaw tenses when someone touches his arm. The flicker in his gaze when he’s interrupted. He’s still performing. Every inch of him scripted.

The congregation settles. The organ exhales a slow, wheezing hymn. Cold air brushes my cheeks with every note. I sit motionless, absorbing every detail, the way the old ceiling beams moan in the wind, the way someone coughs twice near the front, the way Trent finally steps to the pulpit with deliberate reverence.

His Bible creaks open.

“Proverbs 11:3,” he says, his voice low and sure. “‘The integrity of the upright shall guide them: but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them.’”

I freeze.

It’s the voice. Too smooth. Like Levi’s sermon tapes. Like my father’s. Oil wrapped in scripture.

“Integrity,” Trent says again, the word puffing into the cold air like a breath. “It’s a simple word. But a powerful one.”

His gaze sweeps the room. It passes over me like light on glass, no pause, no flicker of recognition. I don’t know if I expected him to see me, truly see me, and know who I am, what I’m here to do.

But nothing changes in his face.

Maybe I was just another nameless child in the shadows to him. Or maybe he’s the kind of man who forgets the shape of the pain he causes.

“A man without integrity,” he continues, “is a house without a foundation. A hollow thing.”

I want to laugh, or scream, or stand up and tear that mask off his face. But I don’t.

He doesn’t recognize me.

Good.

Let him feel safe. Until the ground he stands upon starts to give way.

Amens stir like wind in the pews.

I feel nothing.

He keeps talking. About walking the right path. About resisting sin. About forgiving those who trespass against you.