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Another pause filled the silence. “It was about your attack, wasn’t it?”
Images of the dark figure swam through my head. The smell, the sounds, the pain.
Where is it,—?
I shuddered, cutting off the memory. “Something like that.”
“Want to talk about it?” he asked.
“No.”
He scoffed. “And you call me closed off. Okay, let’s circle back. When did you grow a brother?”
I’d shut that one off before, but... he would hear it all soon enough. “Right after the funeral,” I said, sighing.
I told him about the church getting vandalized, finding the odd payments, the trips to Charlotte, the digging Hope had done that led us to Matthew Isaiah McMasters, born shortly after I was. The reverend’s bastard son that he’d given his name. Then I stopped, took a breath, and told him about the second set of books.
Adam’s head snapped my way. “What?”
“We found those in his office,” I said. “Little initials by things. CA turned out to be Matthew’s mother, Carol Atkins. That was the monthly payments I mentioned. There were others. CP and—”
“CP,” he echoed.
I looked at him. “Does that mean something?”
He shook his head, his jaw going tight. He stopped talking. Something wasn’t right, and my earlier instincts poked at reality. I let it be, but when we saw the sign for ten miles to Redemption, I tried again. I felt like the air needed to be good before this adventure was over.
“Adam, what’s wrong? What did I say?”
“Let it be, Faith,” he said in a low voice.
“No,” I said, indignant. “I’m—”
“Do you have any idea how reckless you’ve been? How dangerous?” he spat, the vitriol taking me off guard.
“What?”
His fingers flexed on the wheel. “Hello, Faith, cooked books? Shit, no fucking wonder.”
“Excuse me?”
“You find something like that... does Mateo know?”
“Of course!” I said, all my defenses rising for battle. “He’s my brother-in-law, Adam; what do you think?”
“I think you’re only thinking of yourself.”
Bam.
My chest felt like he’d just punched me square in the solar plexus.
“What?”
“The church gets hit, Faith,” he said, his voice gravelly. “You find fake books.” He flung a finger in the air like he was ticking off the bullet points. “You get stabbed.” Another finger. “And what do you do while everyone is worried about you? You set fire to your dad’s house and go AWOL across the country like an idiot, putting a target on you, Matthew, and anyone who goes after you.”
I sat up, one hand braced on the dashboard. “Did you just call me an idiot, Adam Bishop?”
“It was stupid.”
