Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
“Is it ever enough?”
“For me, there are limits.”
“There aren’t many like you.”
“Is that why you picked me?”
Now he was delighted Rus had figured it out. So thrilled, Rus could taste it.
His stomach twisted.
“You were special,” Richard said.
“How’s that?”
“Obadiah wanted out because he was greedy. It was all about money for that boy. Greed isn’t good.”
“You were greedy.”
He shook his head. “No, I wasn’t. I was smart. I found a way, with very little effort, to enjoy my life, do the things I wanted to do, learn the things I needed to learn to do my work, and get someone else to pay for it. It came fast. You were young. You don’t even remember me being a police officer. The celebration we all had when I made detective. The one we had a few years later when I was able to retire.”
Correction: When he’d fleeced enough money off his followers to retire.
Rus wasn’t going to get into that.
“Okay, but that doesn’t explain why me.”
“Jedidiah followed the leader. Not Obadiah. You. You’re a leader.”
“Again, we’re talking about my brothers, not me.”
“You’re pure, Zachariah.”
Rus said nothing, but that shitty taste was back in his mouth.
Richard kept talking.
“Impossible to sully. Free thinking. Free of pride. Free of lust. Envy. Gluttony. Sloth. Greed. Wrath. You were honest. You listened. You cared. You didn’t want the system to control you, but you were perfectly comfortable working within the strictures of the system. Unless, I would find out, those strictures were too strict. I had plans for you in my work with my congregation. At first, I was disappointed you left. It took some time, I despaired, but eventually the path became clear.”
He sat back in his chair, but he was already warm to his subject, and he kept living in it.
“You were fascinating to me. You loved your mom. You didn’t agree with your father, but you loved him too. Loyal to those people who took you from us. Loyal to that girl who won your heart. Right off the bat, got a job so you were loyal to our country. But you couldn’t be led. It was impossible to lead you. It’s an anomaly. You were strong, your own person even when you were a teenager. You couldn’t be knocked off the path to righteousness because you were just all around…good.”
“If you admired me so fucking much, why’d you put me through this?”
He looked confused. “Put you through this? We were partners.”
Oh fuck.
“This was the path. This was when I knew I could finally do the work I was meant to do. I took care of them,” Richard said. “But I couldn’t finish it. And I knew the only one whose hands I could trust them in was yours. You are me, Zachariah.”
Fucking hell, Bohannan had this asshole pegged.
Still.
“That makes no sense, Richard, because to take care of them, I needed to find you.”
His cuffs clanked when he spread his hands, palms up, fingers curled, like the grace of God would shine from them, and he said, “Here I am.”
“You came to me. I didn’t find you.”
“It was always going to be the way, Zachariah. I knew it from the beginning. There’d be a sign. It was when true evil darkened your life that it would have to be. True evil darkened your life.” He tapped the table once with his forefinger like he’d do to a pulpit before making a point to his congregation. “You go to your god. But your savior comes to you.”
Jesus Christ.
And that was literally.
He thought he was Rus’s Jesus.
Enough of this mindfuck.
“How’d you find Carrie Molnar before me? And please, tell me you didn’t go after Shannon.”
“Of course not,” he scoffed. “Though, when she left the sheriff’s office, I sensed with the way you tore in there, she was important. So I followed her.” He gave a father’s disappointed shake of his head. “She relies too much on her friends. She went right to them. They then went right to that coffeehouse and had a conversation anyone could hear. I contacted the website they mentioned and asked personally for someone in this area, a female with male partner, to assist me. They suggested her and sent the photos I requested. I knew the minute I saw her picture she was the one I needed. It’s all in the eyes, Zachariah. All in the eyes.”
Looking in his crazy-as-fuck eyes, Rus knew this was true.
“I booked it,” Richard went on. “I did this all at the coffeehouse. On my phone. It took maybe half an hour.”
There were so many things creepy about his story, Rus closed the lid on it to unpack later and kept to theme.
Though, he’d be a damned sight more careful about public conversations, and he was already careful.
“How’d you know he’d take Madden?”
That was how he’d gotten to the cave first. He’d been watching the school, and he didn’t intervene when Ezra grabbed Madden at recess.