The Devil’s Bible (Cotton Malone #20)

PROLOGUE

ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Cotton Malone never liked rain. Some found comfort in its monotonous pitter-patter, the consistency, the calmness. But he preferred the warm sunshine of a bright clear day.

Nothing better.

His childhood, up until he was ten, had been spent moving from one naval base to another, following his father who’d commanded submarines.

But when that sainted man was lost at sea, he and his mother settled permanently on her family’s onion farm.

Vidalias. Acres and acres of them. Called that because they were grown in and around the town of Vidalia, in middle Georgia.

One of a kind. Valued. A whole host of state laws protected the brand from counterfeits.

Protection was good. For both onions and people.

He stood coatless, holding no umbrella, Cassiopeia Vitt beside him, his right hand gently embraced with her left.

Rare they showed any PDA. Neither of them was much for that.

But he liked her touch. Always welcoming.

Inviting. Signaling that she derived as much pleasure from the contact as he.

They loved each other. A fact they’d both come to accept.

Especially now.

They’d been in Georgia for a week on an unexpected trip across the Atlantic.

There’d been duties and obligations that he would have preferred not doing.

Having Cassiopeia here, with him, helped.

He’d even spent some quality time with Gary, his seventeen-year-old son, whom he hadn’t seen since last Christmas.

No longer a boy. Now a young man. With a driver’s license.

And big plans.

“I’m going to join the navy.”

“No college?”

“It’s not for me. I want to serve.”

That had been hard to argue with. But serving was a big word.

Being a member of the United States Navy made you one of 350,000 personnel.

A small fish in a really big pond. He’d once been one of those fish, an inexperienced lieutenant with a Georgetown law degree, who was poached for a new position.

One that took him from the navy’s Judge Advocate General’s corps to the United States Justice Department’s Magellan Billet.

All thanks to Stephanie Nelle. She changed his life.

And he went from one in 350,000 to one in twelve.

A big fish in a small pond.

Through his dozen years with the Billet agents came and went, but he stayed and made a career.

Even after retiring out early at age forty-seven he continued to work for Stephanie from time to time, drawn back into a world that he’d thought behind him.

It seemed his life was all about taking chances.

Pushing the envelope. But what had he heard once?

Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which you can die.

And another piece of wisdom, Health nuts are going to feel real stupid one day, lying in a hospital, dying of nothing.

Did the end justify the means? Or, more important, did the means justify the end?

Hard to say. Especially now.

“Are we leaving tomorrow?” Cassiopeia quietly asked.

Though the sky remained packed with heavy gray pillows of storm clouds, the rain had slackened to more of a mist. Not a hint of a breeze disturbed the warm, humid air.

Cassiopeia looked lovely. Her face devoid of anything other than a few touches of makeup.

Her dark wet hair was tied back with a silver silk scarf that matched the one at her neck, her knit suit a dove gray, tailored and elegant.

Like him, though, she seemed vulnerable.

Being in Georgia had brought back memories.

Some good. Most not so. He’d lived in Atlanta during his entire time with the Magellan Billet.

But once he’d retired out, he divorced his wife, sold his house, moved to Denmark, and bought a rare-book shop.

A complete 180-degree change that he never regretted.

Until two weeks ago.

“How did we get here?” he muttered.

“We had to,” she said.

He asked the only thing that mattered. “Was it worth it?”

She did not answer.

So he thought back.

And tried to answer the question himself.