12. Reverend
Reverend
The air in Fable Christian Church at night was the same as any old Kentucky coffin—polished wood, must, and whatever bourbon aftershave Bart slathered on to hide the rot of his conscience.
Stained glass glared over my shoulder, Saints shot through with golds and reds, every last one of them painted with an expression of cosmic disappointment. I let them watch.
The “conference room” had once been the small chapel, before I tripled the congregation and sold out to expansion.
Now it was all drywall and water-stained ceiling tiles, a war room for the Lord’s work.
The folding table bore the scars of a hundred covered-dish fundraisers and at least as many late-night tactical sessions, each more heretical than the last.
I dropped the photos hard. Glossy paper snapped against the fake oak, scattering images like tarot cards, him on a motorcycle, him drinking in the Pink Beaver, him standing outside the bank with a Royal Bastards cut and the smile of a man who’d never once considered God’s judgment. Axel, they called him.
Silas grunted. Bart kept his hands in his lap and his posture military, his back straight, eyes just above mine, not making the mistake of staring at the evidence too long.
I watched the blood spider through Silas’s knuckles as he reached for a picture. “He looks soft,” he muttered.
I snorted. “That’s the problem, Sarge. All muscle, no brains, but somehow he’s turned two of our best prospects into liabilities in a week. Tell me how that adds up.”
Bart reached over and lined the photos in a neat row, like mugshots on a police blotter. “He’s a slick asshole, sir,” Bart said. “Probably had some kind of training.”
Silas shook his head. “Fuckin’ let me at him.”
“Now, now,” I said, steepling my fingers and letting the Father-Voice roll out.
“Jesus made a habit of eating with sinners. Doesn’t mean we give them a seat at the Last Supper.
” I reached for the map, a laminated Google printout I’d annotated with a rainbow of Sharpie scars.
“This is what matters.” I jabbed the crosshairs at the Pink Beaver, then circled a half-mile radius, lapping up Main Street like a spreading oil slick.
“The Royal Bastards haven’t pushed past Third in two years.
Suddenly, they’re running credit lines to every pawnshop and payday loan from here to the freeway.
That’s not ambition. That’s a declaration of war. ”
Bart grinned, a cold pull at the corners of his mouth. “Wouldn’t be the first time, Reverend. Want me to rattle some cages?”
I raised a palm. “Not yet. We’re not savages, gentlemen. We’re missionaries.” I smiled, letting the edge show. “And missionaries know you win souls by seduction, not brute force. At least until you get them on their knees.”
Silas rolled his eyes, but he knew better than to mouth off. “You want intel or a message sent?”
I stood, savoring the way both men instinctively straightened when I did.
“I want leverage,” I said. “I want him compromised. Find out what he wants—nobody just picks a fight for free. Not even a dumb bastard like this.” I paced the length of the table, letting my fingers drag across the map, smearing the lines with sweat.
“Heather says he’s sweet on Darla.” I waited for the reaction.
There was a little twitch at Bart’s jaw, and Silas’s nostrils flared.
Bart said, “That’s a liability.”
I laughed—a short, mirthless bark. “We’re all someone’s liability, son. But she’s not the target. He is.”
Silas finally leaned in, both elbows crushing the edge of the table. “You want us to take her? Or him?”
“Not yet,” I repeated. “We bleed them first. Bleed them slow. I want every dime of the club’s side businesses running through our hands by Christmas.
Let the Bastards wonder who’s stabbing them in the dark while we’re singing Silent Night on live TV.
If they get desperate enough, they’ll turn on their own.
” I sat, lacing my fingers on the table.
“That’s when you go in. Quiet, surgical, no bodies. ”
“Copy,” said Bart. He was already writing names in a spiral notebook, his penmanship small and tidy as gravestones.
Silas flexed his fingers, then pointed at the map. “What about the cop we bought?” he asked.
“He’s useful,” I said. “But disposable. Keep him on ice until we need a martyr.”
Silas grinned, showing chipped canines.
I let them have their moment. It built morale.
Bart finished his list and capped the pen with a click. “Anything else, Reverend?”
“Just one thing.” I leaned forward, letting the sunlight catch in my pupils. “If Axel gets anywhere near my daughter, you don’t bring him to me. You bring me his hands.” I waited for the silence to settle. “He can pray with the stumps.”
They laughed, which was what I wanted. The sound echoed up to the rafters, bouncing off the empty cross and the fake organ pipes. I pictured Christ in his niche above the altar, rolling his eyes and wishing he’d picked a better marketing team.
As the men rose, I gestured to the photos. “Take those with you. I want everyone on payroll to know his face. The first man who brings me something useful gets a bonus, double if he’s breathing.” I watched as Silas folded the pictures into his breast pocket, careful and deliberate.
Bart lingered at the door, clearing his throat. “If I may, sir?”
I nodded.
“Heard your girl’s not been herself. Rumor is, she’s falling behind in college. Missing shifts at the food bank.” He let it hang, like a worm on a hook.
I gave him nothing. “Worry about your own family, Bart.”
“Of course, Reverend.” He clicked his heels together—sarcastic, but only just. “Praise be.”
I waited until the sound of their boots faded, then let out a breath that was half prayer, half curse.
I closed the door and stood alone in the mock-holy gloom, staring down at the rainbow blur of Lexington.
When I pressed my palm to the map, the ink smeared, blue and black bleeding together, territory melting into uncertain lines.
They thought I was just another small-town fraud with a sermon for every sin. They were right, mostly. But I’d been running this game since the night I buried my wife and realized the only way to keep faith alive was to wring it out of people, one dollar at a time.
***
After a decade in ministry, I could tell when a house was lying to me.
The walls flexed with the wind, the HVAC rattled its old bones, and the stairs kept a separate ledger of every foot that ever snuck across them.
The Maple home was a colonial two-story with all the charm of a dental office, but it held secrets like a seasoned priest: quietly, with a tinge of resentment.
The clock in the foyer glowed 2:53. I sat in the parlor, lights off, reading by the stingy puddle of a banker’s lamp. My Bible was open to Luke 12, a warning about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, though my eyes kept drifting to the grandfather clock’s slow, self-satisfied tick.
The window creaked above me, then a thump. Darla’s bedroom. My darling daughter, back from another night of whatever-the-hell college girls did after midnight.
I didn’t move. Not at first. She knew I was a light sleeper. She’d tiptoe, but the second landing was a trap—old houses like mine always kept a Judas step. It squealed, and she froze. I could picture her: breath caught, eyes wide, counting down the time until she thought the danger had passed.
I waited exactly twenty seconds, then clicked the lamp on.
She entered the foyer with all the stagecraft of a Broadway debut, purse slung casual, skirt crisp and unwrinkled, shoes gleaming. I scanned her for signs of sin: lipstick smudges, whiskey breath, the musk of some loser’s aftershave. Nothing. She was perfect, or close enough for government work.
She saw me and did the thing with her face—the one that made her look like her mother, that flutter of genuine surprise forced over whatever lie she’d prepped for me. “Dad! I didn’t think you’d still be up.”
I closed the Bible with a soft thump. “The Lord never sleeps, and neither do I.” I set it aside, making sure she saw the gold-leaf pages. “Library again?”
“Study group.” She didn’t even flinch. “Finals week. If I bomb economics, you’ll have to find another pastor’s kid for the outreach budget.”
I chuckled, low and dry. “Not sure there’s a waiting list.” I gestured her in. “Sit, Darla.”
She perched on the edge of the armchair, back straight, ankles crossed. A lady, through and through. It killed me that I was proud.
“How was the library?” I said, the words syruped with affection.
She toyed with her necklace—her mother’s cross, never taken off, no matter how rebellious she pretended to be. “It’s a madhouse. They brought in therapy dogs for the all-nighters. Tiffany almost got bit.”
“And you?”
She smiled, just a flicker. “I pet the dog. Didn’t get bit.”
I let the moment hang, then changed gears. “You know, Bart was out tonight.” I watched her face for the tremor. There. Gone, but not missed.
She shrugged. “Probably trolling for speeders near the campus. Did he see me?”
“He saw someone looked an awful lot like you. Said she was downtown, near the old post office.” I let my eyes sharpen. “Not the library.”
Darla met my gaze. She didn’t blink. “Maybe he needs his prescription checked.”
I smiled, but only with my lips. “Maybe.” I leaned forward, voice soft. “You know why I care, right? It’s not for my sake.”
She looked away, just for a heartbeat. “I know, Dad.”
I caught the lie. She was good, but not perfect.
I let her stew in the silence. The clock ticked, the house breathed. “I have to trust you,” I said. “And I need you to trust me. When you lie, it’s not just you who pays the price. It’s everyone who believes in you. It’s the church. It’s me.”
She bristled, and for a second I saw her mother in her—the same stubborn tilt to her chin, the unwillingness to give an inch. “I’m not a child. I’m allowed a life.”
I nodded, solemn. “Of course you are. But you don’t get two of them. Remember Lot’s wife.” I let that hang—a threat, a sermon, a father’s plea.
She didn’t answer, but she folded her hands, white-knuckled, and held my gaze until I looked away.
“Go on,” I said, waving her off. “Get some sleep.”
She moved to the stairs, and for a second I wondered if she’d say goodnight, or even look back. She didn’t.
She was getting better at lying. That scared me more than anything else.
The sound of her door was almost silent, but I heard it.
Of course I heard it—there was nothing in this house I hadn’t mapped, measured, or weaponized.
I waited ten minutes, then climbed the stairs with the same slow step I used in hospital rooms or confessionals, where people broke down easier if they didn’t see me coming.
Darla’s room looked just the same as it had when she was twelve, but now the books on the shelf were all psychology and business ethics, and the perfume on her dresser cost more than my first car.
I leaned against the wall in the hallway, counting her breaths by the way the floorboard vibrated under my heel.
She was crying. Quiet, disciplined, no gasping theatrics. It hurt, and it was supposed to.
I pictured her curled in bed, eyes red, brain running through every mistake she’d made since the day she learned I wasn’t God, only the closest thing she’d ever get to it. She’d get over it. They always did.
I went back to my study and poured a finger of Old Forester, watching the men outside smoke their last cigarettes before bed. My soldiers. My flock.
Upstairs, the house stilled again. I poured a second drink and waited for the night to tell me what it wanted.
It took less than twenty minutes for the light to come on again under her door. She moved around, creaking the boards, then went still.
I poured a third drink and walked up. This time, I put my ear against the wood.
A faint, electronic trill. She’d turned on her phone. Not the one I paid for, not the one the church’s data plan could trace in three seconds. A burner, then. Clever. Or maybe just desperate.
I let my lips part, just a hair, and listened.
Her voice, soft. “Hey. You up?”
A pause. The tiniest beep. Her hands moving, fast, like she was running from something inside her own skin.
I pictured the device, a prepaid, bought with cash, probably from the gas station on Versailles.
She’d stashed it somewhere in the room, maybe under the mattress, maybe inside a stuffed animal with its seams picked open and sewn back by hand.
It made me want to laugh, but only because I wanted to weep.
She typed for a while. I didn’t need to guess who it was. There was only one man she’d risk me for, and his face was already burned into my desk downstairs, in color and black-and-white.
She finished, then rolled to her back, phone clutched to her chest like a rosary. Her breathing slowed. Eventually the phone slipped to the pillow, and I heard the long, even rhythm of a child asleep.
I went back to my study, poured the last of the bottle into my glass, and dialed Silas.
He answered on the first ring. “Sir.”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “She’s going to meet him.”
“Should I take a crew?”
“Alone. I want to know where, when, and what for. Don’t interfere unless she’s in danger.”
A pause. “She’s always in danger, Reverend. That’s why you keep me around.”
I smiled, more teeth than joy. “Watch her. Report. Do nothing unless I say.”
“Understood.” He hung up, because he knew there was nothing left to say.
I stayed up until four, tracing the edge of her window with my eyes from the kitchen, watching for the glow of her phone. Nothing. When I finally slept, it was on the sofa, with the house locked down and the alarm set to beep if a mouse farted.
In the morning, I watched her at breakfast. Her face was pale, eyes rimmed with mascara she hadn’t bothered to scrub away.
She picked at her toast, said thank you, and left the house at exactly 7:02.
Silas would tail her from the end of the block, in a car so nondescript you’d have to be God himself to notice it.
As the door shut, I felt something old and familiar—grief, maybe, or pride gone sour—turn over in my gut. I poured coffee, black as judgment, and told myself it was better this way. If you want to save someone, you have to be willing to destroy them first.
She was going to meet the biker. She was going to lie again, and maybe sleep with him, and maybe break both our hearts. I’d let her do it. But I’d be waiting on the far side of it, ready to catch her when she fell.
After all, that was my job. The shepherd never blamed the sheep for wandering; he blamed the wolves.
And I’d already made up my mind how to handle those.