CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The fairgrounds looked different to Selena after dark.
By full daylight, it would probably have been only gravel lots, rusting livestock pens, and tired buildings with paint curling off the boards.
Evening did it favors. Strings of temporary lights cut through the deepening blue.
A white revival tent rose above the parked trucks like something dropped in from another world.
Music spilled from inside, full and bright, rolling over the rows of vehicles and the damp smell of dirt.
Connor shut his door and scanned the lot. “Let’s find Elias Croft and ask some questions.”
Selena looked toward the tent instead. “No. Let’s watch first. If they don’t know we’re here, they’ll act natural.”
His head turned toward her. “You think he’ll tell us something useful from a stage?”
“Maybe not with words. I want to see what message he’s preaching. It could be related to the case.”
“It’s your rodeo.”
They moved with the crowd.
Near the entrance stood a folding sign painted in red and gold.
MERCY ROAD MINISTRIES
ONE MORE NIGHT OF MERCY
COME AS YOU ARE, LEAVE CHANGED FOREVER
Two volunteers handed out pamphlets and smiled too quickly at everyone who passed.
Selena took one, folded it once, and slipped it into her pocket without looking down.
Across the fairgrounds, the ministry bus sat where they had seen it from the road, long and polished, cream and blue with gold script catching the tent lights.
It looked less like transport than a rolling promise.
Inside, heat gathered under the canvas roof.
Rows of metal folding chairs stretched toward a simple wooden platform.
The place was nearly full. Voices mingled with the music warming up onstage.
Children squirmed. Somebody laughed. Somebody else prayed under their breath with eyes closed and one hand pressed to their chest.
Connor led them up the side aisle far enough to give a clear view without drawing notice. They sat.
From the platform, several musicians took their places at the back, including a few backup singers, a drummer, a keyboardist, and a couple of guitar players.
“I hope they play some death metal,” Connor joked in a murmur. The guitarist with longer hair and a beard leaned toward the microphone. “Good evening, everybody.”
The crowd answered him at once.
“Good evening.”
He smiled modestly, as if embarrassed by the sound of his own voice carrying that far. “We’re glad you’re here tonight. Doesn’t matter what kind of week you had getting here. Doesn’t matter what shape you came in. You’re here now, and that matters.”
A few amens floated up.
“We’re going to sing first,” he said. “Then the one and only Shepherd Croft’s going to bring the word. Hallelujah!”
Keyboard notes filled the tent, then guitar, then a second singer from farther back on the platform joined in. The song was simple enough that the crowd caught on by the second chorus. Voices rose, uneven but earnest. Selena did not sing. She watched.
Every few moments, her eyes went to the crowd instead of the stage.
Lauren Gimble had sat in rooms like this.
Likely Brenda Colter, too. Easy to see the appeal when you feel life lacks meaning.
Easier than Selena wanted to admit. Washington had given her meaning; at least, so she thought. She was beginning to wonder.
When the final chord faded, the guitarist stepped back from the microphone, and the crowd began to clap.
Elias Croft came out from the wing of the platform like a man arriving where he belonged.
He was taller than Selena had expected. Late fifties, maybe.
Silver threaded through dark hair. Strong jaw.
Expensive smile. Even from halfway back, the control in him was obvious.
Not stiff control. Something more practiced.
He knew where to place his hands. Knew when to let silence breathe.
Knew how long to hold a look on one side of the tent before turning to the other.
A man born for the pulpit, just as the notes had promised.
Croft stood at the center, Bible in one hand, and let the applause roll out before he spoke.
“Tonight,” he said, warm and clear, “I want to talk to the people who think they’ve run out of road.”
The tent quieted.
“I want to talk to the people who think they missed their moment. Blew their chance. Broke too much, lost too much, wasted too much. Folks who think maybe the best part of life already happened, and what’s left is just the bill coming due.”
A murmur moved through the chairs.
Croft turned slightly, one hand open now. “Some of you know that feeling, don’t you?”
“Yes,” a woman called out.
“Yes,” Croft echoed. “I know you do.”
Selena watched the timing of it. The pauses. The softening of his voice before he raised it. The way he made the word you sound specific every time, as if he had picked a single person out and spoken straight into their private shame.
Croft set the Bible down on the lectern and rested both hands on either side of it.
“Years ago,” he said, “I heard a story about a painting hanging in the Louvre in Paris. The painting showed a young man seated at a chessboard with the devil across from him. Now the devil in that painting looked pleased with himself. Looked certain. Looked like he knew the game was over, and the man sitting opposite him knew it, too. Head bowed. Hope gone. Nothing left in him but the look of a soul that believed it had been beaten. An angel stood near, looking on, dismayed that the man was about to lose his soul forever.”
The tent had gone still enough that Selena could hear canvas shifting overhead.
Croft’s gaze moved across the rows.
“The title of that painting was Checkmate.”
His voice dropped on the word.
“Game over. No move left. Defeat final. That’s what the title said. That’s what the devil’s grin said. That’s what the young man’s face said. His eternal soul was about to be consumed forever in the fires of hell.”
Croft let that sit, then lifted one finger.
“But one day a chess master came by to the Louvre. He took in the incredible works of art, but there was one piece that caught his eye the most. He stopped in front of that painting. In front of Checkmate. Looked at it for longer than everybody else. Studied the board. Studied every piece. Studied the angle. Studied the checkmate that was about to happen.” He leaned forward slightly.
“And after a while he stepped back and said, no. No, this painting is wrong. He was speaking to a tour guide who was relating the story of the painting to a crowd.”
A few people were already nodding.
“‘Wrong how?’ the tour guide asked. The chess champion said, ‘Well, I am a world champion of chess, and I’ve been studying this board, and either they are going to have to change the name of the painting or the painting itself, because this is not checkmate.”
Croft’s voice rose.
“He said, ‘The man is not beaten.’”
Higher now.
“And the tour guide asked, ‘How?’ And the chess champion replied…” Elias was taking every dramatic pause he could before raising his voice loud and bellowing, “‘Because the king has one more move!’”
The first response came from the left side of the tent.
“Amen!”
Croft pointed outward. “That’s what I came to tell somebody tonight. The king has one more move!”
More voices answered.
“The devil tells you it’s over. The bottle tells you it’s over.
Shame tells you it’s over. The papers on your kitchen table tell you it’s over.
That hospital room tells you it’s over. That divorce tells you it’s over.
That grave tells you it’s over.” He struck the lectern lightly with the flat of his hand and pointed skyward. “But the king has one more move!”
Applause broke out. Croft let it build, then cut through it.
“Listen to me. Some of you came in here bent double under things you haven’t told anybody.
Some of you came in here smiling so your children wouldn’t know how scared you are.
Some of you came in here because you were one bad hour away from giving up.
Some of you feel eaten up by what’s happened in the past, runnin’ from it and feelin’ like the road is runnin’ out! ”
Selena felt that one in the center of her chest.
Not because she believed him. Not fully.
Because the shape of it was familiar. Knowing what it meant to stand in a room and keep your face composed while something deeper in you had already started to fray.
Knowing what it was to leave one life for another and tell yourself the cost had been necessary.
Knowing how far a person could travel without outrunning old choices.
An image of that horrible memory she dared not face came rushing into her awareness again. A car crash outside her old home in Elmsview. A memory that had haunted her since she’d stepped foot back in Harlan County. She tried her best to push it away. But it would never leave her.
Croft’s voice softened again. “Maybe you think God forgot you. Maybe you think you burned your second chance years ago. Maybe you think you’re down to the last piece on the board.”
He picked up the Bible and held it against his palm.
“You are not done because the king is not done.”
A woman in the front row rose to her feet. Then a man behind her. Then three more.
“The king,” Croft said, each word slow and forceful, “has one more move!”
By the third repetition half the tent was standing.
“There is always hope.”
He lifted a hand and the words rolled back at him from every side.
“There is always hope.”
“No matter how bad it gets,” Croft called.
“No matter how bad it gets,” the crowd answered.
“The king has one more move!”
“The king has one more move!”
Applause thundered under the canvas roof. A child started crying somewhere near the back. A man wiped at his face with one hard swipe of his wrist and did not seem embarrassed by it. Selena remained seated, hands locked together, pulse a little faster than before.
Beside her, Connor stayed still, too, as they listened to the rest of the sermon.
Croft closed the sermon in prayer, voice low now, shepherding the crowd down from the height he had pushed them to.
When he finished, the guitarist and his band moved straight into another song, this one brighter than the first. Guitar, handclaps, a brushed snare.
People were already singing by the time Croft came down off the platform.
Selena watched him enter the crowd.
He didn’t hurry. Didn’t need to. People reached for him.
Hands extended. Faces opened. Croft moved among them with a touch on a shoulder here, a clasped hand there, a word bent toward one person, then the next.
He had the ease of a politician and the intimacy of a man pretending every conversation mattered more than it possibly could.
“He’s definitely got influence over people,” Selena said.
Connor’s eyes stayed on Croft. “Yeah, but the wrong kind.”
“I wouldn’t say that. You don’t know. Sometimes it’s good to hear about hope.”
Connor turned to her, disbelief plain enough to be almost funny. “Don’t tell me you fell for that.”
“You never were one for religion, Connor.”
“Religion’s about trust,” he said. “And I don’t trust anyone when their message is too good to be true. Especially when they wield authority.”
Selena glanced at the badge on his belt. “Says the man who became a sheriff.”
Connor grinned. “True. But then I don’t trust myself either.”
The line drew a small smile from her. For a second Selena wondered whether he meant it.
Connor had always distrusted easy answers, grand gestures, men who liked being watched.
That part had not changed. Maybe the same was true of himself.
Maybe it wasn’t. But it was almost reassuring to know that the rebel within still burned in there somewhere.
Croft, meanwhile, worked the aisles like he had all night to do it.
Selena rose. “Let’s go meet the preacher.”
Connor stood with her.
Getting through the crowd took longer than it should have.
People were still standing in the aisles, clapping, hugging, talking too loudly over the music.
A woman with tears on her cheeks caught Croft’s hand and held it in both of hers while she spoke.
He listened with grave attention, then squeezed once and moved on.
By the time Selena and Connor reached the front third of the tent, Croft had nearly circled toward them of his own accord.
He saw them coming. Or saw something in them that set them apart.
The smile arrived first. Warm and open.
“Evening,” Croft said as he stepped close enough to be heard without shouting.
Connor put out his hand. “Sheriff Connor Chase. Harlan County.”
Croft took it.
And kept holding it.
Not long enough to make a scene. Long enough to establish the terms.
His gaze shifted to Selena. “And you are?”
“Agent Selena Raven. FBI.”
No change in the smile. Not even a flicker.
“Well,” Croft said. “That sounds serious.”
“We’d like to speak with you,” Connor said.
Croft’s hand finally released his. “Of course. I’d be glad to help in any way I can. But somewhere private. Please, come.”
Too smooth. Too unflustered by it all.
Selena said, “Of course.”
“My pleasure, child.” Croft turned slightly, gesturing toward the exit with easy hospitality, as though he were the host and they had come to him by appointment. “No sense trying to talk over all this joyful noise. Satan himself couldn’t swallow that sound!”
Selena exchanged a glance with Connor, then followed Croft toward the flap at the side of the tent.
Behind them the music swelled again, voices rising under the canvas as they stepped out into the night, which held its breath as if waiting for an answer.