CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nora Avery—and that was her name, would always be her name no matter what her driver’s license said—knelt at the altar to pray.
As was her custom, she crossed herself and began with a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.
“Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
As she continued the prayer, her thoughts drifted to the Lawgiver, the man who had shown her that God had not abandoned His scorned child, only waited for her to come to Him that He might give her the courage she needed to enact His revenge on those who had harmed her brother.
She had no idea where Elijah Cox was now, no idea if he was even alive.
She doubted it. The news reports from Baltimore last month reported finding his blood inside the church and at several places in the park beyond.
That FBI agent had clearly shot him mortally before he escaped.
He was probably in the arms of God right now, grateful that his work continued even after his death.
Nora's work was almost finished. She'd killed the false witness who had chosen to bow to the white police narrative and turn against his Black brother.
She'd killed the man who aided in that falsehood by planting shoe prints inside the jewelry store.
She'd killed the court clerk whose choice to withhold evidence that would have exonerated Daniel, regardless of the false evidence provided, had led to her brother's incarceration for a crime he'd never committed.
She'd killed the bitch whose hate couldn't be sated by the unearned suffering of her brother and who had to spread vicious lies about a dead man's family.
Only one remained, the woman whose call had first directed the police toward her brother, the woman who had realized that she was wrong but had refused to admit that and retract the statement that put her brother in handcuffs.
It had taken years of hunting to discover that name, years of dead ends, but finally, with the Lawgiver’s help, she had found her.
Perhaps even before the Lawgiver arrived in her life, she had been subconsciously preparing for this reckoning, and God had sent the Lawgiver as an angel to point her in the right direction.
The Lawgiver had found the phone number used to call the police and found the woman who used that phone number on the day of her brother’s false arrest. Now Nora knew her name, and she was going to make sure she received the justice she deserved.
"Please, God," she whispered as she finished the Lord's Prayer. "Please God, give me the opportunity to finish this. I know this is for your will and not mine, but God, please let me have the satisfaction of seeing that whore die for what she did to my brother."
Tears welled in the corners of her eyes. She clasped her hands tightly and pressed them to her forehead, temporarily overcome by her anguish. “Please let this be enough.”
Not that she wasn’t willing to kill more if she needed to.
Those who bore false witness deserved death.
But the pain she felt, the hollowness, the rawness in her center through which every breath was agony, that she wanted gone.
Her brother had torn her heart out when he died, victim to the hate of men who saw his goodness, his lack of belonging in the den of evil in which they were held.
Her eyes hardened. In fact, she wasn’t finished.
This final woman was only the conclusion of the first phase of her revenge.
She would finish with her, then she would visit the men in prison who had murdered her brother.
She had no idea how, but the Lawgiver had instructed her in his letters to have faith, to trust that God would provide.
And He would. How could He not? He was a God of love, wasn’t He? He must give her the chance to take her revenge. After all, Vengeance belonged to Him, and she was His servant.
A sound drifted to her ears, a car door opening. She whipped her head around and saw the priest of this church walking toward the door. She breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t the scapegoat. She still hadn’t found Nora.
She sobbed, not with grief but with frustration.
The Lawgiver had offered his help, but not freely.
He had a task for Nora, one she must complete before he would give her the information she sought: the name and location of the former Stuart Pelham, the false witness in word who must be the first to die.
Leave Kate Valentine a message for me. Embed it in your cipher. Show her the way. God’s will must be done, and she is the key.
Nora had left the message, but not with a perfect heart. She didn’t want Kate to find her. She didn’t want Kate to stop her before she had her chance at revenge. That wasn’t fair.
So, she’d obscured the message after Stuart Pelham’s murder, using different and more difficult codes.
The final message she’d encrypted heavily, using a vintage Japanese coding machine she’d obtained during her decades of wandering under various assumed names.
At the time she’d obtained the machine, she hadn’t understood its purpose.
She understood now. God hadn’t wanted Kate to see the way.
Not in time to stop His work. The machine was His provision, a tool that would veil the message Kate was to receive long enough to give Nora time to finish her task.
“Good evening, my child,” the priest said.
He smiled at Nora, his face kind, his eyes betraying a lust he likely never acknowledged in spite of the late night explorations the he conducted, half-lidded and breathing heavily in the darkness, telling himself that he was away, that his right hand wasn’t aware of what his left hand was doing, that since no actual women were harmed in this fantasy, it didn’t count as a betrayal of his vows.
He wasn’t going to try to act on his lust with her, though. He kept that buried deeply. It was just that Nora had a knack for seeing people as they truly were.
“Good evening, Father.”
“Forgive me for being forward, my child, but you seem troubled. What is weighing on you?”
Nora thought for a moment, then decided that God had sent him to her, and it wasn’t her place to call unclean what God had cleansed. “I have a job to do,” she told him, “and I’m afraid that I won’t be able to finish it.”
The priest nodded sagely, a habit formed early in his ecclesiastical career, though he had no idea what Nora was talking about. “God often gives us tasks that are difficult to accomplish, but He always provides us the tools we need to accomplish them. Tell me what He has laid on your heart, dear.”
Nora smiled. She got to her feet. “Actually, I think that’s what I needed to hear. Thank you, Father.”
The priest blinked. He frowned and opened his mouth to ask if Nora was sure she didn’t want more counsel or perhaps confession.
But Nora was already gone, her smile widening. She had felt doubt and fear, and God had sent His messenger—His flawed messenger—to remind her that though she was imperfect, He would give her the opportunity to complete her task.
God was good.
And she would smite the evildoer in His name.