The Breath of God (41 page)

Kristin jumped to her feet and hobbled to the apartment's door with the chair attached to her back. She desperately tried to work her hands free, but they were secured too tightly. She reached the door. Turning her body sideways, she grasped the knob with her fingertips. She turned the knob and pulled.

“You bitch!” the hoarse scream came from the floor behind her.

Hunched over and still pulling on the door, she glanced at the man crawling toward her. He left a trail of blood and curses behind as he moved closer.

The door was locked. Releasing the knob, her fingers searched the metal plate.

There!
A deadbolt. Just above the handle. She turned the lock and heard the click. She cut her eyes to the floor. He was almost to her. She grasped the knob again and turned it. The door opened.

“You're not leaving!” he wailed.

The door stopped after only a few inches. She jerked it harder, but it wouldn't budge.
The chair
. It was still attached to her back, and it was blocking the door. Frantically Kristin stepped away, giving the door room to swing out. It didn't. The man rose to his knees, just out of range from her legs. She looked back to the door, and then her heart sank.

The chain lock was attached two feet higher than her bound arms could reach.

“Help! Help me!” she screamed through the small opening.

She angled herself to grasp the handle again and tried to jerk the chain out of the wall.

The door slammed shut. Her captor pushed in front of her, blood and rage dripping from his face.

“Nice try.”

He punched her hard in the jaw, snapping her head sideways. Her skull thudded against the door. She crumpled to the floor, and the lights around her again faded to darkness.

T
HE WHINE OF THE TURBINE engines on the Hawker 800 series aircraft subsided as the plane leveled off at cruising altitude. William Jennings loosened his lap belt and relaxed into the plush leather seat. He'd never enjoyed flying, especially takeoffs and landings. He knew his fear was irrational, originating from a lack of control over the giant tube of metal's capacity to stay up in the air, but he still avoided planes as much as possible. Although the aircraft was technically considered a luxurious midsized private jet, it felt small to him. He would have preferred sitting crammed into the coach section of a 767 rather than being surrounded by the creamy leather and walnut trim in this cabin where he had to duck to avoid bumping his head on the Alcantara-upholstered ceiling.

“I need a Coke!” Reverend Brady bellowed from the sofa where he slouched. A notepad rested in his lap, and he chewed on the end of his ballpoint pen while he worked on the speech he was to give the next morning at the annual meeting of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Jennings knew that Brady was anxious because his breakfast address would be his first step in taking the reins of the organization. In the keynote that evening Reverend Jimmy Jeffries would be announcing his retirement and his support of Brady in the upcoming election. Word of the announcement had already leaked on the blogs, and many were already crowning Brady the heir apparent after the trifecta of his bold announcement of the New Hope Community, his best seller, and his public leadership in the recent charge against the Issa texts.
Jennings better than anyone understood how each of these public relations gold mines worked to reinforce each other.
After all
, he thought,
I planned them all
.

Jennings knew that Brady's more confrontational style and substance suited these uncertain times better than Jeffries's feel-good message of redemption through Christ's sacrifice. While Jeffries had grown his Texas-based church into one of the largest congregations in the country over the past two decades—he claimed a membership of an astounding fifty thousand believers—the NAE had lost its power and influence in American politics while under his control. The media loved to portray evangelicals as uneducated buffoons, often choosing the dumbest ones among them to interview. Jeffries's strategy had been to coddle the media, to show a softer and gentler side of their movement focused on outreach programs to the less fortunate, humanitarian trips to Africa, and even a recent move toward environmentalism in the name of protecting God's creation.

Jennings, however, had anticipated the folly of this strategy from the beginning. Just as one didn't negotiate with terrorists, playing into the mainstream media's hands had only weakened them. No longer were they feared as an organization that could deliver millions of Christian votes on election day. But he and Brady were close to changing the rules. Brady's recent media exposure had now propelled him to prominence in an organization restless for a new vision. Jennings had carefully crafted Brady's message so that it didn't shy away from blaming the country's problems on its sinful direction. Just as children craved firm rules and discipline, the country needed to be taught the Bible's message clearly, without reservation. Jennings had shaped the content of this message through his influence over the reverend's sermons and the hours he'd spent with the ghostwriter of Brady's book.
Maybe even more hours than Brady himself has spent,
Jennings mused.

They were so close to achieving their dreams. Now he needed to get his boss under control for the final stretch. The stakes were too high for any missteps.
Or
, he thought,
any bad publicity
.

“Here you go, Reverend.” The perky blond assistant secretary from Brady's office placed a glass filled half with Diet Coke and half with Regular Coke, cold but no ice, on the polished table beside the sofa.

Jennings pulled an overflowing file folder from the worn leather briefcase at his feet. He flipped through the first few pages, spreadsheets containing the church's current financial statements. As positive as Brady's media attention had been recently, the reality of New Hope's finances was another matter. He knew that this moment was not a good time to bring up a financial discussion with his boss, but Brady had avoided the topic for the past week, and now Jennings had him alone.

“Brian, the outside auditors required by the bank come on Monday.”

“Yeah, so deal with it.” Brady made notes in the margin of his pad without looking up.

“We need to prepare for their questions. Our loan is contingent on this audit. We've never had an outside audit before, and I'm concerned about how some of our expenses may be perceived.”

Brady sighed, finally looking up. “William, I'd love to be more involved now in the financial details of the church, but I've got to prepare for the most important speech of my career. Just do whatever you need to do to make the auditors happy and send them away.”

Jennings clenched and unclenched his jaw. This reaction was typical of Brady. The reverend delegated the financial and other day-to-day operations of the church to Jennings, but when the time came to make tough decisions about controlling the expenditures, every line item in the budget was sacred, part of the “necessary operations of the church” or part of God's “vision for the future.” How was he to make the bankers happy when the New Hope Community's projected construction costs were now 35 percent over a budget they'd already increased three times—and his hands were tied when it came to cutting costs?

The empty club chairs around him were a perfect example. The short roundtrip flight to Little Rock was costing the church eight thousand dollars for the three of them. Their one-quarter interest in the fractional jet ownership program provided the flexibility of having a plane at their disposal on a few hours' notice anywhere in the world, but at an extravagant cost. When Jennings had tried to discuss the economics of flying commercially rather than privately, Brady dismissively replied that he could perform God's work
much more efficiently from the private plane: he saved time by avoiding ticketing, security, and luggage lines. He'd also told Jennings that the bank president didn't fly commercial, so why should he?

Jennings knew that trying to budge his boss on the topic of saving money was an exercise in futility. They'd prospered as a church only because of their ability to continually increase revenues. If Brady excelled at one God-given ability above all others, it was raising money. Had the reverend not received the calling to become a preacher, he would've made millions in the business world. Brady was the most natural salesman Jennings had ever met. It didn't matter whether Brady was selling a parable from the Bible, the vision for the new church development, or his book, he had the gift of generating an infectious enthusiasm among those around him. Twenty years ago, Jennings himself had been persuaded by the same charisma. If only he'd been born with such a gift.

“Look,” Jennings persisted, “the bankers don't look at the world in the same way we do. If we can't show at least a trend of increasing our revenues beyond the temporary spike in book sales—either through home sales or growing our congregation—we risk the bank cutting off our funds permanently and possibly even taking over the project.”

“What!” Brady went red in the face. “New Hope is my vision, not the bank's! How can they even think they could execute a project like this?”

“They could never execute the project like you, but that's never stopped lenders in the past from foreclosing on developers who cannot make their payments.”

Brady wiped his brow. “The national media will cover my speech tomorrow, just as they've been following me since the debate. Won't that help? I'm the one, after all, who showed the world that those Jesus texts were a fraud.”

Actually, Jennings thought,
he
had given Brady the information about Grant Matthews's past plagiarism. He'd long ago become used to Brady taking credit for his work, but as long as their end goals were reached, he didn't care.

“That's exactly why you have to hit it out of the park tomorrow. Let me see what you've got.” The right speech covered by the national media would drive more people into the church, onto their website, and into bookstores to buy

Brady's book. The uptick in sales of the book after the debate had been huge, just as Jennings had anticipated, but he knew that that effect could only last so long.

“Okay,” Brady huffed. He handed Jennings the legal pad with the scribbling that was the beginning of his speech.

After a glance, Jennings said, “Not bad, Brian. I like how you speak out against all of these so-called self-help gurus who encourage people to find peace within themselves with their watered-down references to Eastern religions.”

Brady nodded. “True peace
only
comes through acceptance of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, not from within. That is the lesson that our country is missing today.”

“I agree, but what if we also hit people where they are really hurting.”

Brady templed his fingers under his chin. “Their pocketbooks?”

“Exactly.” The slow economy had not only hurt home sales in New Hope, it was dragging down contributions to the church as well. Jennings figured they could turn their problems to their advantage. “What are the two countries that are doing well economically today while the U.S. and Europe suffer?”

“China and India, but those are not Christian countries.”

“That's your point. You make the argument in your book that God punished Israel, even though the Jews were the chosen people, by allowing Rome, a pagan empire, to destroy the Temple in seventy AD. Why? Because the Jews had rejected Jesus as the Messiah. Well, take this one step further. China and India are countries controlled by people who believe in heathen religions, yet even as they take our jobs, our businesses form subsidiaries there, moving even more of our production offshore, which is destroying our nation.”

Brady's eyes lit up. “Just as Paul wrote in First Corinthians, chapter ten, verses twenty-twenty-one: ‘You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord's table and the table of demons.'”

Jennings smiled. The reverend hadn't lost his touch.

“I can give a hundred sermons like that in my sleep.”

“Your speech will be great, Brian. After the CNN debate, the media will be anxious to see what you have to say.”

Jennings glanced at his watch. They would be landing soon. Thinking about the debate, he was reminded of the phone calls he needed to make. In addition to the financial problems at New Hope, the other occurrence that could discredit Brady and upset his bid for the presidency of the NAE would be the sudden appearance of the texts he'd condemned as fraudulent. Jennings believed that the Internet release of the texts had been both a gift and a test sent by God. His strategy of using them to create controversy and drive more people to Brady's book was exactly the kind of response that God had wanted from them. Only when the texts disappeared for good, just as they had done a hundred years earlier in the case of Nicholas Notovitch, would God's will be done.

K
RISTIN STIRRED AND opened her eyes. Her head throbbed.
Where was she?
She lay on her side on a dusty wood floor, her arms bound to a chair attached uncomfortably to her back.

Then the horror of her entrapment overcame her.

She attempted to move her head, but a lightning bolt of pain convinced her to keep it resting on the floor.
How long had she been unconscious?
The room had no windows to the outside, so she had no idea if it was night or day. She blinked at the bare lightbulb in the ceiling above her. When her eyes refocused on her surroundings, she realized that she no longer lay by the door to the apartment where she'd fallen. Her captor must have dragged her back to the center of the room. She also noticed, with relief, that her pants were still on. Her shirt was open, exposing her sports bra, but it was in place too.