The Heaven Trilogy (32 page)

“You think it's that far off ?”

“No. I'm not
thinking.
It is how I
feel.”

He smiled. “Surely there must be a crack in that armor of his. You've been breathing down his neck as you say, for weeks. You are specifically called to intercede for the man; surely that means God will hear you.
Is
hearing you.”

“You would think so, wouldn't you? On the other hand, you are specifically called to pray for
your
loved ones, Pastor. Does God hear my prayers any more than he hears your prayers?”

“I don't know. I would have said
no
a month ago, but I would also have thought you crazy a month ago.”

“You still do at times, don't you, Bill?” He couldn't answer. “It's okay. So do I. But you are right; God is hearing me. We are both deriving a lot of pleasure from this little episode now that I've settled into an acceptance of the matter.”

“You've always interceded for others, Helen. In many ways this is not so different.”

“Yes, in many ways. You are right. But in one way it's very different. I am now walking in faith, you see. Quite literally. I am living intercession, not simply praying. The difference is like the difference between splashing through the surf and diving into the ocean.”

“Hmmm. Good analogy. That's good.”

“He's drinking, Bill. And he's slipping. Like a slug headed for the dark creases.”

“I'm sorry, Helen. I'm sure it must be hard.”

“Oh, it's not so hard anymore, Pastor. Actually the walking helps. It's . . . well, it's like a bit of heaven on Earth, maybe. It's the stretching of the mind that wears one thin. Have you been feeling thin lately, Bill?”

“Yes. Yes, I have. My wife thinks I need a break.”

“Good. We have too many of the thick headed among our ranks. Maybe one of these days you'll be thin enough to hear.”

“Hmm.”

“Good-bye, Bill. I have to fix him dinner. I promised I would. We're having egg foo yung.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Week Eleven

KENT SAW Helen at each evening meal, but otherwise only the spotless kitchen remained as a clue that another person shared the house. By the time he dragged himself from bed each morning, she was gone. Walking, she said, although he couldn't imagine why a woman Helen's age chose 5 A.M. for her daily walk. By the time he wandered home about six, the evening meal was either on the table or simmering on the stove.

He'd peeked into the sewing room once, just to see what she had done with it. The bed had been neatly made with a comforter he'd never seen before; a small pile of laundry rested at the foot, waiting to be put away. Otherwise there was hardly a sign that Helen occupied the spotless room. Only the nightstand beside the bed betrayed her residence there. There, her Bible lay open, slightly yellowed under the lamp. A white porcelain teacup sat nearby, emptied of its contents. But it was the crystal bottle that made him blink. She had brought this one knickknack from that hutch in her house and set it here beside her bed. Her most prized possession, Gloria had once told him. A simple bottle filled with only God knew what. Kent had closed the door without entering.

He had come home Tuesday evening to the sound of what he would have sworn was Gloria singing. He'd called her name and run to the kitchen only to find Helen bent over the sink, humming. If she'd heard him, she did not show it. He had retreated to the bedroom for a quick snip at the bottle without her knowing.

The meals themselves were a time of clinking and smacking and polite talk, but not once did Helen engage him in any of her religious dogma. She'd made a conscious decision not to, he thought. In fact, by the way she carried herself, on several occasions he found himself wondering if she had succumbed to some new drug that kept her in the clouds. Her eyes seemed to shine with confidence, and she smiled a lot. Possibly she was misreading one of her prescriptions and overdosing.

If so, she had lost neither her wit nor her analytical skills. He had engaged her about her knee-high socks once and found that out immediately.

“Those socks look silly with a dress. You
do
know that, don't you?”

“Yes, I had noticed that. But they keep my legs warm.”

“And so would pants.”

“No, Kent. You wear the pants in this family. I wear the dress. If you think these socks look silly, think of how a dress would look hanging off your hips.”

“But it doesn't
have
to be that way,” he said with a chuckle.

“You're right. But to be perfectly honest with you, it's the only way I can get men to look at my legs these days.”

He drove up to the house on Thursday, eager to discover what Helen had prepared for dinner. The sentiment caused him to stop with the car door half open. The fact was, he looked forward to walking into the house, didn't he? It was the only thing he really looked forward to now besides the plan. There was always the plan, of course.

And there was Lacy.

They had steak that night.

Kent forged ahead, tiptoeing through the hours, refining his plan, calling Lacy, drinking. Quite a lot of drinking, always late at night, either in his upstairs sitting room or at the office, maintaining his pattern of late nights at work.

They all took Cliff 's departure in stride, talking ad infinitum about how the competition had tried to steal AFPS and almost got away with it. The speculation only fueled their perceptions of self-importance. That anyone would go to such lengths to infiltrate their ranks came off as yet one more feather in Borst's cap. The distraction proved a perfect cover for Kent's last days among them.

Step by step, the perfect crime began to materialize with stunning clarity. And that was no illusion. He had breezed through graduate school, testing with one of the sharpest analytical minds this side of Tokyo. Not that he dwelled on the fact; he just knew it. And his mind told him a few things about his plan. It told him that what he was planning was most definitely a crime, punishable by severe penalties. If he did fail, it would be the end of him. He might as well take a cyanide capsule with him in the event things went wrong.

His mind also told him that the plan, however criminal, however heinous, was absolutely brilliant. Crime-of-the-century stuff. Enough to bring a smile to any cop's mouth; enough to boil any breathing man's blood.

And his mind told him that when it was over, if he succeeded, he would be one rich fool, living in a new skin, free to suck up whatever pleasures the world had to offer. His heart pounded at the thought.

There was simply nothing he had overlooked.

Except Lacy. He had overlooked Lacy. Well, not Lacy herself—she was becoming hard to overlook. In fact, it was the difficulty of overlooking her that he had overlooked.

They talked every evening, and he had become increasingly aware of the way his gut knotted each time he thought about picking up the phone to call her. It had been the way she touched him on his last visit, holding his head as though it might break, feeling her breath in his ear. Long-lost memories had flooded his mind.

The following evening's phone call had driven the stake further into his heart.

“You okay, Kent?”

“Yes. I'm better. I don't know how to thank you, Lacy. I just . . .” And then he had started to blubber, of all things. Cried right then on the phone, and he hardly knew why.

“Oh, Kent! It will okay. Shhh, shhh. It will be okay. I promise.”

He should have dropped the phone in its cradle then and walked away from her. But he could not. The calls this whole week had been no better. No more tears. But the gentle words, though not overtly affectionate, could hardly hide the chemistry brewing between them.

And now Friday had arrived. Which was a problem, because Lacy didn't exactly fit into his plan, and his plan started tomorrow.

Helen asked him if anything was wrong during the evening meal, and he shook his head. “No, why?”

“No reason, really. You just look troubled.”

It was the last she said of the matter, but her words rang annoyingly through his mind. He had expected to be ecstatic on the eve of the big weekend. Not troubled. And yet he
was
ecstatic in some ways. It was the Lacy thing that tore at his heart.

Kent retired to his room and downed three shots before working up the courage to call her.

“Kent! I'm so glad you called! You would not believe what happened to me at work today.” Her voice might just as well have been a vise clamped around his heart, squeezing.

“Oh? What happened?”

“They asked me to enter management school. They want to groom me for management.”

“Good. That's good, Lacy.” He swallowed. It could have been him six years ago, starting his climb up the ladder. And he'd climbed right to the top . . . before they decided to push him over.

“Good? It's
great!”
She paused. “What's wrong, Kent?”

“Nothing. Really, that's great.”

“You sound like you just swallowed a pickle. What's wrong?”

“I need to see you, Lacy.”

Her voice softened. “Okay. When?”

“Tonight.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“Is there a problem?”

“No.” Kent was having difficulty keeping his voice steady. “Can I drive up?”

She hesitated, and for some reason that worsened the ache in his chest.

“Sure,” she said. “Give me an hour.”

“I'll see you in an hour, then.”

Kent hung up feeling as though he had just thrown a switch to an electric chair. His own electric chair. But by the time he pulled up to her condo, he had resolved the issue. He would do what needed to be done, and he would do it the
way
it needed to be done. He took a slug of tequila from the bottle in the passenger seat and pushed his door open.

God, help me,
he thought. It was a prayer.

THEY SAT at her dinette table again, opposite each other, as they had done nearly two weeks earlier. Lacy wore jeans and a white shirt advertising Cabo San Lucas in splashy red letters. Kent had come wearing faded denims and loafers. His blue eyes had not lost their red sheen. The faint, sweet smell of alcohol drifted around him. He had grinned shyly and avoided contact with her upon entering. Not that she had expected a hug or anything. But that said something, she thought.
What
it said, she had no clue.

For ten minutes they made small talk that would have carried more grace on the phone. Then Kent settled into his chair, and she knew he wanted to tell her something.

“Do you ever feel guilty about wanting to move on?” Kent asked, staring at his coffee.

Lacy felt her heart strengthen its pulse.
Move on?
she thought.
You want to move on? I'm not sure I'm ready to move on yet. At least not in a relationship with another man.
“What do you mean?” she asked and lifted her cup to her lips.

“Move on. Get past . . . John.” He nodded to the mantel. “Forget about your past and begin over. You ever feel like that?”

“In some ways, yes. I'm not sure I've ever wanted to
forget
John, though. But we do have to get on with life.” She looked at those baby blues, and suddenly she wanted him to just come out and tell her that he did want to move on—and move on with her. She would hold him back, of course. But she wanted to be wanted by him.

He was nodding. “Yes. Only . . . maybe even wanting to put the past totally aside. Because as long as you have those memories you can never really be new. You ever feel like that? Even a tiny bit?”

“Probably. I just never thought about it in those terms.”

“Well, now that you are, does it make you feel bad? You know, for not wanting to remember the past.”

Lacy thought about the question, thinking it a tad strange. “I'm not sure. Why?”

“Because I'm thinking about starting over,” he said.

“Oh? And how would you do that?”

The corners of his mouth lifted barely. His eyes brightened. “If I told you, would you swear to secrecy?”

She did not respond.

“I mean, absolute secrecy. Tell no man, ever—or woman, for that matter. Just you and I. Could you swear to that on John's grave?”

Lacy recoiled at the question. John's grave? Kent was still grinning mischievously, and Lacy sat straighter. “Why? I mean, I think so. It depends.”

“No, I need a definite yes. No matter what I tell you, I want you to swear to guard it. I need that confidence in you. Can you do that?”

In any other circumstance Lacy would be telling him she couldn't put herself in that situation without knowing more. But that's not what came out of her mouth.

“Yes,” she said. And she knew it was the truth. No matter what he said, she would guard it as her own.

Kent watched her carefully for a few seconds. “I believe you,” he said. “And if you ever break this promise, you will be putting me in the grave, right beside my wife. I want you to understand that. Acknowledge that.”

She nodded, thoroughly confused as to his direction.

“Good.” He took a long drink of coffee and set the cup down carefully, dead serious. “I'm going to start over, Lacy. Completely.” He waited, as if he'd just revealed a sinister secret and expected her to drop her jaw to the table.

“That's good, Kent.”

Kent lowered his head and looked at her, past her arching eyebrows. His lips curled in a wicked grin. “I'm going be rich, Lacy.”

She thought he might burst with this thing. And so far, it was nothing worthy of his behavior. Unless it really was about her and he was showing attraction in some strange, deluded manor.
I'm going to get rich, Honey, so you and I can live a new life together.

“I'm going to steal twenty million dollars.”

“Come on, Kent. Be serious.”