The Presence

Books by
Davis Bunn

The Book of Hours

The Great Divide

Winner Take All

The Lazarus Trap

Elixir

Imposter

The Presence

The Gift

The Messenger

The Music Box

The Quilt

The Dream Voyagers

Another Homecoming
*

Tomorrow's Dream
*

Return to Harmony
*

Lion of Babylon

Rare Earth

All Through the Night

My Soul to Keep

A
CTS OF
F
AITH
*

The Centurion's Wife • The Hidden Flame

The Damascus Way

S
ONG OF
A
CADIA
*

The Meeting Place • The Sacred Shore

The Birthright • The Distant Beacon

The Beloved Land

H
EIRS OF
A
CADIA
†

The Solitary Envoy • The Innocent Libertine

The Noble Fugitive • The Night Angel

Falconer's Quest

*
with Janette Oke    
†
with Isabella Bunn

The Presence

Davis Bunn

For IZIA

Who helps me listen to God.

God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him,

though he is not far from each one of us.

Acts 17:27,
NIV

DAVIS BUNN, a professional novelist for over twenty years, is the author of numerous national bestsellers with sales totaling more than six million copies. His work has been published in sixteen languages, and his critical acclaim includes three Christy Awards for excellence in fiction. Formerly an international business executive working in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, Bunn is now a lecturer in creative writing and Writer in Residence at Regent's Park College, Oxford University. He and his wife, Isabella, divide their time between the English countryside and the coast of Florida.

Behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you,

I will make known my words unto you.

Proverbs 1:23,
KJV

Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said,

streams of living water will flow from within him.

John 7:38,
NIV

Contents

Cover

Books by Davis Bunn

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Back Cover

The first time it happened was at dawn on his fifty-third birthday as he sat in a friend's boat on Little Frying Pan Lake. TJ Case thought he was having a stroke. He felt a brief moment of regret, a heartbeat of wishing he could tell Catherine once more how much he loved her. Then thought ended and wonder began.

The fishing trip had been his wife's idea. Two evenings ago Catherine silently packed the car while he was watching the election returns, laden with anguish for himself and dog-tired satisfaction for the young man whose campaign he had helped to manage. The next morning she bundled him into the passenger seat with a blanket, a pillow, a thermos of coffee, and a Bible. What's all this? he had asked, not really caring. Emergency aid for the walking wounded, Catherine told him. A little enforced R and R. He nodded, then asked, so where are we headed? It's all arranged, she said. Jeremy's loaned us his boat. Told me to keep you out until your head and heart are back in working order. His shoulders bounced in a humorless laugh. Jeremy said that? Catherine started the car, turned solemn dark eyes toward him, and said, you've been looking out for everybody but yourself for too long.

Seven months earlier, after weeks of sleepless deliberation, Thomas Jefferson Case—TJ to his many friends, Thomas to his wife—had decided to cross party lines and back a Republican friend for the U.S. congressional race. The local Democratic party had thrown a major fit and, when that hadn't worked, had openly sabotaged his own campaign for reelection to the North Carolina State House of Representatives. TJ lost the primary to a man willing to toe the party line, but his Republican friend went on to take the U.S. House seat from the Democratic incumbent. TJ had half-expected both outcomes. Yet his own loss hurt worse than he knew how to put into words.

The local papers made a big deal about it. In the run-up to the November elections TJ was dubbed “a man of principle” and credited for turning the U.S. congressional race around. Interviewers dwelt long and heavy on his “incredible sacrifice” and seemed to search for ways to make him squirm. TJ remained stoic, saying only that he was a lawyer first and a politician second. What was important, he told them time and time again, was what this young man had to offer.

The pain, the frustration, the endless wondering whether he had done the right thing—all this lay hidden too deep for anyone to see. Anyone, that is, except Catherine.

So when TJ awoke in the final hour before dawn he had a tough time believing he was really there; miles from the nearest telephone, snug in the cabin of the luxurious cruiser. The loudest sounds were Catherine's breathing and the lazy slap of water against the hull.

The boat was owned by his client and friend, Jeremy Hughes. Catherine called him their closet Midas. TJ called him the last of a dying breed. Everything Jeremy Hughes touched turned to gold. Everything. The man had a second-grade education, hadn't read but one book in his entire life, yet he made money as easy as other people made mistakes.

Take his last deal. Jeremy had purchased six hundred acres of worthless bottomland, the junk property that skirted three towns, and contained a rapidly sinking state road, a collective garbage dump, and a lake that had a maximum depth of four feet after a hard rain. It was land so miserable even the hunters steered clear. Jeremy bought it for fifty bucks an acre, brought in a special engineering group from Florida, convinced the surrounding towns to cough up half the engineers' fee, drained the boggy soil, then let it sit in dusty desolation for two winters and a summer. The second spring he parceled it into garden plots, hired people from as far as thirty miles away, and truck-farmed the whole six hundred acres. It turned out the land would grow okra the size of sweet corn and melons the size of basketballs. He contracted the produce out to first-class restaurants as far away as New York, charged them top dollar, and made a fortune.

When a local reporter interviewed him and asked how he had known the soil was so rich, Jeremy replied, “Smelled it.”

“Speaking of the smell,” the reporter said, “is it true that local townships have been trying to obtain state funds for twenty years to buy all this up and drain it just to get rid of the stink?”

“Might've stunk to some people, sonny,” Jeremy replied. “Smelled like money to me.”

****

Twenty-three years ago, a younger and skinnier Jeremy Hughes had marched into TJ Case's law office one morning and announced he was looking for an honest man.

“Don't have to be smart, but smart'd sure help. More'n anything I need somebody who can keep other people's lawyers from climbing inside my wallet.”

TJ stalled in what he called his best lawyer fashion, took in the man towering over his desk. And if Jeremy Hughes did anything well, it was tower. He stood six-foot-five in his muddy construction boots and weighed in at maybe a hundred and seventy pounds. He was a wiry bundle of barely contained energy, with blue-gray eyes that shot icy fire at everything they touched. Jeremy was dressed in what Catherine came to call the Hughes Formal Wear—khaki pants with a rough patch on one knee, checked shirt, and a hunting jacket with a broken zipper. His head was a shock of sandy hair that hadn't seen a barber for months. His oversized hands looked like shovels, with knuckles all bruised and broken from heavy work.

TJ asked Jeremy Hughes how he had found the law firm.

“Now that's a right interesting story,” he drawled, plopping down in a chair and stretching out legs that seemed to go on for miles. “I'm sitting on a land deal that looks to make me a whole mess of money. Trouble is, you should see the old boy the other side's got working as their lawyer. Got the eyes of a snake and more oil on his hair than I use in my truck. Handed me this contract with fifty-seven pages of fine print and licked his lips. Yessir, he truly did. Eat me for breakfast is all that boy aims on doin'.

“I scampered fast as my feet could take me,” Jeremy said. “Got up and out that door like my tail was on fire. Started drivin' around in my truck, didn't even know where I was goin'. Sat there at a stoplight like a dummy, watchin' the lights go from red to green and back to red, and knew I was licked. Can't do this deal without the other side, see. They own the land right around me. Want to build this humongous complex out there. They're offerin' a little cash up front, then a chunk of the development. That's all fine with me. I got no need of money right now, and these boys ain't no better or worse'n most builders I've met. They're just out for all they can grab. But their lawyer, now—he's a piece of work. He don't aim on leavin' more'n a greasy spot on the sidewalk when he gets through.

“So I bowed my head right there at that light, and I prayed. ‘Help me, Lord,' I said. ‘I can't do this myself. Show me what I gotta do.'”

Only four years out of law school, TJ had already developed a successful pose he used with new clients. He reacted like a tortoise sneaking back inside his shell, all watchful eyes and body armor until the fellow ran out of steam. Experience had taught him that he could take about ninety-five percent of what a client said during the first meeting and toss it out the window. His grandfather, the founder of the firm and TJ's guiding light during his early years, had put it differently. Every time he interviewed a new client, his grandfather had said, he was tempted to walk out the front door and make sure all the hot air hadn't lifted the building off its foundations.