20

            In Thorne’s haste to flee his residence, he had left open the driveway gate.  Valdez urged the crippled Suburban inside and parked in the turnaround.  That section of the drive was flanked by a dogwood with pinkish flowers that offered concealment from the front of the house.

            Valdez cut the engine and let out a long, low breath that Cutty interpreted as disappointment.

            “Thorne’s escape is only temporary,” Cutty said.  “Clearly, Satan was assisting him, but we have God on our side, Valdez.  God won’t allow us to fail.”

            Valdez gave him a weary smile.  “For we are faithful, si.”

            “Yes.  We are the Lord’s faithful servants.  He will deliver the wicked into our hands.  We must not doubt.”

            “Is sin.”

            “Yes, doubt is sin.  And I never doubt—ever.”

            Leaving her with those words of wisdom, Cutty hopped outside and assessed the damage to the vehicle.  Thorne’s gunfire had left a couple of pebble-deep dents around the grille, as well as a scratch on the windshield, but the right front tire was ruined. 

            The vehicle included a full spare, but he wouldn’t perform the repair himself.  That was mission support’s duty.

            He phoned the dispatcher on his cell phone, gave his location, and requested the appropriate auto service.  The operator assured him that a mechanic would be sent within an hour.

            He also informed the dispatcher that area residents had likely phoned Atlanta police and reported shots fired, and might have included a description of the Suburban.  The man promised to take care of that incident, too. 

            The dispatcher did not inquire about what had become of the Judas, and Cutty did not volunteer an update.  He stated only that the mission was in progress.  He was not accountable to the dispatcher; he was accountable only to those God had placed in authority above him—his division superior and their anointed leader—and the Almighty himself.

            From the outside, Thorne’s home was impressive.  He wondered what kind of work Thorne did for a living.  He found it dubious that a man so skilled with firearms and combat tactics served in an ordinary nine-to-five desk job.        

            Avoiding the front, where bright lights shone, they approached the back entrance.  The big French doors stood locked, moonlight shimmering on the glass.               

            “Would you do the honors, Valdez?” he asked. 

            She indicated the white sticker on one of the window panes, warning that the home was secured by an alarm system.           

            “Go ahead and pick the lock,” he said with a grin.  “I’ve got a hunch.”   

            She removed a lock pick gun and tension wrench from a waist pouch and knelt to work on the cylinder pins.  Within fifteen seconds, she sprang the lock. 

            He had expected her to take longer.  For a rookie fresh out of training camp, she was unusually skillful. 

            When they opened the doors, the security system beeped once, and then quieted.

            “Ah, I was correct,” Cutty said.  “They were in such a rush to get out of here they didn’t bother to arm the system.”

            Her eyes sparkled in awe at his keen instincts.  

            With a generous sweep of his arm, as if they were entering his own home, he beckoned her to go in ahead of him.  He lightly brushed his fingers across her ponytail as she swept forward, just a quick, innocent touch, and the feel of her hair across his flesh gave him a warm, tickly sensation.      

            He put his fingers in his mouth for a moment, tasting her essence, and followed her inside.

            They were in a large kitchen furnished with ultra-modern appliances, granite counters and island, and hardwood floors.  It was meticulously clean, the cooking surfaces, sinks, and countertops spotless and gleaming.

            Then he saw the bottle of alcohol on the counter. 

            “Look at this, Valdez.”  He read the label.  “Hennessey?  This looks like hard, vile stuff.  Thorne must be an alcoholic.”

            He screwed the cap off the whiskey and upended the bottle over the sink drain.  The pungent fumes drew tears from his eyes, but he didn’t stop until he’d poured all of it out.  He tossed the bottle in a wastebasket.

            “Alcoholic beverages are a lure of the devil,” he said.  “The nectar of the damned.  But of course you know that.”    

            “Si,” she said.  “Is very bad.”

            The refrigerator was a stainless steel behemoth, and actually built into the wall.  He pulled open the doors. 

            It was stocked with temple-fortifying foods: fruit, vegetables, milk, juice, bottled water, a tub of butter, deli meats, cheese, condiments. 

            “Uh oh,” he said.  “Look what we have here.”

            She peered over his shoulder as he pointed out a lower shelf that held a six-pack of bottled beer, and a twelve-pack of a caffeinated cola.

            “Not only is Thorne an alcoholic—witness more alcoholic drinks—he drinks caffeinated cola, too.  Caffeine is another drug, Valdez.  We’ve got a serious addict on our hands.”

            “Ah, si.”

            Clucking his tongue, he removed the beer and the soda and methodically poured the contents of each bottle and can down the sink drain.  He returned to the refrigerator and opened the freezer door.

            The racks were stuffed with meats, fish, more vegetables, and, disappointingly, a pint of gourmet vanilla ice cream, which he promptly trashed. 

            The pantry beckoned on the other side of the room, and he saw a wet bar off the kitchen that surely contained a whole storehouse of poison, but he had done enough.  Continued exposure to Thorne’s addictions would have only nauseated him, and he couldn’t afford to be ill.  He needed to keep up his energy and eat a proper meal of his own, as he had a busy night ahead of him.   

            “Would you mind preparing sandwiches for us, Valdez?”

            A frown.  “Eh?”

            “Sandwiches.  I prefer turkey, Swiss cheese, lettuce, and mustard.  I’m sure there’s fresh bread in the pantry, but be careful in there.  Doubtless it’s full of all manner of unwholesome things.”

            She hesitated, and then went to the pantry doors.

            “God bless you,” he said.  “You know, I bet you’ll make some godly man very happy one day.  You’ve got so many wonderful, wifely qualities.”

            She looked at him, eyes flat and indifferent. 

            “That was meant as a compliment,” he said.         

            She said nothing.  Had he offended her? 

            He stammered.  “Umm, anyway, while you do that, I’m going to look around some more and see what else I can learn about this heathen.”

            She turned away.

            He was puzzled.  Women were so mysterious it was as if they spoke a foreign tongue.  Had Adam endured these same challenges with Eve?

            He entered the main hallway, a long corridor illuminated with soft light from a crystal chandelier.  Photographs hung on the wall, and he stopped to examine them.

            Evidently, Thorne had deciphered the language of women.  In one framed photo, Thorne and a striking black woman stood face to face in front of an altar, holding hands, their eyes full of love, while a pastor looked on in the background with a benevolent smile.

            He thought he’d glimpsed someone in the passenger seat of Thorne’s SUV.  Thorne’s spouse was a point against him.  A husband on the run would have to consider his wife’s welfare, would be burdened by her womanly needs and weaknesses and inability to defend herself, and as a result, would be more vulnerable.

            If Thorne were wise, he would dump his wife off somewhere, and go about his business alone.  But he didn’t blame Thorne if he kept the woman around.  She was a looker.

            He moved to another picture.  It was a black-and-white bridal portrait that showcased the wife to her full stunning effect.  Clasping a bouquet, the woman gazed at the camera with her big, dreamy eyes, lips full and soft, lush cleavage tantalizingly displayed.

            He ran his finger along the picture, stopping at the mound of her cleavage.  Delicious heaviness spread through his groin. 

            He was thirty-two years old, but he’d encountered live, exposed breasts only once in his life.  When he was thirteen, one of the teenage girls who’d lived on their commune, a sassy blonde named Holly, had enticed him into the loft of one of the barns.  She’d lifted up her blouse and exposed her large creamy breasts and invited him to touch them, which he did, nervously at first and then with growing eagerness, and the next thing he knew she was massaging his crotch . . . and soon, he erupted in his pants.

            He’d been so ashamed of his sin that he’d fled the barn.  He’d never spoken of the episode to anyone, and Holly, knowing their community’s strict rules, had thankfully kept it secret, too.  If Father had learned of the incident, he might well have castrated him.

            But . . . he wondered how the breasts of Thorne’s wife would look, unfettered.  How soft and warm and full they would feel in his hands.  How the nipples would taste.

            The sound of clattering silverware in the kitchen shattered his reverie.  He glanced down the hallway.  Valdez was not watching him, but his face burned.          

You must not covet a man’s wife.  Remember the command-ments.   

            With effort, he turned away from the photo and entered a spacious great room.  The room was immaculate, as was the rest of the house he’d seen thus far, and furnished with comfortable furniture, oak tables, and leafy, live plants.  A marble fireplace looked commodious enough to spit-roast a hog. 

            On an end table, he discovered a photo that instantly shed light on a few matters.  It was a shot of a younger, yet stern-faced, clean-shaven Thorne in a United States Marine Corps dress uniform, one of those graduation-from-boot-camp portraits.

            A Marine.  It explained the man’s facility with firearms and his gutsy maneuvers.      

            This mission had suddenly become a lot more interesting. 

            A doorway opened into another room: a library.  He turned on the overhead light, an ornate brass fixture.  The room had a marble floor, a couple of dark leather wing chairs, an oak cocktail table, Tiffany-style table lamps, and bookcases stocked with hundreds of hardcovers.

            He ran his thumb along the spines.  There were texts that pertained to American history and culture, but most of the books appeared to be fiction. 

            Not surprisingly, there were no Christian books, no Bibles.

            A dismaying number of the fiction texts were mystery and crime stories, too, with words such as “blood,” “death,” and “fear,” appearing frequently in the titles. 

            Cutty had never read any of these books, and never would.  He read only the Bible and other approved works.  If you weren’t careful, the spirit-polluting products of secular culture would lead you off the path of righteousness.    

            He was about to turn away to visit another area of the house when he came across a series of books with the word “ghost” in the titles.  The author of each novel was Anthony Thorne. 

            He plucked one of the books off the shelf.  The title was Ghost Hunter.  On the inside back flap of the dust jacket, he found a black-and-white photo of his guy. 

            “Well, I’ll be darned,” he said. 

            Not only was Thorne a Marine, he was a writer, apparently, a successful one.

            Although doing so risked the contamination of his spirit, he read the story summary on the jacket flap.  The novel concerned a character named Ghost, a Marine, who learned about the vicious murder of a young woman’s husband and offered to track down the killers when the police failed to apprehend them. 

“Ghost practices only one form of justice—the justice of the streets,” the copy stated.

            Intriguing.

            Anthony Thorne was looking like the caliber of challenge that could make a career for an ambitious young soldier and a loyal servant of the Kingdom.