The Last Straw, page 7
“Whining does not become you,” Wyrick said, then picked up what was left of her pop and candy and left the office, heading down the hall to take the elevator up to her room, while Charlie chose the other way and jogged up the stairs.
Wyrick exited the elevator just as Charlie appeared at the head of the landing. They paused, staring at each other from separate ends of the hall, and then Wyrick suddenly crammed the last bite of chocolate into her mouth, chewing and swallowing it as she screwed down the lid on her Pepsi.
Charlie saw the look on her face, and knew almost instantly what she was about to do.
“You haven’t got a chance in hell,” he shouted and started running, just as she bolted toward him.
Their bedrooms were in the middle of the hall and directly across from each other. Now the race was on to see who could get inside first.
Wyrick knew it was going to be close. She was fast, but so was Charlie, and his legs were long. Really long. She had the Pepsi in one hand, swinging it as she ran, and Charlie was laughing at her as they came closer and closer. Then all of a sudden he was in his room, slamming the door behind him.
“Dammit!” Wyrick shouted.
She was paused in the hall, gasping for breath and thinking she was severely out of shape, when the Pepsi she’d been running with suddenly blew. She screamed, both in shock and dismay as the lid hit the ceiling, then came down at her feet as carbonated cola spewed everywhere.
Charlie heard what sounded like a shot, and then the scream, and panicked. He turned and yanked the door open, ready to do battle, then saw her standing in the hall, the empty Pepsi bottle still in her hand, and what had been left of it now dripping from her face, and her clothes and the wall.
Awash with relief, he grinned.
“Shut your damn door,” Wyrick said.
He did, but by then he was laughing.
She looked down at herself. What a freaking mess.
But she’d made Charlie laugh again. Her good deed for the day.
She went into her room, changed into old clothes, then headed downstairs to get cleaning supplies. She had walls to wash down, and a floor to mop.
Charlie was changing out of what he’d worn to work when his cell phone rang. He glanced at caller ID and then sighed.
Special Agent Raines.
And this is why he hadn’t made that bet.
He sat down on the side of his bed, guessing that Raines was losing his mind over what Wyrick had just done.
“Hello.”
“What the fucking hell is Wyrick thinking?”
“Hello, Agent Raines. Out of curiosity, why didn’t you call her and ask her yourself?”
“Because,” Raines muttered.
Charlie sighed. “So I take it you have not read everything she sent you, or you wouldn’t be asking me this.”
“I saw that video, and I already know the havoc this is going to cause,” Raines said.
“You should have read it all before you called, because then you’d know a religious cult called the Church of The Righteous has dispatched three hit men to kill her. One already tried. He’s sitting in a Dallas jail in deep shit. She sent you a video of the incident, along with all of the info that ties him to The Righteous, and I wasn’t even there. It happened at the office, and I was in court, waiting to testify on a case.”
“Jesus,” Raines muttered. “But she’s put a bounty on these men’s heads.”
“No, she did not, and you know it. All she asked for were their identities. If any of them are harmed in any way, or interfered with, the cash reward is nullified, and if anyone gives her a fake name trying to get the money, she’ll file charges against them for fraud.”
“What’s she going to do with the info?” Raines asked.
“Reveal them to the world for who they are...and what they were willing to do to her, for no other reason than that she was born. I back her fully, so there’s that,” Charlie added.
“Fine. So what’s with the Church of The Righteous...other than a religious cult?”
“Dammit, Raines. Read what she sent. The preacher is money laundering for a man named Preston Davis, who’s buying and selling stolen weapons. Go do your job and give them something more to worry about than what they can do to her,” Charlie said and hung up.
Hank Raines groaned. His wife was planning to grill T-bones tonight, and now he was going to be late going home for dinner. He turned back to his computer, pulled up the rest of the files that Wyrick’d sent and started reading. By the time he had finished, his toes were curling in his shoes. He didn’t know how much of the information Wyrick sent was clean enough to use. They’d have to verify it from their end before they could act, but she was a wonder.
He reached for the phone to call his boss. His guess was they’d pass it off to the ATF, and if they did, they were going to have a field day with this.
* * *
The video Wyrick sent to the media had set its own fire. Another message from the famous Jade Wyrick was solid gold, and when they began airing it, it blew up across social media, and the comment threads for every station that had aired it.
* * *
Preston Davis had gone to a family funeral in Baton Rouge, and was sitting at his aunt’s house having pie and coffee, when someone pointed at the television.
“Would you look at that!” someone said.
He turned around just as Jeremiah Raver’s face flashed on the screen. He set his food aside and walked closer, but by then the story was over. It was bothering him that someone he did business with had made national news. He needed to know what it was about without showing the concern he was feeling.
“Hey, Shirley, what was that all about?” he asked.
His cousin looked up at him from where she was sitting.
“That’s the preacher who heads up the Church of The Righteous over near Paulette.”
“So what’s going on?” Preston asked.
“Oh...they say he’s been preaching against a woman named Jade Wyrick, calling her an alien, and an abomination in the eyes of the Lord because of how she was born. A man in Dallas, Texas, was just arrested for trying to kill the Wyrick woman, and he claims his preacher sent him to do the deed. And it appears he’s not the only one. The Wyrick woman claims the preacher sent three men after her, so two more are still out there. She just put a quarter of a million dollar bounty on each of the other two men. She don’t want them dead or nothin’. She just wants their names and a picture. She’s about to blast their little secret society out of the water. What a mess. What a mess.”
“Indeed,” Preston said, but his mind was racing.
If the law got after Raver, and began digging deeper into his business dealings, that could mean trouble for him. It appeared he needed to do a little housecleaning himself, before things got out of hand.
* * *
Within hours of the video’s airing, every member of Raver’s church was in a panic. Was this going to fall back on them? Were they going to be arrested for abetting an attempted murder, when it was something they knew nothing about?
One by one, they began calling Jeremiah Raver, demanding answers, demanding their names be taken off the church register, but he wasn’t answering. They wanted the whole thing to go away, and their connections to him and the church off the World Wide Web.
And all the while this was going on, Jessup Wallis and Farrell Kitt were en route to Dallas, with no idea of what they were driving into.
* * *
Jeremiah was at his brother Samuel’s house in the bayou, and the cell service was spotty. He was anxious about what was happening, but he couldn’t get a call in or out. He needed to know what was going on to protect himself, so he got in the car and started driving until he got a strong cell signal, then pulled over on the old dirt road and started checking messages.
That was when he found all the missed calls from his church members. After listening to the panic and the anger in their voices, he realized the depth of trouble he was in. He had severely underestimated Jade Wyrick. If she had found out all this, then there was a chance she knew about his other activities, too. The men he did business with weren’t fond of publicity, and if they wanted the link between them destroyed, erasing their names in his contacts wouldn’t do it. They’d want him dead.
He needed to go home long enough to get to his computer and take down the website and delete the files in his email. He drove back to Samuel’s to let his sister-in-law, Maisie, know where he was going, and found his brother sitting on the porch.
And from the look on Samuel’s face, he wasn’t happy. The more Jeremiah thought about it, the more he came to believe Samuel was there waiting for him. But he had more important things to deal with than whatever was up his brother’s butt.
“Hey, Samuel... I’m gonna be gone for a while. There’s some stuff I need to do at home.”
Samuel already knew his brother had come here to hide. He didn’t hold with any of Jeremiah’s preaching or his shady dealings.
“Do what you gotta do,” Samuel said. “But watch your back. Your business partners ain’t the kind to take kindly to publicity.”
Jeremiah stared. “What are you talking about? You don’t know my business. And what do you mean about publicity?”
“We might live in the bayou, but we ain’t stupid, brother. I know what you been doin’. Ain’t no one here got the money to donate what you take in at church.”
“How do you know what—”
“Maisie works at the bank in Paulette, remember? And while you were out, we saw the video that Wyrick woman you been preaching against aired on TV, so we also know you sent men to kill her. It says in the Bible, Thou shall not kill, and you’re a preacher who sent hit men to kill someone! That don’t set right with us. I think you need to just go on and take your stuff back with you when you leave. We don’t want you bringing your bad juju here.”
Jeremiah frowned. All of a sudden, the frantic messages from his church members were starting to make sense.
“Video? What video?” Jeremiah asked.
“It seems that Wyrick woman caught the first man you sent. He’s in jail. But he told her there were two more coming after her. I guess she didn’t take kindly to that, because she has offered a quarter of a million dollar bounty on each one. She don’t want them. Just their identities. And she said can’t nobody hurt ’em, or they don’t get the dough. She’s gonna plaster their pictures all over that social media you’re so fond of, so everyone will know you’re the one behind it.”
Jeremiah groaned. Barrett Taylor had blabbed about the other men.
“But, Samuel, I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Samuel shrugged. “I am not my brother’s keeper. You lit the fuse to this. We’ll say a prayer for your mortal soul, and that’s the best I can offer. Just don’t tell me where you’re goin’, because I won’t lie to the law if they come looking for you. But if I don’t know where you are, then my conscience will be clear.”
“Some brother you are,” Jeremiah muttered.
“That’s kinda what I was thinking about you,” Samuel said and stood up, looming a good five inches above his brother’s head. “Y’all go on now. Get your stuff and go about your business, preacher man.”
Jeremiah ducked his head and went inside. To his surprise, Maisie had already packed his bag. It was sitting in the middle of the bed, and she was nowhere to be seen. He grabbed it and headed out the door, threw it in the backseat of the car and as he drove away, knew he’d never see them again.
It took him over an hour to get home, and as he approached the road leading up to the house, he slowed down considerably, making sure there weren’t any parish police cars parked off in the trees.
Once he got to the house, he ran straight to the office and began taking down the website. He was still at it when he got a call. He recognized Preston Davis’s number, but he didn’t take time to answer. Preston was the moneyman. The one he did business with, and he didn’t have time to talk.
But Preston called again, and again, and kept calling until Jeremiah finally answered.
“Hello.”
“What the hell have you done...putting out a hit on some woman and bringing down the law on top of all we have going?”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen that way,” Raver said. “She’s evil. She’s the Devil’s daughter, and she needs to disappear. I had a vision and—”
“No, you’re the one who needs to disappear,” Preston said.
Jeremiah felt the warning all the way to his toes.
“I’m taking down the website and packing right now. Just calm down. They don’t know anything about you.”
“You don’t know that,” Preston said and hung up.
The knot in Jeremiah’s belly tightened, but he didn’t have time to dwell on Preston’s attitude right now. He turned back to the computer and kept dismantling the site, and deleting everything he could find about it online, then deleted all his email until everything was gone.
He leaned back with a big sigh of relief, thinking he’d covered all his tracks, and then got up and went to pack up his clothes.
* * *
Jeremiah might be a fool, but Preston Davis was not. He was certain that, if worse came to worse, Raver would give them all up, as part of a plea deal on his own behalf.
So while Jeremiah was erasing the Church of The Righteous from the web, Preston Davis sent a man to Raver’s home to erase him.
* * *
Two hours later Jeremiah came out of the house with the last of his things—two suitcases full of clothes. He had a bag in each hand and was heading for his car when he saw movement in the trees beyond the house.
He paused, his heart racing, staring intently, trying to discern if it was animal or man. But he never got a chance to figure it out, because Preston’s hit man put a bullet between Jeremiah’s eyes.
Between one breath and the next, he died. He fell flat on his back, the suitcases beside him, while the blood from his body poured out of the gaping hole in the back of his head. He’d lived his adult life preaching about Jesus, but he was about to meet his Maker on a whole other playing field.
* * *
Jessup Wallis was in Texas, driving westbound on I20 and coming up on Longview when he got a call from his girlfriend, Britta.
“Hey, honey, what’s up?”
“Jessup, a woman just put out a quarter of a million dollar bounty for the name and picture of each man Jeremiah Raver sent to get her. And since you told me your trip was just an errand for your preacher man, I’m assuming one of them is you.”
Jessup felt the blood draining from his face. He swerved to the side of the interstate and stopped the car before he passed out.
“What? What the hell? How did she find out? She can’t do that. Why, that’s outright murder for hire!” he said, then Britta snorted in his ear, a sign she was not pleased with him.
“She found out because Barrett Taylor gave y’all up. She took him down with a Taser, and then got it all on video, so he’s sitting in jail facing a butt load of charges. As for the murder for hire comment, what the fuck do you call what y’all were gonna do to her?” Britta cried.
“We ain’t takin’ no money,” he muttered.
“No, but if your job was to kill her, then that makes you a hit man. The good part is, she don’t want none of you dead. She just wants your identities.”
Jessup groaned. “What for?”
“She’s gonna plaster them all over the media for free, so you’ll know what it feels like to be targeted. And just so you know, your preacher’s gone missing.”
“The bastard,” Jessup muttered. “Raver starts a war and then he’s the first one to turn tail and run. So whoever turns me in gets the money?”
“Yes. But it can’t be anyone connected to the church or to you.”
“Shit. What do I do?” Jessup muttered.
“Well, it don’t take a genius to figure that out. Turn your ass around and come home. Did you tell anyone else where you were going?”
Jessup groaned. “I might have mentioned it when I was drinking with the boys last night, but I ain’t sure. I was pretty lit.”
“You’ll know soon enough,” Britta said.
Jessup groaned again. “Thanks for lettin’ me know, sugar. I’m gonna turn around right now and head back. I’ll likely get home sometime tomorrow. I can’t believe Raver. I didn’t sign up to be betrayed by my own preacher. He preaches hellfire and damnation for sinners, and then turns tail and runs when his own hide is in danger? I did not sign up for this. They can’t arrest me. I didn’t do anything.”
“Whatever...but don’t think you’re coming back to shack up with me. I never wanted anything to do with your church, and I got my own reputation to worry about now. I can’t be tied up to you in any way, and have my picture all over the Facebook and the Twitter.”
“But, baby...you can’t just—”
“I’ll put your clothes on the porch,” she said.
The line went dead in his ear.
Jessup stared at the phone, and then laid it down in the seat, pulled back onto the highway and began looking for a place to turn around.
Six
Farrell Kitt was a thirty-something-year-old farmer with a pregnant wife and three kids—the oldest having just turned nine. His devotion to the Church of The Righteous was just one heartbeat less than his devotion to his family.
His one regret was that his wife, Judy, did not share his love of his church, and refused to go herself, or let him take their children there. She didn’t know what he was doing when he packed up and left this morning, other than he’d promised to do a favor for Jeremiah. He was a long way from home, but was still on I49 in Louisiana, heading to Shreveport, when his cell phone rang. When he saw it was Judy, he smiled and answered.
