in the hospital as news of the sign’s appearance over Reverend Darby’s house had spread. The news was troubling. He knew that wasn’t part of the plan. Which meant someone was going off piste. He wondered if Drucker was behind it, and if so, what he was doing. He realized things were unraveling from all fronts, but he accepted it stoically and knew better than to let his mind fester on what had gone wrong. He knew he needed to focus on the way forward—on completing the task he’d set for himself and, with a bit of luck, on his own freedom and survival. He knew when the time was right to cut one’s losses, when it was better to find a new boat than to keep bailing out a sinking ship. And with Rydell, the Sherwood boys, and that reporter running free, that ship wasn’t just sinking, it was about to be torpedoed into smithereens.
He knew what he had to do: push forward, press on, and, worst case, live to fight another day. It was what he was trained for. He thought back to Jackson Drucker and the rest of his men, thought of their chewed-up bodies littering that Iraqi ghost town, thought about how he’d failed them all. But he’d lived and he was fighting on, and he had to keep doing that. And that didn’t involve him spending any more time in that ER ward than he had to. Which is why, less than an hour after they’d finished patching him up, he was already outside the hospital and making his way to downtown Houston.
Chapter 81
They were still debriefing Father Jerome by the time dawn finally made its appearance over the western suburb of Houston, all five of them—Matt, Gracie, Rydell, Danny, and Dalton—helping each other out in the difficult task of telling the frail old man how the last twelve months of his life had been one big lie.
They told him about Rydell’s original plan. About the smart dust and the launchers and the planet reaching its tipping point. About Drucker’s taking hold of it and perverting it to his agenda. Then they got into the more sensitive topic of what Drucker’s people had done to him. The treatments. The drugs. The LRAD talking to him up on the top of the mountain. And with every new revelation, with every additional detail, his bony shoulders sagged further and the creases in his weathered face got deeper.
By the end of it, he looked thoroughly bewildered, but he was holding up better than Gracie had expected. She’d been worried about how he would take it, but he hadn’t fallen apart. He’d seen a lot in this life, she reminded herself. Bad things. More than most people could ever imagine. For all his physical frailty, the man seemed to have a remarkable inner strength. And yet . . . surely, it all had to be devastating, she told herself. Then she remembered his comment on the plane, and wondered what his inner voice had been telling him all along.
“The voice on the mountain,” he finally said, looking vaguely into the distance. “It was amazing. Even though it didn’t make sense that it could actually be happening to me, it felt so . . . real. Like it was inside my head. Like it knew what I was thinking.”
“That’s because they put those thoughts in your head in the first place,” Gracie told him, her tone careful and soft.
Father Jerome nodded, a sanguine acceptance darkening his face. He sighed heavily, and after a moment, he lifted his gaze toward Rydell. “And you’re going to say it was all your idea?”
Rydell nodded.
Father Jerome’s brow furrowed with a dubious shrug.
Gracie caught it. Her eyes darted across to Matt, who seemed to catch it too, then she swung back to the priest. “What is it?”
The priest didn’t answer. He seemed to be in his own world, processing everything he’d been told, weighed down by it all.
“I’m tired,” he finally said in a hollow voice. “I need to rest.”
GRACIE AND DALTON retreated to their room, Rydell to his. In the fourth room, Danny and Matt stretched out on their beds, staring at the ceiling, sharing a moment of peaceful reflection. They’d caught the early morning news on the in-room TV. The top story was, as expected, the sign’s appearance over Darby’s mansion and the subsequent frenzy, but there was no mention of Father Jerome going missing. So far, they were keeping it quiet.