the answer. If the Prophet doesn’t care about community disapproval, we need to threaten him with legal charges. That’ll be the last thing he wants. He can deal with bad publicity, like you say. The world being evil toward the godly. Fine. He can’t deal with the police investigating, with his members being arrested, with search warrants and income tax and labor standards investigations. Probably the thing he’s most scared of, worse than physical abuse, worse than sexual abuse that he can say he had nothing to do with and didn’t even know about. But back pay for all those people he never paid a dime to? Tax fraud? You can believe he’s scared of that. That’s how we get him.”
“But how?” Daisy asked. “We don’t know that he did kidnap Frankie, exactly, and he’s got her now. How do we say she’ll press charges, when he’s got her, and she can’t say anything?”
“What he did to her is one thing,” Victoria said. “How about what he did to you?”
Now, I told Frankie, “That was how Daisy did it. She and Oriana and I went to the police. Daisy made a complaint, and Oriana substantiated it with what had happened to the two of you. What she saw herself, and the Punishment Hut. They showed the photos Daisy took of you after you escaped last time, too. Meanwhile, Drew called in the media, and everybody rang up everybody they knew, and there you have it. Our very own superhero movie, but with only a couple of punches thrown. A lawyer’s version of an action film, I guess. It’d land with a dull thud at the box office, but the lawyers were right, because it worked.”
“I liked it,” Frankie said. “But what about Prudence? She’s fifteen next week. She can’t get out for another year, and what if they don’t let her go?”
“I’m fairly sure,” I told her, “that the Prophet is going to realize he’d better take good care of her. On her sixteenth birthday, we’ll all drive up there, you and Oriana and Daisy and Mum and I, and make them open the gate. And she’ll walk straight out.”
“Do you promise?” Frankie asked, like the little girl she was and wasn’t. Like a seventeen-year-old woman who’d lost her illusions, but was ready to believe again. Her eyes were closing. She would sleep, now, I thought. Sleep, and begin to heal.
I bent and kissed her forehead. “Believe it,” I told her. “Believe me. I’ve got this.”
Three little sisters.
I could handle that.
58
Kiwi Strong
Gray
Daisy and I took a walk to the lake after breakfast. Frankie was sleeping with Oriana curled around her, Mum had gone to bed, too, and Luke and Hayden had gone home. The two of us needed a nap of our own before we drove home, but not yet. There were still things to say.
It was definitely going to rain. The clouds had gathered over the mountains, billowing piles of cumulus, but the sun was still shining fitfully through them as we headed through town. For once, I wasn’t wearing the cap and sunnies, and I was recognized. People called out and waved, and I waved back. Some of them had been up there today with us, at Mount Zion, and anyway, what was being recognized? Being an All Black was a privilege, and with every privilege came responsibility.
Daisy said, “You didn’t get to hear Hayden’s labor plan.”
“No,” I said, “but I will. And meanwhile, I got a few good men, I think.”
“My cousins,” she said. “Gabriel, the tall one, and Raphael. Archangels.”
“Archangels,” I said. “Especially good, then.” And she laughed.
“I’m thinking Aaron could make one hell of a foreman,” I said.
“I think you’re right,” she said. “I told you. He can do anything. Even leave a cult.”
We’d reached the foreshore now. The wind was stirring up whitecaps on the water, which was glinting green against the stormy sky. The clouds loomed over the mountains, and Daisy pulled my mum’s rain jacket tighter around her and said, “I have something to talk to you about. Something I’ve been waiting to tell you.”
“You’re pregnant,” I said immediately, and waited to feel the thunderclap of doom.
It didn’t come. Huh.
“What?” She laughed. “No. I’m not pregnant.”
“Oh,” I said. “Good thing, maybe, for now. If you’re going to do that nurse practitioner thing.”
“Am I?” she asked.
“Oh,” I said, “I think you are. I think you’ve decided that if Frankie has the courage to do everything she’s done today, and to start over, you