The Overseer Page 10

  Peg began to cry. “Kimberly is our only child, and maybe we spoiled her too much.” The woman wiped away tears. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  “You did call the police, right?”

  Hannah held her breath. Say it, she thought. Tell me that it’s all under control. That someone else has taken care of the problem. That I can go.

  “They took a report and put out an alert,” Peg said, “but nothing has turned up so far. I’ve heard that the first forty-eight hours are the most crucial in finding a missing child, and we’re past that! I know the police are swamped, but…” She looked up at Hannah. “And how did you find out about her?”

  Hannah looked down at her tea, the soaked teabag floating in the ever-darkening brew. She bit her lip and looked up. “I’m on staff with a local organization that likes to help with these kinds of things. I’m not really able to go into detail, but we’re a nonprofit organization that wants to do what we can to help, and I’ve been assigned to your daughter.”

  Peg shook her head. “Is there anything that you can do?”

  Sadness was the only thing Hannah felt on her face. “This could be very difficult. I can’t make any guarantees about how this will turn out.”

  Peg was on her feet in moments. “Let me tell you about my daughter.” She was at the fireplace again, pulling down pictures, stuffing them in her arms. She brought them back, spreading them out on the coffee table. “This was her when she was six. Her birthday party—it was a princess party with all her friends. And this”—Peg pointed to another—“this was when we brought her home from the hospital as a baby. That’s her daddy. He never thought he wanted children until we had Kimberly. He held her in his arms, and she’s been daddy’s little girl ever since.”

  Hannah didn’t know what to say. “Ma’am, I…”

  Peg sat down, staring painfully into Hannah’s face. “She just turned sixteen years old. She’s my baby. But she’s out there— somewhere. And she could be in very serious trouble.”

  Hannah looked the woman in the eyes, studying her face and searching for some way to tell her that her daughter was OK. But she remembered what she had seen in the house before it had burned down. The horrible things that had been done to other girls before. Drugs, violence, and rape. Girls—children— being sold like chattel. But there was no comfort she could offer this woman.

  She took Peg by the hands, looking her in the eye. “I promise you, I will do everything in my power to help find your daughter—no matter what.”

  John was in his office drinking his fourth cup of coffee when his phone rang. He set down his cup and lifted the receiver. “Hello, this is John.”

  The call sounded garbled with sounds of wind ripping at the other end. “John?” Hannah said through the cacophony.

  He leaned forward. “Hannah, where are you? I think we have a bad connection.”

  “I’m at a pay phone,” she said. “Listen, John, I need to discuss something with you.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve started my search for the girls. I wanted you to know that. I met one of their mothers. I didn’t mean to go behind anyone’s back, but I had to talk to her for myself.”

  John leaned against his desk with one arm, not certain what to say. Proud of her initiative yet afraid for how things might turn out. “I don’t like you working on this on your own. I’m sending someone to back you up.”

  A long silence. “I can do this without help.”

  “No,” John insisted. “I’m sending Devin, and that’s final.”

  Her attitude seemed to shift instantly. “You’re sending Devin?”

  “Yes. I wouldn’t send anyone else.”

  “OK,” she replied.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m near the house that burned down, trying to see if I can pick up on any kind of lead.” She gave him the address.

  “OK,” he said, trying to consider everything, the way a leader should. “Stay there. I’ll send Devin as soon as I can.”

  “Thank you, John. I—”

  The pay phone cut off—out of money.

  John dialed his phone. It rang for a moment, then the other end picked up.

  “This is Bathurst.”

  “Devin,” he said, running a hand through his hair, “Hannah needs your help.”

  Trista stepped into the conference room. There might have been twenty people in the room, all finding seats. She too found a chair. There were a few men working on the lines that attached to the conference phones in the middle of the table. Someone said something about needing to get a dial tone, and then she heard one buzz loudly from the device.

  She presumed that the telephone line was for the Prima who weren’t there. She’d been told about how John had set up offices in Domani Financial for the Prima and the Ora to have representatives there full-time. The Ora had taken the offer but apparently wouldn’t open their office doors long enough to talk to anyone, and the Prima had simply declined the offer completely—except for an archivist named Jerry who was nowhere to be seen.

  Vincent Sobel checked his watch at the front of the room. He spotted Trista and gave her a nod—acknowledging her presence.

  The milling dissipated as the twenty or so people found their seats. Laptops opened, and fingers tapped at keyboards. Trista felt out of place without hers.

  “Everybody here?” Vince asked, scanning the room.

  A reply in the form of nods. Several voices sounded off their presence via the conference phones.

  “Everyone know why we’re here today?”

  More nods.

  Vince leaned against the back of the chair, face sullen. “We need to talk about John.”

  Nods and approving noises.

  “Just to recap,” Vince said, clasping his hands, “John hasn’t listened to any counsel from anyone. He’s not doing well as Overseer, and now we’re being investigated by the SEC.” He cleared his throat and looked gravely at his audience. “And I was just informed that the IRS is officially auditing us and that all our funds are going to be frozen until further notice.”

  Gasps and sounds of incredulous dread filled the room. This was it. The big one. The bomb that everyone had both feared and expected since the beginning.

  “John has made very poor choices as a leader—damningly poor. And on top of it all we now have the Angelo issue.” Swiftly, he brought the group up to speed on the previous days’ events.

  Vince spread open palms to the conference room, as if handing them a final piece of damning evidence. As if wrecking the financial viability of the Firstborn wasn’t bad enough. “This Angelo guy knows things. Important things. Now he’s asking that we prevent an outbreak of the Thresher simply by giving up a mission—the prevention of the assassination of a known corrupt government official.”

  Vince’s expression took a deathly seriousness as he looked up at them all, eyes narrow. He looked right at Trista. “We’ve been talking about the Thresher for years. I know my dad talked to me about it when I first discovered my gifting. This is not something small—or to be laughed at. We’re dealing with something we don’t fully understand, and no one has really understood for nearly a millennium of Firstborn history. And as a result, the Thresher has put fear into the Firstborn for eight centuries. Now this Angelo guy sees it, and he’s warning us not to intervene with this one issue—not give up our calling as the Firstborn, but this issue—and John won’t pull the plug. At this very minute Devin and Hannah are beginning to work together on preventing this assassination.”

  Vincent let the room mull it over for a moment as more than twenty people sat in total silence.

  Trista watched Vince, waiting for what he was going to say next—fearing it yet needing to hear it.

  “Make no mistake; the Thresher will be unleashed if Devin Bathurst and his accomplice, Hannah Rice, proceed with their intentions,” he said with a sober nod. “Alessandro D’Angelo warned the Firstborn about it in the fourteenth century. He kne
w the danger—and the destruction it would cause. He tried to warn us then—and if we don’t take that warning seriously today, in the moment, then we’re all dead men. Every last one of us is going to be hunted down by this thing and ended.”

  Silence.

  Vince stood tall. “I don’t think anyone in this room truly believes it’s a coincidence that Angelo shares the name of our founder who died hundreds of years ago. I don’t think any of us doubt the existence of the Thresher, or the destruction he’ll cause us—and eventually the world—when we’re out of the way.” He put his hands in his pockets. “Why does John?”

  The room resumed its quiet.

  “It’s time for all of us to say what we’ve all been thinking but none of us has actually had the initiative to say. It’s time for me to take over the role of Overseer.”

  Hannah stood on the sidewalk under an overcast sky, watching the remains of the house smolder. Yellow caution tape surrounded the scene. Black arms of wood protruded from the pile. Brick and metal formed the charred foundation that the smoky wreckage sat upon.

  She stared at it all, wondering if bulldozers would come to take away the debris and why they hadn’t come yet. She closed her eyes and cleared her mind. She reached out with her heart and mind—toward the center of it all, the source of her gift—to God Himself.

  It was like dipping a cup into a well and coming up dry.

  Her eyes opened. She had prayed and reached and focused for what now seemed like hours, but she couldn’t find the past.

  A car stopped behind her and someone got out. “Miss Rice?”

  She turned. “Mr. Bathurst,” she said with a nod. “Thank you for coming.”

  Devin wore a gray suit with a tan trench coat. He closed the vehicle door, stepping around the front of the car as he approached her. “John Temple sent me.” He looked at the smoldering wreckage of what used to be a house. “Let’s get to work.”

  Trista stared at the slip of paper in front of her as she caught the box out of the corner of her eye, moving toward her from the left as it was passed along.

  Yes or no. It was that simple. All she had to do was write a word. Yes, John should be removed as Overseer, or no, he should not. She stared at the ballot in front of her, pen in her hand. The urge to fidget filled her, but she resisted.

  Trista tried to weigh the evidence—thoughtfully and scientifically—but there were emotions, ridiculous emotions, that kept creeping into her thinking. She tried to banish it from her thinking—the anger she felt toward John, the way he treated her like she somehow belonged to him, the way he followed her like a puppy, the way he criticized her at the thought that she had met someone else. So much anger. It was deep and visceral and…

  …and there was another feeling. One that felt like something else. Just as deep and visceral but not anger. More like…

  No. No more feelings.

  She tried to think her way through the emotions that muddied the waters, around the pathetic feelings that tried to pull her away from the true question of John’s capabilities to lead. The evidence tried to take its place in her mind, easing into an ordered pattern that she could analyze and—

  “Ms. Brightling,” someone said over her shoulder, the small cardboard box hanging in front of her.

  She breathed slowly, trying to make up her mind.

  The hand holding the box shook it slightly, indicating the need to hurry.

  Decision time.

  She held her breath, wrote her answer, and put it in the box.

  Hannah sat in Devin’s car, watching him through the passengerside window.

  He walked up to the blackened ruins of the house, removed his trench coat, and laid it out over the ground. Then he knelt and clasped his hands, bowing his head—like he always did.

  It would be the Lord’s Prayer. Exact. Precise. Covering all angles of exhortation and supplication. A perfect blueprint for prayer of all kinds—devoid of the mystery that meant so much to Hannah, but spiritually correct, dictated by their Savior Himself.

  He prayed for several minutes, then lifted his head and stood. He picked up his coat, dusted it off with exact motions, then replaced it on his shoulders, arms slipping through the sleeves. Hannah watched him approach the car. He opened the driver’s door and took his place at the wheel. “I know where they’re going to be,” he said, turning the key in the ignition. “We have to hurry.”

  Vincent Sobel leaned over as a colleague named Drew handed him a scrap of paper. He looked it over, reading it several times to be certain, then looked up at the conference room filled with concerned parties. “We have a verdict,” he said with a resolved nod. He folded the paper and set it on the conference table. “Including both the secret ballots collected here in Manhattan, in the main office, and e-mailed responses we have from those of you who are joining us from across the nation via conference call—the numbers are as follows.”

  The room watched in a kind of morbid anticipation. Vincent let them watch for a moment out of an equally morbid fascination.

  “With a combined total of thirty-two voting parties, we have thirty-one votes of ‘Yes,’ indicating that John Temple should be removed from his position as Overseer of the Firstborn and myself put in place as Overseer. The yes vote has it.”

  Vince nearly smiled to himself, feeling vindicated to have John Temple ejected from a position he never should have occupied. It was a kind of glee. There was a word for it. German, if he wasn’t mistaken, which meant to take joy in the pain of another. What was that word? Shodden-something—

  —schadenfreude.

  That was right. He had enough experience in the film industry to know the idea—the unadulterated glee of watching someone else ground into dust.

  But this, of course, was different. John truly had a problem. Maybe he felt relief, even happiness, at the thought that the Firstborn could finally get back on track—but nothing malicious. Vince closed his eyes, escaping the chatter of the crowded room for a moment. A silent prayer, thanking God for the strength to do the hard thing and the grace to take care of John in the light of this difficult news—to be John’s friend in the trial that he soon would face.

  He opened his eyes and nodded to himself. This was truly the right thing to do. They were all in obvious consensus about it.

  Vince spoke to the room. “I’ll break the news to John personally. It’ll be better coming from a friend.” There were nods as the room quieted. “Someone get Devin Bathurst on the line—it’s time for someone to officially recall him.” More nods as people resumed their chatter, many standing to leave.

  Drew approached, extending a congratulatory hand. “That was a difficult thing to do,” he said with an affirming nod. “Are you OK?”

  Vince gave a pained smile. “I’ll be OK. Telling John won’t be easy, but”—Vince took a courageous breath and nodded—“I’ll be OK.”

  Drew put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m here if you need to talk afterward.”

  “Thank you. I—”

  “Mr. Sobel?” someone said from behind him.

  “Yes,” he said, turning.

  A woman in her late twenties reached out, handing him a cellular phone. “I have Devin Bathurst on the line.”

  Vincent nodded, appropriately somber, and took the phone. “Devin?”

  The response was crisp and efficient. “This is Bathurst.”

  “Vince Sobel here. Listen, we were just meeting here at the main office—”

  “Did I miss the memo?” Devin asked unflappably. “Anything pressingly important?”

  “Actually”—Vince cleared his throat awkwardly—“you weren’t invited to the meeting.”

  A momentary pause.

  “I see.”

  Vince felt cold inside. “You see, we took a vote, and it was decided by an overwhelming majority to replace John Temple as Overseer and—”

  “You’re establishing yourself as the new Overseer,” Devin continued logically, voice free of shock or concern.

&n
bsp; “Well, we’ve yet to decide who is going to—”

  “You’re the logical choice,” Devin said. “You want the position, you have a good reputation, and the only remaining patriarch is Clay Goldstein. But he won’t be able to take the position because he has Parkinson’s.”

  Vince was silent, stunned, looking around the room at the myriad people swarming around him. “How did you know that?” Vince whispered. “Clay has been very private about his medical condition and—”

  “You’re dealing with people who see things,” Devin said, free of emotion. “I saw his illness coming six months ago.”

  “You did?” Vince stammered, turning away from the room, cupping his hand over the phone mouthpiece. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I don’t tell people they’re dying. I see it all the time, but I make a policy of keeping it to myself. I assumed that if he hadn’t told anyone, there was a reason.”

  Vince breathed deliberately for several moments, trying not to lose his calm. “Where are you?”

  “I’m driving to an appointment,” Devin replied.

  “Does it have to do with the assassination?”

  “No.”

  Vince felt it—Devin was telling the truth, if only in part. “Does it have to do with the kidnappings?”

  “I’m doing a favor for a friend.”

  That meant yes. Devin was helping Hannah find the girls— then she would help him with the senator. Vince could feel it in the pit of his stomach. “Devin Bathurst,” he said with resolve, “by majority vote you are forbidden from pursuing this issue any further. Do you understand?”

  A moment’s hesitation. “I understand.”

  Vince tried to feel him out, attempting to gauge Devin’s motives. There was a loud noise from the conference room, and Vince put a finger in his ear, blocking out the sound as best he could. “Devin, can I count on you to do the right thing?”

  Silence.

  “Devin? Can I count on you to do the right thing?”

  “Yes,” Devin replied from the other end of the line. “You can count on me to do the right thing.”