BOBBY Kent opened his eyes in an unfamiliar place and found a tall, lean man about his age and about his height standing at the foot of his bed. The man had a broad chest and shoulders and lean arms with lean muscles. He had faint scars on his chin and at his hairline. They were only visible because of his dark tan and close cropped hair. The man stood there holding a cup of tea, watching him, just watching him, with a perfectly blank expression.
The man spoke and said, “You’re in a guest room at Carol Mabry’s house.”
“What?” Bobby asked, only because the statement was not the answer to the first question he would have asked and it jarred him.
He sat straight up and looked around, getting his bearings. The bright Virginia morning sunlight shone through the window. There was a humid smell in the air, though the storm had passed. The events of the previous night began to crowd his mind.
The man spoke again. “You looked disoriented. I wake up like that a lot. I’m Nick, by the way. We haven’t met.”
“Nick? What are you doing here?”
Nick Williams shrugged. “Apparently, nothing. I hear you did it already. Tea?”
Nick handed Bobby a cup of hot tea with a lemon wedge floating in it. Bobby asked, “No coffee?”
Nick shook his head. “Never touch the stuff. Want to tell me what went down last night?”
Bobby set the tea on the bedside table. Married to Carol’s best friend or not, he hadn’t decided whether he liked this man yet. “Nick, no offense, but you still haven’t told me why you’re here.”
Nick nodded. “Carol and I go way back. Went to high school together if you can believe that. About a year ago, she did me a favor. It was kind of a big favor. I came because she asked me to. Got here as soon as I could.”
“Did Carol let you in?”
Nick grinned. It was an ironic grin. “Carol’s still sleeping. Must have taken one of her headache pills. Lisa’s at your folk’s ranch. That was a good move, by the way. Anyway, I thought just us boys could have a chat. So, Bobby… you go by Bobby?”
Bobby nodded.
“So what went down here last night Bobby?”
“You seem to already know what went down, Nick.”
Nick nodded. “I don’t know what you think went down.”
Bobby Kent remembered Carol saying that a Roman Legion couldn’t touch her once Nick Williams stood guarding her. Taking in this enigmatic man in these few waking minutes, Bobby suddenly understood what she meant and believed her. Something about the way he moved spoke volumes about years of training and combat experience. Nick moved like a male Jen Thorne. Bobby suddenly knew, without a doubt, that this man was armed to the teeth with concealed weaponry and could turn just as deadly as a viper if provoked to violence.
“Well, a crazy woman tried to kill Carol. She killed a cop right there in the front lawn and kidnapped her and had her tied up in my music room next door. She was about to drug her and strangle her when I got there.”
Nick picked up the discarded tea and blew on it quietly, then took a sip. “How did 150 pound Rhonda Regalman get the drop on the 220 pound cop? I assume he was Carol’s protection detail?”
Bobby found his jaw had clenched. “The cop was assaulting Carol.”
Nick nodded and looked at Bobby. “How do you feel about the fact he’s dead now, Bobby?”
That stopped him. He searched his heart and tried to put a name to his feelings. “I’m not exactly sad about it.”
Nick nodded again. “That sounds about right. So how did you end up putting that 150 pound murdering serial killer in the hospital?”
Bobby closed his eyes. “I pounded her head into my hardwood floor until she stopped moving.”
Nick sat down and met Bobby’s eyes. “You should know that I’ve done far worse. It’s taken me some time to come to terms with that. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you alone this morning. I hope it isn’t presumptuous of me.”
Bobby could tell Nick spoke with deep sincerity. This wasn’t some kind of stunt. This man wanted to help him in some way. Bobby said, “I’ll let you know if it starts bothering me.”
Nick grinned a toothless, tight-lipped grin. “Never been in a fight before, Bobby? Never put a woman in the hospital? Or anyone for that matter?”
“I was always tall coming up in school. Never got into a single fight. Later on I had security guards to keep overzealous fans back.”
Nick nodded. “How do you feel about putting her in the hospital, Bobby?”
He really had to search his feelings. “She’s crazy. She has a sickness.”
Nick put his hand up in a halting motion. “We’ll get there. I promise. That isn’t the question yet. Tell me how you feel about the fact that you pounded a woman’s head into your floor until she stopped moving. And I’ll know if you lie to me, so don’t bother.”
Bobby stared at this strange man. “I’m not sorry.”
Nick nodded sharply and exactly once. “Right. Okay, let’s talk about her mental state. Hang on.”
He reached into a cargo pocket and retrieved a dog-eared Soldier’s Bible that had obviously seen better days. He opened it and flipped the pages carefully. Then he cleared his throat and said, “This is from the fifth book of Mark. ‘And when He had come out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no one could bind him, not even with chains, because he had often been bound with shackles and chains. And the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces; neither could anyone tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones.’ You familiar with this passage?”
Bobby said, “It’s the story of Christ casting out a legion of demons into a herd of pigs.”
Nick closed his Bible. “Exactly. This guy cut himself and had a legion of voices in his head.”
“Are you trying to tell me that the possibility that Rhonda Regalman might have been demon possessed should not escape my attention?”
Nick took a sip of tea. “I’m saying there are likely more things in heaven and earth, Bobby, than are dreamt of in your philosophies.”
Bobby smiled, recognizing the paraphrase from Hamlet. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Nick, but you’re a bit of an odd duck.”
Nick genuinely smiled for the first time since Bobby laid eyes on him. “Now you’re catching on, Bobby.”
Nick set his tea down and held his hand out. Bobby shook Nick’s hand and the two communicated silently, in the way that men do, that they would be friends for now. When they dropped the hand shake, Nick said, “You did what you had to. In my opinion, you did what you were designed to do. You protected the life of the woman you love, the woman God made to be the mother of your child. Pretty soon, when the remorse comes and it feels like more than you can handle, try to remember that.”
“Remorse, huh?”
Nick nodded with a very serious look on his face. “The inevitable remorse. I can’t describe it, but you’ll recognize it here in a few days. It’s just horrible and appalling, but don’t block it out or shut it away. Let yourself experience it. It’s the only way you can heal. What you learn about yourself is going to surprise and sadden you.”
Bobby shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
Nick nodded. “I know. But you will. Listen, Bobby, I know you don’t know me very well – yet – but I want you to know that you can call me any time, night or day, day or night. You can talk to me about it. When you feel so depressed you feel like you can’t deal with it, you need to remember that you can trust me to tell you the truth and not to judge you.”
“Is that the message you felt called to deliver this morning, Nick?”
Nick put his hands in the pockets of his slacks. “Not at first. At first I was going to ask exactly when you intend to make an honest woman of my dear friend, Carol. And if you had no intentions of doing so, I intended to persuade you to change your mind.”
Bobby smiled the same “star quality” sincere smile that had graced everything from billboards to magazine covers. “That can’t happen soon enough, in my opinion.”
Nick said, “See? You’re still doing what God created you to do. How about you and I pray for a little while. You go first. Then we’ll scare up some breakfast.”
Saturday, May 19th
CAROL stood at the end of her driveway and watched Lisa and Amy as they turned the corner. Lisa turned around and waved, then she and Amy took off at a run. Carol watched until she could no longer see them, then turned and started back up her driveway.
Her hip felt better, no longer causing a limp, and most of the bruises on her face had faded, leaving only one at the hairline of her forehead where Jack’s head had smashed into hers. She’d taken the last week off work to heal, and felt rested, ready to get back to work and on with her life.
Things had begun to settle down around the city. The press had quit hounding her, and she hardly knew what to do without her cell phone ringing nonstop. She’d spoken with Maurice almost daily, getting current about the things going on at her office.
Mitch let her read the interview with Rhonda and the background report. She wondered, as she read all about what “Rob” had done over the years, how she could have missed working so closely with someone so malevolent.
Now she let her eyes drift to the pickup truck parked in the driveway next door. She cut across the yard, then rang the doorbell. There was no answer. She thought he must have earphones on so that he wasn’t able to hear the doorbell.
Then she heard it. The soft sounds of a violin drifted through the spring air, the notes telling a poignant, sad story. They came from the back yard, so she walked around the house, stopping at the corner with her hands in her pockets and watched him.
He stood at the edge of his deck and played with his eyes closed. His fingers moved with absolute confidence over the strings of the instrument, bringing the song to life, making her heart ache, tightening her chest, and bringing tears to her eyes. The notes flowed around her, drawing her into the sorrow and grief, and she felt amazed that he could bring such emotion out of a simple song.
She stood there quietly when the song ended and watched him take the violin from under his chin and stare at it. He put it back in its case, laid the bow next to it, and closed it. She watched him look at his hands, then jumped back a little when he grabbed a chair next to him and with a yell, heaved it off the porch, where it hit the ground and bounced several feet from the force of the impact.
He whirled around and spotted her standing there and froze. They stared at each other for an eternity before he finally broke the spell.
“What?” he asked, his voice harsh with anger.
Confused, Carol closed the distance, stepping on the deck with him. She gestured at the chair. “What’s wrong?”
His eyes were closed off from her, keeping her from being able to see what was going on in his mind. “I can’t talk about it with you,” he explained, sliding the glass door open and stepping inside.
“Well, I’d appreciate it if you would try.”
She watched the life come back to his eyes and could see the banked fury there while he advanced on her. “I put a woman into the hospital because I beat her so badly, Carol,” he snapped out. “I grabbed a handful of her hair and slammed her head onto a wooden floor hard enough to knock her out.”
“So what?” she asked.
He stopped moving toward her and kicked the back of the couch. “So what?” His voice sounded quiet, strained, and very deep. “I’m not even sorry, is what. If I had to be completely honest, I wanted to kill her just as dead as a dinosaur. If I had it to do over again, that’s exactly what I would have done!”
He turned his back on her. His hands closed into fists. “When I think about what almost happened…” He suddenly remembered waking up the next morning and having that strange conversation with Nick Williams. Nick had told him that a feeling of remorse was inevitable. He had told him that what he would learn about himself would both surprise and sadden him. Had he meant remorse for hurting the woman? Or had he meant remorse for not killing her?
When the realization hit Bobby, he felt himself instantly calm down. “I’m having a really hard time getting a grip on my feelings.”
“Me, too,” she admitted. “I’m jumpy and afraid.” Her breath hitched.
He slipped an arm around her and pulled her to him. “I don’t know what to do to let this go. I’m not the man I thought I was. I’m certainly not the man I want to be.”
As she put her arms around his neck, she said, “I think we need to pray. Together. We need to pray for healing, but we also need to pray for Rhonda.”
Pray for Rhonda? The woman he would rather had died by his hand? The woman who had killed so many innocent people? Bobby let Carol go and shook his head. “How can you even say that?”
With a shrug, Carol replied, “Because Christ said to pray for our enemies. She’s broken. Her mind is broken. I don’t think she had any more control over what happened than we did.”
He glared at her, his eyes narrowing. Was Rhonda’s mind broken or was it her soul? Either way, she hadn’t been fully in charge of her actions. “Good point,” he relented, slipping his hands into his pockets and taking a deep breath. “I really don’t know what it’s like not to have control over my own faculties.”
Carol walked over to him and reached up, cupping his cheek with her hand. “We have to forgive and release ourselves from any anger or hatred of her. We can’t let what she did ruin our entire future.”
She felt his smile a millisecond before she saw it. “I’m personally looking forward to our future,” he said with a grin.
“So am I.” She stepped back and gestured toward the couch. “Pray with me?”