Once she started, it was easy for Jade to come up with name after name of members of Morning Glory International who might want to hurt her family. There was Elder Keith, formerly one of her dad’s best friends and the one who’d been the most vocal about trying to cover up the abuse. He even offered to pay the family five thousand dollars if Jade told everyone that the child she carried belonged to some boyfriend from school.
After the allegations were exposed to the public, various individuals delighted in telling Jade and her family how sinful they were to bring such outlandish charges against their pastor. Even though a DNA test could easily reveal the child’s parentage, most members of the church preferred to think that Jade and her family made the entire thing up. Halfway into her pregnancy, the pastor’s wife, Lady Sapphire, forced Jade into a bathroom stall and yanked up her blouse because the baby bump looked like nothing more than a little extra weight on an already heavyset teenager. It wasn’t until Lady Sapphire felt Pastor Mitch’s child kicking in Jade’s womb that she even recognized the pregnancy was anything more than a lie and a ruse meant to tear down Morning Glory International and its ministry across the Mat-Su valley.
Ben’s suspect list had grown to ten different names by the time Aisha sat down beside them. “We’ve got a few more volunteers on their way to relieve the ones who’ve been out the longest.”
Jade couldn’t believe she was hearing this. Couldn’t believe there was actually a search team at this moment scouring the woods surrounding the church to look for her five-year-old daughter. As hard as it was to picture Dez wandering off into the cold without a coat or flashlight, the idea of an abduction was even more unfathomable.
If Dez had been taken, whoever had her was twisted. Demented. Who would want to harm a child? The thought made Jade even more terrified. Would the night ever end?
“I need more coffee,” she told Aisha, who looked about as tired as Jade felt. But she wasn’t going to sleep until her daughter was found. She finally understood what was going through her dad’s mind when he found out what Pastor Mitch had done to her. Why he’d grabbed that baseball bat and waited to ambush his prey. It made sense now, that rage. That protective instinct. No parent could sit back and watch someone destroy their child’s life, not without taking matters into their own hands.
Jade thought back to the vows people made back in the time of the Old Testament. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely … Right now, there didn’t seem to exist human language that could describe what Jade would do to anyone who even threatened Dez’s safety.
May God have mercy on their soul, she thought. But even God’s mercy was too good for anyone who hurt her daughter.