67

I was about to rush onto the interior observation deck. Before that, I had only one thing left to do. I punched three numbers into my disposable cell phone and dropped it in my shirt pocket.

On that top deck, Vance Zaduck was alone, leaning against the wall, waiting for me. In Zaduck’s hand was the end of a rope. He was holding it delicately between his thumb and index finger. As if it were nothing. As if it were a mere string. The rope was pulled taut and threaded through the open window, just large enough for a person to squeeze through. There was something outside on the other end of the rope, out of my sight. I had only seconds to size things up.

Broken glass scattered on the floor. The metal window frame twisted by an inhuman power, yet only half-wrenched from its place in the square marble opening. I could feel the wind gusting though the open window. The Potomac River was in the distance, shimmering in the fading daylight. Heather was nowhere to be seen.

As I faced him, I announced myself loudly. “Here I am, Zaduck. Top of the Washington Monument. Just like you asked. Now it’s your turn. Where’s my daughter?”

When the answer came, it was what I had dreaded. And even though it was no surprise, I had vainly hoped against it.

“She’s at the end of her rope,” Vance said and tittered like an adolescent at his own sick humor.

He added, “Don’t worry. It’s tied firmly around her ankle. But just to show you I’m not that diabolical, after the drugs I added to her coffee, she’s been napping peacefully.”

Then a sound. A voice. A few seconds later, the voice again. Then louder. It was Heather screaming outside.

“I believe your little darling has awakened,” Zaduck said.

“You’ll never get away with this,” I yelled.

“Oh? Well, simplest scenario —I let go and your daughter takes a thrill ride to ground level. And about my getting away with things . . . When the police come up here, I think I can sell this situation very convincingly.”

He took a step toward me, his supernatural power so great that he was still delicately pinching the rope between his fingers even with Heather dangling at the other end. “So tell me the truth. You want to see what is inside, don’t you? You’re curious. The kind of demon that can drive a powerful man like me to create an extraordinary enterprise. Meeting the deepest needs of men around the world who want the pleasure of something very, very special. Admit it, Trevor. You want to see the face of the thing that is unspeakable to you. Perhaps because you fear that you will see a power greater than your puny God.”

“This is about you and me, Zaduck, not Heather. Bring her in. Then you can toss me out that window if that’s what you want.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? A failure in life, yet a hero in death. No, I don’t think I’ll give you the pleasure. Besides, I already gave you a chance to get out of town. Tried to tell you on that Metro ride. Made a special effort. But no, you had to stay, didn’t you.”

It was horrifically clear.

He said, “You didn’t really think I was going to a birthday party for my niece, did you? I don’t even have a niece or a sister.” He laughed. “Uh-oh,” he said in a mocking voice, “Trevor Black didn’t do his homework.”

“So this is a game after all, isn’t it?”

“At last. Now you’re getting it. Yes, yes. A game. Here’s the final score: I win. You lose.”

I shouted, “The kidnapping of girls. Perverted abuse. And when they become inconvenient to control as slaves, dumping them in a bayou somewhere or in a shallow grave. That’s no game. God help you, Vance, you’re demonic. Depraved.”

“Depraved. That old legal term. Good for you. Thinking like a lawyer. But you ought to try my new skill set. Thinking like a demon. Nothing like it. And please . . . do me a favor: don’t bring God into this.”

“Too late. He’s already here. And because he’s God, he wins. The forces inside you, they’re doomed.” I began to plead with him. “But believe me, there’s still hope for you. Redemption is right here. All you have to do —”

Zaduck bellowed back with a sound that was unlike anything human. His voice was changing. Rumbling. A volcano ready to erupt. Like the groaning of things breaking and shifting deep in the earth.

“Your talk is nothing! It’s nauseating. Nietzsche was right. Power and the will to use it is everything. Like when I walked into Jason Forester’s office with perfect timing. Then showed him my power. My true self. That’s all it took. The weakling’s heart burst wide-open. Fulfilling our prophecy in the FedEx letter. That makes me just like God, doesn’t it? That’s why I can control anyone. Men like Larry Rudabow. Get them to butcher those gullible idiots, Paul Pullmen and Henry Bosant. Especially Pullmen. Such beautiful bones. I prefer the delicate bones of the hand, by the way. Which is why I have been able to run a global Internet phenomenon that even the DOJ can’t figure out. It all comes down to smart power. Constanzo came close. But he was clumsy. And stupid. I, on the other hand . . . I am the perfection of that power.”

Something was happening to Zaduck physically. As Zaduck began to morph, he was no longer just a man. A furnace had opened up from within, and though he had the outline of a man, his form was filled with a glimmering, smoldering fire, like the color of a lava flow vomiting from a volcano. As if he were a man who had been set on fire from the inside.

The fire monster roared, “Now you will see my power.”

“You have no real power.”

“No?” he screamed back. “Then take the test. I dare you.”

I braced myself. “Test?”

“Just declare it. So simple. Declare Christ to be a coward for not taking the challenge our master gave him in the desert. When he refused to throw himself from the pinnacle of the Temple. Didn’t you ever wonder what he was afraid of? Maybe that those angels might not save him. So, Trevor, it’s your turn. Call him a fool for preaching love. Use your brain, man. Love? We live in a universe full of exploding supernovas and burning stars, where power and energy and survival is all that there is. A planet in a constant state of war. Disasters. Starvation. Where parents kill their children. And husbands and wives slay each other. Just admit the folly and futility of your Jesus, and everything will be fine.”

I shook my head. I knew, God help me, that I couldn’t deny the Savior who had saved me. My legs weakened. I pleaded for him not to do it, while I inched toward him.

But the fire monster in front of me burst into a hideous cackle. “No matter. I’ll still finish it.”

“What?” I yelled back.

“The test of your phony faith. Giving your daughter, Heather, the chance that your Christ refused to take.”

“Chance?”

“To survive the fall, of course. It’s only five hundred feet to the ground.”

I pleaded in the name of Christ for him to show mercy. To spare my daughter. But the creature roared at me, “You worm. Now you’ll watch my power over life and death.”

He opened his hand and let go. I saw the rope and its knotted end vanish from his fingers and fly through the open window. I heard a distant scream from Heather as Zaduck stepped in front of the window and blocked my view.

I rushed wildly toward the window, but my enemy blasted me backward to the floor with a gesture of his hand. I leaped to my feet, horrified.

The monster shouted, “Don’t worry. Your turn is next, going through that window after her. I’ll tell the police you overpowered me and I couldn’t stop you from your own suicide. People already know you’re crazy. After all, you see demons.”

Crushed with grief, I rushed to the window again, and again with one movement of his hand, he tossed me back. The fire creature howled, “And because Vance Zaduck is so cyber-smart, I’ve even created a ‘suicide note’ in an e-mail sent to you from Heather, right here on your own cell phone.” He held up my smartphone and moved slightly to the side, which gave me a view of the window that had been smashed open.

That was when I saw it. A blinding light in the window like a hundred suns. I shielded my eyes. Then a shape in the light. Holding the end of the rope and reaching down, wrapping it securely around the twisted metal of the window frame. The rope was holding fast.

An instant later, the figure of light was no longer there. I started breathing again.

But the creature inside of Vance didn’t see it, any of it. The fire monster was looking straight at me, waiting to see my despair. Thinking that my God had abandoned me and waiting for me to collapse in agony.

I shouted my response in a voice crushed with emotion: “When I am weak, that is when his power is perfected in me.”

The monster roared. I shouted it again.

He roared louder, stepping toward me. “This is just the beginning of my vengeance.”

“No, it isn’t,” I cried. “It is finished.”

The fire monster recoiled at the words.

And then the sound of feet. A lot of them.

Police, with service pistols aimed, rushing onto the observation deck.

No more fire monster standing before me, but instead Vance Zaduck, looking cool and collected.

Zaduck said, “Thank goodness you’re here. I didn’t know how long I could hold on to the rope for that poor girl. But her crazy father here tried to . . .”

Vance reached toward the end of the rope that was caught in the bent window frame, a final attempt to make it look plausible, but he never got there. Three officers wrestled him to the ground first.

Two men from the rescue squad gingerly hoisted Heather up by the rope that was still knotted around her ankle, up to the window, through the opening, and into the room. She was shaking and crying hysterically and couldn’t catch her breath. As soon as her feet touched the floor, Heather rushed into my arms.

Vance cried out to the police that they had it all wrong.

“No,” I said as I clutched Heather, who was weeping loudly, shaking, and holding me tight. “They have it perfectly right. And so does that 911 operator.” I pulled out the cell from my pocket and spoke into it. “This is Trevor Black. Thank you for hanging on. Are you still there?”

“Yes, sir,” she responded. “Is your daughter safe?”

After assuring her that Heather was in my arms, I asked, “Did you catch the conversation?”

“Loud and clear,” the 911 operator said. “Every word. I relayed to Metro police. They’re with you now? And the suspect’s in custody?” I told her yes to both.

As Vance was led away, he announced with an eerie calm that he would be cleared and that “Trevor Black will be the one destroyed by this, you’ll see.”

All that I knew, all I cared about, was that Heather had been protected.