I WAS LYING ON MY BED WHEN I REMEMBERED THE pills.
Gasping, I sat up, reached into the pocket of my white dress, and pulled out the list Rose had given me several hours earlier. The items I needed to start taking for the health of my unborn baby. In the wake of Rose’s outrage, I’d forgotten.
I spun to the window. The sun was starting to hide behind the hills, marking the end of the day, and with it, curfew. No woman was permitted outside without a male escort after six.
Rose had insisted that I start taking these vitamins today. She’d been firm. But she’d also insisted I go home. Had she expected me to go home via the clinic? I could go first thing in the morning, but Dr. Charles would know and might report it.
I stood from my bed and paced the worn rug. In my state of exhaustion, the idea of facing my mother for a solution seemed insurmountable. Jamie would be home by now, but I didn’t trust him to keep a secret in his newfound loyalty to the law.
My only sane option was to wait till morning and risk another scolding.
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Bobbie asked.
I glanced at my bed where she sat, legs crossed, leaning on one arm. Her shimmering hair was pulled to one side across her shoulder.
“Do I have no control over you?” I demanded, but I was glad for her attentiveness, however sporadic.
“Do you want me to leave?”
“I didn’t say that.”
She shrugged. “I show up when I think I can help, which isn’t always. If I’m not welcome, I have no power to help.”
“How do you know when you’re welcome?”
“Am I?”
I hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. Yes, you are.” Then, “What do you mean, waiting until morning isn’t wise? I can’t get out and back by curfew. I have no choice.”
“You always have a choice,” Bobbie said. She stood gracefully and walked across the room to my window. Using two fingers she separated the blinds and gazed out. “If you hurry you’ll have enough time to get back before dark. No rules broken.”
“I could never get past my mother or brother.”
“Who said anything about getting past them?” Bobbie yanked the blinds up, unlocked the window’s latch and opened the bottom panel. “Slip out, tread carefully, slip back in. Easy.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “I couldn’t possibly do that.”
“Why not? Then you avoid dealing with your family, and you follow Rose’s instructions.”
“Sneaking around feels like I’m doing something wrong.”
“More like avoiding wrong.” She turned back to face me. “You could wait till morning, but that means disobeying Rose.”
Made sense. Maybe she was right.
“I usually am,” she said. “I promised to keep you safe. But I can only do that if you let me.”
I considered what she was saying, weighed my options, and started pacing again. The harsh, hurtful words of Rose echoed through my mind as they had all afternoon. You’ve formed a bad habit of letting me down. She wouldn’t accept another excuse from me. And there was also my baby to consider.
I stopped and looked toward the window. Bobbie reached out and pushed it all the way open. Slip out, tread carefully, and slip back in. Easy.
Bobbie smiled. “Easy.”
ROSE SLIPPED INTO THE QUIET CLINIC THROUGH THE back entrance. Harrison had come home when he’d said he would, giving her enough time to deal with Ben before returning home to take care of the boy. Her husband didn’t know what she would do, naturally. It was better that way.
The events of the afternoon had left her shaken. The boy had come off as innocent in the eyes of her children, likely in the eyes of Grace as well. And under the guise of innocence, he’d already influenced her children and Grace to disregard simple, firm rules.
Sylous was right about the boy. She only prayed she had the strength to do what was necessary. There was no other way.
She knew that by this hour Dr. Charles and his family would be upstairs attending to dinner in the attached apartment where they lived. But she wouldn’t have long before they returned to check on their patient.
Sylous hadn’t offered any instruction on how to kill them, which meant he didn’t care. After much deliberation through the night, she’d settled on poisoning them. She didn’t think she had the stomach for violence. Poisoning seemed safer, more disconnected. There would be no autopsy, naturally. No one would be the wiser.
She’d prepared earlier under the guise of researching rare causes of rashes like the one Evelyn had. It hadn’t taken long to do a quick inventory of the medications the clinic had on hand and the lethal doses of those medications.
Supply was limited, but potassium chloride was available. Used to treat low blood pressure, enough injected through an IV would stop the heart. The boy’s would have to be administered through his food with a side of thiopental, which would cause him to relax into an unconscious state while the potassium chloride killed him in his sleep.
Rose reached the doctor’s personal office, opened the door and walked into the dark room. She went to the desk, slid open the top right drawer and reached into one of the back compartments for the keys to the medicine cabinet.
Making her way back to the door, she carefully peered around the corner to make sure the clinic was still empty. The front door wouldn’t be locked until midnight, but most of the lights had been turned off, and with darkness fast approaching, few if any would be out at this time of day.
Taking a deep breath, she hurried to the supply room and entered. Using a small flashlight she approached the medicine cabinet, quickly unlocked it and scanned the labels. She withdrew a syringe and both medications, then locked the cabinet.
So far so good.
Thirty seconds later, Rose was standing outside the patient’s room. The door stood wide open. She hesitated for a moment. Once she crossed the threshold there was no going back. A slight shiver worked through her fingers. Chasing away her doubts with a final breath, she quietly stepped up to Ben’s bedside.
The room was cast in shadows, but there was enough light from the small window to guide her. Beeping from the monitoring device punctuated the patient’s steady breathing. Ben lay still, tucked under white sheets and a blue blanket that were pulled up to his shoulders.
She studied the older man for a few seconds. Peaceful, lost to the reality of where he was or what was about to become of him. Perfectly ignorant. She felt a tinge of envy. While she’d been battling doubts and fear since agreeing to Sylous’s guidance, he’d been at peace, oblivious to the problems of the world.
He would never even know she’d aided in his passing.
That burden was for her to carry, and she would carry it for the good of the world. A price she was willing to pay, she’d told herself a handful of times. Sylous had called her to walk this path, and she would always follow where he directed.
Even so, her hands shook as she held up the syringe and vial. “Forgive me,” she whispered. “I have no choice.” She looked back at Ben’s still face. “I’m protecting your children, you understand? I’ve always protected them.” She kept her voice low but felt the need to speak the words—a kind of absolution for what she was about to do. “Your sacrifice will eliminate the threat against your children.”
It was true. Though she spoke it for her sake, not his. And her speaking seemed to calm her somewhat.
She uncapped the needle, lifted the vial, and pierced the cap. Three cubic centimeters of the amber fluid was all she needed, and it flowed into the syringe with ease.
It would be simple: inject the potassium chloride into his IV and, without any suffering, his heart would cease to beat. Easy and painless.
But she was hesitating. Her hands were still trembling.
Murder is a sin, an offense against God. But so was failing to protect his bride, the faithful few of true religion who’d come out from among the world. Could she commit one sin to justify not committing another?
Was wiping out Sodom and Gomorrah a sin? Was killing Jesus a sin? Even slaughtering children wasn’t beyond God. In truth, Ben was now a Fury. Killing a Fury was a good thing.
So why was it so hard?
Rose swallowed as the shake in her hands worsened. “I am only doing what has to be done,” she whispered to Ben. “Sylous commands it.”
She reached for the thin plastic line of his IV. “You won’t suffer,” she said, silencing the opposition in her mind and placing the needle into the IV line. “You won’t feel any pain, and I promise the same will go for the boy. But you have to understand, I must do God’s will and protect Haven Valley.”
Rose pressed the plunger, releasing the heavy dose of potassium chloride that would quickly find its way into Ben’s bloodstream. A ball of tension rolled through her gut, yet she held steady. She was doing this for her people, for her children, for Sylous, who was the voice of God.
“To protect Haven Valley,” she said, “you and the boy must die.”
I DIDN’T ENCOUNTER ANYONE ON THE WAY TO THE clinic. Most people were already inside for the evening, and I walked in the buildings’ shadows, trying to stay out of sight. I had to get back quickly before anyone knew I was missing.
I knew the clinic’s doors would be unlocked but decided using the back door would be safer. I would rather not announce my late arrival. If someone was inside, I would slip back outside. Easy.
Rose had said she asked Dr. Charles to pull what I needed and put them aside for me. I hoped he’d done so. There was a pickup box in the front room. They should be there. Simple.
I reached the back door and eased it open. Made hardly a sound as I eased inside and softly closed the door behind me. I stood for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the dark hallway, listening for sound. As far as I could tell, I was alone. All I had to do was get to the front, find the medications, and get back out. Then it was a straight shot home. Easy and simple. But I had to be quiet so as not to alert Dr. Charles and his family, who were on the floor above me.
I was four or five strides down the hallway when I heard a voice. Soft and indistinguishable, but there. I pulled up, flattened myself against the wall and strained my ears.
The voice was coming from up ahead, around the corner. A corner I had to cross to get to the pickup box. I considered heading back out the way I’d come.
The voice came again, a woman’s voice, from one of the patient rooms around the corner.
An image of my father flashed through my mind. He’d been the only patient in the clinic yesterday when I’d left. Who would be with him now? Not Dr. Charles. A woman. His wife? Unlikely. Didn’t sound like her.
I had to know, and there was no sign of Bobbie to tell me I shouldn’t know. Besides, she was the one who’d suggested I come.
Creeping with caution, I eased toward the corner and the voice came clearer. A familiar voice.
“I am only doing what has to be done,” the voice said. “Sylous commands it.”
Dread mushroomed in my chest. I knew I should get out before I was discovered, but I also had to know what she was saying to my father. What had Sylous commanded? So I stood as still as a mouse and held my breath.
“You won’t suffer,” the voice said, and in that moment I knew it was Rose. “You won’t feel any pain, and I promise the same will go for the boy.”
The boy. Eli. Certainty crashed into my skull like a hammer. Rose intended to do something terrible to my father and Eli.
Terrified by that certainty, I craned my head around the corner and saw Rose standing over my father.
Her back was half turned to me, but I could see that she was holding something in her fingers. A syringe. And she was injecting the contents of that syringe into my father’s IV.
“To protect Haven Valley, you and the boy must die,” Rose said. Her words cut through the confusion gathering in my mind like a blade.
You and the boy must die. Her words echoed through my mind and the world around me seemed to stand still. Die. The word was in my mind, but so unsettling that it didn’t offer me meaning.
And then it did.
Die, I thought again. Rose was killing my father. And Eli was next.
I lost my mind to fear and retreated without thought, hurrying on tippy-toes, not daring to breathe. Then I was outside and the cool evening air hit me like a wall of bricks.
The back door shut behind me, and a small part of my mind wondered if the sound had been too loud. But the thought didn’t linger long because I was already around the clinic’s corner, then pressing against the wall, hidden for the moment. If Rose came out, I would run.
You and the boy must die. Rose’s final statement ravaged my thoughts, tore them into pieces and devoured them. Rose was murdering my father?
No, I must have misunderstood. An image of Rose standing beside my father’s bed, syringe in hand, filled the space behind my eyes. You and the boy must die.
A wave of nausea rose through me and I fought to keep from emptying the contents of my stomach on the ground, but it was no use. I vomited at my feet, desperate to remain as quiet as possible. Between waves I took several harsh drags of air and tried to steady my breathing.
With that violent retch, clarity came to me. Sylous had told Rose that my father and Eli had to die because they were wolves in sheep’s clothing. They were the darkness masquerading as light. It was the only thing that made any sense.
Rose had just killed my father.
Eli, the boy with the beautiful blue eyes, the child my father had called my brother, would be subjected to the same fate. How could killing him keep Haven Valley safe? Surely there had to be another way.
I straightened as a sudden urge of my own worked its way up my spine. I couldn’t let Eli die. He was my brother. He was just a child. I had to protect him.
“Don’t be crazy, Grace.”
Bobbie appeared on my left, face firm, eyes sharp. But I wasn’t interested in her advice now, so I turned away.
“You’ll be declaring war on Rose,” Bobbie snapped, her voice low and afraid. “There’s no way to get to him without exposing yourself. It’s a terrible idea.”
My father had asked one thing of me: keep Eli safe. Maybe my desperate need to follow his dying request was a temptation, which confused me because I really didn’t know Ben as a father.
What I did know in that moment was that I had never wanted something so badly as to protect Eli. He was being held in the Pierce home, but it was a home I knew as well as my own. With schedules I knew intimately.
And Rose wasn’t there. Not yet.
“This is insane, Grace,” Bobbie cried. “Think of the danger you’ll be putting yourself in. And your baby!”
That gave me a moment’s pause. But only a moment. My need to save my helpless brother had taken root. And the branches were sprouting with each passing thought.
“And if Rose is right about him?” Bobbie demanded.
“You don’t know?” I asked aloud, spinning to her.
She blinked. “No.”
“Then please shut up.”
And then I was running.