Chasing Tomorrow

“I thought you said she was a whore?”

“Tracy’s the whore,” Cooper muttered darkly. “Tracy tempted me, like Eve in the garden. Because of her sins, and mine, many lambs have been sacrificed. But now the price has been paid. Well, almost paid. It’s time for the new covenant. One last sacrifice . . .”

Many lambs? Did that mean many murders? If Cooper really had killed his mother—if it wasn’t one of his sick, fantasy projections—what else could he be capable of?

He continued rambling.

“I did the Lord’s will. I obeyed, but it was awful. Awful. So much blood! Just like with my mother. You don’t know what I went through. But then, you see, there was so much sin with these women.”

“What women?” Jeff asked quietly

Cooper didn’t seem to hear the question.

“So much sin. So much recompense to be made. I thought it would go on forever. But the Lord in His mercy had other plans. He brought Tracy back to me, you see.” He paused then, and after a few seconds seemed to regain his composure. When he spoke again, he sounded totally calm. “That’s why we’re here, Mr. Stevens, you and me. Playing our last game. The time has come. The Lord has demanded a new covenant. A new lamb must suffer death, death on a cross. Only then can Eden be restored.”

A new lamb? A new covenant? Death on a cross? For a moment there Jeff had felt as if he had Cooper on the ropes, emotionally. But now he was losing him.

“Once the new covenant has been made, Tracy and I can at last be married. Our sins will be forgiven. We will walk hand in hand, pure and clean in the light of the Lord.”

“You want to marry Tracy?”

“Naturally. After the sacrifice.”

The sacrifice.

Death on a cross . . .

Jeff held his breath. Slowly, very slowly, the shoe was beginning to drop.

“After the sacrifice, Tracy will come to the tomb, like Mary Magdalen.” Cooper sounded positively cheerful now. “But like Mary, she will find it empty, but for a shroud. She will press the new shroud to her face and she will weep. Then, at last, she will believe. She will see her Messiah face-to-face and she will understand.” Jeff felt the hairs on his arms stand up and the bile rise in his throat.

The new shroud . . .

Daniel Cooper had never been planning to steal the Shroud of Turin.

He was planning to make a new shroud all his own.

He came to Seville to learn how to do it.

What had he said a few minutes ago?

“Do you know why you’re here, Stevens?

“Because you are the lamb.”

Jeff had shrugged off the words as lunatic ramblings. But now he knew what they meant. Panic gripped him like a frozen fist clenched around his heart.

“Your move.”

Jeff couldn’t breathe.

Jesus Christ.

Daniel Cooper’s going to crucify me!

CHAPTER 24

TRACY WAS AT HOME, reading, when the telephone rang.