Nothing Sacred

The statistics were news to David. Leave it to him to get involved with the biggest and best.

“Catering to wealthy businessmen and politicians, the owners of the ‘business’ guaranteed, above all else, anonymity to the clients they serviced.”

Martha’s hand on Ellen’s shoulder grew more brisk. The girl watched the sheriff unblinkingly, but David wasn’t sure she was following what was going on. Martha had told him about Ellen’s talk with Aaron. The girl had been through a lot.

David sent up a silent prayer for Ellen—and for himself—still sitting there with, he hoped, an attitude of total calm as Greg continued.

“The business is owned by a well-known state politician.” Greg named the man.

“What?” Martha sat forward, dragging Ellen with her, and then, looking down at her daughter, sat back. “You’ve got to be kidding! I met Michael Shane at Becca’s last year. He was here for her swearing in.”

Greg nodded.

“And apparently that’s when he noticed the old motel with rooms for rent just outside of town. He’d recently run into some trouble in Yucca and was scouting out new locations.” The apartment complex they’d been using in the town near Phoenix had had a drug bust, and Shane, not wanting investigators so close, had decided to relocate.

“As far as we know right now, there are at least six other establishments he’s been using, all over the state of Arizona. Shelter Valley was one of them.”

“So what does all of this have to do with me?” Ellen’s voice was tiny, childlike. She was on overload and David wished he could take her burdens upon himself and free her of cares. In all his years as a minister, he’d never mastered the detachment that was considered to be a vital part of surviving the work.

“I’m getting to that,” Greg said. “This whole thing involved an intricate network of people who didn’t know each other. No one, other than Shane and his partner, knew who worked for them. Each player only knew the one person to whom he reported. But they were all well compensated for their cooperation. There were front-line men—those who saw opportunity in prospective clients, generally by witnessing them at parties or using an escort service. If the client was agreeable, the front-line guy would send the name to someone who then sent it out for an extensive background check to make sure that there was no trap involved. This guy had no idea what the background check was for. He also never saw the results of it. Apparently those checks were done on the street, illegally of course, with high-tech equipment the local FBI was glad to confiscate.”

“So arrests have already been made.” David, speaking for the first time since Greg had begun, was surprised to hear his voice sound so normal.

“Many of them, yes,” Greg told him, then went on. “The man who did the checks had no idea what the information was used for. He simply passed on the facts to someone higher up and if the client was approved, that guy left a card with a particular insignia on it at the reception desk in the lobby of Shane’s export business. David recognized the name. It was one of Shane’s acquisitions just before David had left the company. When that “higher up” guy had been him, he’d left the card in the lobby of the medical supply company offices, where he’d held a legitimate position. Their clients, or at least the men availing themselves of this particular service—including, on occasion, him—had all been named Sam Hunter then. They were James Sharp this go-round.

“The client was then notified to pick up the card and take it to a certain high-end car dealership owned by one of Shane’s key contributors. This guy started with a couple of used-car lots and is now enormously wealthy—largely due to the prime government-owned real estate he’s been acquiring with Shane’s help over the years.”

Martha was rocking Ellen. Staring at Greg. Still white, eyes wide, Martha didn’

t look well. David wondered if she’d put it all together yet.

He also wondered how he was ever going to go home tonight, to that house by the church.

That house was trustingly provided by people who expected a man of God, a man of sound moral values and genuine virtue, to inhabit it.

Not a man who’d been stained by his actions long ago, branded by what he’d done just as surely as a tiger’s stripes identified him as a tiger and a leopard’s spots identified him, too.

It was what he’d been telling Jeb that day on the street. And the man had known it. They’d had that talk one other night, long ago.

When David had lived on those streets. Pretending not to be one of them.

Now and in the past, David Cole Marks was nothing but a fraud.

HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER WAS slowly building inside Martha as she rocked her little girl on a couch she and Todd had chosen together ten years before. Because they’d wanted a piece of quality furniture and had spent so much money on it, they’d joked about growing old on that couch. Bouncing their grandchildren and maybe even great-grandchildren on their knees while they sat there.

Never once had they considered a divorced Martha rocking her twenty-year-old raped daughter there.

Or hearing a story so fantastic she wasn’t sure she was even taking it all in.

The only thing keeping her calm enough to finish out the evening was the minister sitting across the coffee table. As always, he conveyed the sense that everything was going to be okay.

She might not believe in what he had to teach, might not put any stock in things believed but not seen, but she was beginning to believe in him. The man had some kind of special power.

Even if it was only the power of positive thinking and mind over matter. Whatever it was, she’d seen firsthand, through all these months of turmoil, that it worked.

Ellen had grown heavy against her. Her eyes were still open, but Martha knew, with a mother’s instinct, that the girl had given up her attempt to focus.

Ellen’s counselor had given her a low-dose tranquilizer, which on its own would have done nothing except relax her a little, but coupled with the past twenty-four hours’ events, was helping her find a place of calm deep inside herself.