Page 89 of Brimstone Hollow

“I have to go back,” I mutter. “I forgot something. You go ahead. I’ll see you up there.”

She squints at me briefly but then nods and turns back to follow the crowd.

“Shit,” I growl. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

I start back down the hill as I reimagine the scene on Friday night: Ezra sitting at the table, milking the snakes. The door bursting open, Nathaniel Nickels wielding a baseball bat. The whooshing swing of the bat into the table, shattering the glass beakers already full of deadly venom. The scuffle where Ezra—not the benign man of faith he seemed—manages to get the upper hand, pushing Nickels’s face into the table, the little shards of broken glass, the puddled venom.

I’ll sing Thy power to save,

I’ll sing Thy power to save…

The thing is, if Ezra King had been an innocent man, he’d have stayed there.

He’d have called the police. Reported the attack.

But hewasn’tinnocent. He would’ve guessed, just as I did, that Nickels had been sent by Joel Shepherd—which meant that, best-case scenario,if all this went to court, his involvement in the Shepherd drug operation would come out. It would’ve been all over for him. Which meant he had to run. And what better time to run than when no one realizes you’re missing?

When everyone believes you’re dead?

Nathaniel might have been blond and a bit more muscular, but with a similar height and frame, dressed in Ezra’s clothes, with a face full of snake venom so he was swollen beyond recognition…

I break into a dead run.

It was never Ezra’s body lying in the chair, in the coffin, in the ground.

There is a fountain filled with blood

Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;

And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,

Lose all their guilty stains…

My feet thump on the trail as I tear back down the hill. I almost topple, skittering across the gravel as I turn, then continue at a near-galloping pace.

If Ezra really did show up at Crystal’s—if he really did tell her that everyone should go to the mountaintop—then that’s definitely where he’snotgoing to be. No, Ezra must have wanted everyone out of the church.

And there can only be one reason for that: so he can go in without being seen.

I reach the church, sprint up the back stairs, and yank at the door. It’s locked.

I run around to the front, find the doors already open. My heart thumps in my ears. The sun is dawning, streaming through the east-facing windows, illuminating the sanctuary in pure, pale, golden light.

At the front of the sanctuary, kneeling prostrated against the altar, arms outstretched, is a man in an all-black suit of clothes.

“Mr. King?” I say. My voice echoes in the small sanctuary.

I start toward him, drawing my gun as I go. My footsteps are the only sound in the church.

“Mr. King, my name is Annie Gore. I’m a private investigator. I need to ask you some questions. I was hired by your daughter, Katie.”

I come close and he still doesn’t move. I reach out, touch his shoulder.

“Ezra—”

My movement tips his head to the side, revealing a little pool of blood under his temple.

“Shit!” I gasp, stepping back. And then I reach forward and check his neck for a pulse, even as I’m pulling out my phone. Chief Dishman answers on the third ring.