I rolled the handle of the paring knife in my fingers as I paced the room and Sara slept. I should have been sleeping too, but I couldn’t. My mind couldn’t settle from the whirlwind of thoughts. Though I hated what Thomas had done to her, the knife made me smile. I hadn’t been able to believe it when she removed it from her boot. It was obviously the reason I’d thought she was walking oddly, why I was worried that he’d hurt her sexually. She was so much braver than I knew.
I’d finally gotten the nerve to ask her the question that had eaten at me since my call with Raquel. I’d asked whether she was pregnant. Her answer made me feel neither better nor worse. She said she didn’t know. It had been only three weeks since her last period, which she said was too early to know. I wasn’t sure whether that was totally accurate. Though it’d been three years since I’d watched television—yes, even while in motels, I didn’t; I wanted to stay in Jacob mode—I seemed to remember commercials that talked about home pregnancy tests that could determine results earlier than that. With her sound asleep, I considered driving to a store to buy one, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to know.
We’d talked about so much, but I’d never posed the question that the morning would require. Once she ate the fast food we’d gone together to get and began yawning, I’d decided it could wait. Obviously the future was something neither one of us was ready to tackle. However, we’d done a bang-up job on our past. Maybe it was because it was relatively short, but we’d covered nearly everything, and I’d done my best to explain the whys behind each decision. The time of forbidding her questioning was over. For there to be a chance at a future, she needed to understand everything. The change in dynamic was refreshing yet unsettling. The conditioned man from The Light wanted to take control and tell her what to do. The man I had once been, and hoped to be again, appreciated a partner, not a submissive.
Sara wasn’t the only one who felt like two different people. My two perspectives had me torn.
I didn’t want to ask her to come back to The Light. It was too dangerous. Then again, the idea of never seeing her again created a void I couldn’t imagine navigating. There was a reason agents stayed unattached. Lying in the bed, in nothing more than her bra and panties, was that reason. No, it wasn’t that I’d waited for Sara. It was that I fucking hated having an Achilles’ heel.
She made me more vulnerable. For that reason alone I should forgo asking and just tell Special Agent Adler that she’d said no. Then I should kiss her good-bye and let her walk away into witness protection. She’d be blissfully unaware of the repercussions, but I’d be confident of her safety.
Sitting at the table, I laid my head on my arms. With my eyes closed, I tried reassuring myself that the entire three years weren’t a bust. My testimony alone could put Father Gabriel, the three Commissions, and the three Assemblies away for a long time. They all knew something. It wasn’t as if each individual knew the extent of the wrongdoings. Hell, I hadn’t even known about the entire pharmaceutical scheme until recently. But once this was over, deciphering the details and determining the extent of each person’s involvement wouldn’t be up to me. It would be up to others in the FBI and then the judicial system.
The idea of putting all those men behind bars made me think about the wives and other followers. As the fast food churned in my gut, I feared that if the timing was off—at all—if all the raids didn’t happen at the exact same time, Father Gabriel had an escape plan and would use it. The only part of his plan I knew for sure was that it involved flying to an unknown destination. What concerned me was the fate of those he would leave behind. Every day, as I became closer and closer to people like Raquel and Benjamin, I feared more for their safety. I’d never been told of a mass suicide plan, but I was terrified one might be in place.
Sara’s hand landed on my shoulder. I hadn’t even heard her get up.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” she asked.
I covered her hand with mine. “Investigative journalist, huh?”
She walked in front of me, wrapping herself in a blanket she’d found in the top of the closet. Though the lights were off, with the soft glow of a night-light from the bathroom, I watched as she covered her bra and panties. “Yes,” she replied, sheepishly adding, “I’m good at asking questions.”
“Too good.”
“So why aren’t you sleeping? You were the one who said we had a long day.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m thinking about tomorrow.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
Her volume rose. “I thought you said no more secrets.”
“I can’t tell you, because it’s not up to me, and if it were, I can’t decide what I’d choose.”