Liz folded her hands in her lap. “We could just sit here, but it seems like a waste.”

“Of my parents’ money?”

“Of both our time.”

“What do you care? I don’t even know you.”

“I heard you talked with Pastor Rachel.”

Her already pale face went ashen. “I don’t want to talk about her!”

“I can help you, Tara. Trust me.”

“No!” The teenager leaped to her feet. “You can’t help me. Nobody can!”

Liz followed her to her feet, hand out in supplication. “Let me try. You let Pastor Rachel try.”

“And look what happened to her!”

Liz’s heartbeat quickened. “What do you mean? What happened to her?”

“She’s gone now. Gone! And I’m here. I’m-”

She brought her hands to her face. Her shoulders shook with what Liz thought were tears, but when she dropped her hands Liz saw that her eyes were dry.

She looked at Liz, expression curiously neutral. “Do you believe in God?” she asked. “Do you believe in heaven and hell? In the devil and eternal damnation?”

Startled, Liz replied that she did. “Do you, Tara?” she asked.

“Pastor Rachel did. She warned me against the devil.”

For a moment, Liz couldn’t find her voice. She wondered what her sister had told this impressionable and troubled young woman.

“And what did she say when she warned you, Tara?”

“That the Evil One masks himself and his army of the damned in beauty. He is seductive, his pleasures earthly and immediate. But beneath, his stench is more foul than any known to man. She warned that the price of succumbing was the eternal fires of hell.”

Liz hid her dismay. Her sister couldn’t have said that. The woman she had known never would have. Never.

Liz tilted her head, studying the teenager. The fanatical light in the girl’s eyes troubled her. Liz suspected she had found the source of imbalance in the girl’s life. She made a mental note to speak with Pastor Tim about the family’s religious beliefs.

“Can I tell you a story?” the teenager asked suddenly. “It’s about a miracle.”

“If you’d like.”

Tara inched back to her chair and sank onto it, never breaking eye contact with Liz. Liz followed suit, then waited, hands folded in her lap.

After a moment, Tara began. “In 1846, back when Paradise Christian still belonged to the Catholic church, the Blessed Virgin appeared to children playing in the churchyard. Twenty-four hours later blood ran from the hands of the statue of Christ, in the church’s sanctuary.”

Tara began to tremble. “Fourteen days later a hurricane hit Key West. It devastated the island and destroyed the church. A third of the island’s inhabitants were killed.”

Tara lowered her voice to a strained whisper. “The Catholic archdiocese decided the visions had been the work of demons and struck all accounting of them from their official records.”

Liz cleared her throat. “So how did you learn the story?”

“I grew up on the island,” she murmured. “Some stories can’t be hushed.” She fell silent a moment, expression far away. “There are those who believe the Blessed Mother appeared to warn the faithful of the disaster to come. That like the Great Flood, the hurricane was delivered by the Lord to punish the wicked. To make them pay for their sins.”

Liz swallowed hard. “Is that what you believe, Tara?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe.”

“Yes, it does. It-”

“I have to go now.” The girl stood so abruptly she sent her chair sailing backward. She hurried toward the door.

“Wait!” Liz jumped to her feet. “Is that what Pastor Rachel believed? Did you tell her that story? Did you-”

“Ask Father Paul, he’ll tell you. He believes.” Tara yanked open the door and dashed out to the waiting room.

Liz took off after her, heart racing. “ Tara, please! Don’t leave like this. We have to talk. We-”

She bit the last back. She was too late. Liz watched helplessly as the young woman darted across Duval Street, earning the blare of several horns as she was nearly struck by a moped.

When the teenager disappeared around the corner, Liz stepped back into her office, thoughts racing. Tara knew what had happened to Rachel; Liz was certain of it. The girl was frightened. Frightened that the same was going to happen to her.

That, Liz deduced, was why she wasn’t eating or sleeping. It explained the haunted look in her eyes.

As she shut the door and turned, her gaze landed on a sheet of folded paper on the floor by her feet. She bent, picked it up and opened it. A simple message had been typed on the first line of the notebook paper:

They know. You’re in danger here. Go before it’s too late.

Friday, November 9

5:25 p.m.

Mark stood behind the bar, drying glasses that came out of the washer still wet. His thoughts raced forward, to the next hours, to the promise he had made. To Tara. To their unborn child.

Dear Lord, am I doing the right thing?

“Mark?”

He glanced toward Rick, standing at the cash register, the drawer open. Mark glanced at the drawer, then back at Rick, a catch in his chest. “Problem, boss?”

“I need to make a few phone calls. You think you can hold down the fort for a few minutes?”

Mark smiled, relieved. What? Did he think the man could read his mind? “This crush? Are you kidding?”

The last of the afternoon boozers had trickled out a minute ago. The evening crowd would soon begin cruising in.

Rick laughed. “Stay out of the Jack.”

“No worries there, boss.”

“Call me if-”

Mark shooed him toward the office. “You worry too much. Make your calls, already.”

Chuckling, Rick disappeared through the doorway that led to the storage room and his office. Mark watched him go, counted to twenty once, then twice. Taking a deep breath, he inched his way to the cash register. There, he eased the drawer open.

It chimed and he froze, looking over his shoulder.

From the recesses of the bar, he heard Rick talking.

He was on the phone; he hadn’t heard.

Guilt swamped him. As did a feeling of falling, of spiraling down to the devil’s dark pit.

He had to do this. For Tara. For their baby.

Tonight he and Tara were running away together. They had planned to meet in the garden of Paradise Christian at 2:00 a.m. Everything was set. About an hour before closing, Mark was going to claim illness and leave early. He would be long gone before Rick closed-and discovered what Mark had done.

Quickly, Mark scrawled an IOU to Rick, lifted the cash drawer, slid the IOU under some checks, then extracted six hundred dollars.

Hands shaking, he pocketed the money and closed the drawer. He was scared senseless. How was he going to support a wife and child? He could hardly support himself.

This decision would be easier if Tara hadn’t been acting so funny. Distant and…unhappy. He had wondered if she was having second thoughts about him, about the prospect of spending her life with a humble preacher. He had wondered, God help him, if the baby wasn’t his.

How could they begin their lives together with that hanging over their relationship?

Let it go, Mark. That’s over. That part of her life is over.

He fisted his fingers. Tara was frightened. And not just of what their future would hold. Of her friends. They had threatened her. If she tried to leave their group, they had promised they would hurt her.

Tara feared they would kill her or the baby.

Mark didn’t believe that. These were a group of spoiled rich kids, not inner-city gangbangers. They were angry and not above using intimidation to terrorize Tara.

Mark couldn’t have that. He wouldn’t. Lord help him, he would do whatever it took to protect his own.

He figured they’d head to Texas, back home to Humble. His parents wouldn’t be happy, but they would support his decision because of the baby.