Faithless in Death (In Death, #52)(113)

“We’ve got the pictures,” Eve said. “And what do you care? They’re females. Just getting groomed for their purpose in life, right? Anyway, both of your older sons are going away—we’ll be talking to them for a long time. It’s a Wilkey family affair.”

“We can’t leave out the daughter.”

“Sure can’t,” Eve said with cheer. “No embezzlement there, no sick taste for ten-year-old girls.” Eve sat back. “She’s just a murderer.”

“More lies.” But his soft hands balled into fists. “No one will believe your lies. How I pity you, how I will pray for you.”

“You can save the pity and prayers for yourself. This is truth, and your faithful as well as the world in general are going to get a whole crapload of truth. And a lot of those faithful will suddenly turn faithless and roll all over you and the rest. And the rest of the world? They’re going to stop seeing you and your sick order as crazies or bigots and see just how unnatural you are.”

“The true flock will never turn away.”

More cracks, deeper cracks. Eve smirked at him, pushed harder.

“Keep thinking that. And just an FYI, if you’re thinking that Congressman—Jeez, what the hell is his name? It’s been a long few days.”

“Congressman Orlando, Oklahoma,” Peabody provided. “And there’s Senator O’Connell, Kentucky.”

“Right—what would I do without you? If you’re waiting for either one of those gentlemen—and I use the word loosely—to come to your defense, strike up the fucking band, forget it. They should both be in custody about now. Bribery—accepting and making—conspiracy to defraud the United States of freaking America. But you don’t need to hear about their problems when you’ve got so many of your own.”

“Freedom of faith, my constitutional right, protects—”

“Don’t you begin to speak to me about rights.” Eve slapped the table, lurched up. “Let’s talk about Fiona Vassar’s rights. Abducted, drugged, tortured, forced to go through a bogus marriage ceremony to become your breeding wife. Raped by you repeatedly, restrained, forced into servitude.”

She paused a moment, pulled herself back. “Her children are with her now. Cassie, Robbyn, and Seth—that’s the name she gave him before you had him sent to what you called the Nursery—with several other kids.”

Berenski at the lab had come through with the DNA match there, Eve thought. Sometimes Dickhead didn’t earn his nickname.

“They’re all together now, safe from you now.”

“So are the others you designated as breeders,” Peabody snapped out. “You perverted fuck.”

“Ella Alice Foxx,” Eve continued, “abducted, drugged, tortured, forced into servitude, and held against her will. You’d already banked payment of a hundred thousand—she was a prime one—for her forced marriage, to take place next week—you had the date marked.”

She reeled off names, no need for the file now, no pretense, of women taken—the ones he’d kept, the ones he’d sold.

“They have stories to tell, you pathetic excuse for a human being, and they’re telling them. Your block on Tribeca’s done. Your jailer there’s in custody. The Huffmans are in custody, your recruiters—what a tame name for a vicious practice—are in custody.”

Now his voice roared out, a fanatic in the throes of persecution. “You, the unworthy, the unnatural, attack our faith. Our faith will stand and spread and triumph over your vicious and unholy attacks.”

But his face had paled, and the knuckles of his folded hands went white.

“Not a chance. The judges, the cops, the lawyers, and all the rest on your rolls—in custody. Some of them will flip hard on you and yours to save their own asses. You’re done. And you know why you’re done, why your cult is finally broken? Because your daughter’s been planning and plotting how to take over, and she killed rather than risk a hitch in those plans.

“I’m betting you were on her list of disposables.”

His face relaxed again. So sure of himself there, Eve thought. So sure a daughter would remain ever loyal.

“You lie. You lie to test my will, my faith. Mirium would never betray me or the order.”

Eve leaned forward, spoke softly now to give each word import. “She despises you, and because I know that, I’ll turn her. She knows everything there is to know, your personal assistant, your recruiter.”

“Mirium is blood of my blood. She is fruit of my seed. She will never turn against me. If you make a martyr of me, the faithful will rise up.”

“Nobody’s going to mistake you for a martyr. Did you authorize and finance the abductions of selected individuals in New York City? Deny it,” Eve invited. “Because every one of them deserves their day in court recounting what you did.”

“I saved their lost souls.”

“You don’t deny the abductions?”

“I deny nothing. I am shepherd to the lost sheep.”

“Did you authorize the restraint, imprisonment, the use of shock devices, forced feeds, sensory deprivation, physical beatings on individuals abducted from New York City?”

“We trained them, educated their minds and their spirits. We saw that they had proper nutrition to cleanse their bodies of the toxins of your secular world.”