Page 26 of The Last Straw

And from the look on Samuel’s face, he wasn’t happy. The more Jeremiah thought about it, the more he came to believe Samuel was there waiting for him. But he had more important things to deal with than whatever was up his brother’s butt.

“Hey, Samuel... I’m gonna be gone for a while. There’s some stuff I need to do at home.”

Samuel already knew his brother had come here to hide. He didn’t hold with any of Jeremiah’s preaching or his shady dealings.

“Do what you gotta do,” Samuel said. “But watch your back. Your business partners ain’t the kind to take kindly to publicity.”

Jeremiah stared. “What are you talking about? You don’t know my business. And what do you mean about publicity?”

“We might live in the bayou, but we ain’t stupid, brother. I know what you been doin’. Ain’t no one here got the money to donate what you take in at church.”

“How do you know what—”

“Maisie works at the bank in Paulette, remember? And while you were out, we saw the video that Wyrick woman you been preaching against aired on TV, so we also know you sent men to kill her. It says in the Bible, Thou shall not kill, and you’re a preacher who sent hit men to kill someone! That don’t set right with us. I think you need to just go on and take your stuff back with you when you leave. We don’t want you bringing your bad juju here.”

Jeremiah frowned. All of a sudden, the frantic messages from his church members were starting to make sense.

“Video? What video?” Jeremiah asked.

“It seems that Wyrick woman caught the first man you sent. He’s in jail. But he told her there were two more coming after her. I guess she didn’t take kindly to that, because she has offered a quarter of a million dollar bounty on each one. She don’t want them. Just their identities. And she said can’t nobody hurt ’em, or they don’t get the dough. She’s gonna plaster their pictures all over that social media you’re so fond of, so everyone will know you’re the one behind it.”

Jeremiah groaned. Barrett Taylor had blabbed about the other men.

“But, Samuel, I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Samuel shrugged. “I am not my brother’s keeper. You lit the fuse to this. We’ll say a prayer for your mortal soul, and that’s the best I can offer. Just don’t tell me where you’re goin’, because I won’t lie to the law if they come looking for you. But if I don’t know where you are, then my conscience will be clear.”

“Some brother you are,” Jeremiah muttered.

“That’s kinda what I was thinking about you,” Samuel said and stood up, looming a good five inches above his brother’s head. “Y’all go on now. Get your stuff and go about your business, preacher man.”

Jeremiah ducked his head and went inside. To his surprise, Maisie had already packed his bag. It was sitting in the middle of the bed, and she was nowhere to be seen. He grabbed it and headed out the door, threw it in the backseat of the car and as he drove away, knew he’d never see them again.

It took him over an hour to get home, and as he approached the road leading up to the house, he slowed down considerably, making sure there weren’t any parish police cars parked off in the trees.

Once he got to the house, he ran straight to the office and began taking down the website. He was still at it when he got a call. He recognized Preston Davis’s number, but he didn’t take time to answer. Preston was the moneyman. The one he did business with, and he didn’t have time to talk.

But Preston called again, and again, and kept calling until Jeremiah finally answered.

“Hello.”

“What the hell have you done...putting out a hit on some woman and bringing down the law on top of all we have going?”

“It wasn’t supposed to happen that way,” Raver said. “She’s evil. She’s the Devil’s daughter, and she needs to disappear. I had a vision and—”

“No, you’re the one who needs to disappear,” Preston said.

Jeremiah felt the warning all the way to his toes.

“I’m taking down the website and packing right now. Just calm down. They don’t know anything about you.”

“You don’t know that,” Preston said and hung up.

The knot in Jeremiah’s belly tightened, but he didn’t have time to dwell on Preston’s attitude right now. He turned back to the computer and kept dismantling the site, and deleting everything he could find about it online, then deleted all his email until everything was gone.

He leaned back with a big sigh of relief, thinking he’d covered all his tracks, and then got up and went to pack up his clothes.

Jeremiah might be a fool, but Preston Davis was not. He was certain that, if worse came to worse, Raver would give them all up, as part of a plea deal on his own behalf.

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