Page 17 of Chasing Lynda

“What do you want ...” what’s her name again?

“Delaney, Pastor. I have a few questions about your latest sermon, I was wondering if you had a minute to talk in private? Especially the part about purity, I—”

“Not now, Delaney!” I snap. I soften my tone when she gasps, taking a step back and I notice some people stopping to look at me. “I’m late for a meeting. Isn’t there anyone in the inner circle or the elder’s council that can answer your questions?”

She shakes her head. “No, Pastor. I don’t feel comfortable asking anyone else anyway. It’s about purity and ...”

Just like I thought. I bet my head she’s given it up to some dumb jock and now she’s worried about not being able to find an enlightened husband.

“Like I said, I have a meeting I’m late to. But I’ll try to find some one-on-one time on Saturday night after the next youth enlightenment class.”

She grabs my hand again, daring to stroke the skin between my thumb and my index finger. Fucking dirty temptress!

“Thank you so much, Pastor.”

I walk away, disgusted by her behavior and by my reaction to her touch. I’m painfully hard and I quicken my pace to avoid drawing attention.

Sheriff Kirk is waiting for me by my office door with Greggs standing by his side. They better have some fucking news on my wife.

“Gentlemen, come on in,” I invite them, opening the door for them.

I can already tell by the tension in the sheriff’s shoulders that it’s gonna be more bullshit excuses.

“So, have you found my wife or do you at least have a vague idea of where on this goddamn Earth she might be hiding?”

Kirk swallows agitatedly, fiddling with the sheriff’s star pinned on his chest. “Aaron, it’s hard. I’m sure she must’ve left town. There’s no way my men and I wouldn’t have found her if she was still in Shell Cove.”

I grab the edge of Harold’s old desk, my knuckles turning white at the effort to resist the urge to flip the piece of furniture over. “How on Earth did you let her get away from the city limits? She’s one girl and you’re an entire police force.”

Kirk demonstrates once again that he has no business leading the police force. “We looked everywhere. We patrolled the bus station, the ferries to and from Coral Cove and she hasn’t gotten on a plane because with the amber alert, we would’ve—”

I raise my voice. “I know all that! You keep repeating it like a goddamned broken record. Where is she?”

The pathetic excuse for a sheriff takes a step back. “I have feelers and informers everywhere on the coast. It’s impossible that she went further than San Francisco.”

I shake my head, exasperated. I remove my glasses and massage the bridge of my nose, feeling a headache starting to arrive. “All I hear is fucking excuses. Rather than fucking the women on mission, you should spend more time actively looking for her. If she isn’t in Shell Cove, get in your damn car and find her!”

What did I just say? More excuses.

“We’re doing that, Aaron. I have all the resources I can spare looking for Lynda. But like you know, my jurisdiction only goes as far as the county. The missing person alert has been propagated at federal level but I can’t—”

I’m about to tell him that I’ll try my chances with a new sheriff, when Greggs intervenes. He knows that his position in the church hangs in the balance too. I value his financial acumen, the church didn’t get this rich just thanks to Harold’s preaching, but Lynda is his daughter. What does it say about us as leaders that his daughter and my wife have been fooling us for an entire year?

“I’ve been doing my own investigation, Aaron. And I got these from one of my paid informers.”

He pushes a couple of A4 prints across my desk. They look like CCTV camera footage. A thin girl with long black hair and tight leggings is climbing into a truck at a gas station.

“It’s her!” I yell excited, slamming my fist on the mahogany of Harold’s desk. “You found her!”

Greggs shakes his head. “Not quite. But that tells us that she left town. That interstate goes to San Francisco. So she’s either there or in one of the towns along the coast. I’ve already alerted our people in San Fran and in Bridgeport. I told them that finding Lynda is as much a priority as building our new satellite churches.”

Finally someone who uses their fucking brain! “Good work, Greggs. I’ll be ready to leave as soon as she’s located,” I say excitedly. “Kirk, you’re dismissed. I’ll be looking for a replacement for you, as well as evaluating your seat in the inner circle.”

I enjoy his defeated expression as he leaves my office. “Keep an eye on him, Andy. I can’t believe Harold would trust an incompetent like him.”

Andrew Greggs remains calm, as usual. “He does as he’s told without questioning it. That’s a great quality in a follower, as you know.”

I sigh. “That’s true, we’ve built a whole fucking religion on people following blindly, but still ... he’s law enforcement, for fuck’s sake! Maybe if I revoked some of his inner circle perks, he’d do some fucking work around here for a change.”

---