Page 14 of Operation: Integrity

Brendon had trapped him into a commitment he’d been committed to avoid. He had to help Kelly, something that broke one of the fundamental rules of working at Wayside, without feelings. He had to be helpful but emotionless. He had to find ways to help her heal, be present, but prevent himself from becoming reattached to this woman. A woman he already felt too much for.

Kelly finally spoke, breaking the peaceful silence around them though her words were quiet. “I finally feel a measure of peace. I never thought I would. I clung to Jesus, thinking I was going to meet him almost daily. You say He has a plan for me. I didn’t want a plan. I didn’t wantto stay. I didn’t want to keep breathing.” She turned her face away. “Even seeing this, what I went through crowds out anything good and yells obscenities over any joy I try to experience. I can never wash it away.”

Instead of reaching out like he did before, a move he would have to control if he needed to stay emotionless, he paused and took a deep breath. “I don’t think that’s abnormal. We’re all wired for self-preservation. You were in a place where you never saw anyone freed. You only saw abuse and death. The only one benefiting was your captor. I wouldn’t ever encourage taking your own life, but I can see why your brain would want to see an end. The only end you could envision.” Thinking about the termination of Kelly’s life put his own feelings in perspective.

She’d hurt him. That was a given. No one could, with any honesty, say their feelings wouldn’t change if they found the person they loved and thought was faithful in the arms of another person. He hadn’t believed in the cliché ‘broken heart’ before that moment. But when he’d looked through that window and saw Kelly holding someone else. Kissing someone else . . . He’d drastically changed. His chest had ached. His mind couldn’t focus on anything else. He’d been broken.

“So, what now? Do you think I can get past all that? Will I want to go on? I had a literal moment of joy. So brief. Then the world crashed in around me and memories flooded back like I don’t deserve happiness. I don’t deserve peace.”

He swallowed hard. This was Brendon’s forte, not his. “And while you were there, were you taught that you didn’t and don’t deserve to be treated like a human being, with wants and needs and happiness?” He’d heard Brendon say that having a client come to their ownrealizations instead of feeding thoughts to them was always the best way to counsel them.

“I suppose.” She shrugged. “We were just bodies. To them, we were only human in that we fit the mold of a person. Mentally, we weren’t people at all.”

Sam prayed for the right words to say. In Luke 12, Luke talked about the Holy Spirit giving the right words to say. Even though that was in a completely different context, Sam prayed for the same words. They were just as important. He could feel Kelly’s faith in the balance. Wavering. He had no clear thoughts, no guidance.

He took a moment, then let what was on his spirit come out of his mouth. “People always ask why God allows awful things to happen. Truth is, he doesn’t allow anything. In a perfect world, we would all follow the nudging of the Holy Spirit and Satan not only wouldn’t be here, but we wouldn’t have trouble because we would never go astray.”

“Thank you for not blaming me outright. I wasn’t following God at that time. I felt hesitant to do what Jasmine and Nathan were asking of me, but I didn’t see any other way out of the pit I was in.”

“Even Christians are guilty of ignoring nudges. We are in no way perfect. And to assume that Satan isn’t powerful is to cripple the power of Jesus. Satan was so powerful that Jesus had to come and die for us so we had a way to be saved. Saying, ‘if only I’d done this’, in a small way, takes away the power of the cross. Jesus overcomes Satan, but he has a very real power on this Earth.”

Kelly nodded her head and swiped at her eyes. “I’ve seen it. It looks like black death coming from their mouths. No one else saw it, but I did. It was like smoke from tar.” She stopped where she was and Zeus immediatelysat on her feet, looking up at her and pressing his head into her legs.

She scratched behind his ears. “So, will Jesus help me see joy?”

“Yes.” He knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt. God didn’t want Kelly to stay in the pit. He had a plan for her.

Zeus barked and raced off to the west. He didn’t usually do anything like that, especially barking. They’d worked on training him to only bark when there was truly something wrong. Sam took out his small binoculars from his jacket pocket and searched the area.

With a leap, Zeus jumped in the air and snapped at something above him. Sam focused on the sky and dialed the focus control on the binoculars until he saw what had caught Zeus’s attention. A small drone flew about fifty feet off the ground, directly toward them. “Kelly, get behind me.” He didn’t yell. If that drone had the capability to record sound, he wanted Zeus’s barking to drown out his words.

Kelly did what he said. “Plug your ears.” He hated shooting anything in front of a guest, but they were at least a mile in all directions away from land that didn’t belong to Wayside. This drone was a threat.

He drew his pistol and shot it out of the sky.

Chapter Seven

Kelly tried to keep her shaking under control. She wasn’t stupid. Sam wouldn’t have shot down that drone if it hadn’t posed a danger. Maybe a direct danger to her. What if the person on the other end of that device was Nathan or one of his men? What if they were looking for her?

Sam didn’t rush faster than she could keep up, but certainly faster than they’d come. He seemed in a hurry to get back to the house. Zeus kept at her side, though she couldn’t recall Sam telling him to do that.

“Is everything all right?” The question sounded stupid to her ears. Why was she always asking the obvious?

“I just want to make sure you’re close to more protection. I don’t know who this device was after. Could be any one of you, or none of you. A few guys came yesterday who are a lot smarter than I am when it comes to gadgets. I’m hoping they can figure out what this thing was looking for.”

Now she understood why Sam had only shot one of the propellers off and waited for it to crash, instead ofshooting the center of the device. “Do you think you can get information off of it?”

He shrugged, but pressed forward at a rapid pace. “Not sure. That isn’t my thing. I train dogs. I don’t have anything to do with drones.”

Other than being an excellent shot at them. She shoved her hands in her pockets, suddenly chilled to the bone. If Nathan or one of his men had been controlling the device, they’d probably seen her. That thing could’ve been flying in the air for a while before Zeus noticed it. She hadn’t heard it until one of the propellers was missing, making it weave around until it crashed into the ground.

Kelly moved a little closer behind Sam. Having him right there and the giant dog at her side gave her a small measure of security. The tall barn came into view ahead and her dread warred with her fear inside her. All those buildings had given her a feeling of being watched before. Yet it had been when she’d given up her fear that something bad had actually happened.

Her initial feeling was to question herself, yet that hadn’t helped her so far. Sam said she would learn new ways to handle life without so many questions. That meant she had to look at what she’d been through recently to start making decisions, not what she’d been through before coming to Wayside.

“I’m safer there, in the cabins and buildings, aren’t I?”

Sam took a moment to look at her, and those gentle hazel eyes melted some of the frost around her heart.

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