He held her firmly and stroked her back and pressed the side of his face and neck into hers. He smelled the dizzying aroma of her perfume. His heart opened and his brain tried to close it down fast but it was too late.
"I drive a load of cash from L.A. to Mexico every week. The customs people are paid off and I make good money for my time. There's no risk. It pays ten times what I make in a week from the Sheriffs. Ten. It helped pay for this ranch and the cars we drive and the clothes we wear."
This time Erin stepped back to look at him. Her face was always lovely and always readable. He saw it coming but did nothing to stop it, not even squint. Her open hand cracked into his cheek once. Then the other. Then the first again. She cried softly and her eyes bored into him. "That morning last winter when you were gone, Brad. When I told Charlie you were with me and the guys. And the gangsta that shot your mom got murdered up in L.A. Did you do that, honey? You can tell me. I'd understand if you did it. But you have to tell me the truth if we hope to make this marriage work."
But even Bradley's overflowing heart was no match for the peril he sensed here, and he did not hesitate in his answer.
"I didn't do that, Erin. I was helping out a friend. I swear this to you and the many children I hope to have with you."
"You would swear on them?"
"I do swear on them."
She stepped back into his arms and squeezed him gently. He could feel the tapping of her heart against his chest. "Stop the Mexico runs. We can live on less."
"No. I'll do anything you want but not that."
"Why?"
"So I can become."
"Become what?"
"A man able to protect what he loves."
"You didn't protect me last night."
"I can change that. There will never be another night like it."
She moved away again and looked at him and he saw the uncertainty in her eyes.
He went to his knees. "When you look at me it's like walking into a beautiful room," he said. "The most beautiful room on earth. It's the only place I ever want to be."
A tear rolled down her pale face and she wiped it away. She bit her lip and stepped forward and helped him up.
17
Wednesday morning Hood sat in the Buenavista ATF station watching Sean Ozburn's videos again on the now-useless safe house monitor number four. Oz was using a Flip now, so the latest videos sent to Seliah were of better quality than the first few. Playing any of them on the good monitor made them even clearer, and more haunting.
Hood watched the miracle healing of Daisy. It was like seeing it for the first time. Ozburn began this segment with an establishing shot and Hood now recognized El Centro. Then came a jumbled, poorly focused episode: a black, bleeding dog lying on the side of the road, a little crowd forming, Sean scooping up the animal in one big tattooed arm while holding the cell camera high in the other hand for an aerial shot as he crunched along the sun-cooked street toward his car.
Hood noted that the actual miracle healing wasn't caught on video because Ozburn was presumably steering with one hand and healing with the other. But Oz narrated his actions as the unmanned camera filmed the headliner of the Range Rover.
And now I place my right hand over her head. There is blood coming from her mouth and nose. She is not conscious but she is breathing. Now I pray to you, God in heaven, that your power move through me and heal this simple blameless animal, you for whom the creation of heaven and earth was pretty much a snap… Yes… I feel your power moving through me into the beast and I feel her life returning and her name will be called Daisy… Wow… Oh, WOW, check this out!
Phone back in hand, Ozburn focused on the dog, bouncing along with the rhythm of the vehicle, panting gently, looking up at Sean with affection and loyalty.
Man, this is so cool.
Next came a sermon delivered by Sean at an outdoor service of some kind. Hood couldn't place the landscape: rolling hills, grassland, some oak and madrone and manzanita. Someone else was working the camera. Ozburn stood before twenty or thirty people sitting on fallen logs and a crumbling adobe brick wall. The cameraman panned the people. They were a mix of ages, half of them brown and the other half white. There was a big fire ring made of river rock but there was no fire. An orange cooler sat on a slouching picnic table, and beside it was a glass jar with a few coins in it.
An aged evangelist introduced Sean Gravas as a "man come newly to our Lord," but Hood saw annoyance in his craggy face. The evangelist held a Bible in one hand and wore a white shirt buttoned to the top with no tie, and a beaten black coat, and his crucifix was large and made of silver and turquoise.
When Sean stood and faced the assembly and the camera, Hood could see that he wasn't right. Sweat poured down his face and he looked to be in pain. He was dressed in his sleeveless biker vest and the black jeans and harness boots and he wore a black bandana pirate style. Over his left shoulder was slung a Love 32 with the curving fifty-shot magazine and the noise suppressor screwed into place. He held a white-covered book in both hands but he didn't open it. He kept looking skyward, as if he was waiting for something to appear, something perhaps not good. Daisy stood at his feet and looked up at him with a similar expression.
Here in this rude theater we sense God. His breath is the wind that touches our skin and gives life to our dust. His eyes are the creeping and flying and swimming things that see us better than we see them. His ears are the canyons that amplify our sounds and songs and prayers. Lord if we offend Thee, strike us down, and if we please Thee, raise us up and place our bodies upon the blade of Your truth that we may be pierced with Your spirit…
Sean sweated and talked on. Blood and life eternal. The lamb and the sword.
Hood's heart broke some as he watched and listened. Sean was a good man. And something had gotten into him. Something had changed him. Sean had all but lost his once-kind and strong and generous self. Who was this inhabiting his body? Who in hell? Where was Sean?
Then came the baptism of Daisy by Father Arriaga.
Then came a long lecture on the evils of whoredom. Hood watched Sean throttle a young man, then drive him through a window of what appeared to be a bordello bedroom. A prostitute flailed at him with a red stiletto shoe and cursed in Spanish. Ozburn growled at her and she ran out. He went bar to bar and club to club in what Hood recognized as Tijuana, lecturing whoever was too afraid to scuttle away.
Then came video that Hood had never seen before: a beautiful Mexican girl lying on a bed, wide-eyed and sobbing, a woman holding a bag of something against her neck.
Hood checked the time and date: It had been sent to Seliah just an hour ago. Ozburn narrated:
In the village of Agua Blanca a girl was dressing for school. She put on her hat but a huge scorpion fell from the hat to her neck and drove its deadly stinger into her flesh. Then it fell to the floor. Her mother trapped the scorpion under a glass bowl, then ran into the streets to find the curandera. The village had no ice so the curandera filled a plastic bag with peeled cucumbers, dandelions and cool well water. She viewed the scorpion and said it was the deadly variety, the only scorpion that can kill a healthy girl. The girl's neck swelled up at the sting. I'm here in Agua Blanca on a personal matter but it can wait. Now I see that I was brought here by someone or something, for another purpose. My purpose here is to save this girl. Her name is Silvia.
Ozburn turned his camera to the floor and got a close-up of the upended glass mixing bowl. The scorpion nearly spanned its diameter, head and pinchers facing the camera, stinger cocked up and ready for action. Daisy nosed the bowl and the scorpion swiveled on her; then she sprang away.
Hood knew from his boyhood that the curandera was right: There was only one deadly species of scorpion in the West. But she was wrong, too: The one that had stung the girl was a much larger and darker, and less potent, creature than the slender, pale, lethal other.