Chasing the White Lion by James Hannibal (best free e book reader .TXT) 📗

do to keep him from dragging strangers into God’s kingdom by the scruffs of their necks.”

She watched him hang up the coat, so totally at peace with the insanity coming out of his mouth. “Faith?”

“Correct. Now let’s go make a declaration of yours.”

The trip from the foyer to the pews was a gauntlet of family and acquaintances. Finn went straight to Jenni. “Finn. Michael Finn.”

“Um . . .” Jenni leaned out to see Talia from the other side of the burglar, long blonde hair flopping to one side. “Who are your friends, Talia?”

“They’re coworkers.”

“We prefer the term work family.” Finn took Jenni’s hand, raising her fingers as if he might kiss them. But the man next to her pried his hand free and shook it, using the motion to tug him a short distance away.

“Bill Lewis. Jenni’s father. Pleased to meet you.”

After he let go, Finn winced and wiggled his fingers as if they’d been crushed.

Tyler’s turn came next. “Hi, Bill. Call me Adam. Think of me as the weird uncle Talia never talks about.”

“Apt.” Bill cast a questioning glance at Talia. “Because she never does. Please, Uncle Adam, won’t you and your friends sit with us?”

Tyler waved Eddie and Darcy into the pew past Wendy and her purse, but he stopped Finn with a backhand to the gut and inclined his head toward the rear of the sanctuary.

“Right,” the thief grunted. “I prefer the back pew . . . It’s an Australian Baptist thing.”

The pastor spoke on Peter and the day he stepped out of the boat. Talia loved the imagery—the wind, the waves, the fear in Peter’s eyes when he began to sink and the calming voice of Christ as he lifted him up again. When the music minister began strumming quiet chords, Talia took the cue and ducked out to change.

Passing Finn, she grabbed his shoulder and dug in with her nails. “While I’m gone, the offering plates will come around.” She bent to whisper in his ear. “If you take so much as a penny, I’ll kill you in your sleep. You know I can.” She started to walk on, then rocked back a step. “Also . . . Jesus loves you.”

When she returned in her Georgetown Crew sweats, she saw Bill, not her pastor, standing in the Mission’s rolling baptismal. He gave her an Is this okay? look as she walked up the steps. Talia answered with a smile.

“Today is—” Bill’s voice caught in his throat. He coughed and started again. “Forgive me. Today is special, but I promise I’ll be brief. The water’s cold.”

The congregation laughed.

Bill squeezed Talia’s arm. “This is Talia. She came into our lives a while ago as a foster child, becoming a sister to Jenni and a daughter to Wendy and I. Since then she’s achieved so much to make us proud—top of her class, captain of the rowing team, a post in the Foreign Service. Today we are proudest of all. Overjoyed. Not for her achievement, but for her choice.”

He laid a hand at the small of her back and asked Talia to proclaim her decision to follow Christ. After doing so, she wrapped a hand over his, letting the strength of his arm support her for what came next.

“Talia Inger, upon your profession of faith, I baptize you my sister in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, buried with him in death—” Gently, he let her fall back.

The water closed above her, turning the spotlights into waves of color. A hundred images passed through Talia’s near-perfect memory. She saw a swimming pool rising to meet her, shards of glass splashing all around. She saw her father at the wheel of an old Ford on a misty road, the world tumbling, a man dragging her clear before the vehicle exploded. She saw her own gun pressed to that man’s head and in the next instant her arms wrapping around him.

Forgiveness given.

Forgiveness accepted.

The water parted as Bill lifted her up into the free air. “—raised with him in newness of life. Our adopted daughter, now adopted by the Father.”

The church cheered, even Darcy, though she looked a little bewildered.

Talia cried as she hugged Bill and let Wendy walk her back to the church’s small kitchen, where the deacons had put up partitions to form a makeshift dressing room.

By the time Talia came out from behind the partitions, a second woman waited for her, chatting in a hushed voice with Wendy. She had her back to Talia, red hair turned inward to a bob below her collar.

For a split second, Talia mistook the woman for Jordan and reached for a Glock that wasn’t there. But the cant of the redhead’s shoulders and the tapping of her foot spoke of someone else.

“Valkyrie?”

The grifter turned, laughing at the shock on Talia’s face. “I’ve got to hand it to you, darling. That was quite a show.”

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

THE MISSION CHURCH

THE HEIGHTS, OXON HILL, MARYLAND

“WENDY, COULDYOUGIVEUSASEC?”

Talia’s foster mother waited for Talia to add a reassuring nod to the request, then started for the door. “I’ll be outside. Your uncle Tyler wanted to talk with me.”

Once she had gone, Valkyrie pulled a stool over from the kitchen bar and sat down. She locked one spiked heel behind its bottom rung. “Let me get this straight. You get ritualistically dunked, and this buys you a ticket to the pearly gates? Why isn’t everyone signing up?”

“It’s good to see you too, Val.”

The grifter sighed. “What did I teach you about deflection? Use it, but don’t be so obvious.”

“I’m not deflecting.” Talia walked to a standing mirror to adjust her skirt and blouse. “I’m ignoring the question.”

“Why?”

“It’s beneath your intelligence. I’ve seen you cold-read a mark for gullibility, marital status”—Talia pointed at her with a hairbrush—“bank account password. We’ve been friends for months. You know I’d never believe such a thing.”

“Papa had me christened as a baby.”

“Okay . . .” Val had a point to make. Talia could see that. “Go on.”

“Eleven years later, at our summer home in Capri, I