“Stay here,” I instruct.
Swinging my legs over the side, I pull on a pair of athletic shorts that are at the end of the bed.
“You’re naked,” she states almost accusingly.
“It’s how I sleep,” I confess.What I want to reveal is that I was tempted to peel off her panties and top to feel every inch of her body against mine and have nothing separate us, but I don’t.
I leave the bedroom and trek down the hall towards the kitchen.The smell of Martha’s cooking fills the air of the house.After plating some food for both of us, I return to Sutton and see she’s got her back against the headboard of the bed, staring at the wall across the room.
“Here you go,” I say, handing her the plate.
“Thank you.”
We eat for a few minutes in silence.The only sound is our forks clanking when we dig into the pasta.After half her plate is eaten, she sets it down on the nightstand.
“My family isn’t what the public thinks it is,” she confesses as she picks at the skin around her fingernails.
“Your dad’s the pastor of the church, right?”
She snorts through her nose then looks up at me.
“When I was growing up he was, but it’s not what people think,” she says.
“What is it then?”
“The Fellowship is…” She pauses as her eyes look around like she’s trying to think of what to say.“Hell.”
Hell?
“What do you mean?”I ask, feeling my back stiffen.“You’re going to have to elaborate.”
“Papa changed.Something happened years ago, and he’s not who everyone thinks he is.I realize now why my mom tried to get me away.We almost made it, but he and some of the men got to us before we could make it into the police station.”
She stares off like she’s remembering the event.I reach over and grab her hand.
“Start from the beginning.”
She takes a deep breath, like she’s grounding herself.“Papa came from a strict religious family from what I remember Mama telling me.When they got married and moved here, the local pastor was retiring so Papa took over the job at the church.Over the years things started to change.Mama thought Papa was being too strict on the congregation towards some of the teachings, but he didn’t relent.Papa went away to a conference one summer and came back changing the church.He told the people that God had showed him that he was to be followed in every way.That his word came directly from the Lord.”She shakes her head.“I see now that he was changing things so slowly that the people didn’t realize that he was moving them away from what they believed in to what Papa wanted.He had the people start dressing a certain way and calling him Shepherd Walter.”
“And no one saw this and objected?”I ask.
“Those who went against Papa and his new leaders were sent away on mission trips.”
“Mission Trips?Where?”
“I didn’t know and no one spoke about it.When the people came back, they never said where they went or what they did, but they fell in line with Papa and the other leaders.”She starts to twist her fingers together in a nervous manner.“When I graduated high school, I was shipped off a few days later on a mission trip.I didn’t even know about it until the morning of.”
“Where did you go?”I remember the file that Hawk got me said something about South America, but didn’t pay too much attention to the country.
“Colombia.”She shivers when she says it, and it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.
“What kind of mission work did you do there?”
She snorts and a haunted look flashes across her face.
“I dug,” she spits out.Her voice filled with hate.
“Dug what exactly?”
