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“Wolfe. Kerr. Harper,” I say flatly. “They’re all gone.”
He flinches. Good. Let him feel that.
“But it was never just them, and never just Hurricane,” he continues, each word carved from something jagged. “Your father… he was the anchor. The shepherd. He gave them a name to follow. A God to blame it all on. But the machine? It was already there. Built long before he took the pulpit.”
“A name,” I say. “It has a name, doesn’t it?”
He goes still.
“Tell me.”
His breath comes out slow. Defeated. “The Covenant.”
The word settles into the room like smoke.
“It’s bigger than collars. Bigger than churches.” He finally looks at me, his eyes two holes punched through whatever mask he used to wear. “Your father didn’t invent this. He inherited it. He helped bring it to Hurricane. He gave it a pulpit, a congregation, a God to hide behind. Not many do that. The Covenant was already old when he was introduced to it. It’ll be old long after both of us are gone.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“You can’t.”
I step back slightly. Just enough to let air return between us. My hand doesn’t leave the hilt.
“Give me names.”
He nods, slow. Reluctant. “Kerr brought it to town, but he wasn’t anywhere near the top. There was a man in Tennessee. Trent Miller. A former pastor. Your father visited him often. A few towns over? Carl Sutton. Deacon. Ran a boys’ home in the ’90s. That place never made the papers, but the things I saw there…” He stops, breath hitching.
Sutton. The name lands somewhere old in me, a face I never could place, in a photograph I still can’t bring myself to burn. The unnamed man. Not unnamed anymore.
“And Cindy?” I ask, sharp now. “Was she one of your sacrifices too?”
His whole face changes.
I step closer. “Did my father hurt her?”
“No.” His answer is fast. Too fast. “It wasn’t him.”
“Then who?”
Levi’s voice is a whisper, full of ash. “Her uncle, Henry O’Rourke.” The connection hits me like a punch to the gut. Henry O’Rourke is Cindy’s uncle. The rumors were true.
Henry hurt her. He was hurting her and she never said a thing.
The photo that Clyde placed in my hand. The man standing beside my father and Kerr like he belonged there. Clyde showed me that photo and said his name without flinching. Without saying that’s my uncle. Without saying anything that would connect Henry to his own family.
He knew.
He knew this whole time.
I press the blade a little harder. Not enough to break skin, but just enough to feel it.
“Your father helped him disappear. After Cindy died, your father got him out of town. Before people could start asking questions.”
Of course he did.
“Did her parents know what he was doing to her?”
He goes still, but he’s given me the answer.
