Final Justice. Marta Perry

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СКАЧАТЬ into a maze of even older sections of the church’s underpinnings, and spurting out into the teen lounge and then into the gym.

      Mason would come to the door closest to the driveway, no doubt. She went to unlock it, her footfalls echoing hollowly on the bare wooden floor.

      Funny. She was usually alone on this basement floor from the time the nursery school ended until the after-school crew came charging in. She’d never before felt this urge to look behind her.

      She shrugged, trying to shake off the tension that prickled along the nape of her neck. She’d been thinking too much about Josie, lying in a makeshift grave all those years when people thought she was living happily in Europe.

      And about Penny. Kate thought Penny might come after her, the way she had everyone else who’d been involved with the class website. She shrugged that off. Once Josie’s body had been found, everything was bound to come out. Her connecting the dots through the website was a minor part in solving the mystery.

      Mason probably felt that empathy for poor Josie, too. That was why he’d reacted with such tension to Kate’s news the previous night. There was nothing else to it.

      She stood by the door, staring out the small window at the driveway. The gray stone walls of the sanctuary and the old education wing loomed over the drive on either side, turning it into a shadowed tunnel with the afternoon sunshine a gentle glow at the far end. Somewhere a door fell with a soft thud, and then the silence took over again.

      She’d been back in Magnolia Falls for nearly a year now. The job was going well, and she had a sense of accomplishment with what the Lord had allowed her to do here. She’d renewed cherished friendships with people she cared about, including Mason.

      Especially Mason if she were being honest with herself. But she still wasn’t sure what he felt, if anything, for her. He seemed to enjoy spending time with her, but she had yet to see behind the pleasant facade he presented to the world.

      A white panel truck with the Grant’s Sporting Goods logo on its side pulled into the driveway, turning almost gray in the deep shadows. Mason drew up, made a neat three-point turn and backed up to the gymnasium door. He slid out, walking with easy, athletic grace to the rear of the van.

      She pushed open the heavy door and propped it with the wooden wedge that was always left handy. “Hi! I thought you’d come in this way.” She scurried up the four steps to ground level. “I’ll help you carry things in. This is so nice of you.”

      He passed her a cardboard carton and then pulled out two more to carry himself, giving her the slightly crooked smile that had a way of melting her heart. “As if I had a choice about it,” he said.

      “You did,” she protested, remembering what Pastor Rob had said about it. “All I did was ask if you had any sports equipment you could donate. You could have said no.”

      He followed her back down the stairs and into the gym. “Like you’d have taken no for an answer.” His voice was light and teasing, the tension of the previous night vanished. “You’d have pestered me to death if I hadn’t agreed.”

      “Well, you belong to the church. Naturally I assume you want to support it.”

      “Naturally.” There was a dry note to his voice that she didn’t miss. “As it happens, my check to the church arrives promptly every week.”

      “You might bring it instead of mailing it,” she ventured.

      “I might,” he said, his tone noncommittal.

      What happened to him, Father? He was so devoted back in college, when we were in Campus Christian Fellowship together. Something has gone very wrong for him, and I don’t know what. If I can help him, please show me the way.

      She put the carton down on the gym floor and hesitated, longing to rip it open. “Can I see what’s in here?”

      Mason’s eyebrows lifted. “There are more in the van. Don’t you want to bring them all in first?”

      “I want to see.” She suspected she sounded like one of her four-year-olds.

      He planted his hands on his hips, smiling at her. A shaft of sunlight, piercing through one of the high windows, turned his hair to burnished gold. “You were one of those kids who ripped open the birthday present before you looked to see who it was from, weren’t you?”

      “Guilty,” she confessed. “Please?”

      He shrugged. “Knock yourself out. It’s just some basketballs, that’s all. I have new baskets in one of the boxes, too. Those old things are so bent it’s a wonder a ball can get through them.” He nodded toward the existing baskets, which drooped dispiritedly from their worn backboards.

      “They’ve probably been up there for thirty or forty years,” she commented, eagerly ripping the box open. “This is so great. The kids will be thrilled.”

      The box held half a dozen basketballs, brand-new. She took one out and tossed it to him.

      He caught it automatically, but then threw it back into the box with a quick thrust of his hands.

      “Come on,” she said invitingly, picking up the ball again. “Show me that hook shot of yours.”

      “Sorry. I don’t play anymore.” He turned and walked toward the door.

      She paused, watching his lithe figure. No, she didn’t understand what was going on with Mason. Maybe she never would.

      She went to the van after him, helping to carry in another load of boxes, which proved to contain a couple of table-tennis sets.

      “I can’t thank you enough for this.” She knew that sounded stilted, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She sat down on the floor beside the boxes. “If you have work to do, I can unpack everything myself.”

      He stood for a moment, looking down at her, and then squatted next to her. “Don’t be so polite, Miss Jennifer. Isn’t that what the children call you?”

      “It is. How did you know?” Don’t let me make a mistake and drive him away again.

      “I have my sources.” He opened a box containing a wooden hockey game and started to put it together, his hands deft. “Look—about the basketball. I’m sorry if I was rude. I just don’t like reminders of my failures, that’s all.”

      She’d tell him he was overreacting, but she’d already tried that, and it hadn’t worked. “It must be tough to avoid an entire sport, in your line of work.”

      “Yeah, well, when you inherit the family business, you don’t exactly have a lot of choices.”

      “I guess not. I just—” She looked at him, troubled.

      “You want to make it better.” He gave her a wry smile that twisted her heart. “You always want to make things better, don’t you, Jennifer? Some things about people don’t change.”

      “Some things do.” She shivered a little. “Everything that’s been coming out, about Josie, I mean, has me feeling as if the college days I thought I remembered might not have been real.”

      His face СКАЧАТЬ