Sinner by Ted Dekker Page B

“I really hope you’re not the stubborn kind.”
    She told him what she thought of him in no uncertain terms, but it came out in a long “Uhummmmmmm!”
    â€œThis doesn’t have to be difficult,” he said. “You’re brimming with questions, and I don’t blame you. We’ll get to them. Where do you keep the bandages?”
    She stared him in the eyes, refusing to clue him in.
    â€œThe bathroom, naturally. Just seeing if you were warming up.” He walked to her, grabbed her by her hair, and tugged her to her feet. She stumbled beside him into the living room, where he shoved her onto the love seat.
    Producing a pair of cuffs, he cinched one end to her ankle and the other to the sofa leg.
    â€œBe right back. Can I get you anything? Coffee, lemonade, mint tea?”
    The man left, banged about in the bathroom for a minute, then returned, hand bandaged in a strip of sterile cotton.
    â€œProblem with giving you a drink,” he said, “is drinking it. If everything they tell me about your yapper is correct, I don’t think I’ll be taking the tape off any time soon.”
    He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with one of her wooden chairs. Spun it around and straddled it.
    â€œYou can call me Agent Smith. Not my real name, but it has a ring to it. You like old movies?”He pointed at her. “You, we’ll call Darcy. Number thirty-five sounds a bit too clinical. Fair enough?”
    She stared at him.
    â€œGood. Now, the first thing you have to understand is that whether I kill you or not depends on how cooperative you are. If it were up to me, I would let you live. You’re dangerous, I’m sure, but I think the world needs a bit of danger to make it interesting, and I’m not about to be the only one providing it. Follow?”
    She didn’t. She was about as dangerous as a mouse. He was mistaking her for someone else. This whole thing was a mistake! Which gave her some hope. If she could make him understand, he might let her go.
    â€œBut,” he continued, “they disagree and they call the shots.”He stared at the tape around her mouth. “If you really can do all they say you can, maybe it’s best for everyone.”
    What was he talking about? She shook her head hard.
    Agent Smith slowly smiled. “You really don’t know, do you?”
    â€œHmmmm!” she shouted. No!
    â€œWe’ll start with me and then move on to you. You’re the prize here, after all.”
    Smith stood, withdrew a toothpick from his breast pocket, and began to pick his teeth. “I work for Rome. The Roman Catholic Church. Not as a priest, obviously, but I’m on the payroll. Evidently you have a history they aren’t crazy about. A certain monastery in which you and thirty-six other children were sequestered for the first thirteen years of your lives. You remember?”
    Long fingers of horror reached around Darcy’s throat. Smith had the right girl, then. The nightmare she’d fled all these years had caught up to her. And this time it would finally kill her. Darcy felt hot tears leak down her cheek and drop onto her lap.
    â€œOne year ago, one of those children, a man now named Johnny Drake, demonstrated a rather remarkable set of powers that could ultimately embarrass the Catholic Church. Evidently, Johnny wasn’t the only one who came into the possession of such powers.”
    Not me! You have the wrong person! But the words refused to form in her frozen throat.
    â€œMy mission is a simple one: find the grown children, find out what they really know, and then decide whether they should die.”
    She felt herself shiver with a deep-seated rage. Not only against this emissary but also at the institution that had reduced her to a shell of what most people were.
    Smith drawled on. “The church is in a bit of a spot as you probably know. Everyone seems to hate her these days. Not without reason,