“I-I’m sorry.” Her chin fell and her lip quivered.
I reached for that chin and pulled the blue gaze toward me. “No, Stella, it’s over. Never be sorry for your questions. I owe you a lifetime of answers, and it’s going to start tonight.”
CHAPTER 10
Sara/Stella
What did he just say?
Releasing my chin, Jacob said, “Let’s go into the motel?” It sounded more like a question than a command.
For the first time since Deputy Hill had handed me off to Jacob—the moment I realized my nightmare was not ending—my chest filled with air and my neck straightened. Incredulously, with my mouth agape, I turned in his direction. It was my turn to narrow my eyes.
Sighing, Jacob reached for my hands.
I pulled them away. “What the fu—? What did you just call me?” I asked, with more anger in my tone than I’d ever used with him.
Nevertheless, the expression that stared back at me didn’t frighten me. I didn’t understand it and didn’t know what had happened, but something was different. No longer was Jacob my disciplinarian: he was my equal. Something in his dark eyes told me that he felt it too.
With only the lights from the outside of the motel, I scanned the man who claimed to be my husband. His face looked older and more tired than I’d ever recalled. Slowly he ran his hand through his dark hair as defeat filled his voice. “We’ve both had a long day. Let’s get out of this truck and go inside where we can talk. You deserve answers.”
“Answers? Answers?” My volume rose exponentially with each word. “I fucking deserve a lot more than that!”
“Sara.”
“No! No! I’m not Sara!” Blood rushed to my ears and face. My body trembled as nine months of submission boiled out of me. I was losing control, and I knew it. “I’m Stella! And you knew it! You knew! Fuck you! You’ve known it from the very beginning!”
Unable to stay seated, I reached for the door handle and shoved the door open. Though Jacob spoke, his words didn’t register. As soon as my feet hit the parking lot, I ran, the sheathed blade of the paring knife rubbing against the side of my foot. With each stride the world lost more focus. I rushed forward, each step becoming more important than the last. I didn’t know where I was going, but I had to get there.
Being farther north, the Northern Light had very few hours of darkness this time of year, but thankfully, Fairbanks had some. Since I’d spent so long at the marshals’ office, the sky was now black. As I ran I imagined the darkness was my cover, my invisibility cloak, allowing me an escape from my ongoing nightmare. But alas, it wasn’t. Before I made it through the next parking lot, Jacob seized my shoulders.
Burrowing his lips into the nape of my neck, in a hushed whisper he said, “You can hate me for the rest of your life. Just, please, trust me for a few more hours. If you don’t, I’m afraid the rest of your life won’t be long.”
I spun toward him. Under the lights of the street, in the eyes of the man I wanted to hate, I saw what I suspected was the most honest expression I’d ever seen. Still I asked, “Are you threatening me?”
He shook his head. “I’m trying to save you.”
“I-I don’t understand.”
Releasing my shoulders, he reached for my hand. I didn’t fight as he laced our fingers together. “I’ll explain. I’ll tell you everything.” He lifted our joined hands and kissed my knuckles. “Then it will be your decision.” Looking at my hand, he smiled. “You’re still wearing your wedding band.”
I looked down at our joined fingers and shrugged. He was right. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t taken it off, but I hadn’t.
“Please,” he pleaded, “come to the room and let me try to explain.”
With the warmth of his hand and the cloud of leather and musk, I nodded. I didn’t understand what had happened, but somewhere between the marshals’ station and the motel, my husband had changed. Maybe we’d both changed. As we silently walked, hand in hand, I didn’t know.
Once we were inside the room, Jacob locked the door and turned in my direction. My heart ached as I watched the handsome man before me. From his dark wavy hair to his brown eyes, defined jaw, and broad shoulders, I saw a storm of emotions I’d never before seen. His normally confident demeanor had been replaced by one of sorrow and fear.
Holding a fistful of his dark hair, he said, “Before I start, I need to know . . .” His chest expanded and contracted. “Tell me the truth. What did Thomas do to you?”
Though his tone wasn’t demanding, I had no reason to lie. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I sighed. “He scared me and slapped me, but that was all.”
“He didn’t . . . ?”
I couldn’t help but smile at his genuine concern. I shook my head. “No. He told me he would, once we got to Fairbanks, but as soon as we landed, the marshals were there.” Remembering the scene, I stood. “Were they really US Marshals or were they part of The Light? How did they know I was there? What really happened to Thomas?”
Though my questions came fast and furious, the shaking of his head was lethargic and slow. “Sara, there’s so much I need to explain.”
My back straightened. “Do not call me that. You know my real name. Use it!”
“Stella,” he said.
My name sounded painful on his lips, as if it ripped him apart, exposing him in an unfamiliar way. The angst resonating from the one word made me want to tell him to forget it and just call me Sara, but I bit my lip, stopping the words. I was the one who’d been living a lie for the past nine months, the one who’d been ripped from her real life; he deserved to feel a fraction of the pain I felt. My eyes dropped to his hips.
Pain.
All I had to do was look at his damn belt to remind myself that this was the man who’d hurt me—controlled me—brainwashed me, not only mentally but also physically. With each second of silence, my contempt grew. Crossing my arms over my chest, I exhaled and turned away.
“Don’t,” he said, his warm hand reaching for my shoulder and his fingers directing my movement.
Spinning toward him, I yelled. “No! You don’t. Don’t you touch me. I’m not your wife. You know that. You’ve known that and still you . . .” My words began to fail. “You . . . made me . . .” Shaking my head within the confines of the small motel room, I walked as far away as I could, refusing to cry. “Jacob . . . I . . .”
When I turned back toward him, he was sitting on the end of the bed, his elbows on his knees and his hands holding his head. His normally proud broad shoulders slumped forward. Unable to see his face, I stared, feeling the palpable defeat wafting off him.
Finally, still looking down, he said, “My name’s not Jacob, not really, but you probably figured that out.”
When his dark eyes peered upward, I nodded. “I assumed. I mean what are the chances that everyone has a biblical name? I think I’ve figured out that most of us were given a name that starts with the same letter as our real name.”
He shrugged. “You’re right. It has something to do with recall. It’s supposed to make accepting the new name easier. My real name is Jacoby McAlister, and what I’m about to say will be the reason Stella Montgomery will never be able to go back to her life in Detroit.”
The compassion that continually licked at my heart for this man evaporated.
“Then don’t say it,” I said with alarm. “Whatever it is, Jacob, please don’t say it. I want to go back. I need to go back.”
Though he sadly shook his head, one side of his lips turned upward. “See, Stella, it isn’t that easy. You just called me Jacob. Sara is who you are to me.”
I nodded. I hadn’t even realized I’d said his name. “Jacoby,” I said, the name sounding foreign. “Please don’t say whatever it is. Just let me go. I need to. I have connections. I can save Mindy. I can save others.”
“Mindy?” he asked.
“She’s my friend. She’s part of the reason I started investigating The Light.”
He sat taller. “W
hat? You were investigating The Light? Are you with the police?”
“I’m not police. I was, or am—hell, I don’t know anymore—an investigative journalist. I’d been following some leads that led me to The Light.”
He stood, again fisting his hair. “Shit! I didn’t know that. They didn’t tell me. All they said was that you were chosen.”
“What? What do you mean . . . I was part of the chosen, or I was chosen?”
“Most men don’t get to see their wives until they arrive, but I was different. I’m a pilot.” He grinned a real grin. “See, not everything is a lie.”
“Army?” I asked.
He nodded. “That’s true too, and so was Iraq. Anyway, because I travel to the different campuses, about a week before you were taken, Brother Uriel, from—”
“Eastern Light,” I interrupted. “Uriel Harris or Harrison.”
Jacoby’s eyes grew wide, staring at me as if we’d never met. “Shit!” he exclaimed. “Yes. Well, he took me to this festival in Dearborn, Michigan.”
It was my turn to collapse onto the bed. “You saw me there? You saw me with Dylan?”
“Yes, I saw you.” He sat beside me. “Do you remember me telling you how the first time I ever saw you I knew you were mine?”
I nodded, trying to forget the emotion I’d felt that night, the night he’d started painting me a mental picture of our past.
“Well, it was true. I saw you with Richards . . .”
Gasping, I covered my lips with the burned tips of my fingers. “You know his name?”
He nodded. “But like I said, I did know you were mine. I wasn’t being figurative. Brother Uriel told me that you were. I remember listening to you laugh, how fucking carefree you were. At the same time, I knew. I knew it was all about to end.”
I didn’t understand. “Why? Why? Why did you do it?”
Jacob seized my shoulders. “I didn’t do it. Don’t you get it? It wasn’t up to me. Father Gabriel said I was to have a wife. I didn’t choose you. You were chosen for me.”
“So you didn’t want me?”
He gently reached for my face and, so as not to hurt my eye, tenderly cupped my cheeks. “I didn’t want a wife. I’d tried to avoid taking one, but from the first time I saw you, I wanted you.”
He released my face and stood. As he paced the length of the room and back, the silence grew. Each step upon the carpet was a beat of a mystical drum, each one increasing the pressure until he exploded. “I know it makes me as fucking wrong as all of them! But I did! Damn it, I wanted you. And once you were there, at the Northern Light . . . once you were there and you were mine, I did everything I could to save you.”
Indignation rose as I stood. “Really? Really? Lying to me, correcting . . . fuck that . . . beating me, was to save me?”
“Yes, Sara, it was.”
“Stella! Use my goddamn name!”
In two strides he was before me, his large hands holding my shoulders, our noses nearly touching. The heat of our breath grew as his chest touched mine. “Stella.” He’d calmed his tone, yet his words were separated, punctuated for emphasis. “Every. Goddamn. Thing. I. Did. To. You. Was. For. You.” With only a whisper of distance between us, his lips crashed over mine. Their warmth was the fire that ignited my body in a way I no longer wanted to admit.
I reached for his shoulders and pushed him away. “No!”
Hurt swirled in the depths of his eyes.
“No!” I continued, “You want me to believe that you didn’t get off hitting me with your belt. Well, I don’t believe you.”
“Think about it, Sara. Just think about the bigger damn picture.”
I was too upset to correct my name again. “Bigger picture. Fuck you, Jacob, or Jacoby, or whoever the hell you are! I didn’t see a bigger picture. I don’t see it. Remember me? I’m the one who had the reminders on my ass!”
“We were being watched, continually. Every encounter was a test. If I failed, you failed. If you failed, I failed. The only time I corrected you was when your transgressions were witnessed. It was when it was expected of me. Only once did I do anything without someone to witness it.” Remorse filled his words. “It was at the clinic when I slapped you, but even that, like the other times, was for your success.”
My mind spun. I thought about all the times he’d corrected me. I tried to recall what had preceded or followed each instance. He was right. There were so many times I’d expected him to do it, and he hadn’t. Yet there were other times when I’d thought my transgression was minor, but he had. I sank back to the bed. Every instance had had witnesses.
“Why?” I asked. “Why not just let me fail?”
Jacob’s eyes grew as he dropped to his knees near my feet. “You said you researched The Light?” He turned my hand over and touched the tips of my fingers. “Do you know what happens when someone fails?”
I swallowed and nodded.
“From the first time I saw you at that festival, I knew failure wasn’t an option. I didn’t know for sure why you were chosen. Now I suspect it was because you were getting too close to them, but no matter why, I knew you needed to live. I wouldn’t let them banish you.”
I shook my head. “But we were banished.”
“That wasn’t real banishment. In all the time I’d been with The Light, I’d never heard of temporary banishment, not until us.” He ran his hand through his hair. “The night after service when Father Gabriel said that we were to be banished, my heart stopped beating. I was so fucking scared.”
I reached for his face and palmed his scruffy cheeks, seeing his pain. “That was the first night I went to service, wasn’t it?”
He nodded, his face still in my grasp.
“It was the night you were so quiet. I was afraid that I . . .”
Jacob stroked my cheek. “It was the night I almost claimed you as my wife, your body. Despite all that they’d done to you and all you’d been through, you were still so beautiful, so strong, and yet so scared. I wasn’t supposed to, but I wanted to make it better.” He shook his head. “But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
My eyes narrowed. “They? They did to me? You did it. I remember being hurt. I remember your voice. You were the one who hurt me! There wasn’t an accident. Father Gabriel banished us for something that never happened!”
“Oh, God, no! Yes, I was there, but I wasn’t the one who hurt you. They made me watch. I was supposed to be quiet and let God’s plan . . .” He stood again and paced. “Fuck that! It wasn’t God’s plan. It was Father Gabriel’s. I was supposed to stay quiet, but I couldn’t. I yelled at him. I told him to stop.
“If I hadn’t been on the Assembly, fuck, if I’d been a mere follower, I never would’ve gotten away with what I did. But I couldn’t watch him hurt you. When he wouldn’t stop, I finally stopped him. I was the one who carried you away.” He fell back to my feet and reached for my hands. “Of all the things I’ve done, please know, that wasn’t one of them.”
“Father Gabriel? He’s the one who hit me and kicked me?”
Jacob’s head moved back and forth. “No, hell no. He doesn’t do any of his own dirty work. He’s always a few steps removed.”
“Then who?”
Jacob closed his eyes. When he opened them, sadness and regret flowed through the swirling brown. “You know how you said you didn’t like Brother Abraham, that he made you feel uncomfortable?”
“Oh, God.” My stomach twisted.
“There’s a good reason for that.”
“Does Father Gabriel know?”
Jacob nodded.
My eyes narrowed. “You’re not defending him? I . . . I don’t understand.”
He leaned back on his toes, kneeling, as he’d told me not to do. With sadness in his eyes, he confessed, “Stella Montgomery, my name is Jacoby McAlister. I’ve been an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for over seven years. The last three have been spent embedded in a deep undercover investigation of The Light.”
r /> I couldn’t move or speak. The pieces of the puzzle that I’d tried to arrange over the last year all slid into place. From the first time I’d seen the white building that housed The Light in Highland Heights, I’d tried unsuccessfully to make the pieces fit. Even the pieces I’d managed to maneuver as Sara now combined, fitting into place like a key in a lock . . . a lock that I slowly realized meant the loss of my past.
“That’s what you couldn’t say? That’s what you said would never allow me to go back to Detroit. Isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“Then take it back. I don’t want to know!”
Jacob reached again for my hands. “I can’t take it back. Do you understand now? Do you understand how crucial your success was—is?”
“Because if I failed, you failed?”
His lips formed a straight line. “Yes.”
“Jacob.” I shook my head. “Jacoby, what do you mean is? How did you find me so fast? Did The Light tell you or the FBI?”
He exhaled. “There’s much more to The Light than what you know. I’ve spent the past three years trying to get at its secrets, trying to learn what’s really happening. You were my ultimate test. Although I prided myself on how fast and well I learned the ways of The Light and Father Gabriel’s teachings, I think they suspected that I wasn’t like them. Not until you. You convinced them that I was. I didn’t want a wife”—he stood and resumed his trek—“for many reasons. The obvious one was that this was all a sham. It’s my job. The other was because I don’t agree with all their ways. I could preach it and teach it to new followers.” He shrugged. “I thought of it like the military. I justified it as taking and giving orders, but taking a wife made it different. Taking a wife meant I had to live it. I didn’t want to do that.
“Though Brother Daniel was always supportive, Brother Timothy was equally as negative. I suspect he was involved in forcing a wife on me. He wanted me to fail.”
I hated that man, even the sound of his name. “Why? What is his problem with us?”
Jacob shrugged. “I suspect he doesn’t like you because you’re my wife. I really don’t know why he doesn’t like me. To be honest, I never let it bother me, until . . .”