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            Using the program Reuben created, Anthony sent a one-page press release to over ten thousand news and media outlets across the Internet, from CNN.com to MSNBC.com, from Reuters to The Associated Press, from The New York Times and The Huffington Post to The Times in London. 

            Although New Kingdom dispatched web crawlers that canvassed the Internet and identified damaging content, the breadth and sheer number of media sources that Anthony contacted ensured maximum damage, in minimal time.  By the time the church shut down his server—if the crush of media-generated traffic didn’t manage to do so—it would be too late.

            “Now we need to get out of town.” Anthony pushed away from the computer.  “I don’t think we want to be around when the reporters come.  It’ll be a zoo.”

            “Where we gonna go?” Reuben asked.

            “I’m not sure.  Let’s go talk to the ladies of the family.”

            Reuben followed him downstairs.  Lisa and Danielle were in the living room, Lisa relating what had happened. 

            Anthony started to tell them, It’s done, when he glanced down the hallway and noticed that the door to his father’s study was open.

            No one ever left that door open.

            Dread gathering in him, he moved down the hallway.  A cool draft drifted from inside the room.

            Lisa called after him, but he ignored her.  He pushed open the door all the way.  When he and Lisa had spoken privately in there earlier that day, he’d opened the window on the other side of the study, to let air circulate. 

            But he hadn’t removed the screen, too.  He stepped into the room.

            Someone pressed a cold muzzle to the side of his head.

            “Guess who?” Cutty said from the shadows behind the door. 

            Anthony held his breath.  He didn’t have any of his guns, and had taken off his body armor, too.

            In his peripheral vision, it looked as if Cutty bore a silencer-equipped nine millimeter.

            “Did you think I’d abandoned my mission, Thorne?” Cutty said.  “I am a loyal servant of the Kingdom until the day God calls me home to glory.”

            “You should have run away,” Anthony said quietly.  “It’s all over now.  You’ll go to prison.”

            “Wrong,” Cutty said, and pulled the trigger.

            The bullet ripped across Anthony’s left shoulder, spinning him around.  He crashed against his father’s desk.  Pens and pencils clattered onto the desktop, fell to the floor.

Never should have let my guard down, Anthony thought.  I knew this nut was still on the loose . . .

            Pain swelled across his shoulder, the bloodstain on his shirt steadily growing.  He had been shot before, but those prior injuries had been only flesh wounds, and he’d recovered quickly. 

            This time, he wasn’t sure if he’d been so lucky.

            None of his family came running.  The silencer had done exactly what it was designed to do.

            “Heaven,” Cutty said was saying.  “I am going to heaven.  You and your family are going to hell—now get up and move.”

            Keeping the gun trained on him, Cutty grabbed his arm.  His short, strong fingers dug like meat hooks into Anthony’s flesh.  Anthony struggled to his feet, dizziness tipping through him.

            After all he had been through, fifteen agonizing years of hoping for justice, it couldn’t possibly end like this, with him slaughtered in his family’s home on the very day of his redemption.

            Cutty pushed him through the doorway, and into the hall.

            “Go to the living room,” Cutty said.  “I’m going to shoot your family members one at a time, and you’re going to watch, and you’re going to pray to God to forgive you for all the wicked acts you’ve done, and when I’m done with them, I’m going to finish you off.”

            He poked the gun against the back of Anthony’s head, and Anthony began to shuffle down the carpeted hallway.  Blood trickled from his fingers and dripped onto the floor as he walked past the photos of his family and the time-faded pictures of his beloved father. 

            No.  It couldn’t end like this.  Not after they had suffered so much.

            But he was out of options.

            Reuben and Danielle were sitting together on the sofa, talking.  They stopped in mid-sentence and gasped.   

            “Not one word or move from any of you,” Cutty said.  “You disobey, Thorne dies.”

            Both of them froze.

Where is Lisa? Anthony wondered, wildly.  Where the hell is she?

            Her purse, which had been sitting on the coffee table, was missing. 

            “Go sit across from your family, Thorne,” Cutty said.  “You’ll have the front row seat as I bring God’s vengeance to you heathens.”

            Anthony crossed the room, lowered himself slowly into the chair.  Searching in the corners of his eyes for weapons, but finding nothing, dammit. 

            “Where is your harlot, Thorne?” Cutty asked.  “I was certain that she was present.” 

            “I am,” Lisa said, from somewhere behind Cutty.  “And I’m no harlot, you crazy sonofabitch.”          

            As Cutty whirled to face her, gunfire boomed.  Cutty’s head snapped backward.  He bounced against a wall and collapsed to the carpet in a dead heap, a bloody hole drilled through the center of his forehead.

            Danielle screamed, clutched Reuben to her. 

            Still aiming the pistol at the fallen zealot, Lisa emerged from the shadows of the hallway.  She slowly lowered the gun, staring at the man she had killed. 

            Anthony realized that when he had entered the study, she must have followed, suspicious, and waited in the powder room off the hall when she knew he was in trouble, waited for her shot. 

            He went to her.  She was shaking.  He carefully removed the gun from her clammy fingers.

            “It’s okay, baby,” he said.  “Everything’s fine, it’s over.”   

            “He shot you,” she said softly, gaping at the blood on his shirt.  “Oh, my God . . .”

            “I’ll be okay, I think,” he said.  “Can someone get me a towel?”

            As Reuben raced to find one, the doorbell rang. 

            “That’ll be the FBI,” Anthony said.