Alle Kapitel von Redemption’s Sweet Surprise: Kapitel 91 – Kapitel 100

Reverend Joseph Hill’s church wasn't in a city. It wasn't even in a town. It was a small, white-clapboard building at the end of a gravel lane, nestled in a valley of apple orchards in eastern Washington. "New Canaan Fellowship," the sign read. "All Are Welcome." The air smelled of ripe apples and cut grass. Peace so profound it felt like a trap.I parked the grey sedan under a gnarled oak, the thermite stones and the obsidian a hidden weight in my bag. I wore the clean, anonymous clothes the FBI had provided, but I felt like I was wearing my mother’s ghost.The church door was unlocked. Inside, it was simple, sunlit, filled with the scent of lemon oil and old hymnals. A man in his late sixties was at the front, carefully arranging a vase of wildflowers on the plain wooden altar. He wore corduroys and a faded flannel shirt, his hair a soft white cloud. He moved with a gentle, deliberate grace.He turned as I approached, his smile warm and unguarded. "Hello. I'm Joseph. Can I help you?

The next eleven hours were a blur of asphalt, cheap coffee, and nerve-shredding paranoia. Every car that stayed behind me too long was a tail. Every ringing phone in a passing diner was the FBI calling to say they’d found Keila’s body. The silence from my burner phone was a scream.I’d lit the fuse. Now I was waiting for the world to explode.With thirty minutes left on my deadline, the burner finally buzzed. Not a text. An incoming call. The number was blocked.I pulled into the parking lot of a shuttered big-box store, the empty expanse of cracked asphalt feeling like the surface of the moon.“Hello.”“Ms. Richards.” The voice was female, crisp, and unfamiliar. Not Pryce. “This is Deputy Director Clarke, National Security Council. We received your email.”The National Security Council. The email had gone higher than I’d dared hope.“Do you have my conditions?” My voice was steadier than I felt.“We are prepared to facilitate a secure exchange. We can have Luther Vance extracted to a

The next eleven hours were a blur of asphalt, cheap coffee, and nerve-shredding paranoia. Every car that stayed behind me too long was a tail. Every ringing phone in a passing diner was the FBI calling to say they’d found Keila’s body. The silence from my burner phone was a scream.I’d lit the fuse. Now I was waiting for the world to explode.With thirty minutes left on my deadline, the burner finally buzzed. Not a text. An incoming call. The number was blocked.I pulled into the parking lot of a shuttered big-box store, the empty expanse of cracked asphalt feeling like the surface of the moon.“Hello.”“Ms. Richards.” The voice was female, crisp, and unfamiliar. Not Pryce. “This is Deputy Director Clarke, National Security Council. We received your email.”The National Security Council. The email had gone higher than I’d dared hope.“Do you have my conditions?” My voice was steadier than I felt.“We are prepared to facilitate a secure exchange. We can have Luther Vance extracted to a

I ran from the hospital, the brass key biting into my palm. I had the key. I had the location. I had the frequency in my head. But I had no way to turn a memory into a weapon. As I reached my car, my phone buzzed. Not Luther. An unknown number. A text. The harmony is found in the dissonance. The broadcast requires a choir. You are the first voice. Find the second. He is waiting where the music died. – A Friend A friend. Leo? Anya? One of the other Trusted, watching, guiding from the new shadows they inhabited. Where the music died. There was only one place that fit. The cottage. My mother’s garden. Where I had just poured concrete over a nightmare. I had to go back. The first and second voice had to meet at the source. The bloom was activated by the sealing of the orchid. The countermeasure was at the site of the crime. I drove like the devil was at my bumper, back to the quiet valley, the now-empty cottage, the freshly sodded patch of earth that hid a world of trouble. The

The ordinary days began to stack, one upon the other, like well-worn books on a stable shelf. Keila’s eighth birthday was a riot of noise and sugar on the beach, her laughter carried away by the wind. Luther’s white paper on ethical data frameworks was quietly adopted by three European governments. My irises bloomed, violent purple slashes against the grey-green cliffside.We were healing. The scars were there, but they had softened from angry red lines to silvery whispers.Then, on a Tuesday in October, the mailbox yielded a plain postcard. The picture was of a generic mountain lake. The message on the back was typed.The garden needs tending. The old rose bush by the south wall. A FriendIt was signed with a single, inked thumbprint.Luther held the card under a forensic light from his kit. “The paper is common. The print is smudged, intentionally. Untraceable.” He looked at me. “The south wall of the cottage garden.”We hadn’t been back. We’d paid a local service to maintain the ba