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.no.”She lowered her gaze to the table.She had stopped eating.He realized that he had embarrassed her.Once again, his inexperience with the fairer sex had betrayed him.“I apologize,” he said.“We hardly know each other and here I am discussing marriage and children.”She kept her gaze on the table, twisting a napkin around her finger.“Excuse me.” He picked up his food and milk.“I think I’ll go back to the library to ah, check out the books Thorne wrote.”She appeared relieved that he was leaving.Walking away, he chastised himself.He had to be careful what he said to her, or else when this mission concluded, she might request a re-assignment.If that happened, it would break his heart—because he was sure he was falling in love with her.In the library, he placed his meal on an end table and resumed his perusal of Thorne’s work.Although he had originally intended to search the entire residence, as was his habit, the books could tell him everything he needed to know about his mark, since the title character, Ghost, was obviously Thorne himself.The books were maps of the man’s tormented soul.Picking a chapter at random from Ghost Hunter, he found himself in the middle of a grisly, yet richly detailed interrogation: Ghost was using a pneumatic nail gun to drive carpet tacks underneath the fingernails of a murder suspect, to compel the man to admit to his role in a crime.Each lurid sentence crackled with fervor.Thorne believed in what he was writing, which meant he was a profoundly evil man.Barely able to take his eyes away from the novel, Cutty slowly chewed a sandwich morsel.After several blood-saturated, obscenity-laced pages, the violent scene ended.He flipped forward in the book and soon found another.This one featured Ghost pummeling a police officer who was described as “corrupt.”It made Cutty laugh out loud.Corrupt? These books were corrupt, and were precisely why censorship of mass media was not only desirable, but necessary.A society that allowed the distribution of filth like this was destined to sink into moral turpitude.He wanted to speak to Thorne and demand to know why he felt the need to channel unadulterated depravity into the pages of a book and offer it for popular consumption.He wanted to know why he was glorifying violence.Why he was advocating disobedience to established authority.Why he had rebelled against God’s plan.When Thorne supplied satisfactory answers to those questions, Cutty would kill him.No one who earned his living producing such degenerate tales was fit to live in God’s Kingdom.A text message arrived on his cell phone.It was from the dispatcher: the auto service had been completed.Mission support had kept their promise to complete the repair within an hour.He ate a few more bites of the sandwiches, chased the food with the milk, and returned to the kitchen.He brought Thorne’s book with him, as evidence to present to his superior.Valdez had cleared her dishes off the table.She sat there, quietly reading her pocket Bible.She gave him a lukewarm smile.He had fallen out of her good graces, and somehow, he would have to redeem himself.He took his plate and glass to the sink, washed them, and placed them in the dish rack.Although he was in the home of a spiritually unclean man, he’d been raised to observe good manners at all times.He cleared his throat.“Mission support got in touch.We’re ready to go.”“Si.I see them outside just leave.”“I didn’t hear them from the library.Those guys operate with mucho stealth, huh?”His use of an authentic Spanish word, one he’d not realized that he knew until it came from his mouth, summoned a genuine smile to her face.He opened the patio door.“After you, senorita.”She bowed slightly, and walked out of the house.He didn’t know where that Spanish word had come from either, and he interpreted it as proof that God planned for him and Valdez to be together someday.Everything was going to be fine.At the Suburban, he tossed her the keys, and she deftly plucked them out of the air.While she drove away, he powered up the MDT and logged on to Genesis.The background report on Thorne had arrived.23Mike lived in Duluth, a suburb about thirty minutes northeast of Atlanta.The city was a case study of the rapid growth that had swept across the region a decade ago.Strip malls, restaurants, and assorted retail stores blanketed the streets where not long ago there had been only fields and forest.Signs advertising various housing communities bristled from the ground at seemingly every intersection.The area’s boom phase had ended, unfortunately.These days, many of the strip malls were full of empty stores that had gone out of business, and among the signs touting new subdivisions were nearly as many ads promising deals on foreclosed properties.“I hope he doesn’t think we’re crazy,” Lisa said, as Anthony turned into a residential neighborhood.On the phone, Anthony hadn’t given Mike the full scoop, only told him that they were in trouble and needed somewhere to crash for a short while.Mike had readily agreed, as Anthony had known he would.“He’ll be cool,” Anthony said.“You know Mike
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