The Bone Field by Debra Bokur (top e book reader txt) 📕

Kali didn’t try to speak. Behind her another light, brighter than the lamp, switched on. Then came a low cough as someone cleared his throat, and a man moved into view, joining Abigail. He slipped his arm protectively around her shoulders, regarding Kali gravely. Even in her compromised state, Kali noticed that Abigail seemed to stiffen at her father’s touch.

“Hello again, Detective.” Abraham smiled. Kali’s gaze wavered and then settled on his face. She noticed for the first time the length of his front teeth, the sharply pointed canines revealed as his lips drew outward into a thin smile.

There was another male voice, and she tried to move her head to see who was speaking.

“Hello, Miss Mhoe. You remember me?”

It was Nathan. Yes, I remember you, she thought to herself. You’re the scary one.

Nathan nodded at her, the movement brief. “I apologize for tying you up. You’re probably finding all of this difficult to comprehend, and you probably don’t feel much like speaking.”

She didn’t. The room smelled sour and dusty, as though it had been sealed up for too long without an open window to dispel the odors that had been trapped inside years ago. The side of her head throbbed, and her hands were numb. She flexed her arms, willing the blood to flow toward her fingertips, and was rewarded with the intense, prickling pain of renewed circulation.

Nathan moved closer to her chair. He pushed up the short sleeve of her T-shirt to expose the warrior band tattoo on her upper arm. He reached out with one finger, tracing the outline of it, the movement gentle. Then he frowned and pulled away, staring her in the eye.

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: Therefore glorify God in your body.” He shook his head. “That’s from 1 Corinthians. It means that this mark on your body is an abomination. It is witchcraft, and it will not please God.” His gaze was intense. “Have you any others?”

Kali said nothing. She tried to keep her eyes locked on his, to not glance involuntarily toward her hip, where her other treasured tattoo could be found—the one she and Mike had chosen together years before. As she focused on Nathan, her eye caught the glint of metal from beside him. There was a small, rolling cart next to where he stood. It had several shelves, and on the top was a tray of what she assumed to be surgical tools and knives. Next to them were bottles of hydrogen peroxide and rubbing alcohol, and a stack of cotton bandages and pads.

She took a deep breath.

“My goodness.” Her voice sounded weak. She looked from Abigail to Nathan. “Don’t you mind that your grandfather has you doing his dirty work for him?” She focused on Abigail. “It’s just like when you were a child helping at the pineapple plantation, convincing the people you met that your father was some kind of miracle worker instead of the con man and rapist that he really is.”

Nathan stepped forward, arm raised. Kali held her breath as he hit her, the force nearly knocking the chair over.

“You will speak no word against my grandfather,” Nathan said, eerily calm. “Do you understand? I won’t have it. Everything we do is God’s work. We are merely His servants.”

Abraham stood silent. Kali felt powerless, and was filled with silent fury. She ran the tip of her tongue over her lip. The slap had split the skin, and she could taste the warmth of her own blood. She forced herself to look at the tray of knives resting on the surface of the stainless steel. A chill ran through her, and another wave of nausea roiled through her stomach.

Abraham ignored her and spoke to Nathan. “She will not be able to hear God until the marks of the devil are gone.” Abraham came to stand beside Kali. He studied her tattoo, then spoke to Nathan as though instructing a group of young surgeons on procedure. “The fortunate thing about tattoos is that they are confined to the surface of the body, not like evil thoughts embedded in the mind. These marks of the devil can be removed, but the true work is not removing these offending symbols—it is to make certain that the mind has been purified as well.”

Something clicked when Kali heard his proclamation. “The man in the refrigerator,” she said. “You couldn’t cleanse his mind, could you, Abraham? You couldn’t force him to think like you.”

Abraham turned to her, his face grave.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s why you cut off his head. You thought his thoughts were impure, and you couldn’t decontaminate his mind. What was it that he was thinking about, Abraham?”

Abigail made a small, choking sound. Kali kept her focus on Abraham, but from the corner of her eye she could see that Abigail was becoming agitated. Abraham noticed it as well. He reached out his hand and rested it on his daughter’s arm. Kali saw her cringe—the response was involuntary and subtle, but it was there nonetheless.

“I offered him the key to the doors to Heaven,” said Abraham. “But his mind had been given over to evil and lust. He desired another man, you see. He was gormless and uneducated. What I did was for the benefit of his eternal soul.”

“But he was my friend,” said Abigail, her voice barely a whisper.

The tension in the room grew stronger. “He was your friend,” repeated Kali, “and you couldn’t bear to see what happened to him, to see what your father had done to desecrate his body. So you put the pineapple on his shoulders, and you left him with a charm from your bracelet. You meant it to protect him, didn’t you?”

There was a look of terror on