Free Play With Fire by Dana Stabenow Page B

warned of the disastrous future facing them if they did not become champions of Christ and fight to rescue their country from the vast and morally perverted swamp into which it was currently sinking. "Let us pray," he said, and they bowed their heads forthwith. He'd given them plenty to pray about, Kate would grant him that much. She, a practicing heathen, was feeling a little unsettled herself.
    The service ended with another hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers," and the highest and sweetest voice in the choir came from the ten-year-old standing in the middle.
    Outside the church the mother of four said to Kate, "I haven't seen you in church before, have I?"
    "No, I've been picking mushrooms."
    She laughed. "Haven't we all. I'm Sally Gilles pie." The baby on her hip started to fuss and the other three to become restless.
    "Kate Shugak."
    "Where are you from?" Two of the boys started playing tag.
    "I've got a homestead outside Niniltna."
    "In the Park?" Kate nodded, and Sally said, "At least you're not as far from home as some of the pickers are."
    The older boy growled and pretended to be a monster, and the other two boys got into the act. Kate felt surrounded by whirling dervishes.
    Sally said something else and Kate had to ask her to repeat herself.
    "I said, would you like to come to Sunday dinner? My husband's the postmaster, we live in back of the post office, you could come about five--"
    "I'm T. Rex and I'm going to chomp you up! Grrrr!" Standing up on his tiptoes, arching his arms into claws, the older boy chased the smaller boys behind Kate. The two smaller boys shrieked with delighted terror and ran for their lives.
    Sally's face went white and for a moment Kate thought she might faint.
    "Brandon!" She grabbed the biggest boy by the back of his shirt as he dashed past her.
    Startled, he overbalanced and would have fallen if she hadn't been holding him up. "What, Mom? What's the matter?"
    "Don't you ever let me hear you say that again! We don't talk about those kinds of things and you know it!" She swatted him ineffectively, hampered by the baby, and cast an apprehensive look behind her at the church. In the doorway stood Pastor Sea bolt, regarding her impassively, and if possible her face went even whiter. She gathered her children up and with the barest of farewells marched her family homeward.
    Seabolt's gaze shifted to Kate. His eyes were the coldest blue she'd ever seen, cold and clear and assessing, and without thinking she laid a hand on Mutt's head, a real and reassuring presence at her side. She stood a little straighter, pulled her shoulders a little squarer, lifted her chin a little higher beneath that coldly speculative gaze.
    She would not scuttle away in fear from the challenge issued by those eyes, although later she wondered why fear, and later still, why the challenge. A challenge that was almost a dare. As if he were invulnerable, and knew it.
    Someone touched him on the shoulder and he broke off the staring match to talk to a parishioner. Kate felt what amounted to a physical release that actually had her rocking back on her heels, just a little, just enough to make itself felt. She turned and made for the truck, shaken and determined not to show it.
    She had her hand on the door when she heard her name, and turned to see Matthew Seabolt. He looked over his shoulder to reassure himself that his grandfather was no longer standing in the doorway of the church. He wasn't, and Matthew turned back to Kate. "Have you found my father?"
    She busied herself, opening the door, sitting on the foot board, retying one shoelace that had gone limp beneath the Right Reverend Seabolt's fiery rhetoric. "Tell me again when he went missing. Everything you can remember."
    "I wasn't here, I was at Bible camp."
    She looked up. "So he was here when you left?" He nodded. "And gone when you came back." He nodded again. "Do you remember the dates?"
    He frowned, blond brows knitting in concentration. "Bible camp always starts