Free Soon by Jerry B. Jenkins

approaching Angela would be a good way to flush him out.
    He dashed off a note to Angela, reiterating his pleasure at meeting her. Trading on the fact that they both had military fathers, he claimed to be working on a commemorative project for his father’s platoon. Might she have a colleague who could identify the soldier who had written a certain letter by comparing two handwriting images he could scan and send her—and perhaps also help him get an age fix on the letter from an ink specimen?
    Two can play the spy game.
    And, Paul thought with a smile, asking Angela for help could fan a spark between them.

    Jae had been surprised at how unwilling Paul was to talk to his father-in-law during his two weeks of recuperating at home. He claimed he was in too much pain. But now that he had been back to work a few days, he seemed to welcome Ranold’s calls. Jae took that as a good omen—that Paul’s new satisfaction on the job was promoting better relations with her father, which might also herald greater contentment for him at home.

    Koontz urged Paul to ease back into his duties, but by the end of the week he was demanding a new assignment. “I want to keep my momentum,” he said. “I can’t do that hanging around the office. Put me back in the field.”
    Paul didn’t confess his rage over Andy Pass—or his father—getting sucked in by the promise of “springs of life-giving water” or the threat that Jesus was coming soon. He couldn’t purge his mind of the young, overzealous Coker grinning and giving him the thumbs-up before jogging into a bomb shop, or of the earth pitching and bucking as he tumbled down the hill. He relived shooting the burning woman, the white uniform, and the limping man; and he kept flashing back to that moment when his heat ray intersected the arc of the man diving off the porch. Paul’s bruises were healing but his anger remained. How he wished he’d killed more, that he’d killed them all.
    For a few days he had been distracted. First, there had been his thank-you-for-the-paper-analysis lunch with Trina Thomas, a languorous, wine-soaked afternoon culminating in a kiss that had left Paul relieved he’d had the sense not to place himself any further in her debt.
    Angela had responded with delight in having heard from Paul and expressed her eagerness to help out his father’s old platoon. He had immediately transmitted images of a few lines his father had written his mother and a sentence from the letter— “One day you will hold your own child and understand the profound depth and breadth of a father’s love” —along with a snippet of the date at the top of the page for ink testing.
    Then he’d given over a few evenings to cat-and-mouse discussions with Ranold, trying to determine whether the old man knew about the letter and his approaching Angela.
    But now Paul was stir-crazy.
    “Well,” Koontz said finally, “we’ve got a situation in Gulfland. It’s strictly fact-finding, but I’ll send you with all the authority you need to question anybody at any level. You don’t even have to take a weapon.”
    “I appreciate it, Bob, but don’t baby me.”
    “Fair enough. But this one should be easy.” Koontz handed him a folder. “Oil country. A gusher there suddenly stopped pumping and caught fire.”
    “I’m not an oilman, Bob. Is that unusual?”
    “Must not be, other than being a nuisance for the investors, but what’s happening now is without precedent. It’s not some underground flare-up but a pillar of fire a couple hundred feet high.”
    “Sounds dangerous. Why can’t they put it out?”
    Koontz raised both hands. “Foam isn’t working, and they can’t figure a way to cap it. It’s another ‘inexplicable occurrence’ the crazies will have a field day with. People who see these things talk, and then rumors spread like wildfire. Personally, I think it’s got to be some sort of industrial sabotage.”
    “This I gotta see.”
    “How does first thing