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uneducated, unwashed, and completely unable to appreciate him. But they’d see his greatness. He dawdled and decorated the polished oak with his chisel.
    E AMUS .
    And enjoyed the work of his hand. The way she cowered and cried inspired him to greater heights.
    M EUS .
    He’d found new restraints that held her better. He talked as he worked, trying to make her understand the honor he was bestowing on her.
    N ATIO .
    He’d brushed her hair and read to her from Mother’s Bible. He even went so far as to show her the artwork he’d carved on his own body.
    M EARE .
    Still, like Pharaoh, she didn’t see reason. Pravus held the power of life and death. Like God. No he wasn’t
like
God, he
was
God. And this sinner had been given all the chances he was going to give her.

    The beast within urged him onward to the second plague.
    “You can come up to the apartment door, Rev, but you can’t come inside. We can’t let you touch—”
    “I know the drill, Detective Collins.” He breathed out anger and breathed in God. It was his own Christian version of counting to ten. He couldn’t quite figure out how he’d gotten on the pretty detective’s bad side, but he’d managed it—in spades.
    “Uh, sorry, Rev. I keep forgetting you were on the force.”
    Paul had the distinct impression that Detective Collins never forgot a thing.
    “Good. I don’t want to carry the mantle of ‘cop’ around with me anymore.”
    She shoved at her hair as if she were swatting away a gnat. He remembered the wild tangles from his hospital stay. He towered over her as they walked into the apartment building. He was six one. He glanced at her with experienced cop eyes. She was five six, all lean muscle and coiled energy, hidden under the kind of cheap suit a cop could afford. She started up the outside steps of the apartment building at a fast clip. Paul tried to keep up and it hurt like blazes.
    He was trying to like her, but his ribs were her sworn enemy. “I have better luck helping the people at the mission if they don’t sense the badge.”
    She entered the building and started up the stairs to the missing woman’s apartment. “Should you have shed the sling and collar so quickly? You look lousy. You’ll probably end up back in the hospital.”
    Paul didn’t answer her. He hadn’t had time to breathe all his anger out yet. For him to do that, she would have to shut up and give him a little more time. He was tempted to ask her to do just that.
    The apartment building they were in was just outside the neighborhood Paul served. Shabby, but hanging on to respectability by a thread. Paul tried to trot up the steps behind her, but every time he jostled his ribs, his chest hurt like a heart attack. He settled for watching her disappear around the corner of the stairs. Then the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, O’Shea, passed him.
    Paul trudged on, left in the dust of real cops. “Humility is the name of the game, isn’t it, Lord?”
    O’Shea turned around and looked at him. Detective Collins leaned over the railing above and stared down.
    He looked back and forth between them. “Did I say that out loud?”
    O’Shea gave him a disgusted look. Collins rolled her eyes. They exchanged a look, shook their heads, and started moving again. By the time he made his destination, the fifth floor, they had disappeared inside a room. The hallway was dismal—the paint old, the carpet stained. But there was no trash strewed around. The doors were all on their hinges. Only one stood open. Paul smelled mold and decades of cigarette smoke, but there were no bullet holes to be seen.
    There was enough noise coming from the apartment to clue Paul in that they weren’t the first ones there. He very carefully stayed out. Over the door he read,
Pestis Ex Rana
, carved in a beautiful script. Paul examined it, as he hadn’t had time to examine the carving he’d been given.
    The words were etched into a wooden sign the same size and color as the one Paul had