“Is Daddy going to be on the plane?” Lauren asked as she slid out of the seat.

“Fancy ties you got there,” the deputy chuckled as he fastened the cuffs around Lauren’s wrists before he untied the apron and tossed it in the back seat.

“No, ma’am,” the other deputy answered. “He’s sending your brother to accompany you. Are you going to go quietly?”

“Yes, I’ll be a good girl.” Lauren almost sounded like a sweet little mistreated child. “Just don’t make me go back to Piney Wood. They abuse all us girls at that place.”

The deputy winked at Elijah as he escorted Lauren to their unit. “That’s a shame. Deputy Jones will get your bag, and hopefully this next place will be nicer to you.”

“Well, that’s that,” Elijah said as he got back into the vehicle with Novalene. To his surprise, his hands trembled when he put the van in gear and drove out of the parking lot. Elijah didn’t handle failure well, and he felt as if he’d failed Lauren. As he drove north, he thought back to the time when he’d flown out to get his teammates. He didn’t know at that point how many were hurt, if any were dead, or exactly what he was going to find. The only information he had was that there had been an explosion and Matty, their corpsman, was hurt too badly to render help to the others. The picture of Buddy and Tim running across the ground between those two mountains was forever burned into his brain. Elijah had smelled fresh blood many times, but anytime he thought of that day when three of his teammates were killed, the metallic smell that filled his nostrils always came back to his mind.

“Where’s Tim and Matty?” Elijah had yelled over the whirring noise of the blades.

“They’re right behind us. Their Humvee got hit. Matty’s hurt bad,” Buddy answered. “But he’s alive.”

Tim was a huge man, six foot four and weighing in at 280 pounds, but there wasn’t a spare bit of fat on his body. He carried Matty like a baby across the desolate field that day and held him all the way back to base. Elijah could still hear his deep southern voice telling Matty to hang on.

“Elijah’s going to get us back to safety. You’re going to be fine. Open your eyes. Look at me,” Tim kept repeating.

But Elijah didn’t make it in time, and Matty was declared dead on arrival at the base. And Elijah had always wondered if those few extra minutes without refueling the chopper might have made the difference.

“I feel like a complete failure.” Novalene’s voice brought him out of the past and back to the present. “This is my first time ever to lose a girl, and she slapped Mary. I’m sick to my stomach over that. I keep asking myself if something I did or didn’t do caused her to flip out like that. Should I have gone easier on her over the cigarettes?”

“Don’t beat yourself up. Like Henry said, some folks can’t be helped. Maybe Lauren will get some good professional help at this new place.” Elijah made the last turn and parked the van in front of the dining hall.

“Well,” Novalene sighed, “it’s a good day for church after all that.”

“Amen,” Elijah agreed.

Novalene’s two remaining girls had been on milking duty with Henry that morning and had evidently finished their job, because they were sitting on the Moonbeam porch. Jayden’s crew was on the dining hall porch. The remaining three were coming across the grounds with Diana behind them.

“We’ve got about an hour.” Novalene unfastened her seat belt and got out of the van. “I’m going to use the time to talk to the two I’ve got left. Do you think this will shake the whole camp up?”

Elijah held up his forefinger in a gesture that said he would answer her in a minute, and then followed her to the porch where Jayden waited.

“Hey, everyone, gather up here,” Elijah yelled.

When the rest of the girls had come close enough, he said, “Lauren won’t be coming back, but we’ll continue on with our lives just like before. We will be attending church and then coming back here for Sunday dinner. Any questions?”

No hands went up, and not a single one of them opened their mouth.

“Okay, then go on to your cabins and get ready for church,” he told them.

When they were out of hearing distance, he turned to the counselors. “Novalene asked me if I thought this incident would shake the whole camp up. It usually does when we have to take one away. The rest of the girls realize what they’re up against if they don’t finish the course,” Elijah said. “Let me know if you have any problems.”

“If we have any, they’ll probably come from my cabin. Keelan and Lauren were pretty close,” Novalene said. “Hopefully, going to church as a group will help them.”

“Let’s hope so, and we will be attending the first church on the list this morning.”

“If I remember right, that would be the small one with the nice red chairs rather than long pews, right?” Novalene asked.

“Yep,” Elijah answered. “Henry and Mary still think it’s best if we go to a different one every week.”

“If we do what?” Jayden asked.

“We attend a different church each Sunday,” Elijah explained. “We know that the girls don’t all have the same religious affiliations, so that makes it fair. When we have girls that usually attend a temple or a mosque, we make arrangements for that, too, but this time around we don’t need to include those.”

“Makes sense to me.” Jayden started to get up and follow them, but Elijah reached out and grabbed her hand. “Just a word before you go.” He dropped her hand and asked, “Are you all right? How’s Mary?”

“I’m just fine,” Jayden assured him. “Mary and Henry have already left for their services. She seemed fine when they drove away.”

He tucked his hand under her chin and turned her face toward him. “You’re going to have a shiner.”

This just proved that people who got too close to Elijah had bad luck. First his brother died, then his parents, and then almost half his team. Jayden would do well to steer clear of him.

She put her hand on his and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I’ve had black eyes before, and from a person a whole lot smaller than Lauren. My first one was from a seventh grader who was throwing a tantrum over not being able to eat candy in the classroom. He decked me harder than she did.”

Elijah dropped his hand. “I’m so sorry this happened. I’d still feel better if you would let me take you to the emergency room.”

“I’ll be ugly for a few days, but we’ve got to take these girls to church this morning. That’s more important than a bruised eye,” she told him.

He walked across the lawn with her. All three girls were sitting on the porch, their young faces filled with questions.

“We want to know more about what happened to Lauren,” Tiffany said. “Did she settle down or do something stupid like kick the windows out of the van?”

“We took her to the police station, where they were waiting. Her father sent his private plane to take her to a rehab center,” Elijah answered.

“What if her father pays for her to come back?” Carmella asked.

“Three-strike rule applies here, and there’s no coming back, ever. If her father didn’t have the means and connections, she’d be on her way to talk to the judge about spending some time in juvie. What do you think would happen to you if you got two more strikes?” Elijah locked eyes with Tiffany.