The Stolen Gospels by Brian Herbert Page A

recovery, that head wound looked very serious.
    She fought back tears, told herself to be strong. Her forehead throbbed with pain. An untouched sandwich lay on the seat beside her. She should be hungry by now, but was too upset to eat.
    The looming tragedy involving her mother made Lori think of another loss, the disappearance of her father more than twelve years before, when she was only a small child herself. He had been there one day, but not the next. Her mother said he abandoned his small family, but Lori remembered her mother moving her to another apartment at around the same time. It was all muddy in her memory, but recently she had been wondering if her mother had told the truth. She didn’t want to think badly of her now, though.
    But to Lori it had always been a disturbing mystery. Had her father been killed, or was he still alive and out there somewhere at this very moment, thinking about her and wanting to see her again? She hoped for the latter.
    Searching her memories as she had done so many times before, she recalled three or four years ago in Seattle, when she’d found an old leather suitcase on a shelf in the garage. Inside were rent receipts for an apartment in Washington, DC, and other papers . . . in her mother’s name. There were also papers showing different names in different cities, details that Lori could not recall afterward.
    Catching Lori with the papers, Camilla had grabbed them angrily and burned them in the fireplace. To Lori, the reaction was inexplicable. The suitcase disappeared soon afterward, but she remembered seeing the initials ZM etched on top, by the handle . . . not her mother’s initials, or those of anyone Lori knew. Who had they belonged to? Lori’s father?
    Had something happened in Washington, DC that broke up the relationship between her parents? Had her mother moved away, gone back to her maiden name—or taken another one to avoid detection—and hidden their daughter from him? Had they ever actually been married? Her mother had never answered that question, leaving Lori with doubts.
    With Lori’s father out of her life, she and her mother had moved a number of times, but the girl couldn’t keep the events in order. She only remembered crying and calling “Daddy” over and over, and her mother shouting that Lori was not allowed to mention his name in her presence again. A rule that the defiant, stubborn girl never followed.
    Now a memory fragment came to the troubled teenager, one that was familiar since she had reviewed it so many times before: Daddy wearing aviator-style dark glasses, outside in bright sunlight. Smiling, he had lifted her onto his shoulders, holding her arms tightly around his rough-textured neck while she laughed and giggled. He carried her around piggyback, making her feel taller than he was.
    Then she saw the scowling face of her mother, and the fun ended abruptly.

Chapter 8

    Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
    —1 Corinthians 14:34–35, The New Testament

    The sleek black jet banked to the right, and through a starboard window Lori saw the forbidding terrain of a mountainous region below, with craggy, snowy peaks and sheer rock walls that dropped off to winding rivers and wide green plains. The sun hung low in the sky, casting long shadows across the landscape. As the jet descended below the highest mountain tops, a barren, rocky valley became apparent, with a narrow ribbon of highway and an arched stone bridge that spanned a ravine. The plane passed over the bridge and set down on a straight section of highway. After the landing, the aircraft taxied onto a side road and came to a stop at the base of a cliff, with the engines still running.
    A hatch opened in the passenger compartment floor by the