Santa Lucia is like most other small towns in America, a collection of buildings connected by highways and back roads lined with houses to another cluster of buildings. You’re never quite certain where one town begins and the other ends.

Other than a sign announcing the city limits, it’s the old church that tells me I’ve arrived. Since it was rebuilt twice after the fires, I’m not sure if I should call it old or not. A small building with a rock foundation and a white steeple, it’s set back from the road in a field with knee-high yellow grass.

I pull off the road and follow the gravel driveway that leads up to the hill the church sits on. Our agents have been over it several times. The priest insists he’s seen nothing suspicious. The mere mention of another fire turned the man white.

Up until a few hours ago we had a surveillance team staked out in a small shed across the highway from the church. Knoll relieved them after we found the SIM card. The church was one of a thousand possible targets. With Haywood now in custody we have to cut back on our manpower.

To the left of the church is a small graveyard overgrown with weeds. The markers look like they’ve been there since Texas was part of Mexico. The priest had explained that the church was only used on special occasions, for weddings and holiday services. Most of Santa Lucia’s worshippers attend a megachurch outside Brownsville.

Megachurches, with their concert stages and arena seating, have become the big box store equivalent of religion. Never that religious myself, I don’t know how I feel about that. If I get married, I think I’d like to do it in a church like this.

It’s the golden hour right now and the shadows of the weeds give way to a warm glow. It’s picture-perfect. The most peaceful place in the world. I roll down the window and listen to the breeze as it rolls through the grass.

I pull my phone from my pocket and hover my thumb over the address book. I think about calling my father.

The door to the church opens and a man in a priest collar emerges. He waves at me. I wave back and put the phone down. He walks across the gravel to talk to me.

“Beautiful day,” he says.

“Yes, it is.”

He turns his head to the side and coughs. “Hay fever. Gets my asthma.” He takes an inhaler from his pocket. “He’s real, you know.”

Who’s real? Jesus?

He sprays me in the face with his inhaler.

I go numb before descending.

Into darkness.

59

MY BODY WON’T MOVE. It’s completely black. Part of me feels like I’m flying. I think I’m dreaming. A dream I have whenever I get stressed or feel overwhelmed. It’s a dream based on a memory. A horrible memory. A memory of when I almost died.

I’M TWENTY AND PERFORMING an illusion for a television show in Mexico. It’s the kind of show with a bunch of sweaty older men in business suits and jiggly teenage girls in thongs. Everything is sensational and over the top. The week before, a stunt rider from Argentina had tried to jump three brightly colored buses in a shopping mall parking lot and slipped on his landing, sending him into a coma.