Gayle felt the blood drain from her face. Although not yet fluent in speaking, her comprehension in Spanish was 95 percent.

“No,” she said. “Tell her that God did not do this, that this was not Jesus.”

Campos translated, touching the woman’s arm gently, but the woman recoiled. She rattled something off in quick, broken Spanish, her eyes fixed on Gayle instead of Campos, then strode angrily toward the remaining hut, the baby looking back from around her arm.

“She said that you—she means Global Gospel Missions, not you personally, I’m sure—that you brought your God here and now He has killed her family and most of her people.” He looked around the smoldering remains of the village. “What really happened here?”

“I don’t know . . . A meteor shower, maybe?”

“Oh, come now, Gayle,” Campos said, his expression going stern for the first time. “We are both professionals and Christians. You know who I work for. I know who you work for. Maybe it is time to stop playing games, yes?”

She met his gaze but didn’t answer.

“These were my countrymen. I need to know what happened here.”

“I honestly don’t know, Alex,” she said, pressing her lips together in a hard line. “This is not my area of expertise.”

“And that’s why they are here? Your new friends,” he said, nodding at the four contractors who were scouring the village and taking photographs.

She nodded.

“Pillars of salt . . . ,” a male voice said from behind her.

Gayle spun around to see Dagan Meier walking up the path. He looked much older than the twenty-one-year-old she’d met when he arrived in Lima for his assignment with GGM just three weeks ago. Dagan’s now-old eyes were bloodshot from tears and had the faraway look of a man returned from a bloody battlefield. His hair flapped in windblown disarray while his fingers picked at the spine of a worn leather Bible he carried.

“What did you say?” she said.

“Pillars of salt,” Dagan said, his attention fixed on a pile of ash a few feet away. “Remember what happened to Lot’s wife when she tried to flee Sodom and Gomorrah? In Genesis . . . she turned to look and she was punished. Remember?”

Dagan stopped next to her and began to weep. Reflexively she wrapped an arm around him. While she tried to comfort the young missionary, she noticed Jedidiah’s eyes on them from where he knelt beside a pillar of ash. Instead of looking away, she held his gaze and felt an eerie, palpable strength of purpose from the stranger.

She felt his . . . certitude. Certitude about what, she could not say, but certitude nonetheless.