Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) by Karen Rose

            It was fair. Pastor held Eden together. “Is anyone saying he shouldn’t go to a doctor?”

            “Not out loud where anyone can hear. I noticed that a few members were scowling at the discussion of outside medical help for him. Mostly those whose family members have died. But they won’t fight it publicly.”

            “Can’t we just see if he improves on his own?”

            She was quiet for a moment. “He has broken bones. And I think he’s got internal bleeding. I don’t have the equipment or training to know for sure, but . . . I don’t think he’s going to magically get better, DJ.”

            No, he wanted to scream. He didn’t have time for this now. He needed to kill Mercy Callahan and Gideon Reynolds.

            Although if Pastor died, it wouldn’t matter. Especially if DJ managed to get him to cough up the bank account passwords first.

            Suddenly the situation looked brighter. “What was he doing when he fell?”

            “He’d gone to call his banker. He said that he needed to check the accounts.”

            It was how Pastor normally managed financial transactions. He would either e-mail or call his banker to check balances. He never logged on to the account himself. If he had, DJ could have tracked his keystrokes long ago. But the bastard was a wily old fucker.

            The wily old fucker just might have met his end, though. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Get back to Pastor and make sure he’s comfortable and not so out of it that he spills secrets.”

            “I will. Thank you.”

            He ended the call, realizing that her thanks were heartfelt. After having three husbands die over the last thirty years—two of natural causes, and McPhearson, who’d been murdered—she’d been married to Pastor for over a decade.

            DJ wondered if she genuinely loved the man.

            DJ did not. Pastor feigned amiability and exuded competence. Under all the charisma, though, lay a snake.

            DJ knew that Pastor had instructed Ephraim to kill people who’d spoken out against Eden’s leadership. It was always done in a way to make it look like an accident. Sometimes they’d “fallen” or, more frequently, they’d “wandered” too far from the compound and were “mauled by wolves or bears.”

            Ephraim had enjoyed his job as Eden’s enforcer. A lot.

            DJ preferred to do his killing with a gun and from far enough away to escape if need be, but a pillow over Pastor’s face while they were en route to the hospital would also work.

            He set his cell phone aside and called Kowalski on the sat phone.

            “Yeah?” Kowalski barked over voices in the background. “This better be important.”

            “Daddy! Daddy!” A little boy’s voice came through the phone.

            “Just a minute,” Kowalski said, his tone much gentler. “Daddy needs to take this call. Go wait with your mother. I’ll be right there.” A second later his demeanor was surly again. “What?”

            “There’s been an accident back home.”

            “What kind of accident?” Kowalski asked coolly.

            “My father took a fall. He needs a doctor.” DJ managed to call Pastor his father without a snarl. The man had taken him in when he was barely nine years old, even though Waylon had still been alive. Marcia, Pastor’s wife, had died, along with their children, and he’d decided that DJ would be his next heir.

            DJ always wondered why his biological father had gone along with it, but had figured that Pastor held something incriminating over Waylon’s head. All of Eden’s founders had nasty skeletons in their closets.

            “Can’t somebody else take him?” Kowalski demanded. “You have a crop to harvest.”

            The grow houses. Shit. Kowalski was right about that. Kowalski would send a few of his guys to help, but the responsibility was DJ’s. His mind searched for a solution. “The doctor I need to use is in Santa Rosa. I can drive back and forth. It’ll be no problem.”

            “What’s the doctor’s name?” Kowalski asked suspiciously, as if DJ had made it up.