Garrett - In the Shadow of Lions

For my dad

Contents

AfterWords

And Job answered God
I admit I once lived by rumors of you;
now I have it all firsthand
Ill never again live
on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor.
Job 42 MSG

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For the Scribe: When we meet someday, and you finish your book on my life, please be gentle. I tried to make you quite dashing. If you want to do the same for me, that would be appreciated.

For my friends at Cook, including Andrea Christian, Terry Behimer, Dan Rich, Don Pape, Jaci Schneider, Ingrid Beck, and Melanie Larson: Thank you for believing in me. Working with you is such an honor and I look forward to many years together. And for John and Nannette Hamilton, who designed the cover, thank you for your incredible artistry!

Chip MacGregor, my fearless literary agent: Thank you a million times over for your wise advice and reality checks. Ive seen incredible growth in my career since you began to shape my decisions. I am really thankful God connected us and I hope Patti likes this one!

Don Maass, Lisa Rector-Maass, and the team at Free Expressions: Lorin, Jason, and Brenda. I am forever indebted to each of you. Thank you for your passion for words and your willingness to walk authors through lonely passages. If any author is looking for a way to invest in their gifts, I would highly recommend a workshop offered through Free Expressions, as well as any of Don Maasss books.

My editor, Ramona Tucker, gently held my hand and helped me see the weaknesses in the manuscript. Working with you, Ramona, was a gift!

My friends, both in the writing community and in my everyday life: Thanks for always asking about the book, even if you couldnt remember which one I was working on. (I rarely could either.) For Siri, who makes trade shows memorable and shares my oddball sense of humor, thanks for praying me through another one and sharing your research. For the Cat Pack of women in publishing that meets for girls night out once a year, and keeps my secrets. For Courtney, Riki, Stephanie, Alecia, Dani, Niki, Kris, Louise, Carolynn, Tina, DeDe, Karetha, Allison, Amy, Shannon, Tinsley, Laura, Sherrill, Jennifer and Judy: One of my life goals is to love my friends well. You make it easy.

Finally, my husband and family sacrificed more for this book than for any other. Whether I needed to travel to London to walk through the events in the novel or go away for a long week to write, they supported me, keeping the family running smoothly. Mitch, your quiet strength gave me courage. My parents did without sleep to watch the kids and made endless stacks of Saturday-morning pancakes. My in-laws, Andi and Chris, made their house available for ransacking too. My daughters drew me pictures and insisted that I take breaks to snuggle on the couch. They have an uncanny sense of when my writing day should end, which often corresponds to their hunger level. My son, the coolest defensive tackle football has ever known, is always fighting to knock players on their rears. He told me to work hard so I could knock readers on their rears too. I tried, baby.

Chapter One

Tomorrow, someone else will die in my bed.

Someone died in it last month, which is how it came to be called mine.

The infernal clock moved confidently toward 1 a.m., and I turned my head to look at the window. The window of this room is a miserly gesture from the contractors, producing more fog than visage. I watched the gold orbsthe lamps on the lawn of the hospice sputtering off and on in the darknessthat dotted the fogged glass.

That was the last moment I lived as an iver , one whose eyes are veiled.

One orb did not sputter but moved, gliding between the others, moving closer to the window, growing larger and brighter until the light consumed the entire view. I winced from the searing glare and tried to shield my eyes, but the IV line pulled taut. Wrestling with the line to get some slack, I saw the next movement out of the corner of my eye. I bit down hard on my tongue, my body jerking in reflex, and felt the warm blood run back to my throat.

Outside, a hand wiped the fog away from the glass, and I watched the water beads running down the inside of my window. There was no searing light, only this mammoth hand with deep creases in the palms wiping down the window until we both could see each other. A mans face was against the glass, but no breath fogged his vision. He was a giant, grim man, with an ring in one ear and dark glasses, and he was staring in at me. Even through the morphine, fear snaked along my arms, biting into my stomach, constricting around my throat. I tried to scream, but I could only gulp air and heave little gasps. His expression did not change as he lifted his hands, curling them into fists. I flinched at the last moment, thinking him to be Death, expecting to receive the blow and die.

Then I grew suddenly warm, like the feeling you get stepping from an old, dark city library into the busy street and a warm spring sun.

Death didnt even hurt, I rejoiced. I could slip into it like I slipped onto that street, eyes down, my thoughts my own, and simply turn a corner and be gone. I lifted my fingers to beckon him. Yes, I thought. I saw the beautiful Rolex on my birdlike wrist and saw that it had stopped. It is time.

When I looked back up, he was beside me, staring down, not speaking. I wasnt dead. His frame was monstrously large, hitting what must be seven feet tall, with a width of muscle strapped across him that was inhuman. As he watched me, his chest didnt move, and his nostrils didnt flare, but heat and warm breath radiated from him. When he laid his hands across my eyes, I was too scared to move my head away. His palms covered most of my face, and a sharp buzzing drilled into every pore. He began to move his hands elsewhere, touching and bringing to life every splintered inch of my body. When he got to the cancer, with one swollen lymph node visible even through my stained blue gown, he rested his hands there until the swelling sighed, and he swept it away with his hand.

Wait! I screamed.

I didnt want to live. I hadnt known that was going to be an option. I deserved to be damned. To return to my life was too much to ask of me. I was finished.

Youll still be dead by morning, he reassured me. His voice was deep and clean, no telltale dialect or inflection. Taking off his glasses, I saw he had enormous gold eyes, with a black pinhole in the center that stayed round and cold. There was no white in them at all, and they were rimmed all the way around the outside with black. I stared at them, trying to remember where I had seen eyes like this. It had been years ago, this much I remembered.

I had to shake myself back to the present moment. Clearly, morphine was not setting well with me tonight. I wanted to die in peace. Thats what I paid these extravagant sums for. My hand moved to the nurses call button. Mariskka was just down the hall, waiting for her moment to steal my watch. I knew shed come running.

He grabbed my hand, and the shock seared like a hot iron. Crying out, I shook him off and clutched my hand between my breasts, doing my best to sit up with my atrophied stomach muscles and tangled IV.

He leaned in. I have something for you.

What?

He leaned in closer. A second chance.

Second chances were not my forte. As the most celebrated editor in New York City, I had made a killing. I loved the words that trembling writers slid across my desk, those little black flecks that could destroy their lifes dream or launch a career. I bled red ink over every page, slashing words, cutting lines. No one understood how beautiful words were to me, why I tormented the best writers, always pushing them to bring me more. The crueler I was to the best of them, the more they loved me, like flagellants worshipping me as the master of their order. Only at the end, lying here facing my own death, did I understand why. They embraced the pain, thinking it birthed something greater than themselves. I saw how pitifully wrong they were. There was only pain. This is why I was ready to die. When you finish the last chapter and close the book, there is nothing but pain. It would have been better never to have written. Words betrayed me. And for that, I betrayed the best writer of them all.