Frank had watched from inside the RV. He did not want to be outside and have Laurie accidentally look his way and perhaps alert Carol of the connection, and he suppressed a laugh over the exaggerated praying of both women. Laurie might be cynical, but Carol was sincere.
Pat watched from a hiding spot behind the rocks. As a professional, she evaluated Carol's body language and tone. One thing she noticed, Carol had a brief flash of physical lust when she looked at Laurie. Pat was not jealous, but she found it interesting.
"Hello, my sister," Laurie finally said and extended her hand. "I'm Laurie."
"I'm Carol, sister," Carol extended her hand. She noticed Laurie's cross and collar.
"I see you are a pastor, of what church?"
"I'm from Canada. We are here on vacation. The Gila is beautiful. I like to wear my collar when praying. Like this place, it makes me feel closer to God."
On opposite sides of the spot, Frank and Pat both had the same admiration that Laurie could pile on the bullshit, but they knew that only a trained pastor could pull off the rescue. Laurie had to go verse to verse with the zealot.
Laurie paused and eyed Carol.
"I see something troubles you, sister." Laurie said.
"Oh, I'm only thoughtful. I am here with my husband and trying to lead him to the Lord."
Carol did not know why she told that to this stranger, yet she felt she could trust this visiting pastor. Carol realized she had not had a real confidant at her church. Most of the women in the congregation were not involved in the sacred rites, and those that were seemed more interested in the pleasurable worship than in forming any deep bonds. Carol tried to resist the lustful thought that kept trying to invade her mind.
"I just don't know if I have the tools to lead Frank to God. That's why I wanted to take him to pastor. He could save him as he did for me."
"I can help," Laurie said. Her lips smiled and her eyes seemed to massage Carol. "I am a pastor, too."
"Oh, would you? Can you pray with me more?"
The pair reverted to prayer for the next twenty minutes. Frank finally had enough and stepped outside, slamming the RV door and attracting the women. From that point, Laurie and then Pat became guests at the RV, sharing dinner, star gazing and late night devotions and prayer. Frank had to take part, as it was his soul they were supposedly saving.
Pat could not stomach too much of what she thought to be silliness and faded into the shadows; however, she would watch and evaluate from the darkness. Over the next few days, a routine developed of early Morning Prayer, some hiking and perhaps serious discussions about Frank's salvation in the afternoons, and the same dinner and devotion rituals in the evening. Frank slept in the pull-out bed while Carol had the little stateroom. Both longed to share a bed, but Frank knew Carol had not decided he had found god and Carol quietly prayed before each sleep that she could resist her sinful lust.
Four days passed and Carol bonded with Laurie and, to a lesser extent, with Pat. If Carol thought that the two Canadian women were lovers, she never said. Laurie said she and Pat were childhood friends.
"I know we want to get her to go voluntarily with us to Grandview," Frank said to Pat, "but we need to move soon, I hope. The water is getting low."
By the fifth day, Carol and Laurie had many private prayer sessions. Frank had noticed that the two hugged more often and entwined their arms while praying. He was jealous of both women.
"Tomorrow is Monday," Pat said, "and Laurie is going to invite you both to come to Canada. She thinks Carol is bonding with her. I see looks of lust from Carol towards Laurie. From your video, I know she is bi."
"Does that bother you?" Frank asked. "I know you love Laurie."
"I don't own her, Frank. We are tight, and all things being equal, exclusive, but we separate sex from our commitment and only demand honesty. We already have discussed the possibility of sharing with another." She looked at Frank.
"Me?" Frank asked. "It's good for my ego that two hot chicks like me, but I would never come between you."
"Let me put it this way," Pat smirked. "If Laurie and Carol screwed, I would be fucking you so fast your head would spin."
Pat kissed Frank hard on the mouth and held him back with two arms.
"If you came between us, we would all be naked in bed and you would beg for mercy."
"Laurie and I have discussed it. If it takes seducing Carol to get her away from the cult, we are both agreed that it must be done. Laurie also says if we hurry and declare you saved, Carol will fuck your lights out. She loves you, Frank. God knows why."
Pat winked and kissed Frank again, but this time it was tender.
"We had better wait until Grandview for my salvation," Frank said. "I want to get to where I don't have to share her beliefs, which I never will, but I want her love and her to accept that she could believe and not insult her god by loving me. I want Carol, my friend, as much or more than Carol, my uninhibited slut lover, but I'm just afraid that if her religiosity fills her heart, there will be a barrier and no room for me. We won't have an easy loving relationship like we had before."
"The key is to find what her deep spiritual need is and fill that need." Pat applied her psychology understanding.
"I think it began because her mother was and still is a narrow, judgemental bitch who threw Carol onto the street for having teenage hormones." Frank said. "They brainwashed Carol as a kid in those bigoted religious beliefs, and I think they resurfaced. In a way, both our lovemaking and the fucking in the church come from her hating her mother."
"All humans spiritually need to hope and understand, Frank. Myth and religion have grown from that need, the need we all have. The cult Carol fell into provided that hope, purposeful activity, ritual related to that hope and reward. In their case, the rewards are both carnal and heavenly. Sex is their control and their reward combined. Presenting sanctified hedonism as the path to salvation is a neat trick. Making the division between us and them, the sinner and the saved, is the trap they used to capture people like Carol into the cult."
"Perhaps there is more like Carol." Frank thought of Fran, but he did not know if the story she told him about her life had any truth. He knew she had lied about her goals in seducing Frank.
"Let's just concentrate on Carol for now." Pat said.
"Suites me," said Frank, "but we need to get home as soon as we can."
"We really need to get Carol willingly to cross the border. That's Laurie's job." Pat said.
Frank ran into an unexpected bump. With the growing frequency of Laurie praying one on one with Carol, Frank had time to work on the possibility of destroying the Church of the Abhorrent. He had a firm satellite internet link and his onion router which was a sophisticated VPN. He logged into the church business computer and began downloading more data showing ongoing hidden transactions overseas.
Pat watched him work as she considered what traits he had that would help re-connect with Carol. Suddenly, Frank furiously tapped a few keys and frantically operated the mouse on his laptop.
"Damn," he said. "I have to clean this machine and get out."
Frank had seen a familiar signature on the church data base and felt danger. He withdrew, severed his internet connection and ran a sophisticated scrub of his recent activity in his hard drive and memory. He face-timed Trish.
"Hey kid," he didn't waste time on greetings, "go to the recent downloaded file on server B, the server in Australia, and run the deep scan. I'll send you a binary code for the signature you are looking for. Snip that bit out. If you find it, and download it onto a thumb drive, not, I repeat not onto your hard drive. Yank the thumb immediately and courier it to my address in Grandview. Then run a Z scan on everything."
"God, boss, who's after you, the Russians?" Trish asked as her fingers flew over her keyboard. She had done this several times on customer servers when they had discovered worms and Trojans.
