Blood of the Lamb Read Online Free

yard. The majority of inmates were on the lower compound, but there were enough on the upper to be a serious threat to Nicole.
    What was wrong with Stone? Had he been behind a desk outside the institution too long? Was he that out of touch? Or was it just that, unlike me, he had never heard the detailed confessions of the predators we held captive, never looked into the abyss of their dark hearts?
    “Chaplain,” the warden said by way of greeting as I walked up. “We got back earlier than we expected and I was just giving the Caldwells a tour of the institution. They’re very impressed. Would you like to join us? It’d give you and Bobby Earl a chance to talk,” meaning a chance for Bobby Earl to talk and me to listen.
    “What is Nicole doing on the compound? Shouldn’t she be—”
    “If anyone even looks at Nicole the wrong way,” Stone said, “my nephew will put him in the hospital.”
    I glanced around the compound at all the inmates who were gawking in our direction and knew that, even as appealing as many of them would find Bunny, they weren’t all looking at her.
    When Paul Register, a sex offender I had been counseling, saw me, he quickly looked away.
    “She’s safe, Chaplain Jordan,” Bunny said. “Mr. Stone wouldn’t let anything happen to her in his institution.”
    “That’s right,” Stone said.
    “You worry too much, John,” Bobby Earl said with the smarmy smile of a door-to-door Bible salesman. “You’ve got to learn to trust God more.”
    “It isn’t God I don’t trust,” I said. “Why don’t I take Nicole up to the admin conference room and let her color while you finish the tour?”
    “Chaplain, you’re being silly,” Stone said. “I assure you she’s—”
    “Mama, I’m hot,” Nicole said. “I want to go with Chaplain JJ inside to color.”
    I smiled. Not very many people called me JJ anymore, and I wondered who she had heard refer to me by my initials. Adding chaplain to them was purely her own invention. No one had ever called me Chaplain JJ before, but coming from her it sounded cute, and hinted at what I suspected was a delightful personality.
    Bunny looked at me. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”
    “Not at all.”
    “Okay,” she said.
    “Have her quote Scripture for you,” Bobby Earl said. “I guarantee she knows it better than you. I’ll put hard-earned money on it.”
    Not pointing out that quoting and knowing aren’t the same things or the fact that, though he had plenty of money, none of it was hard-earned—not by him anyway—I took Nicole’s hand and we walked as quickly as we could off the compound, through the front gate, and into the admin building.
    “You’re a preacher like my daddy?” she asked.
    I smiled. “Not exactly like him.”
    “Are you on TV?” she asked.
    “That would be one of the ways I’m not like him.”
    The cool air and shelter from the sun felt refreshing, but couldn’t compare to the relief I felt at having Nicole on this side of the chainlink and razor wire. I still couldn’t believe they had taken her down on the compound. Perhaps the Caldwells were just naive. Not everyone was as sensitized as I was to the danger the concrete and steel held, but it was unimaginable they could put her on display like that, parading her around for all the molesters to see, and Edward Stone should have known better.
    “Are you saved, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Ghost?” she asked.
    “Not so much,” I said.
    She looked puzzled, but let out a small laugh. “You’re silly.”
    Once we had retrieved her coloring book and crayons from Stone’s office, she settled in the head chair at the conference table with them and got right to work.
    For a long moment, I just sat and watched her, finding her intensity and concentration fascinating. As she worked, she narrowed her eyes, furrowed her brow, and talked very softly to herself about what she was doing.
    “Would you like a Coke or a candy bar?” I asked.
    Without looking