Righteous02 - Mighty and Strong Read Online Free PDF Page A

Jacob relaxed. “Give it a week or two. Nothing will come of this, you’ll see.”
    “Very well, we’ll set that aside for the moment.” Dr. Hess returned Jacob’s resume to the file, then closed it and twisted his pen closed before replacing it in the breast pocket of his suit jacket. Then he tented his hands in front of his face. “Now I want to discuss the more serious matter.”
    “What serious matter?” Jacob asked. A cold knot returned to his stomach.
    “An FBI agent stopped by my office this morning, asking about you.”

    Chapter Four:
    The drive from Manti to Salt Lake took two hours, but Jacob still hadn’t digested the news that the FBI was asking about his work at the hospital. He’d fully cooperated with their investigation four years earlier, had testified in court against leaders of his own church.
    Jacob wasn’t ready to talk to Fernie. He needed to clarify his own thoughts. And so he stopped at Temple Square to look for his sister, Eliza. He parked across the street, made a quick trip into the French patisserie at the mall.
    Temple Square was a single square block that encompassed the Salt Lake Temple itself, plus the dome-shaped historic tabernacle, the gothic Assembly Hall, and a pair of visitor’s centers. A massive wall surrounded the block, with visitors funneled through a handful of entrances. The entrances served double duty as a security checkpoint and a place for missionaries to approach visitors.
    Mormonism, as a movement, had grown from a few hundred members in 1830 to millions today. Some of the growth came from a high birth rate, the rest from baptizing waves of converts. Two young women spotted him and gave him an encouraging smile. His sister was not one of them, so he gave a polite nod and continued on his way. No need to get sucked into a discussion about Joseph Smith.
    The first thing he did upon running the first missionary gauntlet was glance at the temple on the east side. Only card-carrying members of the mainstream church could enter the temple itself, so Jacob had never been inside. He’d had ancestors who’d helped build it, however, and couldn’t drive past or walk through Temple Square without feeling a stirring of pride.
    The temple was granite, with six spires, almost like a European cathedral in appearance, except for the gold-leafed statue of the Angel Moroni blowing a trumpet atop one of the spires.
    In Blister Creek, the headquarters of his family’s church, they had built a smaller-scale temple, with an interior layout that was midway between that of the Salt Lake and Manti Temples. It also had a Holy of Holies, where the Lord himself might appear to speak with his prophet. So far as Jacob knew, Salt Lake was the only mainstream temple to share this feature.
    Jacob doubted the LDS prophet spent much time in the Holy of Holies chatting it up with either Heavenly Father or Jesus. He seemed a nice old man, but just a bureaucrat.
    But when has Father ever talked to the Lord, either?
    He found Eliza with her companion in the North visitor’s center, chatting in Spanish with a pair of tourists. They stood next to the Christus, a white marble statue, eleven, maybe twelve feet high with outstretched hands to show where he’d been nailed to the cross. Jacob thought Jesus looked a little too Nordic, but the statue attracted attention.
    He watched his sister, not the statue. Eliza wore a dress, a touch of makeup, and her hair was cut shoulder-length, not the waist-length braids she used to wear. She wore a name tag that read ‘Sister Christianson, Cardston, Alberta.” She’d blossomed since leaving the church for the mainstream Mormons. If she’d followed Father’s command, she’d be some guy’s n th wife, probably nursing one child and pregnant with another.
    When the couple left, Eliza turned, spotted him, and came to give him a hug.
    “Wow, your Spanish was great,” he said. “I’m impressed.”
    “You should hear my French.” She rattled something in