The Presence Read online

  Books by

  Davis Bunn

  The Book of Hours

  The Great Divide

  Winner Take All

  The Lazarus Trap

  Elixir

  Imposter

  The Presence

  The Gift

  The Messenger

  The Music Box

  The Quilt

  The Dream Voyagers

  Another Homecoming*

  Tomorrow’s Dream*

  Return to Harmony*

  Lion of Babylon

  Rare Earth

  All Through the Night

  My Soul to Keep

  ACTS OF FAITH*

  The Centurion’s Wife • The Hidden Flame

  The Damascus Way

  SONG OF ACADIA*

  The Meeting Place • The Sacred Shore

  The Birthright • The Distant Beacon

  The Beloved Land

  HEIRS OF ACADIA†

  The Solitary Envoy • The Innocent Libertine

  The Noble Fugitive • The Night Angel

  Falconer’s Quest

  *with Janette Oke †with Isabella Bunn

  The Presence

  Davis Bunn

  © 1990 by Davis Bunn

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Minneapolis, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Ebook edition created 2012

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  This story is a product of the author’s imagination. No parallels to any actual person, company, or events are intended.

  Cover illustration by Dan Thornberg

  Cover design by Sheryl Thornberg

  eISBN 978-1-4412-3361-5

  For IZIA

  Who helps me listen to God.

  God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him,

  though he is not far from each one of us.

  Acts 17:27, NIV

  DAVIS BUNN, a professional novelist for over twenty years, is the author of numerous national bestsellers with sales totaling more than six million copies. His work has been published in sixteen languages, and his critical acclaim includes three Christy Awards for excellence in fiction. Formerly an international business executive working in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, Bunn is now a lecturer in creative writing and Writer in Residence at Regent’s Park College, Oxford University. He and his wife, Isabella, divide their time between the English countryside and the coast of Florida.

  Behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you,

  I will make known my words unto you.

  Proverbs 1:23, KJV

  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said,

  streams of living water will flow from within him.

  John 7:38, NIV

  Contents

  Cover

  Books by Davis Bunn

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Back Cover

  Chapter One

  The first time it happened was at dawn on his fifty-third birthday as he sat in a friend’s boat on Little Frying Pan Lake. TJ Case thought he was having a stroke. He felt a brief moment of regret, a heartbeat of wishing he could tell Catherine once more how much he loved her. Then thought ended and wonder began.

  The fishing trip had been his wife’s idea. Two evenings ago Catherine silently packed the car while he was watching the election returns, laden with anguish for himself and dog-tired satisfaction for the young man whose campaign he had helped to manage. The next morning she bundled him into the passenger seat with a blanket, a pillow, a thermos of coffee, and a Bible. What’s all this? he had asked, not really caring. Emergency aid for the walking wounded, Catherine told him. A little enforced R and R. He nodded, then asked, so where are we headed? It’s all arranged, she said. Jeremy’s loaned us his boat. Told me to keep you out until your head and heart are back in working order. His shoulders bounced in a humorless laugh. Jeremy said that? Catherine started the car, turned solemn dark eyes toward him, and said, you’ve been looking out for everybody but yourself for too long.

  Seven months earlier, after weeks of sleepless deliberation, Thomas Jefferson Case—TJ to his many friends, Thomas to his wife—had decided to cross party lines and back a Republican friend for the U.S. congressional race. The local Democratic party had thrown a major fit and, when that hadn’t worked, had openly sabotaged his own campaign for reelection to the North Carolina State House of Representatives. TJ lost the primary to a man willing to toe the party line, but his Republican friend went on to take the U.S. House seat from the Democratic incumbent. TJ had half-expected both outcomes. Yet his own loss hurt worse than he knew how to put into words.

  The local papers made a big deal about it. In the run-up to the November elections TJ was dubbed “a man of principle” and credited for turning the U.S. congressional race around. Interviewers dwelt long and heavy on his “incredible sacrifice” and seemed to search for ways to make him squirm. TJ remained stoic, saying only that he was a lawyer first and a politician second. What was important, he told them time and time again, was what this young man had to offer.

  The pain, the frustration, the endless wondering whether he had done the right thing—all this lay hidden too deep for anyone to see. Anyone, that is, except Catherine.

  So when TJ awoke in the final hour before dawn he had a tough time believing he was really there; miles from the nearest telephone, snug in the cabin of the luxurious cruiser. The loudest sounds were Catherine’s breathing and the lazy slap of water against the hull.

  The boat was owned by his client and friend, Jeremy Hughes. Catherine called him their closet Midas. TJ called him the last of a dying breed. Everything Jeremy Hughes touched turned to gold. Everything. The man had a second-grade education, hadn’t read but one book in his entire life, yet he made money as easy as other people made mistakes.

  Take his last deal. Jeremy had purchased six hundred acres of worthless bottomland, the junk property that skirted three towns, and contained a rapidly sinking state road, a collective garbage dump, and a lake that had a maximum depth of four feet after a hard rain. It was land so miserable even the hunters steered clear. Jeremy bought it for fifty bucks an acre, brought in a special engineering group from Florida, convinced the surrounding towns to cough up half the engineers’ fee, drained the boggy soil, then
let it sit in dusty desolation for two winters and a summer. The second spring he parceled it into garden plots, hired people from as far as thirty miles away, and truck-farmed the whole six hundred acres. It turned out the land would grow okra the size of sweet corn and melons the size of basketballs. He contracted the produce out to first-class restaurants as far away as New York, charged them top dollar, and made a fortune.

  When a local reporter interviewed him and asked how he had known the soil was so rich, Jeremy replied, “Smelled it.”

  “Speaking of the smell,” the reporter said, “is it true that local townships have been trying to obtain state funds for twenty years to buy all this up and drain it just to get rid of the stink?”

  “Might’ve stunk to some people, sonny,” Jeremy replied. “Smelled like money to me.”

  ****

  Twenty-three years ago, a younger and skinnier Jeremy Hughes had marched into TJ Case’s law office one morning and announced he was looking for an honest man.

  “Don’t have to be smart, but smart’d sure help. More’n anything I need somebody who can keep other people’s lawyers from climbing inside my wallet.”

  TJ stalled in what he called his best lawyer fashion, took in the man towering over his desk. And if Jeremy Hughes did anything well, it was tower. He stood six-foot-five in his muddy construction boots and weighed in at maybe a hundred and seventy pounds. He was a wiry bundle of barely contained energy, with blue-gray eyes that shot icy fire at everything they touched. Jeremy was dressed in what Catherine came to call the Hughes Formal Wear—khaki pants with a rough patch on one knee, checked shirt, and a hunting jacket with a broken zipper. His head was a shock of sandy hair that hadn’t seen a barber for months. His oversized hands looked like shovels, with knuckles all bruised and broken from heavy work.

  TJ asked Jeremy Hughes how he had found the law firm.

  “Now that’s a right interesting story,” he drawled, plopping down in a chair and stretching out legs that seemed to go on for miles. “I’m sitting on a land deal that looks to make me a whole mess of money. Trouble is, you should see the old boy the other side’s got working as their lawyer. Got the eyes of a snake and more oil on his hair than I use in my truck. Handed me this contract with fifty-seven pages of fine print and licked his lips. Yessir, he truly did. Eat me for breakfast is all that boy aims on doin’.

  “I scampered fast as my feet could take me,” Jeremy said. “Got up and out that door like my tail was on fire. Started drivin’ around in my truck, didn’t even know where I was goin’. Sat there at a stoplight like a dummy, watchin’ the lights go from red to green and back to red, and knew I was licked. Can’t do this deal without the other side, see. They own the land right around me. Want to build this humongous complex out there. They’re offerin’ a little cash up front, then a chunk of the development. That’s all fine with me. I got no need of money right now, and these boys ain’t no better or worse’n most builders I’ve met. They’re just out for all they can grab. But their lawyer, now—he’s a piece of work. He don’t aim on leavin’ more’n a greasy spot on the sidewalk when he gets through.

  “So I bowed my head right there at that light, and I prayed. ‘Help me, Lord,’ I said. ‘I can’t do this myself. Show me what I gotta do.’”

  Only four years out of law school, TJ had already developed a successful pose he used with new clients. He reacted like a tortoise sneaking back inside his shell, all watchful eyes and body armor until the fellow ran out of steam. Experience had taught him that he could take about ninety-five percent of what a client said during the first meeting and toss it out the window. His grandfather, the founder of the firm and TJ’s guiding light during his early years, had put it differently. Every time he interviewed a new client, his grandfather had said, he was tempted to walk out the front door and make sure all the hot air hadn’t lifted the building off its foundations.

  A new client spent the better part of a sleepless night deciding what he did and did not want his lawyer to know. At the first meeting the client swept every particle of guilt or error under a monumental pile of words. TJ’s grandfather had once suggested that the firm install a rack of wings and halos in the waiting room. That way new clients could stop in, try on a few pairs, find the ones that set right, save everybody a lot of time and trouble.

  TJ Case’s grandfather had used first meetings to clean his pipes. He had carved out the bowls, cleaned the stems, then polished the exteriors with a soft cloth he kept in his top drawer. A six-piper had been pretty standard. Anything over a ten-piper left him in a bad mood for the rest of the day.

  As a fledgling lawyer, TJ had tried to stop new clients in mid-flow by asking a pertinent question. It hadn’t worked any better for him than it did for anybody else. The clients stopped, looked tremendously aggrieved, said they were just coming to that, and went right back to where they’d left off.

  So TJ began sketching, using his new-client meetings to draw what he called his “winged team.” The first time Catherine saw one of his drawings, she laughed, clapped her hands, and said it looked like an angel that had had a head-on collision with a rocket. She began taping his best efforts to the refrigerator door, right next to their daughter’s finger paintings.

  When Jeremy Hughes started his story, TJ picked up his yellow legal pad, leaned back far enough to hide his artwork from view, and wrote “contract” in the upper right-hand corner. This was the beginning of a list he would review with the client once this Mr. Hughes ran out of steam. Under that he wrote “details of deal,” then “bank,” “quarterly audit for control,” “name of lawyer and group,” and “how about a smaller deal on his own?” Then he started sketching. This fellow was going to wear a football helmet with little Mercury wings for wind shear and flap control.

  All this ceased when Jeremy Hughes announced that he had stopped and prayed. TJ later told Catherine that if the man had done a handstand on his antique leather chair, he would not have been any more surprised.

  His secretary chose that moment to buzz him. It was an unspoken rule that whenever he was meeting with a new client, she would call him fifteen minutes into the conference and say whatever came to mind. TJ called it his escape clause.

  “The neighbor’s cat had eleven kitties under my cellar stairs last night,” she said. “My little girl is in seventh heaven. She’s got it in her head that they’re all hers. I was wondering if I could sue my neighbor. Willful destruction of my peace of mind, or something like that?”

  Normally he would think of something cute to say that would brighten each other’s day with a shared smile. Today he simply said he would have to get back to her about it, and to hold all calls. He set the telephone down, turned his total attention back to Jeremy Hughes.

  “Well, sir,” Hughes continued, “I opened my eyes, turned the corner, and right smack dab in front of me stood the prettiest little grove of dogwoods you ever did see. And there beside it stood the Church of New Zion. I guess you know the one?”

  TJ nodded. It was his family’s church. Had been for over a hundred years.

  “I won’t try to make it out like something it wasn’t,” Hughes said. “Can’t do that and expect you to give me honesty in return. Nossir. Truth is, I was a tad concerned when I saw the preacher out front, changing the Sunday announcement board. Had to stop and think when I realized where I was. But the answer to my prayer was maybe right there in front of me. So I said, Hidy, Lord, and went over to introduce myself.”

  Hughes chuckled. “The reverend wasn’t havin’ a bit of me when I first got there. Like to have froze me up solid, what with that face of his all clamped down hard as stone.”

  TJ nodded. He’d run afoul of Reverend Amos Taylor’s “freeze ’em dead” look often enough as a child. Reverend Taylor had baptized him, married him, and buried more of his relatives than TJ was willing or able to count. For decades now the old man had been preaching and guarding his flock.

  “When he decided I meant what I said and wasn�
�t just some troublemaker, he popped out the biggest smile I’d ever seen. ‘Nigh onto blinded me. Took me into his house, sat me down, and told me ‘bout you. Carolina undergrad and Wake Forest Law, full scholarships to both, that’s what he said.”

  TJ’s antennae worked overtime, searching for the slightest hint of derision, found none. The man was genuine, he decided. Strange as a two-headed shoat, but genuine.

  “Always had a great admiration for somebody with education. Envy, too,” Hughes said easily. “My daddy was a backwoods country farmer. Never had much use for schoolin’. He said anybody who could sign his name and read the Bible knew all he needed to know. I’ve carried that burden with me all my life. Hardest test of faith the good Lord ever gave me was learnin’ how to forgive my daddy.”

  A pang of old heartache struck TJ. He wondered if Reverend Amos had said anything about his own father to this man, decided not, wondered for the thousandth time if that wound would ever heal.

  “Now maybe you see why I gotta find myself an honest man. I don’t need just any lawyer. Nossir. Fact is, I could stand on any street corner in this city, whistle one time, and be up to my ears in lawyers. I need somebody I can trust. Somebody who’ll tell me where the bear traps are. I told all this to your Reverend Taylor. He’s a remarkable man, by the way. Know what he said?”

  TJ shook his head. He couldn’t imagine what Reverend Amos had told this gangly white man in his patched trousers and muddy work boots.

  “Said he always liked to hear a man pray. Best way he’d found to look inside a man’s heart. Said it was almost as though the Holy Spirit was listening with him, giving him a second pair of ears.” Hughes’ eyes had a luminous quality. “So that’s what I’d like to ask you to do. Before I trust you with my family’s future, if you see what I mean. What I’m asking, Mr. Case, is whether you’d be willing to pray with me.”

  It was all TJ could do to nod his head. He was too astonished to speak.

  Jeremy Hughes hunkered toward the edge of the chair. “I’ll just say a few words; then you can take over.”