The Meek Shall Pt. 04

Please read the first three parts in order.

Frank, Pat and Laurie sat at breakfast in the airport Hilton coffee shop in El Paso. A good night's sleep helped them recover from the exhausting multi-connection flights from Canada, although Frank briefly wondered if the women had slept much in their shared bed.

"I hope we didn't keep you awake, Frank." Pat smiled and squeezed Frank's hand.

"Well, that answers that question," Frank laughed, "but I didn't listen at the door like the first time I was outside that room."

"You mean..." Laurie asked "Oh God,"

"I heard that phrase a lot the time I listened months ago now." Frank said.

Laurie blushed and laughed.

Frank enjoyed his first Texas breakfast in some months. The women chose the more modest pancakes and sausage.

"So what do we do now?" Laurie asked. She knew Frank's general plan, to take Carol away, sneak her over the border and try to convince her of a better way in the house in Grandview, Ontario.

Frank went over the thoughts he had, and his doubts.

"Maybe we should just forget it," he said.

"You can't do that; you know that," Laurie said and took her turn with Frank's hand.

"You're right there. I love her."

They saw a tear in his eye.

"I have decided we can't just throw a hood over her, jab her with tranquilizers and smuggle her north. I think she needs to leave with me, voluntarily, so I'll take her to an isolated place to get her to go with us on her own. The RV is the key to that, and I think I know how I can get her to take a ride with me. I'm going to ask her to save my soul by praying in the wilderness."

"So you get her into the wild, and then what?" Pat asked.

"Here's my idea," Frank said.

Frank rented a small SUV. The trio walked in on Trish, unannounced.

"Why didn't you warn me you were coming?" Trish looked annoyed.

"I was trying to catch you with your feet on the desk, eating a donut and watching cat videos." Frank laughed. "I run a tight ship."

Trish ignored him.

"Are these your side-side-side chicks?" She asked.

Frank made the introductions, and then he got right to business.

"Where's the RV? The Hilton's expensive."

Trish handed Frank the keys and paperwork and directed him to the dealership.

"It's five years old and in great shape. Ted helped me check it out."

"Is that where Computer Boy hit the home run?" Frank asked. Trish blushed. Frank laughed.

"So ladies, you won't be the first to christen it then." Frank winked.

"Hey Laurie, he called us ladies." Pat said.

"I'm insulted," Laurie laughed.

"Trish," Frank said. "If things go well, I want you to ride to New Mexico with these two lost lambs. I'll send you the map and directions. It's a place up in the Gila where Carol and I used to go, wilderness camping, off highway 180. You will drop Pat and Laurie off with their camping gear and then drive the rental back. If Carol doesn't come with me, I'll bring them back."

"Can Ted come for the ride?" Trish asked.

"Can you trust him?" Pat asked. She sounded miffed.

"I do," said Trish.

"Good enough for me," Frank said. "So far, the only bad thing this gal has done is to use the company credit card to buy ice cream."

"You saw that?" Trish asked. "I begged Ted not to, but he insisted I do it. He said you'd never know. I'm so sorry Frank; I betrayed you. Can't you give me another chance?"

"You sound like a cheating wife begging for forgiveness," Laurie said.

"There's a nice Quality Inn at Deming," Frank said. "You and Ted can hit homers there on me."

The laughing bout bonded the group.

It took the rest of the week to get the plan ready. Frank had to endure the thought that Carol probably enjoyed another orgy, but he ignored it and spent the evening watching baseball. He wanted to get to Carol on Monday. She normally only saw Gord on Thursday, had the mansion fuck-fest on Friday and church on Sunday, so no one in the church would miss her until pastor Gord found his cock dry.

Briefly, Frank wondered if he should call Fran, but decided she did not deserve it. For sure, she could never know what happened.

On Monday morning, just as Carol would leave for her office, Frank pulled up in the RV. He parked, blocking her driveway in case she ran for it before he could talk with her. Frank wanted her to come voluntarily. He waited in the vehicle.

Carol placed her briefcase in her car and frowned at the RV in her driveway. She saw the driver and stomped towards it. Frank jumped out.

Frank saw a brief look of love replace the anger on Carol's face, but she soon masked it with more anger directed at Frank.

"Hello Carol. I hope we can talk. I need your help." Frank hoped the sob in his voice sounded real.

"Oh, my love, what's wrong?" Carol rushed towards him. She embraced him with uninhibited love, but then remembered he was a sinner. She stood back.

"I thought you would come back. Fran is too much of a temptation." Carol did not smile, and caught herself. She had accidentally revealed that she knew about Fran and Frank. She hoped Frank didn't think it through and ask why she knew. He seemed distraught.

"I didn't come back for her," Frank said. "You are why I came back. I want you to help me find the Lord." Frank said. "I want to join your fold of holy worship."

Frank sounded sincere, and then she noticed the book in his hand, a King James Bible. She burst into tears of happiness. Frank felt guilty for the lie, but considering that she lied to herself about so much, the feeling flew away. Carol flew into his arms. Despite it all, it felt wonderful to Frank. He had missed these familiar loving arms for two years.

"Oh, yes," Carol cried, "I'll take you to Pastor right now. He will be thrilled."

Carol gripped the Bible along with Frank. She felt a jolt of connection as if the Holy Spirit had united them.

"No," Frank said, "I want you to help me personally, and prepare me for the holy pastor. I have been on my knees constantly, searching for forgiveness. I need lots of quiet time with you in prayer, Carol. We need to spend some time alone. That's why I brought this."

Lies dropped from his mouth easily. He waved at the RV.

"I want to go to pray in the wilderness. Come with me now. The RV has all we need."

"Praise God, thank you Jesus, like Matthew 4, when Jesus went into the wilderness and solidified his love of his father. It says, 'Jesus said to him, away from me, Satan! For it is written: Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only. Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.' I need to be the angel attending to you."

Carol danced wildly in the driveway and praised the Lord. It amazed Frank that she knew the passage by heart. Laurie had helped him prepare this tactic. She had said one could use the Bible to justify anything. Pat said that it would be useless to challenge Carol's faith directly or to disprove it. They wanted to get her out of the clutches of the cult and have a better perspective on sin and reality. That probably meant leaving much of her faith intact.

"Yes, oh God, yes," Carol said. Then she frowned.

"What about my business? I can't leave it for a week."

"Do Jenny and Josh still work for you?" Frank asked.

"Yes, oh yes, they could handle it for a week or two. I admit I have relied on them a lot lately."

"Over two years of you being distracted by your whoreship," Frank thought, "but so what."

He smiled and held out his hand with the Bible. Carol grasped the book once more, and it joined them together. She felt such happiness that she would save Frank at last.

"I'll call them and get ready. When do we leave?"

"Let's go right now, up to the Gila wilderness where we used to camp."

Half an hour later, Carol ran from the house, dressed in her jeans and white T and carried her pack. It all looked so familiar to Frank, and Carol felt the same. Her smile overwhelmed Frank. He remembered why he loved her.

"This is nice," Carol snuggled into the passenger bucket seat. "We never had it this luxurious."

"I'm getting old, I guess." Frank said. "Tents are out, but that bouncing floor had advantages."

He smirked; Carol blushed but felt no guilt at what had once seemed a sinful memory.

The only hard part of the drive into the mountains was that Carol prayed out loud for most of the trip. Frank and never heard the words God and Jesus as much outside of watching a Friday night whoreship orgy at the manse. Frank found it to be a long drive, but it helped that thrall and happiness filled Carol's face.

"Maybe we'll get to fuck," Frank thought. Fucking her or making love to Carol had a secondary importance to Frank. He wanted to protect her and draw her to him emotionally. He wanted her love back, for her to love him more than God. Laurie had already told him that might not happen. Laurie asked if he could share her love evenly. Frank did not know the answer.

"Love isn't a fixed quantity," Laurie had said. "Love grows to embrace all that a person loves."

Frank had to decide if that would be true and enough.

The camp site was on a hill above a canyon and with a wonderful vista to the east. Carol and Frank had camped here before. They could watch the sunrise to warm them from the usually cool night. Best of all, they could not see any hint of civilization in a wilderness detached from human madness.

Madness might call. Frank hoped not.

Frank parked the RV so that the door faced the sunrise. He had to read the manual to use the levelling jacks and extend the awning, but he finished the work with only a few laughs from Carol. It felt like old times.

"Let's pray before we eat," Carol said and drew Frank to kneel on the ground, facing the beauty of the Gila. Carol certainly had the litany and took Frank through a long verbal road, asking for forgiveness and love. Frank had sat through enough bullshit services in the Church of the Abhorrent that he knew when to throw in "thank you Jesus", "praise the Lord" and "Amen" at the right spots. He was glad Carol did not have an overhead projector with worship songs. This prayer thing would become frequent, but Frank knew he had to endure until Laurie and Pat could intervene.

The women helpers had camped in the pre-arranged place just past a pile of boulders about 25 meters from where the RV rested. They had watched the first prayer session, and the two more bouts of prayer that took Carol and Frank past breakfast. They had not slept together, although Carol had hugged Frank hard and gave him a chaste kiss on the lips before bed.

The plan called for the women to ease their way into Carol's life. It was devious and yet genius, Frank thought. Laurie dressed in camp style clothes, but wore her clerical collar, and an elaborate cross hung from her neck. She contrived to kneel just in sight at the rocks and pray in ever-increasing volume. It worked.

Carol had just thrown a pan of dishwater into the scrub when she heard the first faint sounds of prayer. It startled her, and she squinted to see a woman kneeling at the rocks. It reminded her so much of Christ praying in the wilderness on that Sunday school poster. Carol's heart filled with Christian love and just a touch of human lust. Laurie had a quiet beauty that suggested holy love and perhaps carnal worship. In Carol's view, this strange devotee might be a vessel of sacrament as that which she found in Pastor's house with the other women believers.

Carol approached Laurie and waited for the prayer to finish. She then knelt beside Laurie and prayed. With her eyes closed in prayer, Carol did not see the satisfied smirk on Laurie's face. The pastor waited for her target to finish. From watching the videos, Laurie knew Carol held genuine and deep faith. The spiritual jujitsu that she intended would rely on Carol's strengths to lead her to a better path.

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.