The Trinity Game

what they’d left behind.
    “Nobody’s following,” he said.
    “Well, that’s something,” said Trinity. “Hang a right, there’s a police station up on Magnolia.”
    “Not going to the cops.”
    “Why not?”
    “Samson was coordinating security with the cops, and that was Samson who just shot at us.”
    “What?”
    “It was Samson just tried to kill us.”
    “Shit. Really?”
    “I saw him clearly.”
    “Damn.” Trinity shook his head. “Still, that doesn’t mean—”
    “Another thing: When we arrived, cops all over the hallway outside your dressing room. Same thing when we went to the stage. But when I came out during your sermon, no cops. All gone.” He hung a left, headed south. “You see any when we ran out?”
    “No.”
    “Right. Maybe they’ve got nothing to do with it, but I say we don’t make that wager.”
    Trinity sat in silence for a few seconds, then nodded. “Where we going?”
    “I don’t know. Away from Atlanta.”

Chicago, Illinois…
    S pecial Agent Steve Hillborn straightened his tie as he crossed the high-ceilinged lobby of the FBI Chicago Division Headquarters. He signed in at the counter, clipped his building pass onto his handkerchief pocket, and nodded to the uniformed guard standing at parade rest as he passed through the inner doors.
    Hillborn didn’t usually mind being called in on a Sunday, but he’d promised to meet Fred at five o’clock at the Lakeview Athletic Club’s climbing wall. They’d only been dating a couple months, and Hillborn had been putting a lot of hours in at the Bureau lately, and he didn’t think Fred would enjoy being stood up…again. But that’s the life of a cop’s boyfriend, he thought as he stepped into the elevator, and if Fred couldn’t accept it, the relationship wasn’t gonna last anyway. Better to find out now.
    The text message from his boss, Chicago SAC Winfield Battles, had said simply: Explosion @ Trinity church—Report HQ, 3PM .
    Hillborn worked the Organized Crime desk. A week ago he’d been tasked with opening a file on the Reverend Tim Trinity, and he was glad to be working on something new. Morale had taken a hard hit after their most recent showcase prosecution went tits-up.There’d been a thorough post-mortem on the case, and nobody thought the investigation had been faulty or the evidence lacking. Sometimes you just get a charismatic defense attorney who dances the seven veils and seduces the jury. Sometimes you get a jury of idiots.
    And when you get both, you don’t get convictions.
    So now the federal prosecutor was insisting that
more than enough
evidence still wasn’t enough, and Hillborn’s open files were growing stale. There were few feelings worse than busting your ass on an investigation, proudly presenting your case to the prosecutor as a slam dunk, and being told to go back in search of yet more evidence.
    The new investigation was just beginning, hadn’t really had time to take shape. Tim Trinity was seen as a successful player in the religion industry, who recently added soothsaying to his act. Nobody knew how he was doing it, but his predictions were bang-on, and his prognostication of professional sports had to be giving the gambling business a bleeding ulcer. Hillborn had not yet found a connection to organized crime, but it seemed a fair bet that he’d find one. So he was searching.
    The terrorism guys—and terrorism was still eating most of the Bureau’s resources—were looking at Tim Trinity from another angle, looking for a connection to the Belle Chasse Refinery disaster. Word around the office was they weren’t finding anything.
    Now, with the explosion at Trinity’s church, Hillborn figured on a trip to Atlanta, a trip he’d have to take anyway to interview that reporter—what was her name?—Julia Rothman. It was Rothman who broke the story, she might provide a way in.
    Hillborn stopped at his cubicle to grab the Trinity file, thin as it was, and headed up to the briefing room. Seated around the longtable were Special Agents Robertson and Bock, Toronteli, Bryson, Macfarlane, and a couple of terrorism guys he knew only slightly, who’d flown in from National. They were watching CNN on the large flat-screen monitor mounted on the end wall between the American flag and the whiteboard.
    Hillborn nodded hello to the others, took his seat, and poured himself a coffee as SAC Winfield Battles entered and muted the television. He planted his palms on the table.
    “This is