At about noon the next day, Hope and Patrick sat down with David and Samantha, and Sam and Ashleigh, in a makeshift boardroom in the maternity ward. The female twins knew that something was going to be needled out of them, but they did not know what.
In the hospital room right next door was Tammy, who was sitting down with Dawn while Ruthie was holding Chip. Also there was Felicity, who was on a bit of a high after smoking one of Ruthie's herbal cigarettes. She thought since they were herbal, they wouldn't hurt her baby.
Ruthie thought the same with hers. But she seemed worried, as was Felicity.
"Tammy," Ruthie asked, "do you have any idea what's going on?" She gently rubbed Chip's nose.
"No Ruthie," said Tammy, kissing Dawn on her forehead. "But I just can't believe it was Arnold Thompson, Junior who raped Lucy! The estrangement from his father is well known in the evangelical community, but there's no way he could have become so unhinged that he would be driven to target her, Cecilia and Meredith, and all those other victims. He must have known what he was doing."
"I can't believe that coward actually wore a corset, tightly," said Ruthie. "I know when I wore mine the day I got married to Hope, I got help from a college buddy of mine who lived in Atlantic City. Although she was gentle in tightening it up, it took everything in me from grimacing in pain until Hope and I got into the honeymoon suite. When she took mine off, it was a relief. I know it was for her when I took hers off too."
"And the sex that night was good, wasn't it?"
"Oh yeah! Even though we were both bruised. But the pain was definitely worth it. We were at it for hours."
"Tammy," asked Felicity, "you can tell us girls. When did you decide to make love to Patrick?"
"Four weeks before we actually did, Felicity," said Tammy. "When you know it's the right guy, you know. I'm sure that's why Ruthie and Peter lost their virginity to each other, when they were just fifteen. Right, Ruthie?"
"The first time was a bit messy," admitted Ruthie, "but every time we did it after that until we got engaged at least, and we called a time out after our engagement until we got married, we knew it was right. Felicity, I know it's probably wrong asking you since you are The Other Woman, even though we're best friends now ... but when did you know it was time to seduce Peter?"
"The moment I laid eyes on him, after we cybered all that time," said Felicity. "Um, Tammy ...why are you asking us?
"Ruthie," said Tammy, "I have a feeling my husband and your wife are going to ask Samantha and Ashleigh to do something I don't think is right, especially at their age and even more so with their delicate conditions. Their babies need all the nurturing they can get while they're inside their mothers' bodies and this really throws a loop into that. By the time I get back to work, the girls are going to be due. Felicity, can you help them with their mommy shopping and stuff?"
"I'm always ready for them!"
"Tam, Fel ...What do you think it may be that Patrick and Hope want?" asked Ruthie.
Tammy leaned over and whispered something into her friend's ear.
"Oh no. Not that."
But Tammy nodded. Ruthie cringed. She then whispered the same thing to Felicity.
"Oh God!" said Felicity, almost gagging. "I need to get another one of those herbs, pal ... and a drink."
"Here you go with the cig, actually the pack," said Ruthie, "and there are a few bottles of lemon vodka in the cooler of Hope's and my car. Here's the keys."
As Felicity headed out of the room, Ruthie told Tammy, "I'd never do that. But I guess desperate times ..."
"You're damned if you, and you're damned if you don't?" asked Tammy rhetorically.
Ruthie nodded silently. Tammy rolled her eyes. But they knew it might be their only hope. They shared a fist bump.
Next door, Samantha had something on her mind for Hope and Patrick.
"Go ahead, Samantha," said Hope.
Samantha was holding her fiancé's hand tightly. Ashleigh did so with Sam, too.
"Ashleigh and I have a few questions," said Samantha. "First, why aren't you asking someone familiar with the workings of everything going on?"
"Like whom?" asked Hope.
"Well, Jeremy and Ashley in London."
"They're setting up the sting."
"The Lumby siblings, Lisa and Tom." Samantha pointed sideways in no particular direction, as if to say they were better candidates than she and her sister.
"They're setting up a fake hack that the elder Thompson can exploit. And, before you ask, so are Mike and Elena in Sydney, as a backup."
"Okay ... fine. So where's the money flowing to, and from, now?"
"Tom has told us that Thompson set up a new numbered account to where he hasn't been before."
"Where is that, Hope?" asked David.
"Faroe Islands," said Patrick. "This information was confirmed by Elena a week ago."
"The Faroes. That's a tax haven territory ... ," said Ashleigh.
"... of Denmark," finished Sam.
"Right," said Patrick. "And I can assure you, the fathers of Torshavn do not appreciate their goodwill being used for money laundering, especially at that scale. They're offering their full cooperation with us all."
"Before you tell us what you have in mind," said Ashleigh, "Samantha and I have some major questions for you two."
"Like what?"
Samantha felt both her babies kick inside of her. She rubbed her tummy to calm them down. Ashleigh did the same with her baby.
"I honestly don't understand you two," continued Ashleigh. "Neither does Samantha."
"What do you mean?" asked Hope, a bit defensively.
"Hope ... until a year and a half ago, you two were at loggerheads. You barely admitted each other existed. But not only did you two reconcile, you haven't just made up for lost time, you two are closer than any brother and sister we know, anywhere. Samantha and I are worried that you guys, while you're as close as is legally permitted for siblings, are too close for comfort and you might ... well, fall into each other's arms."
Hope and Patrick looked at each other in shock.
"Wait a minute," said Patrick. "You actually think my sister and I would ..."
"Don't say you haven't been tempted," said Samantha. "Either of you."
"No!" said Hope angrily. "How can you even think that?"
"Then how have you become so close?" asked Ashleigh. "Given your history, it really doesn't make sense. It takes years to heal that kind of a rift - not months, or even just weeks."
"Since Patrick and I have reconciled," said Hope, "we have spent three to four hours every Saturday going over everything. Where we disagree on doctrine. What the Church's proper role is in a secular society. How much should our church give back. And we've also gone over where things broke down between us. Most times, we actually agree. Sometimes we don't, but you'll never find two human beings who agree on absolutely everything. Well, maybe the Kim family in North Korea."
The sisters laughed.
"But ... now, there isn't a thing we wouldn't do for each other ... or each other's families. We truly love each other, as siblings, and that's all there is to it. If it looks like we're too close for you, we're not that close. We promise you that."
"You know what the crazy thing is, Ashe and Sammy?" said Patrick. "If we had just talked honestly to each other in our teens, like we do now, we could have toppled our parents twenty years ago, put them in jail for all their sex crimes and given back all the billions they stole from parishioners and the money markets. And put the ministry on a level headed footing, and probably have kept all of our followers while steering them on the truth of what the Bible says, which isn't prosperity. More importantly, Hope would have made sure my mother never took advantage of me. Now Mom faces capital murder charges because she did. Like my sis and I have said, we don't want her to die at the hands of a human being, but we both decided if she gets the death penalty we won't campaign to stop it."
"That's how you really feel about it?" asked David.
"That doesn't sound like you guys at all," added Sam.
"It hurts," said Hope quietly. "She and Dad are our parents in name only, but they are still our blood. But if spilling blood will restore Patrick's sense of honor, then so be it."
"We're still not entirely convinced that you haven't been tempted, either of you," said Samantha.
"What are you two trying to tell us?" asked Patrick in exasperation.
"Ashe and I have ... um ..."
"We made love when we were fourteen," said Ashleigh. "Three times over the course of five months, when were were about eighty percent filled in, both of us. We're not proud of it, but we were so disconnected from our parents at that point ... well, we didn't care. You're familiar with the expression, 'How can it be wrong, if it feels so right'?"
Patrick and Hope were horrified.
"Dolly wouldn't appreciate one of her song lyrics being used like that. Sheez!" said Patrick. "That's just ... I'm sorry that you two were driven into each other's arms by your parents' negligence, but that's not an excuse. Hope and I didn't do that, even think about that, when we were getting along as kids. That's wrong in so many different ways. I'm glad you've told us, but ... we ... we can't condone that kind of behavior."
"That's not the whole story either, Patrick," added Samantha. "About a year before we met Sam and David, we had boyfriends. Actually, we had the same boyfriend, who was double-crossing both of us. We didn't know he was playing both of us until about six months in. So we decided to get back at him."
Hope and Patrick looked at each other. They never imagined that the Atkinson sisters would ever have committed incest, and were still disgusted. But it seemed that they later had played precisely the game the elder siblings wanted them to play now - "Sisters Who Share".
"Let me guess," said Hope. "I've seen erotic films that started just like this, and so has my brother. You both confronted him, said you both forgave him, and wanted to do a threesome with each other. You sat him down while you two did each other. Then you tied him up, both went down on him, and left the room, with him still tied up. He was only found by housekeeping at the hotel the next day."
"Yes!" said Samantha.
Sam and David laughed. They knew about this even before they were formally introduced - it became a legend at high school and Samantha and Ashleigh were considered heroes. The first thing the brothers told the sisters on their initial double date was that they didn't care. When the sisters admitted to Sam and David what they had done to each other, they immediately forgave their loves.
"So what do you think?" asked Hope.
"So ... you want us to do that, again," said Samantha. "'Sisters Who Share'."
"Yes."
"We can do that! So how is this going to work?"
"I'll tell you," said Hope. "But I can't stress enough you have to get this exactly right."
"Okay," said Ashleigh. "We'll definitely do it. But there's something else you need to know."
"Oh my God, what other sex games have you played?"
"Uh, not that, Hope. There are two things. First, we've told you this in confidence. I'm serious guys, this has to stay between the six of us. Sam and David have vowed they'll never tell their siblings or their parents. Not even Ruthie. You can't tell Felicity, Tammy, Rod or Shelby. When all of this blows over, for good, then it'll be okay. For now, we have to keep this a secret!"
"You have both our words. What else?"
"Hope, you're not going to like this at all, but we've got to say it," said Samantha. "You know the über Enigma emulator that the Parkers created?"
"Yes," said Hope.
"Well ... in addition to being wannabe theologians, Ashe and I are also mathematicians. We both got scholarships to several universities, although we've both decided that we do want to become ministers after all!"
Hope and Patrick were delighted.
"Be that as it may," said Ashleigh, "we do know very intricate math, calculus, linear algebra and so forth. Six months ago ... we cracked the code while doing some random hacking. We didn't realize it was your code until two days ago, but we figured it out."
"WHAT?!" screamed Hope and Patrick.
"And we're both just seventeen. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if we could crack it, someone else a lot older could. I'm convinced that every step your gang has taken the last eighteen months or so, the bad guys know about."
"And unless y'all come up with something new and better, and fast," said Samantha, "we're all toast."
"What tipped you offed that it was about us?" asked Patrick.
"A message from an anonymous account," said Ashleigh. "We though it might be another CIA operative helping you out, but this one had the message ... FOE - LGA - LHR - TLV."
"Topeka - LaGuardia - Heathrow - Tel Aviv. That's a typical flight plan, especially with a commuter jet. Unless ..."
Patrick's jaw dropped.
"Who was the recipient?" he asked.
"The guy ... can't remember his name ... whoever took over from Penny Flynn," said Samantha.
"He and Thompson, they're going to blow up something! Something big. But what?"
"If I was a betting woman ... the Cave of the Patriarchs. And just possibly, with one of the leftover dirty bombs when Flynn's plot was aborted ... or maybe even a miniature nuke. That second one can be done, trust me.
"I mean, what better way to start a huge Middle East war than by destroying the one site holy to Judaism, Islam and Christianity? And throwing up a bomb of atoms into the air in the process? This will make the massacre there years ago look like a family picnic. Hope, Patrick ... we don't want to blame ourselves for keeping this to ourselves and something really bad happening. This is way over our heads. You and the rest of the ministers are the only ones who can stop this."
"Girls," said Hope, "thanks for telling us this. We appreciate your honesty, on everything you've told us. Now, please find the administrator of this hospital and tell him we need to book the largest room that can fit all of our families. All the kids included, since they know about the overall operation too. We also have to get Ruthie's other siblings and their spouses on conference call - and the moles we mentioned earlier too. We don't have four weeks to ring in the elder Thompson. We may only have seventy-two hours."
"When do you need to set it up?" asked Samantha.
"One hour, Samantha. Patrick, get your wife. I know she doesn't need this the day after your twins were born, but we really have run out of time."
"Sure thing, sis," said Patrick. He kissed Hope on her left temple, and bolted out of the room.
Sam and David helped up their fiancées. Walking as fast as the women could with their babies inside of them, the Gang of Four made way to the executive floor of the hospital.
Meanwhile, Hope went out the front door. She asked Felicity to bum her one of Ruthie's herbals. She also asked for one of the coolers. Hope lit it up, drank from the bottle offered to her, and took a very long time to inhale the herbs. At this point, she wouldn't have minded pot.
But all three women were about to get a stern lecture about their habit ... from Matt and Sarah.