thought

for a more comfortable pair of shoes, then sat on the bumper to change.
He'd had such hopes, once. His message had seemed so perfect—it had certainly been lucrative enough! He'd begged his followers to support his ministry, and they had: right into a palatial home, swimming pools, a multimillion dollar Midwest television station . . . . Oh, yes. All the things he'd longed for growing up in the North Carolina hills had been his at last.
There'd been times, he mused as he tied his shoes, when he'd actually thought there might really be a God.
His clean-shaven, neatly scrubbed image—bolstered by his carefully maintained accent and the rolling hellfire