Nick knelt over Wheeler to make sure he was still breathing, then stood up. He kicked himself mentally—as satisfying as it was, he should not have done that. If his cover wasn’t broken, it was now substantially bent. Real preachers didn’t walk around punching people, no matter how badly they deserved it.

He rubbed his hand over his face with a sigh.

“You okay?” Danby asked in a low voice.

Nick nodded.

“Yeah. But that was a stupid thing to do.”

Danby shrugged.

“Maybe. But he was certainly asking for it, and I enjoyed it.”

The people at their table had returned to their meal, though some looked distracted. Other diners seemed to have gotten over it.

Before Nick and Danby could decide whether to return to their dinner, two white-uniformed crew members rushed into the dining room. Nick had no idea who called them—perhaps a diner at another table—but they clearly hadn’t wandered in on their own. They saw the crumpled Wheeler and hurried over to him. One of them knelt over the unconscious passenger.

“What happened here?” asked the other.

“He cursed the Lord,” Nick said with a straight face.

A look of shock passed over the security officer’s face.

“And you slugged him?”

Nick shrugged.

“Seemed like the Christian thing to do.”

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