Stunt. Like her questioning him had somehow pushed Vega over the edge. Like this was somehow her fault.
Well, ain’t it, darlin’? Ain’t it always?
She looked around, her gaze landing on Church. She stood near the confessional with a couple of crime scene techs, talking quietly while the grim-faced paramedics secured the priest on a gurney. They’d been working for nearly thirty minutes now, trying to stabilize him for transport. She didn’t have to ask to know that they didn’t think he had much chance for survival.
The number I did on you was a hell of a lot worse, remember? You had no business living, but you did it anyway.
She watched as they wheeled him up the center aisle, one of them rushing ahead so she could hold the door open for the rest.
Miracles happen every day. You’re proof of that.
Santos cleared his throat, the sound of it pulling her back to the here and now. “Did you see his face?”
“No. My eyes were still adjusting to the light change.” She shook her head. “It happened too fast.”
“Okay.” Santos flipped his notebook closed and tucked it into the breast pocket of his shirt. “I’m gonna head across the street and see if anyone working the fields caught a look at him as he was fleeing the area.”
She nodded, not bothering to offer to help. He had Alvarez. He didn’t need her. As soon as he was gone Church closed in on her while the techs descended on the crime scene. “You’re making it difficult for me to do the job I was hired for,” she said, keeping her voice low so the techs couldn’t hear her.
Sabrina shook her head. “I should’ve asked you to come with me. If you’d been here, you could have stayed behind while I went after him.”
“You’re right,” Church said bluntly.
“Whatever Ben is paying you, he needs to double it,” she said.
“It’s not like I haven’t earned it,” Church said, deftly ignoring her ham-handed attempt at an apology. It probably made her as uncomfortable hearing it as it made Sabrina to say it. “I’ve drank about a thousand gallons of chamomile tea since hitching myself to your wagon.”
Sabrina laughed, rubbing her knuckles across her cheekbone. “Is it helping?” she said, her gaze drifting from the pair of techs to the confessional. There was something on the bench. Throwing long, candlelit shadows against the wall of the booth. She stood up and walked toward it.
“Hell no.” Church laughed with her. “I’ve assassinated world leaders with less stress than being your pretend partner causes me.”
“Just tell me it was worth it,” she said over her shoulder as she slipped inside the booth. “Tell me you guys found something while I was out here messing things up.”
“Actually, I did,” Church said, her tone going heavy. “I found three murders that fit. College-age girls. Disappeared from local bars. All dumped within a few miles of the abduction site. Torture. Rape. Eyes gouged out. Sound familiar?”
Familiar, yes. But not exact.
It was fun, watching him come into his own. Showin’ him how. Makes me proud to know a part of me is still out in the world, killing …
“—first victim turned up a week after he sent Wade his last letter, but they didn’t happen here. You were smart to widen the search window.”
She was only half listening, most of her attention focused on the object left behind in the confessional. It was a hat. Sabrina crouched in front of the bench, tilting her head so she could catch sight of its front without touching it. “Tucson,” she said as she studied the patch stitched to the cap. “They happened in Tucson.”
Arizona was home to a few major universities. U of A was one of them. The university’s mascot, a white and red wildcat, stood out in sharp contrast to the cap’s bright blue bill.
“How’d you guess?” Church said. Sabrina could feel her standing behind her and she turned, aiming her gaze upward.
I lost my scholarship. Dropped out of college and after a short What the hell am I gonna do now? crisis, applied to Tucson PD. Rode patrol for a few years before I made detective and transferred here …
The conversation she’d had with Mark Alvarez over coffee came back to her like it’d happened only moments ago. It suddenly made perfect sense. The way he’d been able to stay ahead of the investigation. Mislead and redirect them. Plant her DNA under Stephanie Adams’s fingernails. Lure her here. He was a cop.
Just like Wade.
“Where is he?” She stood quickly, giving the sanctuary a quick survey. It was illuminated brightly by the portable klieg lights brought by the crime techs. For the first time she realized that while Santos had been questioning her, his partner was absent. Her gaze landed on the techs again. Something about them bothered her.
Confusion skimmed over Church’s features, wrinkling her brow. She followed her gaze, bouncing it around the chapel before resettling it on her face. “Where’s who?”
“Where’s Alvarez?”
Sixty
Kootenai Canyon, Montana
Four days.
Michael slid his spatula under the pancake and gave it a flip. She’d been gone for four days. No update. No word. Nothing. It was like she’d dropped off the face of the planet. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected after his ill-advised call to Phillip Song. Armageddon? Livingston Shaw himself, delivered to his doorstep, surrounded by Pips? If he were completely honest, a part of him had wanted that. For it to be over, one way or another. A confrontation would finally free him. Instead, he’d gotten more of the same. Silence. Nothing. Waiting.
“Your flapjacks are burning.”
Miss Ettie’s voice snapped him back. She was right. Smoke was beginning to curl up from the skillet in front of him, carrying the smell of charred batter and chocolate. “Shit,” he muttered as he jerked the skillet off the burner. He shot an apologetic smile over his shoulder at the pair sitting at the kitchen table. “Sorry, guys.”
Christina gave him an indifferent shrug while Alex stared out the window like he was waiting for something. He’d been doing that a lot lately. Most days his behavior was puzzling at best, leaving Michael to wonder if he even knew what was going on, but every once in a while he caught a sharpness in the boy’s gaze that told him Alex Koto saw and understood more than he pretended to.
“Why don’t you let me take over,” Miss Ettie said as she gently pried the spatula from his grip. “Besides, I think everyone’s about finished with breakfast.” Some unseen signal passed between the old woman and the kids at the table and they stood to carry their plates to the sink. He moved away from the stove, leaning against the counter with a small nod. He’d made enough pancakes to feed the four of them for a week.
“Okay.” He peeled one without chocolate chips off the stack and handed it down to the dog at his side. She craned her neck slightly before nipping it softly from his hand. She licked her chops and whined, pressing her head against his knee. Without Sabrina, Avasa was as lost as he was, but at least she wasn’t sitting at the back door anymore, waiting for her to come back.
“You’re done moping,” Miss Ettie said sternly as soon as the children left the room to wash up. “I want you out of this house.”
He almost laughed. Not many people in his life saw fit to boss him around like that. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m serious, Michael,” she said, using her tiny frame to shoulder herself in farther between him and the mess he’d made. “And I don’t mean go out to the barn and listen to that damnable radio hiss static at you for hours on end. I want you to get your boots on and go for a walk.” She picked up the spatula and started to scrape burnt chocolate from the bottom of the skillet. “A long one.”
His gaze found its way to the antique larder that’d been converted into gun storage. It’d been a few days since anyone had walked their fence line. Not since Sabrina had taken Christina out with her the day Maddox showed up. It seemed l
ike a lifetime ago.
“Okay, you win.” He looked down at the dog again before nodding. “Whaddya say, girl, feel like a walk?”
Avasa chuffed at him softly before ambling over to the back door to sit down and wait.
–––––
Thirty minutes later, Michael carried his boots outside and sat down to pull them on, loosening the laces just enough to slip his foot inside before pulling them tight again. He glanced at the barn. Aside from his little field trip, he’d been within sprinting distance of it—and the radio inside—since Sabrina left. He’d fallen asleep last night on the hood of his car, listening to dead air, just like Miss Ettie had accused him of.
“Mogu li ya poyti s toboy?” Can I go with you?
Michael glanced up from the boot he was lacing to find Alex standing beside him. He’d traded his sneakers for sturdy boots and added a lightweight jacket. A .22 rifle was slung over his bony shoulder.
It was the first time the boy had spoken directly to him in days and the first time he’d ever shown interest in spending time with him. “Da,” he said to the boy, nodding his head before standing. Avasa was already waiting for him, sitting at the lip of the bridge, her tail swishing impatiently in the dirt. “Ty gotov idti?” Are you ready to go? Instead of answering, the boy nodded on his way down the stairs. Michael chuckled softly as he shouldered his TAC-50 before following suit.
They walked for a while in silence, the dog jogging a few paces ahead, nose to the ground, before circling back to wedge herself between them. Every few minutes, she’d catch scent of something up ahead and trot off to investigate before coming back.
The grass along the fence line had grown thick and high. It shuttered and hissed, rattled by a low-sweeping wind. The sound of it caught Avasa’s attention and she shot forward before banking left to dive into the waving sea of green. They both stopped walking, Alex watching the dog while Michael watched him. Something was going on with the boy. Something beyond his carefully blank stares and firmly held secrets.
“Pochemu ty zdes’, Aleks?” Why are you here, Alex? The question came out of nowhere. If anyone had asked him the same thing, he’d have told them that Alex was here because he was like the rest of them. Lost and alone. Despite the truth of it, Michael was suddenly sure that his orphan status had nothing to do with why Alex was here.
The boy turned toward him, dark gaze sharp. “Potomu chto vy menya nuzhno.” Because you need me.
Michael opened his mouth to tell him that he knew. He knew the boy could speak English. That he could probably speak it all along. He knew he was hiding something. Or that he was hiding from something. “Look—”
Alex held up a hand, palm flat and pressed against the air between them. “Shhh,” he said without even bothering to look at Michael, the sound blending perfectly with the wind as it whispered through the grass. “Sushchestvuyet kto-to zdes’.” There is someone here.
It wasn’t the boy’s words that silenced him. It was the certainty behind them that had him lifting the TAC to fit it against his shoulder, eye pressed to the scope. He caught sight of their cattle—no more than a couple hundred head—a few miles out. Their heads were hung low, big, soft jaws rolling slowly as they chewed up the meadow. They looked relaxed. Undisturbed.
“I don’t see anything,” he said quietly, sweeping the rifle from left to right. He lowered the TAC to look at the boy. “YA ne vizhu nich—”
Just then Avasa shot through the grass, ears tucked against her sleek skull, the strip of hair running down the length of her spine standing straight, even more ridged than before. She stood in front of him, lips peeled away from her teeth in a quivering, silent snarl.
Michael immediately lifted the TAC to do another sweep just as another gust of wind swept through the valley. That’s when he caught the flutter of it. A spent parachute, nearly the same bright green as the grass that surrounded it, billowing gently in the breeze.
Shit.
“Do you remember what my friend Ben looks like?” he said, his tone held low. When the boy didn’t answer he chanced a quick look, pulling his eye off the scope. “No more pretending, Alex. I know you speak perfect English. Now, do you remember what Ben looks like?”
Alex hesitated a moment before he nodded. “Yes.”
“Good.” Michael eyed the .22 rifle Alex had slung over his shoulder. “Go home. You see anyone you don’t recognize, kill them,” he said, pulling his gaze away from the rifle to find the boy watching the distance, eyes aimed in the same direction he’d been looking just a moment before. “Can you do that?”
Alex lifted his gaze, settling it on his face. “What about the big one?” he asked in a dispassionate tone. “Should I kill him too?”
The big one … It took Michael a second to realize he was talking about Lark. A few seconds longer to shake his head. “No. But you can shoot him in the leg if you want.”
“Okay,” Alex said before turning to head back the way they’d come without saying anything else.
Sixty-one
Yuma, Arizona
“Alvarez?” Church craned her neck for a moment, trying to see what was inside the booth that sparked such an odd question. “No. I haven’t seen him since …” The confusion on her face cleared up, replaced by skeptical comprehension. “He left the conference room to grab a cup of coffee.” She shook her head. “Santos and I were buried so deep in research, I just assumed he’d grabbed some files off the stack and settled in at his desk.”
“But you never actually saw him do it,” Sabrina said quietly.
“No, I just …” Church shook her head. “What are you thinking, Kitten?”
Sabrina took a second look around, just to make sure, half hoping she’d spot him in some dark corner talking to an overlooked witness. No witness. No Alvarez. “Alvarez didn’t duck out for coffee.” Aside from the pair of crime scene techs, they were the only two in the building. “While we were all focused on finding him, he took the opportunity to leave the precinct.”
“Him? You mean Alvarez?” Church narrowed her eyes for a moment. “You think he did this?”
Hearing Church say it out loud, it sounded crazy. A lot of people went to U of A. If she complied a list of people who’d attended the college during the years the killings Church and Santos found, it’d probably be as long as her leg. But how many of them moved to Yuma months before the first victim was found? How many of them were cops? How many of them had access to their investigation?
Despite the mounting evidence, Church was still having trouble buying it. “But what, that gave him a five- or ten-minute jump on you? No way he had time to get the job done that quickly.”
Ten minutes at best, but once you add in her surprise visit from Phillip Song, Alvarez’s lead nearly tripled. Plenty of time to get here before her. He’d left the room before she’d announced her plan to come here and confront the priest. He’d had no way of knowing she’d be here to interrupt him.
But why now? Had he meant to kill Father Francisco? Had something triggered him, or had it been an impulse? Everything she’d learned about Nulo over the past few days told her that giving into impulse wasn’t how he operated. “What was he doing before he left?” She looked at Church, could feel the desperation coursing through her. “He was sitting at the conference table—was he reading something? A journal or maybe—”
“The lab report.” Church narrowed her eyes for a moment—not at her but at the memories she’d been asked to recall. “On the cat you found in the prayer garden last night.”
“Are you sure?”
Church nodded. “Positive.”
Whatever was in that report had been damning enough to set Alvarez off. Scared him enough to push him over the edge. “Did you read it? What was in it?” Probably evidence that pointed directly at him.
“I didn’t,” Church said, giving her a pensive look. “I was in the middle of pick
ing it up when you texted me.” She shook her head. “I just tossed it into the file box you had me swing by and grab from the hotel.”
Her cell phone rattled on her hip and she reached for it. “I need you to get a copy of it,” Sabrina said, punching her finger against the screen. It was a text from a number she didn’t recognize.
375 Bahia
San Felipe, Mexico
You’re welcome.
Seeing it reminded her that despite evidence to the contrary, Paul Vega was involved somehow. He was hiding something. What other reason could he have for shipping Graciella Lopez off to Mexico? “Croft outside?” she said, clipping her phone back onto her waistband.
“Yeah, he’s out there.” Church shot a glance at the main doors to the sanctuary. “He got here before we did.”
Sabrina nodded. “Good,” she said, moving past the techs, couched over the spot where she’d found Father Francisco. “I’ve got a job for him.”
She was halfway up the aisle when it hit her—what it was that had been bothering her about the pair of techs since they arrived—and she turned around to look at them, just to make sure.
Neither of them was Ellie.
Sixty-two
She shouldn’t be here. It was wrong—and not just because if she was caught, Paul Vega would sic his lawyer brother on her and probably sue the entire department for harassment. No, coming here was wrong because it was unhealthy. She knew that. She knew that her incessant return to the place where her childhood best friend had been tortured bordered on obsessive behavior. She knew that in doing so, she perpetuated the ridiculous fantasy that she could’ve done something. That she should do something to help Rachel, even if Rachel didn’t want her to.
And yet, here she was.
Ellie switched the ignition off on her car, pulling the keys from the steering column, but she didn’t get out of the car. As much as she was driven to come back to this place, over and over again, she hated it.
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