by Mark Stone
"How so?" I asked, glaring at the man.
"You're here to investigate, right?" he asked.
"I am," I admitted. Then, looking over at Emma, added, "We both are."
"Then I'll let you," he said. "I need to take care of some parish business. I was hoping Charlotte would come with me, but you and Emma are free to look around here as long as you'd like. Go over this place with a fine-tooth comb for all I care. Hopefully you'll find something."
I stared at Oscar for a moment, trying to decide if he was being genuine or if there was something else going on here. Whatever the truth was, I couldn't let this opportunity slip away.
"Alright," I answered. "I'll take you up on that."
"Good," Oscar said. "Charlotte and I should be back soon. If the two of you finish up before we return, lock up. I have the master key."
"Okay. Thank you," I said, still uneasy. I shot Charlotte a look, not to let her know that she had been right in giving Oscar a second chance, but more to say that I had heard her and was willing to consider it.
She nodded at me, seemingly understanding.
She and Oscar walked toward the door and I was about to get together with Emma to discuss how to go about looking over this room when my phone rang.
"Rita?" I said, answering the call and speaking to Father Jameson's friend and co-worker.
"Dillon," she answered. "I looked around Father Jameson's room and did find the journal his brother was looking for the other day." She paused and I could practically hear her shuffling. "I'm not the type of person to usually invade someone's privacy, Dillon, but I read some pages."
"Okay," I said, registering the concern in her voice. "What'd you find?"
"Something strange," she answered. "He wrote about someone he was talking to, someone who he was concerned for. He thought this guy was in trouble, that he'd gotten himself into something horrible and didn't know how to get out of it. He wanted to help Archer, but—”
"Archer?" I asked, remembering the name as the man who had been found hanging in the abandoned house that Father Jameson had been running from. "You're sure his name was Archer?"
"That's what it says in the journal," she answered. "He said he was going to go try and help, try and reason with the people Archer worked for."
That made sense. Father Jameson had always been a helpful person. He had always come to the aid of anyone who sought him out, regardless of their beliefs or past. If Archer had come to him, confessing his sins and asking for help to get out of the mess he'd found himself in, I had no doubt Father Jameson would do everything in his power to help him, even if it was dangerous, even if it meant it would cost him his life.
He must have gone to talk to whoever Archer was in league with. A fight must have started there and, when Father Jameson tried to run away, someone ran him over in the road. It would account for the blood leading up to the road where he was hit. Father Jameson was already hurt.
"That's not the weirdest part though," Rita said.
"What?" I asked.
"There were prayers in the back as well as a family tree," she said. "According to it, Father Jameson had a sister whose husband died three years ago and two nieces. I tried to get in touch with them, but the number Father Jameson had in his notes was disconnected and the manager at the apartment complex he had listed as their address said he hasn't seen them in a few days. Here's the thing though. Father Jameson never had a brother, Dillon. So, who was the man who came looking for the journals?"
My heart skidded to a stop. Looking up, I saw Oscar pull the door of the chapel open and, on his hand, was the same strange tattoo that had haunted me since all of this began.
"Stop!" I yelled, dropping the phone and reaching for the gun on my hip. "Stop right there."
Oscar looked at me, reading my face. "Dammit," he muttered. Then, reaching back, he punched Charlotte hard in the face. She crumpled backward, moaning, and he grabbed her, slinging her over his shoulder.
"Stop!" I repeated, realizing I couldn't take a shot at the man with Charlotte intertwined with him like this.
"It's already too late, Dillon," he said, reaching into his pocket. "He was going to let you live, but you had to come looking. Now there's nothing I can do. At least this way, it'll be quick."
He pulled something from his pocket, flicked his wrist, and tossed it to the ground. Then, he pulled the door closed and I heard the lock turn from the outside.
I ran toward the door, knowing that he had Charlotte and that nothing was more important than that at this moment.
"Dillon!" Emma shouted. "Stop!"
She pointed to the floor, to the orb Oscar had thrown onto.
With a sickening thud in my chest, I recognized what it was.
Oscar had just put us in a room with a live grenade.
Chapter 24
"Run!" I screamed, looking over at Emma and already hauling ass toward the altar at the far end of the church. My heart was racing, my body tense and tight, and my survival instincts kicking in. This was a “fight or flight” situation if I'd ever seen one and, given the fact that I was staring down at a live grenade, the “fight” option didn't make much sense.
Luckily, Emma was further away from the potential explosion than me. As she ran, I darted, moving into her line. When this thing went off, I would take the brunt of it. Hopefully, both of us would be far enough away to escape any real harm, but if someone had to take it, it should be me.
This was my fault. Emma was here because of me, because I went behind Boomer's back and took this into my own hands. And here I was, too stupid to understand what was really going on here before it was too late.
As I rushed toward the altar, I realized I understood it now, and that it very likely wouldn't matter.
I heard it before I felt it, a small popping sound that reminded me more of a balloon giving in to the heat at the county fair than a destruction weapon fulfilling its horrible purpose.
For a split second, the idea that it might have been a dud rushed through my head, filling me with hesitation and cooling calm, but it didn't last. The sound of the grenade going off heralded its effects. A rush of heat came first, moving over my skin like a wave, a ripple threatening to burn me alive. Then, with it, came the force.
It rushed to my back, colliding with me like a freight train slamming into me and pushing me forward. I had never felt anything like it. I screamed, a mixture of pain and shock, as the sheer force of the blast knocked me off my feet.
It threw me through the air, tossing me toward the altar and shaking me to my core. The world went away. Though I tried to look for Emma, to make sure she was okay, everything went white. I felt hot. I felt weightless. I felt like what I imagined being dead might feel like; a spirit in flight on its way to the next life.
A strange thought filled my head as I came crashing down onto the steps in front of the altar. If I was going to die, if I was going to meet my maker and reunite with my mother, I could think of worse places for all of it to end than a church.
I felt a snap in my hand as fell onto the steps, yelping again in pain as my body made contact. It hurt like hell, but with the pain, came the realization that I wasn't going to die. Death wouldn't hurt this much. Only life does.
"Emma!" I said, rolling over, grabbing my hand, and looking up at the ceiling. In the corners of my eyes, I saw the stained glass windows. Toward the end, where the grenade had gone off, the windows shattered. Their beauty was now reduced to shards of blue, red, and yellow barely clinging to the sides of the window frame. "Emma, are you okay?"
My chest tightened, and not just because of the hurt. I brought Emma into this. If she had been hurt or worse because of what I did, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. I knew that as well as I knew my own name. I forced myself upright, swallowing hard and ignoring both the scratch in my throat and the heat I could still feel all over me. Perhaps I had been burned. It didn't matter right now. All that mattered was making sure Emma was okay and, after that, making sur
e I got to Charlotte before something horrible happened to her.
"I'm here!" I heard her answer. "I'm okay. Are you alright? Are you hurt?"
I blinked hard, shaking my head and following the sound of her voice. Everything was ringing loudly enough so that it sounded like Emma was speaking to me from the inside of a well, like we were shouting at each other underwater.
Looking over, I saw her. She lay on the floor, though she looked practically unscathed.
"I'm fine," I said, though I wasn't sure whether or not that was the truth. "Can you get up?"
"I can," she answered, pushing herself off the floor and standing unsteadily. "It must have been a smaller one," she continued. "Though not small enough."
She motioned to the door with her left hand, and I saw that the place was ruined. Scorched floors, tossed and torn apart pews; the church was a mess of destruction.
"We have to move," I said, swallowing hard again, and standing. The world seemed to move irregularly as I stood and my wounded hand screamed in pain as I used it to steady myself against the altar. It was strange. As a kid, I had always been taught to show reverence to the altar, to bow as I crossed its threshold and to absolutely never approach it directly. I was breaking that code of conduct now, using the sacred slab to steady myself. Still, after what Oscar had just pulled, my transgression seemed more like a mercy. "He has Charlotte."
"Why?" Emma asked. "What the hell is going on here? Why would Oscar do this?"
"Because he's part of this," I answered, shaking my head to try and dislodge the “fog” that the explosion had shaken loose in my head. "I was right, Emma. Oscar had the tattoo on his hand, the same tattoo they all have." I took a deep breath. "He's working with him. Oscar is working with Father Jameson's brother."
"What?" Emma balked, running a hand through her disheveled hair. "Father Jameson had a brother?"
"Walk with me," I said, nodding and motioning for her to follow me. There wasn't time to explain things right now, not without getting out of here. The front door had been locked from the outside after Oscar made his escape. Emma and I could crawl out the voids left by the shattered windows, but we'd have to get up to them first and, even if we did that, we'd be forced to brace the shards lining the casing only to find ourselves fifteen feet off the ground.
Luckily, fire code demanded another exit, and I'd bet in was in the back. I hadn't seen Oscar head that way. So hopefully I'd find it unlocked or, at the very least, less heavy duty than the ornamental double doors in the front of the church.
"He didn't have a brother, Emma," I said as she rushed toward the back of the church with me. We ran down a long, darkened hall until I saw a door at the end. It had the words “Emergency Exit. Alarm will sound if opened” scrawled across it. That didn't bother me though. Let the alarm sound. This was a damned emergency if I ever saw one. "But someone pretended to be his brother. A man came to the hospital with a picture for Father Jameson and then he showed up at the rectory looking for journals. I'd bet money that he's the one in charge of this, that Father Jameson's fake brother is the person who’s responsible for all of this. "
"Why would you think that, and why would he want the journals?" Emma asked, keeping pace with me.
"Two questions, but only one answer," I said, pushing through the emergency exit and wincing as the alarm sounded. "Because his business was in trouble. Whoever this man is, he has a chokehold on the drug trade in this town and he wanted to expand to Naples. He set up abandoned houses on Calhoun and who knows where else to serve as bases of operation and sent some of his people to get things off the ground." I shook my head, running as I rounded the church, heading back toward my truck. "But Archer, one of his people, must have had second thoughts. He started talking to Father Jameson and, God love him, the old man tried to help."
"And got himself killed," Emma gasped.
"But not at first," I said. "Father Jameson survived the surgery. He was going to recover and his fake brother wanted to make sure he stayed silent. That was why he gave me that picture. It must have been a picture of Father Jameson's sister and her daughters. He wanted Father Jameson to know that he knew where they were and that he could get to them." I shook my head, thinking. "Or maybe that he already had them. Either way, when he found out Father Jameson was so intertwined with law enforcement, he must have thought better of his plan."
"So he just decided to shoot up a hospital as a diversion?" Emma asked, disgust dripping off her words. "So he could kill him?"
"That's about the size of it," I said.
"But Charlotte?" Emma asked, nearing the front of the church. "Why do they need Charlotte?"
"Doug." I said, remembering the man I arrested earlier, the first person I saw wearing the strange tattoo. "He told me something. He said that whoever was in charge of this likes to make his people prove their loyalty."
"Prove it?" Emma asked. "How?"
My blood ran cold as I thought about the answer and what that would mean to Charlotte if I didn't get to her in time. "By killing the person closest to them."
"Oh, God!" Emma shouted. "Oh no! He's going to kill Charlotte! Oscar's going to kill his own niece!"
"No, he's not," I said, rounding the front of the church. "I'm going to stop him."
"But how?" Emma asked. "You don't even know where Oscar is taking her."
"Yes," I said, thinking about the picture Father Jameson's fake brother handed me and what he said when he did. He wanted me to give this photo to Father Jameson and he asked me to be sure to repeat what he said. He told me where the picture was taken. He wanted Father Jameson to know that he had them, and he wanted him to know where. And now I did too. "It's okay, Emma. I think I know where we need to go."
Chapter 25
"St. James City?" Emma asked, holding onto the handle overhead as I ripped through Fort Myers, heading toward the place I thought Oscar had taken Charlotte.
Emma had been with me a while back, when I raced to get to the bottom of the death of Ethan Sands's wife. Like that night, when I was swerving all over the road with her next to me, Emma stared daggers as I burned up the road.
"That's what he told me," I explained, making a hard left toward the marina leading out into Pine Island Sound. I had been driving for a little over forty minutes now, over half an hour with my mind churning through some of the worst and most horrible thoughts it had ever produced. The idea of Charlotte killed, of her hanging from the rafters like Archer and Father Jameson after him, was enough to stop me in my tracks. I couldn't stop though. Stopping would mean giving up. It would mean giving in to the fear I felt now and the hopelessness creeping into the back of my mind right now.
How far ahead of me was Oscar? He hadn't gotten too much of a head start. Hell, if he hadn't tried to blow Emma and I up, I'd have probably caught him before he left the parking lot, which is probably why he tossed the damned grenade in the first place. In the time it took for us to take cover and to make sure we had made it through in one piece, Oscar got away with the first woman I ever said “I love you” to.
"When Father Jameson's brother, or whoever the hell he is, handed that photo over to me, he said it was taken in St. James City on Pine Island." I shook my head. "That couldn't have been an offhanded comment. He obviously wanted Father Jameson to know he had them. I have to assume it was there, in St. James City."
"That's a big assumption," Emma said, putting into words the fear that was churning around in my skull right now. I hoped I was right, prayed I was right, but Emma had a point. As far as I knew, Father Jameson's fake brother could have been alluding to the fact that he knew where the late priest's sister and nieces lived. If that was the case, then Charlotte could have been anywhere, and that was if she was still alive.
Obviously, she was being used as a sacrifice; proof that Oscar was all in with this horrible thing he'd found himself in, the same situation that resulted in Father Jameson's death. If he was already wherever they were supposed to be (and that was very likely if I was wro
ng about the Pine island thing) then there was a good chance Oscar had already done the deed. Any man who would toss a live explosive into a church with two innocent people feet away wouldn't hesitate to murder his own niece or (just as likely) standing aside and watching someone else do it.
I couldn't think like that though. That sort of thing was destructive and, in any event, I had a plan.
"That's why you have to stay here," I said, looking over at Emma as we pulled into the parking lot of the pier. In the forty or so minutes that we had been driving, I'd called to arrange a small motor boat to take me across Pine Island Sound and onto the island itself. I asked for the boat to be gassed and running, ready to go the instant my feet fell onto the dock. Hopefully it would be. Hopefully all of this would be enough.
"What?" Emma asked. "You can't go into this by yourself!"
"I have to," I answered, screeching to a stop. "For Charlotte. Because, if you're right, then you need to find her. Rita texted me the address to the apartment building where Father Jameson's sister and his nieces live. It's the only other lead we have. It's about three miles from here thankfully. I'll send you the address. You need to head over there. Hopefully, you'll find something." My heart sank. "Hopefully, whatever you find will be alive."
"And you?" She asked. 'Where are you going to go? Even if you're right about St. James City, it's not a one-room house. It's a city, for goodness sake. Where would you even begin to look?"
"I don't know, Emma," I admitted. "I'm a detective. I'll look where the clues take me. I'll look for something out of place."
"That'll be the definition of searching for a needle in a haystack," Emma said, obviously afraid, obviously frustrated.
"I know that!" I shot back, perhaps too sharply. "But it's what I do. I have to find her, Emma. If Charlotte dies because of all of this," I said, swallowing hard. "If I have to look at Isaac and tell him that his mother is never coming home, it'll kill me. Or, at the very least, I'll wish it had. Now please, do what I asked. But be careful. If you see anything—”