by Sharon Wray
“We were hoping you’d know,” Garza said.
“I’ve no idea.”
“Did you show her the other one?” Father Quinn asked Garza.
“There’s more?”
Garza led her past the main altar to the north transept. Father Quinn followed.
“I locked up at ten,” Father Quinn said, “and went to eat. When I returned, I noticed lights flickering through the transept window. Every candle in the church had been lit, the fuse box had been destroyed, and incense had been burned. Then I saw this.”
As in the other chapel, her pots had been destroyed, flower heads cut off to line another rectangle of dirt in front of the Altar of Reservation. This message said DRAW THE SHADY CURTAINS FROM AURORA’S BED. THY HUSBAND IN THY BOSOM THERE LIES DEAD.
“Miss Capel,” Garza said. “Do you know what this means?”
“No.” That was the truth. She had no idea what tonight’s vandalism or the crazy texts meant. The only thing she was sure of was Rafe was involved. She just didn’t want to discuss her relationship with her ex-husband.
Garza’s cell rang, and he held up a hand. “Excuse me. I need to take this.”
Since everyone was busy, she walked down a side aisle, staying out of the way. She sank into a pew and leaned forward, her head in her palms. What was going on? And more importantly, what was she going to do?
“Don’t scream,” a man said behind her.
She turned. Even in the shadows, she recognized Nate. She’d put up with a lot today. Two strikes of vandalism. A bank loan disaster matched by real estate issues. A narcissistic senator. A rogue ex-husband. A murder on her land. Crazy texts. Deke. And this cathedral disaster. But she wouldn’t put up with Nate. “Go. Away.”
“I’m here to help.”
She snorted. “Did Rafe send you?”
“Yes.”
“Then he doesn’t know what you did to me eight years ago?”
Nate’s green eyes begged her. That’s when she noticed the scar on his cheek, the worry lines around his eyes, his shaky lips. “Not yet.”
“You saw what Rafe did to Deke,” she whispered. “I wonder what he’ll do to you?”
“Kill me. But, for now, Rafe asked me to watch out for you until he can get here.”
“What for?”
Nate waved his hand around the cathedral. “You’re at the center of this mess.”
“Ridiculous.” Shivers ran up her back. But was it? Really? She left the pew.
He followed her to the confessionals. “If you can’t trust me, trust Rafe.”
Before she could respond, Garza maneuvered between her and Nate. “What’s going on?”
Nate held out his hand. “Nathan Wall.”
She snorted. Another lie? Why was she not surprised?
Nate sent her a warning glare. “I’m Montfort’s parole officer.”
Garza crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you doing here?”
Nate shoved his hands in his back pockets, his nonchalance loud and clear. “I heard about the incident from the police scanners. I knew Miss Capel had been setting up for a funeral. I decided to check it out.”
She started to reply but stopped. She didn’t want to give the detective any more reasons to ask questions about Rafe. She just wanted this night to end.
“You follow the ex-wives of all your parolees?” Garza asked Nate.
“Only the ones who need help.”
“Uh-huh.” Garza turned toward her. “May I speak with you alone?”
She nodded and followed him to the front of the church.
“Why is Wall here?”
“I don’t know.” Was that her sounding so exasperated? Probably. Except it didn’t matter because it was the truth.
From his slight scoff, he didn’t believe her. “Does Wall bother you?”
She pointed at the chapel. “All of this bothers me. The vandalism. The dead man on my land. My loan.”
“What loan?”
She told him the story, finishing with “Someone’s targeting me, and I don’t know why.”
Garza glanced back at Nate. “Do you know a man named Escalus?”
“No.” She followed Garza’s line of sight to see Nate texting. “Why?”
“According to the ME, that name was tattooed on the arm of the victim we found on Capel land. Same name I read in a journal the sheriff found in that rental car.”
“What journal?”
“This afternoon, Sheriff Boudreaux sent me a diary belonging to Escalus because it was written in Latin.”
The detective was full of surprises. “You know Latin?”
“Yes.” Garza showed her a photo on his phone. It was of the dead man’s arm with a tattoo of a sword piercing a heart and the name Escalus scrawled below. “The journal has a leather cover embossed with this same image, and his name was inside.” Garza swiped the screen, finding another photo. “This is the first page. Read the first line.”
She took the phone as the cathedral doors shut with a bang, and she saw Rafe grab Nate’s arm and drag him into the shadows.
“You should know,” Garza said in a conspiratorial voice, “that I’ve called my military contact. I’m looking into your husband’s release.”
“Ex-husband,” she said softly. Rafe had Nate cornered.
“Miss Capel, are you familiar with the graffiti around town with the words sans pitié beneath a skeleton hand holding a cutlass?”
The question startled her, and she gave the detective her full attention. “It’s the Prioleau family sigil.”
“It looks like a pirate flag.”
“During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Prioleau family ran a pirate empire from the mid-Atlantic to the Caribbean. By the Revolutionary War, they were wealthier than King George. By the Civil War, they were the most powerful shadow family in the country. The Prioleaus are huge benefactors in this city now.”
Garza nodded, his gaze going back to Rafe and Nate. “The Prioleau tag was painted near a murder victim we found today. The boy had a hole in his neck. I was hoping the tag would be a clue.”
“Probably not.”
“Thank you. I couldn’t get anyone in the station to tell me what it meant.”
She could only imagine how hard it was for a man from New Jersey to fit in. In Savannah, if people didn’t know you, they knew your family. If they didn’t know your family, you were nothing. “I’d like to talk to Father Quinn. I have to fix this by tomorrow.”
“When you’re ready, I’ll have an officer take you home.” He nodded to her hand, and she realized she still held his phone. “Did you read the first line?”
She blinked before giving his cell back. Then she focused on Rafe, who leaned against a column, a few pews away, staring at her. The first sentence on the first page of the diary had started with one word. Romeo.
Chapter 16
Rafe stayed in the dark. Away from candles. Away from cops with flashlights. Away from Nate. Rafe had come in ready to throw Nate into one of the stained-glass windows and then rip him from balls to neck.
But Rafe had stopped himself. First, he wasn’t sure if what Balthasar said was true. Balthasar was a master manipulator. Yet Kells Torridan was a cold-blooded Special Forces commander devoid of emotion who gave no quarter. It would be like Kells to mentally torture a defenseless woman in the name of protecting his men. While Nate would pay for what he’d done, the real blame lay at Torridan’s boots.
Second, Nate’s problems were connected to Juliet, so until that mess was figured out, Nate had to stay alive. At least Rafe now understood her reactions.
Juliet stood in the north transept with Father Quinn. She’d changed into yoga pants and a sweatshirt. Her braided hair was twisted into a knot that hung low against her neck. Rafe remembered the weight of her hair, the
sensation of the strands dragging across his naked chest, the scorching heat left behind.
He ached to go to her. Instead, he focused on every sound: footsteps, male conversations, Juliet’s softer voice.
Nate came up next to him, pocketing his phone. They’d had a brief conversation when he’d arrived, but Rafe had tabled the real issue of Nate’s evisceration. The one good thing Rafe had learned from the Fianna? Extreme self-control.
“I don’t get it,” Nate said. “Why defile a church?”
“Balthasar didn’t defile.” Rafe caught the candlelight glinting off the silver combs in Juliet’s hair. She rubbed her neck and passed the altar. Had she looked at him? “Balthasar desecrated.”
“There’s a difference?”
“A desecration ruins the sacred, like a consecrated cathedral. Or a marriage.” She moved closer. His heartbeat kicked up, and he crossed his arms so he wouldn’t reach for her.
“Hey.” Nate nudged his shoulder. “You with me?”
“A defilement ruins the profane. The real world.”
“Our world.” Nate’s voice scraped gravel. “You’re sure—”
“Positive.” Rafe would recognize Balthasar’s work anywhere. Although Rafe wasn’t sure which angered him more: the desecration, what Nate had done, or the fact that Juliet might have walked here alone in the dark.
A text hummed. Nate pulled out his burner phone and showed it to him. “What does this mean?”
For never was a story of more woe.
The caller ID was blocked, but Rafe knew who’d sent it. “Balthasar’s idea of a joke.”
“That freak has my cell phone number? Fabuuuulouuuus. We’re supposed to be staying below the fucking radar.”
“Balthasar knows I have to win her trust. So he’s making her not trust me.”
“Is this The Dating Game? We have work to do, except I have a Fianna warrior on my phone and a detective on my ass. We can’t keep up this parole thing.” Nate held out his cell. “Pete left a message. Garza requested info about you from every military organization around. It won’t take long for him to put this together. Or Colonel Torridan. And when Kells finds out I’m working with you, I’m back in prison.”
Rafe dragged his attention from his wife and planted it on Nate’s scrunched-up face. Rafe was moments away from going primitive. “Cut the self-pity or I walk.”
“What are you—”
“I don’t give a shit about Torridan or what he wants. I don’t care about you or Pete.”
Nate blinked. “You agreed to help us.”
“That was before I spoke to Balthasar.”
Rafe’s eyes must’ve shot fire because Nate sank into a pew and scrubbed his face with his palms. “I was under orders.”
“I don’t care.”
“I wish…I’m sorry, alright? We got your letter, for fuck’s sake. You’d gone AWOL. Betrayed us. Betrayed your country. What the hell were we supposed to do?”
Rafe gripped the pew and got in Nate’s face. Rafe spoke slowly and carefully so Nate would realize how close he was to being annihilated. “Not emotionally torture a defenseless woman with enhanced interrogation.”
Nate stood. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice, and the irony is that what you did eight years ago may have destroyed your chances of succeeding now.”
“What do you mean?”
“You humiliated her and stripped her of power. A person doesn’t just get over that kind of interrogation. Abuse like that forms scar tissue preventing them from trusting others. You and Torridan may have ruined the woman you need to save your men.”
Nate ran his hands over his head. “I’m fucked.”
“We’re both fucked.”
“Does that mean you’re still helping us?”
“I’m helping myself. I have a week to do something for the Prince. In order to do that, I have to win back my wife’s trust, which will be harder now that she knows I’m helping you.”
“Where does that leave me and Pete?”
“Not sure. Don’t care. The only reason you’re not dead is because killing you would condemn your men to prison for something they didn’t do. But when this is over, there will be a reckoning. In the meantime, stay away from Juliet.”
“My operation is connected to your wife.”
“Connected to her lily.”
Nate sighed like a teenager. “I’d give anything to know what a stupid fucking flower has to do with a Special Forces operation on the other side of the stupid fucking world.”
“Right. Divert blame to the fucking flower.”
“What are you doing here?” Juliet’s voice came from behind him.
Rafe turned slowly, taking half breaths along the way. Her face glowed without all the heavy makeup she’d worn earlier. But her eyes seemed heavier, the circles beneath darker. And the bruise on her cheek made him want to beat Deke again. “I heard about the break-in. I was worried.”
She wrapped her arms around her waist and sent Nate a glare that could strip paint off a bumper.
Nate held up both hands. “I’ll wait for you outside, bro.”
Once Nate left, Rafe said, “Let me take you home. We can talk there.”
Detective Garza appeared. “Why are you here, Mr. Montfort?”
To save my wife. “To protect Juliet.”
Garza’s eyes narrowed tighter than a gun spring. “Miss Capel is safe. I guarantee it.”
“How can you when you’ve no idea what’s right in front of you? This vandalism isn’t random.” Rafe pointed to the broken pottery. “Calum told me that over the past nine months, pots decorated with Juliet’s lily were broken and her store windows were destroyed. Is that true?”
“Yes,” she said.
“So?” Garza asked.
“One thing is being destroyed. Every image of Juliet’s lily.”
She covered her mouth with her hand.
Garza rubbed his chin with his fist and focused on Juliet. “The pots. The windows. They all had your logo?”
She nodded and sank into a pew.
Her shoulders shook, and Rafe wanted to sit down and wrap his arms around her. Instead, he said, “Tonight’s different. Things have escalated. Not only was your logo destroyed, whoever did this sent you a message.”
Garza’s phone rang, and he answered. A moment later, he covered the speaker and said to Juliet, “I have to take this. Officer Holmes is waiting outside to take you home.”
Since Rafe needed to see Nate first, he gently touched her shoulder. From his height, he could see the engravings in her silver hair combs. Eight-petaled lilies. “Can you go with Officer Holmes? I’ll meet you back at your place soon.”
“It’s late—”
“I know. But we’re running out of time.”
After a moment, she nodded, and he led her outside. Across the street in a garden square, Nate stood with his arms crossed.
Rafe opened her car door.
As she got in, she said, “Nate is Colonel Torridan’s lying puppet.”
Rafe shut the door and double-tapped the roof, and the car sped away.
Then he made his way across the street. Nate had no idea how lucky he was to be alive.
* * *
Nate waited for Rafe with his arms crossed. He wasn’t sure which worried him most: Rafe working for the Prince or the fact that Rafe knew about what Nate had done to Juliet.
Rafe’s self-control would only last so long. A judgment was coming that would make Deke’s beating look like a handshake. But the fact that Nate was still standing meant one thing: Rafe needed him.
Nate wasn’t surprised Rafe had heard so quickly. The surprise had been that Nate hadn’t figured out Rafe was still working for the Prince. Then again, considering the headspace Nate occupied right now, he w
asn’t up on his game. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he knew what game they were playing.
He closed his eyes and clasped his hands behind his neck. Colors flew behind his eyelids, and his larger muscle groups felt like they’d been tased. He couldn’t afford to faint, and he had another hour before he could take his next pill. His last pill. Because without Deke, no more Z-pam. Shit.
“As much as I want to kill you right now,” Rafe said in a rough voice, “you’ve got to chill. You can’t help your men if you lose it.”
Nate opened his eyes. “You’re still going to help us? Despite what I did?”
Rafe shoved his hands in his coat pockets. Probably where he kept his gun. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because your men are innocent. When this ends—”
“I did the deed. I’ll take the punishment.”
Rafe nodded.
The tic above Nate’s left eye kicked in. “This clusterfuck we’re in? It’s epic.”
“It’s always epic.” Rafe glanced at the cathedral with its flickering lights through the stained-glass windows. “Does Torridan have any idea who set you up? Any idea who has money and motivation to take down two A-teams?”
“Besides the Prince?” Rafe shifted his attention back to Nate. “There’s a list of arms dealers, drug kingpins, and tribal warlords. You probably know most of them personally.”
Rafe frowned. “This attack on your team took cunning, a ton of money, and a load of logistics. But the fact that you weren’t all killed sounds like it was personal.”
“Again, the Prince comes to mind.”
“The Prince doesn’t act on emotions. Everything is logically thought out, every action considered. The Fianna is all about self-control and obeying orders.”
Nate raised an eyebrow.
“I never said I was a great warrior, Nate. The Prince threw me in prison because I got tired of the bullshit and wanted out.”
“I’m feeling sorry for the Prince and Colonel Torridan.”