by Blake Pierce
He managed to apply the brakes just enough to slow so the collision wasn’t fatal.
The back of the truck caught the front of his bike, and he was sent flying. His leg caught the lip of the truck bed, slowing his progress a bit, but sending a jolting pain through his side. He hit the ground, rolling once, twice. Groaning, he blinked, dark spots dancing across his vision. Shakily, he tried to regain his feet, but found his legs threatening to give out.
For a moment, all he felt was pain and heat. Blood dripped along his hands were they’d scraped on the ground. His head hadn’t hit anything. He should have been wearing a helmet. But he trusted the Lord. For good reason. He had survived.
He heard honking, followed by a voice shouting. “Are you okay, mister? Dear God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you.”
The father’s hands were bleeding, but as he pushed up, leaving red stains against the asphalt, blinking, he found his vision adjusting once more. Groaning, with bolts of pain shooting down his back and along his thigh, he limped to his feet. He looked over his shoulder and realized his bicycle was one giant mangled mesh of spokes and metal and punctured rubber. The bike was totaled. The car had barely suffered a scrape. The driver was standing in front of the open door, shaking his head and holding his hands up in placation, apologizing profusely.
Repentance. He had done something wrong, running the red light. He could’ve killed someone. He nearly had. But now, he was repenting. The good Lord was fair.
The man dusted himself off, wincing, feeling his attention diverted once more toward the truck driver.
“Are you okay? I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you. Look, here, let’s trade information. I’ll get you a new bike. I’m really sorry.”
The man kept going on and on. How contrition ought to be. Still, the father had been enjoying himself too much. He smiled. The Lord was simply reminding him what life was. Suffering. The pain on his face, along his body, down toward his bruised knee and sprained ankle, would remind him of that. A good reminder. One he was grateful for. He limped a couple of steps toward his bike, a droplet of blood falling from his fingers and splashing against one of the spokes. Completely beyond repair. Beyond use.
The man in the truck was staring at him, stunned. “You look dazed. I’ll call an ambulance. Again, I’m so sorry.”
The father didn’t reply. Speaking with others led to temptation.
The man who’d been driving the truck was still watching him hesitantly. “Should I get a name? Do you want to trade information?”
Finally, the father looked up, watching the truck driver. “I cannot lie to you,” he said, hesitantly. “I’m not going to tell you my name.”
“Hang on, mister, you need to. Look here, I can give you my insurance. I promise, I’ll get you a new bike.”
The truck driver took a step forward, but the father didn’t wait to interact. He turned sharply on his heel and broke into a jog, wincing as he did, feeling hot lances of pain shoot up his right leg. He picked up the pace, increasing the pain. This was an appropriate response. The Lord had judged him. Judged him for pleasure. Judged him for getting too caught up in his own happiness. But eventually, when it was all said and done, he would be absolved of it all. He just needed another bike. He couldn’t steal one. That would be inappropriate. A sin. He could feel the eyes of the truck driver behind him, glued to his shoulder blades as he continued to limp and jog away. More horns blared behind him at the truck blocking traffic. But he ignored it all, heading up a residential street, past an alley that smelled of refuse. He continued to run, seething, teeth gritted against the agony.
He needed another bike. Stealing was a sin. Perhaps he could barter for one. Or, perhaps, if he was fortunate, the Lord would provide another sign. Maybe someone who owned the bike. Maybe someone who would have to be punished. It wasn’t wrong to take something from a sinner, was it? That wasn’t the same as theft. No, that was justice. Yes. And he was a man of justice. He didn’t like hurting people. Sometimes, though, the Lord made him.
He slowed a bit, gasping, wheezing, still in pain. One way or another, he needed to find another bike. He would reach that cathedral tomorrow. Nothing could stop him.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Adele sat in the car with John, peering through the windshield, eyes glued to the streets outside Lugo. The air through the windows came fresh, sweet, carrying the fragrance of the natural vegetation around them. John was bored again, picking at some of the lint on his seat and throwing it out the window, watching as the breeze caught the fuzz and carried it away like dandelion fluff.
Adele tapped her fingers against the steering wheel, the same way the third victim’s brother had at the cafe. Exhaustion still weighed heavy on her. The scent of coffee intermingled with that of the fragrance of the air. She was already on her third cup. For hours they’d sat here. Hours waiting. She glanced at the digital clock on the dash. It was nearly two in the afternoon.
“Maybe he’s not coming,” John said, as if sensing her frustration.
“He’s coming,” she snapped. “He has to be. This is going to be his next stop.”
John seemed to know better than to argue with her when she got like this. She didn’t mean to be unreasonable. She just hated sitting around and waiting. She checked her phone and then glanced at the radio, making sure it was connected. Occasionally she would pick up on chatter. Agent Pascal was in another vehicle, patrolling the street with officers. But no hits. Nothing on the APB. Nothing at all. They were turning up a giant blank.
Adele could feel her frustration mounting with every passing second. John pulled another tuft of lint, flicking it out the window again, and Adele watched the lint float on the breeze, carried lazily away.
“So we’re looking for bikes,” John said, hesitantly.
“We looking for anything,” she growled. “Don’t make my idea sound stupid. When you say it like that it sounds stupid.”
“I wasn’t trying to make it sound stupid.”
“You said we’re looking for bikes. Hear that? That sounds stupid.”
“Adele, your idea isn’t stupid. I was just wondering if that’s why we’ve been sitting here for the last four hours.”
Adele glared through the windshield.
“So what are we doing?”
“Looking for bikes,” she muttered.
John rolled his eyes, throwing his hands toward the ceiling. He reached out, pulling open the door. “You know what,” he said, “you need some food. And more coffee. Also, I wasn’t going to say anything, but you’re starting to smell.”
Adele glared at him. “I am not. I didn’t even run this morning.”
John paused, sniffed at his own sleeve, and said, “Never mind. That might just be me. What do you want?”
“Food? I don’t care. Anything. I could eat a horse.”
John tapped his nose, slipping out of the car and pointed at her. “One horse coming up. Look, just sit tight. Lugo is far too big of an area for us to go door-to-door. We have no idea if he’s going to be using this route.”
“He has to,” Adele said. “The pilgrimage routes are pre-mapped.”
“According to Pascal, though, there is a lot of leeway,” John reminded her. “You did your best. Now we just have to wait.”
Adele crossed her arms, glaring through the windshield again. John, grateful to be doing something besides sitting around, shut the door and began to move toward a restaurant down the street. For a moment, she thought to call after him, to ask for a couple of meals. Her stomach twisted, growling. She realized she hadn’t eaten anything in nearly twenty hours. Still, she had to focus. She glanced toward the phone again and then turned the radio up. Occasionally, over the designated station for the search, she heard Spanish. Agent Pascal had promised to translate if they found anything important.
Her phone suddenly blinked. Adele’s reached out, snatching the device from the dash and lifting it. “Hello?”
Someone cleared their throat on the other en
d, and then, a crisp, clear voice said, “Agent Sharp?”
Adele’s stomach fell. “Agent Paige?” Adele said, trying to hide her frustration. “I’m on a stakeout right now. Can I call you back later?”
“The reports you’ve been sending haven’t been satisfactory, Agent Sharp. I’m just trying to help. What are you doing right now?”
“I’ll report when I have something to report,” she said. “We have an APB out in Lugo, looking for a pilgrim on bike matching a witness’s description.” She paused, inhaling through her nose and sighed. “I don’t mean to be curt, but I haven’t had much sleep.”
Agent Paige on the other end sighed. “You’re not taking care of yourself?”
Adele scoffed. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. Look, I’m trying my best. Don’t call back.” She hung up. Adele stared at her hand, a slow sense of horror coming over her. Had she just hung up on Agent Paige? The woman was acting in the executive’s stead on this case. Not to mention performance reviews, and Adele had just hung up on her.
Adele massaged her temples, muttering a series of oaths beneath her breath. So stupid. So very stupid. Still, she didn’t have time to play these games. She jammed her phone back into her pocket, determined to ignore it if it rang again. She would just have to deal with Agent Paige later. Her stomach grumbled, and she glanced out the windshield toward where John was entering the restaurant. If he brought back pickles she was going to scream.
As her eyes wandered toward the lint-covered seat which John had been picking at, she noticed something else. The sound of a ringing phone. And there, where it had fallen from his pocket, jammed beneath the seat, John’s cell phone.
She stared. Was Agent Paige calling Renee now, to reprimand Adele?
Or was it something else?
The phone continued to ring, and Adele just stared at her partner’s device. She knew she shouldn’t. It wasn’t really her business. She didn’t want to be the prying girlfriend. But…
She sat frozen for a moment, just watching as the phone blinked, flashing blue, and the ring tone emanated in the car. It was warm, even with the windows rolled down. She was bored. For hours they’d been sitting there. Plus, she was downright curious. For weeks now, John had received mysterious phone calls. The last few days they’d intensified. Who kept calling him?
She wasn’t going to answer. The phone rang a fourth time. She just wanted to assuage some of her curiosity. She reached down, delicate, barely touching the phone. Somewhere, in her subconscious, she determined that if she didn’t hold the phone, at least not too tightly, it didn’t count as prying. A single letter on the phone. No name, the number was hidden. But the phone displayed the contact. A letter: “B.”
B? Did Adele know a B?
She winced. Her fingers still grazed the cold metal of the phone. She knew she should’ve ignored it. The device rang again.
Despite herself, despite her best instincts, and determined to blame sleep deprivation if anyone ever asked, she picked up the phone, placed it to her ear, and said, “Hello?”
She waited. Someone breathed heavily on the other end. And then, a woman’s voice. A young woman. Maybe Adele’s age. “John?”
“No, I’m sorry, he’s not here right now. Who is this?”
“Who is this?”
“I’m John’s friend. He’s not here. Are you the one who keeps calling him?”
The woman on the other end snorted. “I should’ve known he’d shacked up with some floozy.”
Adele bristled.
“Well, Ms. Mysterious, if you’d be so kind, tell that giant lump it would be nice,” she said, her tone biting, “if he could maybe take a couple of minutes out of his very important busy schedule to spend time with his daughter.”
Adele sat, stunned. “Hang on, his daughter?”
“Yes, dear. And let me warn you. Renee, he’ll cycle through you like most women. Did he meet you at a bar last night? At a club a couple of days ago? Don’t believe him. He’s not the sort to stick around. Trust me, I know. And our daughter, she also knows.”
The woman hung up.
Adele stared at the phone. At the B. The phone had turned from blue to white. The call disconnected.
She wanted to scream. John had a daughter? Of course, she had always known Renee had a womanizing past—she had been careful, cautious with him. But they’d known each other for longer than just a couple of days. And he had stuck around, to her astonishment. She’d thought he was turning over new leaf. But now this. How on earth did he have a daughter, and more importantly, why hadn’t she ever heard about it?
Just then, the door opened. Adele looked up, startled, dropping the phone where it hit the cushioned chair. The scent of burgers and fries filled the car. John was grinning, extending a bag of food, but then froze. His smile turned to a frown. He glanced from Adele, down to his phone, and then his eyes darted back up again. His eyes widened briefly, and he stared, stunned, seemingly waiting for her to speak first.
“You have a daughter?” Adele said, grabbing the bag of food if only to take it out of his hand.
John swallowed. He hesitated, and didn’t slip into the car, leaving the door open and resting his hands on the roof. He leaned down, peering into the cab. “Were you going through my phone?”
“Yes. I was. Very much. Now my turn: Do you have a daughter?”
“You shouldn’t go through my stuff.”
“You got a call. I answered it. Sorry. Now, just one more time in case you didn’t hear me: you have a daughter?” Adele could feel her heart pounding. The paper bag in her hand, heavy with junk food, seemed unimportant now. She didn’t feel hungry anymore. If anything, she felt sick to her stomach.
“Adele, look, it’s not what you think.”
“Have you been seeing someone else?”
“Christ, no,” he snapped, adamantly. His hand slammed against the roof. He shook his head violently. “I haven’t seen Bernadette in nearly ten years. She keeps hassling me. I don’t want anything to do with her. I haven’t been seeing anyone else. I swear on my life. I swear it on everything.”
Adele let out a loose, strained breath. Delicately, she placed the bag of food on the dash. She brushed some dust from the steering wheel, absentmindedly wiping her hand off on her suit pants, which were still horribly wrinkled. She looked back up at John. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a daughter?”
“It was ten years ago. She’s not in my life. I never see her.”
“But you didn’t tell me.”
John closed his eyes for a moment, rubbing at his face before returning his hand to the roof of the car, still leaning in, half in the vehicle and half out.
“Shit,” he said. “I didn’t think it mattered. Like I said, I don’t see them. Bernadette made it clear, she didn’t want anything to do with me. It’s only been in the last couple of years—she’s had some financial troubles and now she wants to get in touch. It’s all to make a child-support case against me.”
“John, I don’t care about that. That’s between you and them. I’m talking about us. Why didn’t you tell me at least?”
John hesitated, scratching his chin, and sighed. “You know what, because honestly, I wasn’t sure we were going to go this far. Yeah, there, I said it. I didn’t think it was worth telling you, because I didn’t think you wanted anything to do with me. You played cold for a while. And by the time things started to warm, I felt like it wasn’t important. Because it isn’t. You’re important to me, Adele. They aren’t.”
Adele wasn’t sure how she felt about this. She didn’t like the idea of John discarding his daughter as if she didn’t even matter. She thought of the Sergeant. She thought of their own strained relationship. John was a harsh man also. He had his soft side, but it was hidden deep. More importantly, however, she didn’t like that he hadn’t told her. It was as if he wasn’t taking things seriously. Was she just another throwaway for him? Why wouldn’t he tell her something this important if she really mattered? Unless
this was all some big game. Maybe he was just toying with her. He’d been taking calls, lying about them. It would’ve been so easy, so many times, just to mention it.
“Do you care about this?” she said, waving a hand from her to him and back. “Or doesn’t this matter either?”
John snorted, spitting off to the side. “That’s not fair. How is that fair?”
“I don’t know. But you’re the one saying you didn’t think we’d get this far. Now that we’re here, you haven’t said anything about your daughter—that’s a big deal. Clearly you don’t care enough to tell me these things.”
John’s tone darkened. “I refuse to feel bad about this. I didn’t think it mattered. That’s not my fault. You don’t tell me things either. You have a past. I don’t go prying into it. I have never asked you about half the things you’ve been up to. Your mother? I let you talk about it at your own pace. Because I know it’s painful. That was ten years ago also. Would you rather I just bombard you with questions about her? How it felt? If it hurt when she died? If you liked the way it changed your career? No? That would be prying. It would be rude. It’s none of my business. If you want to tell me, I’m happy to hear. But it’s more important that we just do us. Not baggage from a decade ago.”
“It’s not the same thing! Don’t bring up my mother.”
He jabbed a finger at her. “Exactly. See. It hurts. It doesn’t matter—”
“It absolutely matters,” she snapped. “You know about it. That doesn’t mean I have to tell you every little detail. But you know about it. I didn’t know you had a daughter. You refused to tell me.”
John threw up his hands, placing them against his head and staring at the sky for a moment. He inhaled deeply, his large chest heaving.
For a moment, Adele just stared at him. She wanted to say more, but what was there to say? Clearly, he didn’t take the relationship seriously enough to speak with her about something this essential. Clearly she had been mistaken about him all along. Or maybe she was overreacting. She was hungry, tired, stressed, and surrounded with bodies falling like flies. Maybe this wasn’t the proper time to speak with John. But then again, perhaps that was just an excuse.