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He gathered himself for the most spectacular athletic vault of his career, down into the middle of it all he would plunge…

And was beaten to the punch by the same black banshee that had corralled the panther and savaged the guide.

The black cat ran out from the shadows in which he had circled behind the hunter. He leaped up to land on his neck like a vampire leech, a nightmare even Edgar Allen Poe couldn’t have dreamed of in his most fevered hallucinations.

The man dropped to the ground just as Max landed in front of him—knees bent to absorb the punishing shock, hands out to wrest the rifle barrel from his grasp and smash the butt into the man’s suddenly exposed jaw, the bush hat and sunglasses flying away to reveal…

Max had no time to linger.

He looked around. The guide’s face was a road map of claw marks. He was out of it.

The protesters had circled the still-crouching, growling panther, singing “We Shall Overcome” off-key.

Max spotted an oncoming flash of red through the palo verdes. He grabbed the hunter by the khaki lapels, looked into the dazed face.

“Why?” Max asked.

The bleary eyes focused on his, then went AWOL.

Max looked up. Temple was almost here. He would have to get the answer to that question later.

Best he be gone now.

He looked around for the black cat.

Midnight Louie had made the same, split-second decision.

Great minds and all that…

He was thinking of Louie, of course.

Chapter 49

Bless Me, Mother

There was no way Matt was going to join three nuns in attending 5:00 P.M. mass without committing to 6:00 P.M. supper afterward.

Or so Sister Seraphina had told him on the phone.

“We’re used to six A.M. mass, you know, Matt, dear. But we understand that with your late-night radio show that’s early for you. So let’s make an occasion of it. It will be such a treat to see you.”

“Can we make it supper at seven? I want to visit with Father Hernandez after mass.” How many Hail Marys, Matt wondered, did it take to wash away lying to a nun? To an old nun. That was worse than taking candy from a kindergartener.

Kitty the Cutter was pushing him down the slippery slope to deception and sin already.

But Sister Seraphina had accepted the lie as only logical, and Matt prepared to put in twenty-four hours of fretting before his meeting with Molina.

He had almost been tempted to poll callers on his radio show on whether he was doing the right thing to involve Molina, but people stressed out by their own problems made impenetrable Wailing Walls for the woes of others.

He got through the day by rote, avoiding everyone, seeing phantoms everywhere. Now he understood the power of paranoia.

The poetic justice of it all hung over him like a looming guillotine of conscience. Once he had tracked Cliff Effinger. Now he was tracked.

Except Effinger had probably been too mean, and too dumb, to worry about a stalker as Matt did.

And Kathleen O’Connor was a lot more demonstrably dangerous than Matt ever had been.

At four-thirty Saturday night, Matt’s new old Probe joined the streams of cars heading somewhere to have fun in Las Vegas.

He headed south, away from the city, then circled back toward North Las Vegas. He watched his rearview mirror as if some hood had hidden in the backseat to hold a knife on him. A stalker was only a rear-seat hood, one car-length removed.

No vehicle seemed to stay near him long.

When he finally pulled into the old-fashioned alley behind Our Lady of Guadalupe convent, not a car was in sight. He parked in the deep shade of an ancient pine tree anyway. Pine and palm trees, only one more signpost of how schizophrenic a city Las Vegas was, an oasis in the desert, a theme-park town with a variegated bouquet of socially acceptable sin and churches of every sect known to religion.

A knock at the convent’s back door produced Sister Mary Monica, beaming like a frail apple-faced doll. She swept him into the large, spare kitchen like a prodigal son.

“How wonderful to see you!” Sister Seraphina O’Donnell just swept him into a wholehearted hug. “We know you’re so busy nowadays, but we do miss your visits.”

“Busy is no excuse,” Matt said, seeing that they had already set out the supper plates in the plain dining room with its cluster of small, separate tables. He felt like a worm for using them as a cover.

The six nuns chatted happily as they all walked to the nearby church in the warm afternoon sun. Las Vegas didn’t offer the tree-shaded streets of the Midwest, but the climate’s sun-scoured, healthy openness was always an upper. Our Lady of Guadalupe’s spire, capped with red tile, simmered in the last blaze of undiluted afternoon sunlight.

The nuns’ short black veils seemed more like linen mantillas than a last vestige of more formal habits. Matt almost felt himself transported back to the heyday of California’s Hispanic-Catholic culture. Young and middle-aged people were also converging on the old-fashioned adobe church. Their half-Latino, half-Anglo greetings and banter gave the forthcoming ritual a preface of celebration.

Matt could literally feel and see a community assembling, and for a moment he was homesick for his past at the center of so much goodwill.

But when his party passed into the shade inside the church and dipped their fingertips in the tepid holy water of the entrance fonts, when the sign of the cross replaced chatter and the only sounds in the interior stillness were the scrape of soles on floor tile and the thump of kneelers being lowered to the floor, he felt he was back a hundred years, or maybe only thirty, and about to hear a Latin mass.

Illusion, of course. The nuns led the way to a pew near the front and bracketed him in their midst. He managed to study the confessionals as they entered.

Darn! They were on both sides of the church. He’d forgotten to tell Molina which side to meet at.

The choice was simple: on one side St. Joseph ruled at the tiny side altar. On the other, Mary. There was an assignment for the amateur operative: which would Molina choose?

It was bad enough to arrange to slink into one of the unused little rooms; playing musical confessional would attract certain attention.

He glanced around as the congregation stood for the entrance of the celebrant and two altar boys…one altar boy and one altar girl, what do you know? Molina was about as tall as he was, and he didn’t spot her anywhere in this traditionally short crowd.

So even as the familiar prayers and responses of the mass settled on him like a warm, familiar blanket of sound and motion, Matt found himself fidgeting, fretting. Turning slightly to check out the pews. Studying the confessionals: three doors with a tiny arched window covered with pleated white linen.

At communion time, he was so distracted that he was mostly thinking about how he’d have such a good view of both confessionals on the way back to his seat. Then was the time to spot Molina, or make a choice. And he should also be on the lookout for Miss Kitty. It’d be just like her to show up where least expected. Imagine sliding behind one wooden door and finding her in the confessor’s seat!

Worry, Matt realized, was a great distraction from prayer, so he settled down and asked God to help him find the right confessional, please.

Not a very noble request, but all he could muster.

Someone tugged at his sleeve. He had stood automatically with everyone else for Father Hernandez’s exit. “We’ll see you back at the convent later,” Sister Seraphina whispered.