She'd met Grale a half-dozen years earlier and developed a schoolgirl crush on the handsome young Catholic lay worker. The strange thing was, that crush had not entirely disappeared even when she discovered he was also a murderous psychopath who had slaughtered a number of evildoers he believed preyed upon homeless men.
Grale had tried to explain to her that the people he killed were possessed by demons and that he'd been charged by God with their execution. "We're at war, Lucy," he'd told her. "Like it or not, the forces of good and evil are marshaling for the big showdown. Armageddon. And there will be no watching from the sidelines, no spectators." He further explained that New York City was a sort of epicenter for this battle, drawing the minions of evil like a magnet attracts iron filings.
Given her own Catholic-bred experiences with the metaphysical-she believed that during times of stress a martyred sixteenth-century saint named Teresa de Alhuma appeared to counsel her-Lucy had not entirely ruled out Grale's basic premise. She sensed that what he said was, in some fashion, the truth.
Lucy even bought into the notion that her family-especially her father, Roger "Butch" Karp, the district attorney of Manhattan, and mother, Marlene Ciampi-were unknowingly but inextricably playing out their roles in the great drama that was unfolding. But her church's philosophy, and her own personal belief, was that no human life was beyond redemption, and she couldn't countenance Grale's butchering of other people…even if they were possessed by demons.
Hunted by the police and increasingly consumed by his cause, Grale had disappeared into the city's massive labyrinth of tunnels and sewers-some of them dating back to the earliest days of the city and long forgotten. There he'd become a sort of spiritual leader to what he called the Mole People. Homeless outcasts-many of them also bordering on the insane-they lived in the shadow world beneath the teeming city, emerging occasionally to forage and beg, and to gather news.
At unpredictable moments, Grale would resurface into Lucy's life. Each appearance would leave her troubled by the dichotomy of a man who judged and condemned to death others without even the benefit of a trial, and the haunted, gentle social worker named David. Twice recently he had shown up in the nick of time to rescue her and a family member.
The most recent rescue by Grale had been that summer. The murderous Catholic priest Hans Lichner, an immense bear of a man, had been preparing to sacrifice one of Lucy's twin brothers, Zak, on the altar in St. Patrick's Cathedral. Lichner's predilection for sexually abusing and then murdering young boys had been sanctioned by Andrew Kane, who was using the killer for his own purposes-one of them to eventually bring down the Catholic Church in New York through scandal and corruption.
Grale would have won the ensuing knife fight and, in fact, was about to deliver the coup de grace, except that Lucy, ever the humanitarian, screamed for him to stop. With Grale momentarily distracted, Lichner turned the tables and planted his knife in his opponent's stomach. Fortunately for Zak and Lucy, John Jojola, who had tracked the monster to the cathedral, was there to protect them. Lichner had proved no match for Jojola's speed and skill, though it was too late to help David Grale.
Lying in a pool of New Mexican moonlight that fell across her bed, Lucy recalled when Jojola stooped next to Grale and felt for signs of life. Then he'd looked at her and shaken his head. She'd burst into tears, but Jojola wouldn't let her remain with the body.
Later when other cops arrived, they found large pools of blood but no bodies. DNA tests showed that the blood came from two different people, but who they were remained a mystery to the authorities. The medical examiner told Lucy's father that neither man could have survived the loss of so much blood unless they received immediate medical attention, including massive transfusions.
Just a typical summer for the Karp/Ciampi clan, Lucy thought as she sat up. A summer in which she'd almost lost her life and would have except for the man who slept next to her.
While still in Taos, before the trail led them to Lichner, she and her mother had been the targets of the local sheriff, who'd been hired by Kane to keep an eye on his "clients" at a retreat. When Marlene and Jojola started getting too close, the sheriff had tried to kill them all. But then a young cowboy had ridden to her rescue.
Ned was snoring like a desert thunderstorm, it being one of the rare mornings when he didn't have to be out before dawn taking care of his boss's cattle. Lucy swung her legs over the edge of the bed, trying not to wake him. But Ned was a light sleeper, used to sacking out on the ground with an ear tuned for signs that his bovine charges or his horse were in trouble.
"What's wrong?" he asked sleepily.
Lucy leaned over and kissed him, lingering for a moment. She loved the scrubbed soapy smell of him, with just a hint of the leather and horses he worked with, that never quite seemed to leave him even after a shower. Except for Felix Tighe's assault, which Lucy chose not to count, they'd both been virgins when they met. His courting had been shy and slow; he hadn't even tried to kiss her until she demanded that he accept it as his reward after saving her life.
Still, it surprised Lucy that she'd taken him as her lover. A deeply religious young woman, she'd sworn that she'd remain chaste until her marriage. And to be honest, it hadn't been all that difficult to remain a virgin.
She was a brilliant student with a savant's gift for languages. But for most of her life, Lucy had done little to dispel the first impression men had of her, which was of a bookish prude whose intelligence was frightening to most males. Combined with a beaklike nose and a thin angular body, the image had not helped her attract a lot of suitors. Nor had she cared…much.
When she came to New Mexico, she did have a boyfriend back East, a nice young man named Dan Heeney, who'd certainly wanted to be the first. She'd thought that he probably would be, but up to that point she'd easily managed to put him off by saying she simply wasn't ready. Nor would she be until marriage.
Yet she felt no shame as she looked at Ned. His blue eyes were only half open but still startling in their clarity and brilliance. He wasn't especially handsome-his thin features a bit too irregular, his teeth never having been introduced to an orthodontist, and his ears standing out like satellite dishes. But a life spent outdoors in the Southwest sun gave his face a tanned, rugged quality that mirrored the land he worked and loved. And she loved how she could see his blue eyes sparkle even when his cowboy hat-worn low so that he had to look up from under the brim-shaded his face.
He wasn't even well educated, at least not in a book sense, not even a high school diploma. But he was smart, and maybe it was the wide-open spaces that also made him a deep thinker. His long silences weren't because he had nothing to say; he just liked to think before he spoke. And when he did speak, it was with a simple sort of eloquence that didn't contain a lot of fifty-cent words but was dense with meaning and perception. And while he might not have been a master of many languages, he spoke Spanish-having grown up in a largely Hispanic culture-as if he'd been born to it.
Lucy traced his form beneath the quilt. He wasn't a big guy, but he had the fine, lithe body of someone who'd earned his ropelike muscles through hard work, not in a gym.
No, she had not planned on becoming his lover, and in the glow after it happened, she was surprised at the lack of guilt she felt-not for the broken vow of chastity, nor, at the time, her "betrayal" of Dan. Making love to Ned had come as naturally as taking a warm shower. She wasn't sure if this relationship was forever, but there were times when it certainly felt like it, and she would contemplate what life would be like as a ranch hand's wife. But then she'd stop herself, doubting whether anything so normal would ever be hers.