“Let’s save this for the confessional.”
“It may take awhile.”
“Sleep is overrated. What’s your name?” He walked toward the main doors.
She stared at the side of the church, eyes wide. “Is that the Passion?” Small lights shone behind the narrow stained-glass windows that lined the walls. “They’re beautiful.” She was awestruck, walking slowly along the side of the old church.
The glasswork’s eyes accused her. She imagined Pontius Pilate sentencing her to death. But unlike Jesus, she was guilty.
Don’t feel guilty!
She hadn’t killed anyone who didn’t deserve it. Criminals who slipped through the system. Predators who deserved to die for their crimes. Murderers. Rapists. Child molesters. The world was a better place because of Karin.
But a priest? She couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
She had to. If she didn’t, Ethan would, and he’d hurt him first. Make him suffer. She liked that part, but not a priest. Not Father Cardenas.
She could kill Ethan first.
No, she hadn’t finished her training. There were still things she needed to learn. She’d have to speed it up because Ethan wasn’t getting any saner. The guy was combustible.
She could “accidentally” kill Father Cardenas. So he wouldn’t suffer. Whatever he’d done to Ethan in the past, maybe …
“They’re old,” Father Cardenas said. “Over two hundred years, except for the weeping women, which was broken by vandals shortly after I came here.”
“It looks the same as the others.”
“The artisan is very talented.”
“Are you from Hidalgo?”
“No.”
“The church sent you here?”
“Yes, but I asked to come.”
“Why?”
“It’s a poor town, but spiritually strong. And it was a good place to come for redemption.”
He looked at her. In the dim, yellowed outdoor lights, he seemed to glow. Like an angel. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”
She nodded. She couldn’t speak.
He unlocked the door.
“The confessional is across the way, in the chapel,” he said, letting her step inside first. The lights were on, though dimmed. The church was old, with worn pews, old statues, and a simple altar. To the left was a small alcove where several wooden kneelers faced the statue of the Blessed Virgin on a pedestal. More than half the one hundred and ten candles behind her were lit, their low flames dancing faintly with the stirred air.
She dropped a handful of coins into the donation box, the metallic clink of change thumping when it hit the wood bottom. She took a long match from its holder and lit it from a low flame, stared at it, head bowed as if in prayer.
On the one hand, Frank Cardenas had left Ethan to be tortured and die. On the other, he was a priest and had been forgiven by a higher power. Would killing him be true justice?
Ethan wanted to kill them all. But that was because she had planted the idea in him. It had been her plan from the beginning, Ethan simply embraced it. Wholeheartedly. He couldn’t see anything else. He wouldn’t understand her hesitance because Cardenas was a priest. She could lie. She sometimes did, and usually got away with it.
This time, Ethan would know.
The priest walked toward the chapel on the opposite side of the church.
Dammit, I don’t know what to do!
Father Francis turned on a low light in the confessional, leaving the brunette woman to gather the cour age to confess. He’d seen the struggle in her eyes. The fear of giving up the pain, the guilt, and the sin to God. He’d been where she was. He hadn’t gone to confession in the fifteen years he served in the army. Because he knew he couldn’t promise not to commit the same sins again.
He still had a gun, but he never touched it. He kept it in a box in his bedroom, in the closet, high on a shelf. He opened the lid only when he needed to remember, to repent, to beg for mercy and forgiveness. He had nearly put a bullet in his head with that gun.
“What a way for you to call me, Lord,” he mumbled as he closed the curtain of the confessional.
Francis had come to Hidalgo for many reasons, but primary among them was because Jack had settled with his crew here on the Rio Grande, and Francis owed Jack more than his life. He doubted Jack understood the impact he’d had on Francis’s life-and the lives of so many others. And he worried about his old friend, letting the past eat him alive. Jack didn’t see it. Francis didn’t see much else.
He knelt, crossed himself, and said his own prayers, holding the rosary his grandmother had given him on her deathbed. He’d been nine.
“You will be a priest, Frankie. But first you have to walk through purgatory.”
He hadn’t understood back then. He hadn’t wanted to be a priest, and purgatory was for dead people.
Now, he accepted that his grandmother had been a prophet, a personal prophet for him.
Francis heard a voice. The woman-she hadn’t given him her name-might be lost. Maybe she hadn’t paid attention to him when he pointed toward the side chapel.
A door closed.
He walked out. The church was empty, he sensed it before he searched and realized no one was inside. Just him.
Francis glanced up at the crucifix behind the altar. “And you, Lord.”
He hoped the woman found what she needed, but feared her demons were too great to battle alone. The encounter was odd enough that Francis walked through his church, checked the tabernacle, the altar, the sacristy. Everything looked in order.
“Francis,” he muttered to himself, “why are you so apprehensive?” It was the woman, he decided, the odd woman who wanted to confess, then left without forgiveness. Usually, those returning to the church for redemption had committed what they felt was an unpardonable sin, and had some sort of brush with death where they began to search their souls.
“I don’t know what she did, Father, but please have mercy on her.”
He put the woman from his mind, putting the lost sheep in God’s hands.
On his way out of the church, Francis walked past the prayer candles. None were lit. The sight should have enraged him-why would she blow them out? But instead, he felt a deep, deep sadness. And fear.
Ethan slapped her. Again. Three times. Tears of rage stained his face. Karin had betrayed him.
She pushed back at him. “Don’t ever hit me!”
He grabbed her hair, pulled her to him. He didn’t see the woman who’d saved him. Instead, he saw fangs and horns and laughing eyes. She wanted to hurt him.
“You changed the plans! You were supposed to bring him around to the house. We had it planned!” He was a grown man, but he sounded like a petulant brat. He shook her to prove he was a man. Inside, he was hollow. He watched from above. Was that him?
Kill her.
No. No no! Ethan needed her. His heart raced. He was going to die, his heart was going to run away without him. He turned his head, saw the beating organ running on legs down the street. Was that his heart? He blinked. Nothing. There was nothing. It was the middle of the night, there was nothing. Dark, empty, black.
“You didn’t tell me he was a priest,” she said.
What was she talking about? “I don’t understand.”
She pulled away from him, took two steps back. “Dammit, Ethan! I can’t kill a priest. I can’t. I can’t.”
“But he hurt me.”
His voice was a whisper; he didn’t know he had spoken.
She put her hands on his shoulders. “Maybe he is one of the few who is sorry.”
Ethan’s laugh sounded like the growl of a lunatic hyena, a combination of psychotic glee and rage. It stopped as suddenly as it began. That wasn’t him laughing, was it? Yes. No. He didn’t exist anymore. Did he?
“You know what they did to me.”
She caressed his face. He didn’t feel her hand, but then she skimmed her nails down his neck.