“Danger? From what?”
“Please, Father. There’s no time. Trust me on this. We have to go now.”
He stared at her, his tired face wrinkled with uncertainty. Held her gaze for a brief moment, then nodded and got out of bed. He was wearing dark pajamas.
“I have to get dressed,” he told her.
“There’s no time. Just put your shoes on,” she insisted.
He nodded, and slipped on his socks and lace-up shoes. Matt came over. He put a friendly hand on the old man’s shoulder. “My name’s Matt Sherwood, Father. Everything’s going to be fine. Just stay close to Gracie and try not to make any noise, okay?”
The old priest nodded his readiness, the deepening creases in his forehead betraying his unease. Matt glanced at Gracie. They exchanged tight nods, then Matt opened the door and stepped out.
He didn’t see it coming. The strike came flying out from the right, his attacker hugging the wall closely. It nailed him just behind his right ear, a downward blow that had a hard leading edge to it, as if the fist had been balled around a hard stump. It lit up the inside of his skull. Matt thudded heavily to the floor as Gracie screamed at the sight of Brother Ameen moving swiftly out of the shadows and landing a heavy kick on Matt’s midsection.
Matt grunted heavily as the kick lifted him off the cool tiles of the hallway. He slammed back against the wall, unsure of where the next blow was coming from, his vision blurred. He sucked in a sharp breath and pushed himself onto his hands and knees in time for another kick to explode across his ribs and send him flying back into the wall. Then the monk was right up against him, his thin, taut arms like steel cables around his neck, choking the life out of him. Matt struggled to suck in some air, but the monk’s grip wasn’t about to cooperate. The energy was seeping out of him fast. He tried hitting back with his elbows, but they only found air, and every thrash was draining the little strength he had left in him. He tried to fight off the encroaching dizziness and drew on his last reserves to try a rear head butt, snapping his neck back as hard as he could. The monk saw it coming and jerked his head sideways to avoid it, then tightened his hold on Matt even more. Matt felt his throat getting crushed, felt all kinds of cartilage in there popping and tearing and twisting, felt his lungs retching for air. He gasped, struggling to breathe now, his eyes feeling like they were about to pop out of their sockets—
Then he heard a loud shriek and a dull, crashing thud and felt the monk’s grip slacken. He sucked in a barrel-load of air and sprung backward, shoving Ameen, and turned to see the monk spinning off him before righting himself and shaking his head back to life. Gracie was standing there, her face locked with surprise and fear, the lamp from the old priest’s bedside table now upturned and tightly gripped in her hands, its shade all bent out of shape. She was holding it up like a baseball bat, ready for another swing, her body all tight and curled and hunched like a predator’s about to pounce. The monk wasn’t cowed and he didn’t give her another chance. He swung a lightning arm out and whipped the lamp out of her hands, then brought his arm back with its knuckle out again and caught Gracie on the left temple. The blow landed with a sharp crack. It sent her flying back into the room before she hit the ground hard.
Matt shook some clarity back into his own head and leapt at the monk just as he was turning to face him again. Matt was much bigger and bulkier, but Ameen was a tight coil of hard muscle and knew where and how to hit. They wrestled and punched their way across the hallway, then the monk’s fist found Matt’s bullet wound. A gush of pain erupted across him, causing a momentary blackout that pulled down his defenses and opened him to a frenzy of sharp jabs. Matt recoiled, his body jerking with each blow as if bullets were drilling through him. He was at the edge of the stairs when he heard Gracie scream his name. A flash of lucidity broke through the encroaching darkness, and he saw the monk’s fist racing down at his head for a final, crippling blow. He jerked sideways without thinking, tightened every muscle he could still control, and grabbed the monk’s arm, twisting it savagely and spinning it around like it was a spoke on a six-foot wheel. The move caught the monk by surprise and bent him forward, lifting him off his feet as his shoulder tore out of its socket. Matt kept a tight grip on the monk’s arm and fed his momentum by twisting it even higher in a circular sweep. The monk’s head came down and his feet left the ground as he vaulted over the railing backward and flew into the air, before landing in a heavy, sickening crack at the bottom of the stairs.
Matt creaked his body upright, edged over, and looked down. The monk’s body just lay there, slack and silent. Matt glanced back at Gracie. She stepped over to him, closely followed by a shell-shocked Father Jerome. She looked down. Frowned. Then nodded.
“Come on,” Matt whispered, his voice hoarse. “We don’t have much time left.”
They slipped down the stairs, past the Croatian’s corpse. There was no need to check for a pulse. The man’s head was bent at an angle that precluded life. They threaded their way back out of the living room, past the pool and the tennis court, and skirted the edge of the fairways just as the sign faded out and plunged the neighborhood back into darkness.
By the time they got back to the Lincoln, it was loaded up and waiting for them. They all crammed into it and slipped away, a pregnant silence enshrouding the car as they wondered how the city—and the world—would react to their Christmas surprise.
Chapter 80
Houston, Texas
Maddox blocked out the pain as he watched the ER team deal with his own Christmas surprise. He’d told the admitting nurse he’d had an accident while fixing up his lawn mower. A valid and well-stocked credit card had taken care of the rest. The surgeons had been working on him for over three hours, cutting and drilling and screwing and sewing away at his mangled arm while a couple of tubes snaked into him and replenished the blood he’d left among the trees by the stadium.
He’d insisted on only having local anesthesia, deciding he’d had enough unexpected surprises for one night and knowing full well that he could have even managed without it. They’d just about succeeded in saving the arm, but he wouldn’t have any use of it for a long time, and even then, the doctors had told him that he’d have very limited use of it. The blades had hacked their way through muscle and tendons with abandon. When all was said and done, his arm would be little more than a decorative limb. His right arm. His good arm. In his simmering anger, he’d been tempted to get it over with and have them shear it off at the elbow, but he’d pulled back from the idea, not wanting to make his appearance even more grotesque than it already was. He’d settle for one working arm. He’d just need to train it to compensate.
Even in his weakened, half-drugged state, he registered the commotion in the hospital as news of the sign’s appearance over Reverend Darby’s house had spread. The news was troubling. He knew that wasn’t part of the plan. Which meant someone was going off piste. He wondered if Drucker was behind it, and if so, what he was doing. He realized things were unraveling from all fronts, but he accepted it stoically and knew better than to let his mind fester on what had gone wrong. He knew he needed to focus on the way forward—on completing the task he’d set for himself and, with a bit of luck, on his own freedom and survival. He knew when the time was right to cut one’s losses, when it was better to find a new boat than to keep bailing out a sinking ship. And with Rydell, the Sherwood boys, and that reporter running free, that ship wasn’t just sinking, it was about to be torpedoed into smithereens.