Deadly Blessings (39 page)

Bruno watched the skirmish with wide, eager
eyes, pulling his hands out from beneath his robes as Ro finally
released me. I glared at him, taking deep breaths to keep control.
Where the hell was Jeff?

“
Were you
able to get in touch with Emil?” Bruno asked Ro, as the big guy
pushed me aside to begin searching my purse. He pulled out latex
gloves to do the job, the implication of which frightened me more
than anything so far. I held my breath, and took my seat again at
the table, blocking Bruno’s view of the bag.
C’mon Jeff
. Bruno knew I
was no smoker. The fake cigarettes would be a dead
giveaway.

Sophie had been terrified into silence, it
seemed. She sat in a far corner chair, watching us, abject horror
frozen on her pale face. I turned away from her, angry.

Not angry. Furious.

Ro stopped pawing through the bag’s
cavernous interior long enough to reply. “No answer at the
rectory.”

Bruno stuck a cigarette between his lips,
pulling the Sacred Heart of Jesus lighter out of his pants pocket
in a smooth motion. “Damn idiot. Probably soused up again.” He
stood with his back to us, as Ro resumed his examination. He spent
extra time on a couple of items that seemed to interest him: my
mini-flashlight, a pocketknife, and some dental floss. Great tools
to affect an escape, I thought wryly.

I pulled a few tissues out from the side
pocket, shooting Ro a look that dared him to stop me. They were
soaked within seconds of contact with my cheek, but I held them
there, unwilling to get up to look for replacements until Ro
finished his search.

The fact that Jeff hadn’t made an
appearance, despite my obvious use of the word “Voyager,” hadn’t
escaped my notice. Maybe he was taking his time, calling in the
police … but maybe they couldn’t just storm in. Some law or
regulation might prevent their involvement without probable
cause.

Still.

“
It’ll be dark enough
soon,” Bruno said, almost to himself. “The devil does his best work
in the dark.” His head snapped Ro’s direction, “I want her car
brought around the back. We’ll need it later.”

Ro dug my keys out, and shoved them into his
pocket. “Yes, sir.”

“
Make sure no one sees you.
Anybody else beside those gangbangers out there?”

“
Yeah. Some white guy in a
van sitting out there, smoking.”

Bruno’s eyes flashed toward me. “Friend of
hers?”

Ro considered that. “Nah. Cable guy or
something. I had Rico and the boys chase him off.”

My heart dropped.

Jeff.

Gone. And probably before there had been any
indication of trouble here. My mind blanked for a long moment.

Ro spoke up again. “We could get Rico or one
of them to drive the car, you know.”

Bruno stared at us without expression. “No,
I don’t want them involved in this one. Too risky. They’ll sell us
out in a heartbeat when they get picked up for something else. I’ll
tell Lisa to stop for Emil along the way.”

From the way Ro nodded, my big mistake
became obvious. It was Bruno who called the shots. Not Lisa. She
was his pawn, rather than the other way around. I closed my eyes in
frustration. I’d let my Catholic-ness blind me. How could I have
been so stupid to have missed it?

“
Put them in the basement
for now,” Bruno said, glaring at Sophie and me. Our eyes locked for
a moment and he grinned malevolently.

He made a sign of the cross in the air over
our heads. “Not to worry,” he said, his eyes triumphant, “At your
funerals, I will be certain to speak of your glory. Because, as
Peter says, when the Shepherd appears you will receive the crown of
glory that will never fade away.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

From my vantage point in the back seat of
Lisa’s SUV I couldn’t see the speedometer, but I could tell from
surrounding traffic that she stayed well within the posted limits.
She religiously used her turn signal whenever changing lanes and
maintained a sedate pace on the right, switching only to the left
when it became necessary to pass either a truck or an elderly
driver going twenty miles under the limit. I suspected she was less
concerned with qualifying for a safe driver’s award than she was
hoping to remain unobtrusive and avoid getting pulled over.
Considering that we didn’t crash, get a flat tire, or that the
steely gun Ro pointed at us from his twisted perch in the SUV’s
passenger seat didn’t go off, the drive south on the Dan Ryan
expressway was uneventful.

Uneventful.

The word stung.

Because all of a sudden, it described my
life. All too well.

I spent the ride with a wad of napkins taken
from the church kitchen pressed against my cheek, staring out the
side window, seeing nothing but the barrenness of the landscape as
a backdrop to the barrenness of my life. Wondering at what could
have been. Replaying old regrets—so many. Too many. Wishing I’d
done more, seen more, experienced more.

The cloud cover from the afternoon had
cleared and pinpoints of bright light twinkled above. A full moon,
in such sharp focus that I could see the man in it watching over
us, glinted almost silver. I breathed a shuddery sigh and wondered
if I’d ever see the sun rise over the lake again.

I kept a Mark Twain quote taped to the wall
next to my desk and I thought about it now. He once said that we
would be more disappointed by the things that we didn’t do than by
the ones we did. He urged us to sail away from the safe harbor, to
explore, to dream, to discover.

I’d always pictured myself as an
eighty-year-old woman in a rocking chair, looking back on my life
with a smile of satisfaction. Eighty always seemed so far off. So
distant. I was convinced I had plenty of time to make those
discoveries, to take those chances.

I felt my life rush forward now, like the
surroundings outside the window. Blurred, bleak, forgettable.
Biting my lip, I fought the hard lump of ache working its way up my
throat, lodging hot behind my eyes.

They’d do an autopsy, of course. A mental
image of my naked body lying cold under harsh lights made me take a
sharp breath. Then the scene in my mind shifted, and all I could
see were my parents standing over me, Lucy asking what happened. My
face caked with dead person makeup, my lips sewn tight, and my
hands crossed on my abdomen. I saw the people come visit. I watched
the mourners asking why and how. And—William. I never took that
chance, either. I felt stabbing pain from all I missed. And in that
moment I knew Mark Twain was right. I regretted all the chances I
hadn’t taken, far more than any mistakes I’d made. Except this one,
of course.

Lisa drove with intensity. Her face flashed
bright-dark, bright-dark as we zipped south beneath the pattern of
street lights. Apart from an occasional glance at her rear view
mirror, presumably to verify that Emil still followed in my Escort,
she barely moved, and didn’t speak. Her hands, gripping the
steering wheel at firm ten and two o’clock positions and her ramrod
straight back, confirmed what I picked up earlier in her discussion
with Bruno. She wanted no part of this excursion.

When Lisa and Emil first arrived, Ro and
Bruno shepherded us out the back door of the church, through an
alley of darkness, to three waiting cars.

Ro pushed us toward Lisa’s deep green
Mercedes SUV. At his shove, Sophie stumbled, skinning her knee on
the ground. “Stupid bitch,” Ro said, pulling her up by the collar
of her jacket and throwing her into the back seat.

We looked like a troupe of stage players,
performing in a lonely circle of light from one faint street lamp
above. Desolate, and quiet, I hoped for a curious neighbor to come
investigate what these white folks were doing in a back alley at
night. But nothing moved, except for an occasional dark shadow,
scurrying and scratching, near the bases of the garbage cans.

Lisa wore a black ensemble. Shoes, pants,
shirt, jacket. With her dark hair she was nearly invisible in the
low light. “Hey!” she said, her voice loud, but swallowed up by the
area’s emptiness.

Just as he grabbed me, Ro stopped.

“
No way,” Lisa had said to
Bruno. “They are not getting in my car.”

I’d hoped Sophie would take advantage of the
distraction and make a break out the SUV’s far door. But instead
she just sat there, mouth agape, unable to do more than watch and
breathe, little post-cry hiccups punctuating the silence as Bruno
raised an eyebrow in Lisa’s direction.

If Ro hadn’t held me by the
arm, I would have run.
Don’t get in the
car. Don’t get in the car
. I repeated it
to myself like a mantra.

“
I’ve decided. You will
drive. Emil will follow.” Bruno’s voice took on a tone of
authority.

She blinked at him several times. “What
about you? What will you be doing?”

“
I have a pressing dinner
engagement with the Cardinal in …” he checked his watch, pressing a
small button to make the face light up iridescent green in the dim
light, “thirty minutes.” He held up accompanying fingers. “Two very
good reasons. My parish needs assistance and I need an
alibi.”

Lisa ran her hand back along her head, to
pull her hair back with her left hand, holding it pony-tail fashion
behind her. Not the move of a power-wielding madame—this was a
nervous gesture. “I’m not going to be part of this,” she said. “I
never said I’d be part of killing anyone.”

Bruno stepped close, invading her space.
“You …” he said. Lisa was not a small woman, but Bruno loomed large
before her. His big fingers caressed, moving from her temple along
her hairline, down into the neck of her open jacket. They lingered
there, and he smiled. “Do you remember what happened last time you
told me ‘no’?”

In the night glitter light from the pale
overhead street lamp I watched Lisa’s gaze change. I’d swear she
went from rebellion to hatred, before finally dissolving into
resignation. Her hand dropped from holding her frizzy hair. He
tightened his fingers at her neck.

“
Do you?”

With a nod, she broke away.

Giving a self-satisfied smile, Bruno looked
over at Ro who shoved me, unceremoniously, into the back seat
alongside Sophie. “Don’t bother trying to get out,” he said, “Child
protection locks.”

I tried anyway. He was right.

Bruno went over details with Ro, Lisa
listening from the open driver’s side door. I strained to hear,
too. Sophie, clutching my arm, started again with soft mewls of
panic. With her face so close to mine, she nearly drowned out
Bruno’s words.

“
Stop it,” I hissed at her,
shaking my arm to disengage her grasp. I resisted the urge to shove
her away, but my anger bubbled up, boiling over. I was wrong about
Bruno’s position. While I’d harbored suspicions he wasn’t an
unwitting participant, I hadn’t ever seen him as the mastermind.
I’d never for a moment believed him capable of killing. What an
idiot I’d been, thinking I could talk him into giving up
information on Lisa and the organization. I’d been blinded from the
start by my own priest preconceptions, and Sophie’s unwavering
devotion to him.

“
How could you do this,
Sophie?” White hot lights flashed in my head as I whisper-shouted,
but I knew I couldn’t stop the tumble of words as they spewed out
my mouth. “You trusted him,” I pointed to Bruno, “and now what?
Matthew’s dead and they’re going to kill us, too. How could you do
this? Why did you go to him?”

A long, deep shudder racked through Sophie’s
body. I watched grief and pain come over her face as she opened her
mouth to speak. Nothing came out. The poor girl stiffened, then
shook, her wide eyes panicked and terrified.

Immediately regretting my outburst, I took a
deep breath, trying to calm the demons of anger that shot through
my unnerved body. Sophie stared as though she’d never seen me
before. Ashamed of myself, I relented. I put my arm around her.
“Shush now,” I said. “We’ll get away. I know we will. Trust
me.”

She nodded, taking ragged breaths.

I turned my attention back outside.

“…
fatal accident,” Bruno
had said to Ro. With a look I could only call a smirk, he glanced
up—caught me watching them. Bruno’s voice cut the heartbeat of
silence. “And make sure it burns.”

* * * * *

Now, the SUV bounced hard on the uneven
road, with a powerful jolt that knocked me against the door. My
face bumped the side window and I felt my cut sting and stretch as
it reopened. A warm welling of blood dripped down my cheek. It
pulled my attention back to the present in a hurry.

Ro looked out the back, over my head. He
muttered an expletive, then pulled out a two-way walkie-talkie from
his jacket pocket. He pressed a button and a feedback screech
echoed through the car.

Lisa jumped, then glared at him. “For crying
out loud, Ro, I’ve got mine on, too. Get closer to the window
before you use that thing.”

He moved, but the gun never wavered.

“
Emil, you
there?”

Answering static, then, “Yeah.”

“
Where the hell are
you?”

“
Just turned off, uh, the
main road, uh …”

“
Shit, forget it. I see
you.”

Sophie rested heavy against my left side.
She’d fallen asleep. I shook my head in disbelief. Exhausted from
panic and long crying jag she’d been through during the day, her
body had simply given up. There’s no way I could have slept at this
point, not with the constant shivers of dread ripping through my
mind. If these were indeed my last hours on the planet, I wanted to
face them wide awake. But then again, Sophie was a different animal
than I was, and maybe sleeping worked as her most effective coping
mechanism. It must be a strong one, I thought, since the vehicle’s
continued bouncing didn’t even faze her. I wanted to wake her up,
but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Let her remain unaware,
for as long as possible.