"God will forgive any sin," Angel argued.
"To the truly repentant, yes. You don't qualify." Jay had to be dreaming. There was no way this confession could be happening. Any moment now he would awaken in his room at the parish house in Santa Teresita, grateful the experience had only been another bizarre and terrifying nightmare.
"Whether you believe me or not, I am sorry. To the extent I have sinned, I ask God's forgiveness and yours, Father."
Jay pressed his index finger into a throbbing left temple, momentarily halting the bass drum that thumped behind his eyeballs. He considered himself a tolerant forgiving man. It stunned him to realize he had reached the last outpost of his capacity to absolve human sinfulness in God's name. He glared into the void and rasped, "Let God forgive you if he will . . . . I can't."
"I'll settle for that. In return, Father, I will make you an offer." Angel paused for a response. Getting none, he went on. "A stay of execution. I will give you one day to meditate on the gravity of your crimes. Twenty-four hours. I can't think of a better place for it. Return immediately to Santo Sangre and forget the Bartons. If you do, President Montenegro will dismiss the charges against you. By next weekend you will be back in your parish doing God's real work. Tomorrow night at this same time I will return for your answer"
"If I refuse?" Jay's voice was steel.
"You will leave me no choice but to carry out my orders." Angel's voice softened, becoming almost paternal. "Do you want my advice, Father?" Jay didn't. "Meet me here tomorrow night. It is your only hope to survive the mess you have gotten yourself into."
Mute rage dammed Jay's ability to spew words of hatred, insult, condemnation. Good thing because rationality overcame his exploding emotions. He recognized a long-shot opportunity in this window of time Angel had handed him. He had until tomorrow night to devise a scheme to end this ordeal. Plus, Leah and her children would be safe, at least until then. "Agreed. I'll be here."
"So, you are a wise man after all. I had my doubts. Now, Father, if you will grant me absolution."
Under his breath, Jay prayed, "Lord, if you want to cleanse this bastard's soul, that's your business." Grudgingly, he bestowed the words of forgiveness. "May our Lord Jesus Christ absolve you, and by his authority I--" He surrendered the gun, laying it across his knees. His cramped right hand ached as he made the sign of the cross. "I absolve you."
The curtain in the penitent's compartment rustled. By the time Jay shook loose from the paralysis that immobilized him, the back doors of the chapel had swung shut with a soft hiss from the pneumatic door closer. Angel was gone. Only the obscene voice lingered in Jay's head. A voice so familiar, yet impossible to connect with a face.
* * *
Jay made his way through the building, stopping to talk with no one. He dropped the revolver on the bed and flopped beside it in a heap. Restlessly, he bounced up again and pulled off his sweaty shirt. In the bathroom he doused his face with cold water and pressed a wet cloth to his aching forehead. Still holding the cool compress to his skin, he took two aspirins and returned to the bed.
What had Angel offered him? A chance to save my own worthless skin. A safe return home, where he would live out his life in personal, if not public, shame as the unworthily beloved priest-hypocrite of Santa Teresita. A life sentence. A death sentence. He had never entertained the thought of taking his own life but knew if he abandoned Leah now, the day would come when they'd find him in his parish house, hanging from a wooden beam. His suicide would leave parishioners and fellow priests wondering how he had come to despair of the all-encompassing redemption he had preached for so many years.
Twenty-four hours. Twenty-four years! Punishment fit for a stupid priest with bloody hands. There was nothing to meditate on. It wasn't a real choice. What would he do with the empty time? Since Angel had glued him to the retreat house he might as well spend the time in prayer. Pray for what? Wisdom? Divine absolution? He needed both.
Stuck? "Damn! That's it!" Why hadn't he seen it before? Angel had Jay nailed to the spot while he was free to roam the state of California as he pleased. Where might Montenegro's puppet wander between now and tomorrow night? He knew the answer. But how could Angel possibly know how to find Leah? "Angel knows everything!" he groaned.
Jay sprang from the bed and flew out the door, down the corridor to the phone booth at the far end. He dialed zero, the area code, and Leah's number.
"Operat--" His lungs demanded air. "Operator, I want to call this number collect."
A recording informed him the call could not be completed as dialed. The operator came back on the line. "There's been a storm in the Tahoe area." She added, "Apparently, some lines are down, sir. You can try again later, or in the morning."
"They may all be dead by morning!" he yelled into the mouthpiece before slamming the receiver into its cradle.
It was now a race to reach Leah before Angel did. They must flee to some safe place if such a haven existed for them any more on this earth. He had his rented car. Seven hours driving time at best. If the storm persisted, who knew how long? He could fly but chances were good that flights into Tahoe would be delayed or canceled. In any case, flying left too much beyond Jay's control. Control was vital. Besides, how would he get his revolver past airport security? He decided on the longer, surer form of transportation. There wasn't a second to waste. Angel was almost certainly heading north already.
In his room, Jay opened his suitcase and threw his freshly unpacked clothes back in. Grabbing his black clerical suit and vest from a hanger, he stopped. These garments held no meaning for him any more. They were a sham, a lie. He was no longer a priest, no longer--if he ever was--a man of God, a man of peace. He had become some wild thing whose needs had been reduced to two: murder and survival.
What minimal faith he had left resided in the loaded revolver on the bed next to his suitcase. With it, he and Leah and Teddy and Monica might live. Yes, I will kill to survive. Not the moral stance of a true priest. Not the delicate conscience of Father Javier de Córdova, former pastor of Parróquia Santa Teresita on the slopes of Chuchuán in Santo Sangre. Did I ever truly believe in nonviolence? Or was my Pollyanna posturing the result of never having been threatened with deadly force? Was I a pacifist because I never loved anyone enough to kill for her?
How different the world had looked from his celibate ivory tower. Personal love, his very specific love of a real live woman had changed everything. I'd kill for this woman. The realization gave him a feeling of raw strength and courage he had never experienced before. At the same time it estranged him from the self he had lived with in relative peace.
He folded the black suit and laid it on the bed beside his suitcase. He placed the stiff white collar on top of it. He had vowed to wear it until death. Wasn't this life-altering ordeal a kind of death? Unwanted tears fought their way into his eyes. He had expected his departure from the priesthood to be different, more formal, culminating in a visit to the old archbishop to express gratitude and regrets and to ask the prelate's blessing on his future. This desolate moment in a strange, dangerous land was the reality. The end of his first incarnation.
Father Javier de Córdova no longer exists. He picked up the white collar and pressed it to his lips. A barrage of second thoughts begged him to change his mind. He shook them off and dropped the collar on top of his black suit. "Begin . . . begin the new life of Mr. Javier de Córdova," he said aloud to make the commitment more real. "Condemned fugitive. Angel killer?"
30
"Mom! Mom!" Teddy shook his mother. "Wake up!"
Groggy at first, then quickly awake and alert, Leah asked, "What? What is it, Teddy?"
Monica slept on with the same cherubic look Leah had envied a few hours earlier.
"Better come downstairs. There's a man in the kitchen." He stared at the floor to deflect his mother's questions.
Leah leapt from the bed and went to the bedroom door. No sound from below. "Todd Walter Barton," she rasped j
ust above a whisper, "if this is one of your practical jokes you're grounded for the week. I mean it!" His anguished look convinced her otherwise. "Is it Father de Córdova?"
"No. It's the policeman from San Francisco." Anxiety cracked his adolescent voice.
"Policeman? What policeman?"
"At soccer practice . . . Saturday. This guy came up and showed me his badge. Asked some questions about the priest. Said it was no big deal. Just a routine investigation about something that happened somewhere else. In Europe, I think. He wanted to know where to reach us."
Leah's heart sank to the soles of her bare feet. "And you told him?"
Teddy nodded.
"Why didn't you say something?"
"Guess I forgot."
Leah suspected another reason for Teddy's silence: a secret hope his new rival would get in trouble and be sent back to wherever he had come from. "What does he look like?"
"Big guy. Dark. Black hair . . . combed funny, straight back. Pretty old. Big nose. Bug eyes. Talks with an accent. How'd he get in?"
"I don't know," she snapped. "Stay here with Monica. Lock the door. Don't either of you come down unless I tell you to."
Monica stirred from her sleep and chirped. "Good morning. Is it still snowing?"
Leah kissed her. "Good morning, sweetheart."
Monica looked at her mother's expression, then at her brother. "What's the matter? Teddy in trouble?"
"Teddy's not in trouble," Leah lied. "Stay here with your brother. I'll call you when breakfast is ready."
"I have to pee!" Monica said with a huff that Leah recognized as the mirror image of one of her own mannerisms.
"All right! Go pee and come right back." When Monica closed the upstairs bathroom door, Leah repeated her instruction to Teddy, "When she comes back, lock the door. Hear me?" She crept across the hall to her room and threw on the pants and sweater she had worn the night before. Pausing to look at herself in the bureau mirror, she fussed with her unbrushed hair, until the stupidity of her vanity struck her.
The knife! Perhaps she wasn't impotent and a prisoner in her own house, after all. She returned to Monica's room to retrieve the utensil-turned-weapon. It's gone!
At the top of the stairs she took a deep breath, steadied herself with a hand against the wall and went down.
"Hello, Señora Barton," the man said.
The casual, almost friendly greeting chilled Leah's soul. Teddy's description had been accurate, except that the "pretty old" man had to be in his late forties or early fifties. He was a barrel-chested bull of a man. Horizontal furrows ran in from the temples across a high forehead and met above the bridge of a bulbous nose that confirmed Teddy's description.
Blotched, puffy cheeks only made him look fat, but Leah guessed his arms, legs and torso were mostly muscle. The curve of the intruder's jaw line matched the roundness of the crown of his head. Under it were full thick lips, the lower of which protruded beyond the upper. His humorless face must have long been a stranger to anything approaching a smile. In his right hand, which rested on the kitchen table, was a snub-nosed revolver, the most obscene object Leah had ever seen.
"How did you get in here?" she demanded, affecting coolness and control.
"Trade secret," he grunted.
"What do you want?"
"Hot coffee for now. Tell your children to come downstairs where I can watch them."
"You're the one they call Angel."
The man nodded.
"What's your real name?"
"My name is not important. Not to you, at least."
Leah assumed Angel had seen to it that the phone was still dead. Since she'd be incapable of resisting a man of his size, there was no use making threats or refusing to comply. He had killed before--children. He had no reason to balk now. To have any chance at all, she needed to keep this taciturn somehow interested enough to converse with her. Even then she might only buy a morsel of futureless time, futile prolongation of a grim and deadly final act, probably written months ago in the Sala Azul in Santa Catalina.
"Teddy! Monica! Come down. Now!" Leah called and went to the cupboard to find the coffee. She dumped several scoops of French roast into a paper filter. Hand tremors made it nearly impossible to slide the plastic basket into place. Like a drunk in detox, she poured cold water into the coffee maker, splashing half of it over the side and onto the Formica counter top.
The aroma of fresh brew gave the early morning scene an artificial feeling of domestic well-being. Outside, the storm had passed, leaving behind lingering clouds but none of the blizzard conditions of the night before. As she poured Angel's coffee into a mug and placed it on the table before him, Leah wondered how he had found his way to her cabin. "Where's Jay?"
"Father Javier?" he corrected. "The traitor? I expect him any time now, unless I give him more credit than he deserves. We have plenty of time and I am sure you are well stocked with provisions."
Leah hid the uplift this news gave her spirit. Jay on his way to Heavenly Valley! But walking into a trap. These mutually canceling facts added to her depression.
The children appeared in the doorway like two robots, and she became a mother again, using that role to structure some of the anxiety-laced time that stretched uncertainly before them.
"Sit down," she ordered. "I'll fix your breakfast."
Angel occupied the chair farthest from the stove, his back to the wall. Teddy sat to his left, Monica to the right. Neither child spoke. Their saucer-like eyes alternated between the gun and their mother, waiting for directions, clues to what she intended to do to get rid of this man. For her part, Leah went about the business of frying eggs and bacon as if the man at the head of the table were an invited, welcome guest.
"Did your boy tell you we met last Saturday?"
Leah didn't answer, but only nodded and slipped two sunny-side ups onto her son's plate. She added three strips of bacon and a slice of buttered toast. She wanted desperately to keep the conversation alive, but any words her brain sent to her tongue aborted along the way, victims of her rising panic.
"I don't want my eggs runny," Monica said, more politely than she would have under other circumstances.
Leah found the whole scene bizarre in the extreme. A nightmare in which nothing at all made sense. Domestic tranquillity about to freeze-frame in death. "Okay, no runny eggs." She would have laughed if humor hadn't deserted her repertoire of responses.
Monica played nervously with her food. "Mom, what're we doing today?"
"You'll have to ask--" She pointed with the spatula. "Him."
"We're waiting for someone," Angel said.
"He thinks Jay's on his way here," Leah said. "When he comes--if he comes--I guess we'll know what we're going to do today." She glanced defiantly at Angel. "Won't we?"
"I have to go to the bathroom," Teddy said to his mom. Then to the man at his right, "May I?"
"Use the one down here and be quick," the intruder ordered.
"Yes, sir." Teddy moved toward the enclosed service porch, giving his mother's hand a reassuring squeeze as he passed by.
"How long have you been in the house?" Leah said.
"Long enough to go to the bathroom myself and look around. You are sound sleepers." He produced Leah's carving knife from under the table. "These can be dangerous. You shouldn't leave them around for children to play with."
It disgusted Leah to think of Angel present in her house--in her bedroom--while she and the children slept. What if he had--? But he hadn't harmed them, a fact that puzzled her. Why this leisurely attitude toward his assignment. If his mission was to murder Teddy, and probably all of them now, why delay? Why not kill her and the children and wait to gun Jay down? And why is Teddy taking so long in the bathroom?
Angel stirred in his chair. "Get the boy."
Leah stepped onto the porch. "You through, Teddy?" No answer. "Teddy!"
"Maybe he fell in." Monica giggled. "Or fell asleep on the pot."
Angel wasn't amused. He raised his hulk from the chair and shoved Leah aside. Monica ran to her mother and hid behind her, no longer wise-cracking but whimpering softly, her lower lip puckered and vibrating. With one lunge of his wall-like body, Angel splintered the door leaving it jutting out into the hallway like a broken tree limb.
In the empty bathroom, a screwdriver lay on the toilet tank. Teddy had removed the hardware on the window over the toilet and had climbed through the opening. Leah didn't know whether to be elated or even more frightened. A creeping paralysis in her brain resolved any doubt. For Monica's sake, she fought to remain conscious.
* * *
"Angel!"
Leah recognized Jay's clear voice calling from outside the cabin. She forced her feet not to run for the door.
"Angel!" he called again.
"So, he's come. Good. The curtain rises on the third and final act." Angel waved his pistol at Leah and Monica, motioning them ahead of him to the front window. Using them as a shield, he parted the drapes with the weapon and peered out, keeping his body well behind the cedar-paneled wall.
Jay crouched behind a snow bank about fifteen feet in from the road. Teddy was near him, well protected by a fallen, snow-covered log. Seeing the gun in Jay's hand surprised Leah--and raised her hopes.
Angel shattered the nearest pane of glass with his gun barrel. He chipped away jagged fragments, giving himself a hole to shoot or converse through, whichever the situation demanded. "If you want to see your woman alive again, Father, drop your gun and come out into the open."
"You made a deal with me last night. Now, I have one for you," Jay yelled back.
"You didn't keep your commitment. That's becoming a habit with you, isn't it, priest? What is this 'deal' of yours?"
"Simple. My life for theirs."
"No!" Leah screamed, struggling to escape her captor's grasp.
Angel clapped his free hand over her mouth. "Tell me more."
"I'll come into the open and drop my gun. Let me come inside. I'll do anything you want. Kill me. Take me back to Santo Sangre. Anything. But, let the Bartons go."
Leah attempted to protest but couldn't free her mouth to object to Jay's ill-conceived plan.
"Come out, then, traitor," Angel ordered.