“We don’t have much time. Two days will be over before we know it.”
“I’ll have to go watch that antiques dealer, though.” Curran frowned as the thought hit him. “You’d be alone.”
Lauren bit her lip. “Yes. I would.”
Curran reached into his coat and brought out the small automatic. He kept it in the palm of his hand and pressed it into Lauren’s hands. “You ever fire a gun before?”
She looked down. “Once. I took a self-defense course that stressed real life knowledge and practice.” Her eyes seemed sad. “But I can’t take this. I can’t carry a gun, Steve.”
“You’d rather end up dead?”
She looked at him.
Curran continued. “Look, you might not like the idea of the gun, but if you die and you’re not able to help fight this evil thing off, then wouldn’t you be even more responsible? You could use this to defend yourself and possibly save hundreds of lives.”
“Most of those lives are pretty evil in their own right.”
“Yeah. Yeah they are.”
“But we’re all God’s creatures.”
Curran smiled. “I was waiting for that.” He nodded. “Just tuck it away in your coat. You won’t even notice it. It’s a small.380. Carries six rounds. You know how to work a safety catch and all that?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Curran looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get going. Kwon’s going to be waiting for me.”
“All right.”
Curran stood. The pile of folders he’d been reading through when Lauren came in shifted. He saw it too late. His hands flew out trying to catch them, but they dropped to the stained linoleum floor. Papers and printouts scattered across the small area between their table and the one next to them.
“Dammit.” Curran bent and started shoving the papers back into the folders. He and Kwon could take turns getting them straightened out later on. At least it would give them something to do.
Lauren bent down. “Let me help you.”
Her hand brushed against his. Curran looked up and met her eyes. She smiled. And kept her hand there. Curran smiled. Her skin felt so warm. He wondered what the rest of her felt like.
He broke the contact. Gonna burn in hell for deflowering one of God’s women, he thought.
“Steve.”
He sighed. “Yeah?”
“Who is this?”
Curran glanced up. Lauren held a glossy photo of one of the antiques dealers. “Let me see.”
She handed it to him. Curran nodded. “This is that guy Darius I was telling you about.”
Lauren’s eyes never left the photograph. “I think that was the man outside the library.”
“How can you be sure? You said you only caught a glimpse of him. You said there was a mustache.”
She took the photo and a pen out of her pocket. Curran watched her scribble across Darius’ upper lip.
Lauren leaned back.
“My God. It’s him.”
Chapter Nineteen
The house looked different now, thought Lauren as she walked toward it.
After she’d left Curran, she’d taken the train out toward Boston College. She’d walked slowly down the streets of this neighborhood, almost oblivious to the growing wind and ever present drizzle. But she did look behind her a number of times. Part of her almost expected to see the man again.
Her stalker.
What did the Soul Eater want? Lauren wanted to know the answer to that question worse than anything she’d wanted before. She stopped. What if the answer’s not good?
She frowned. Of course it wouldn’t be good. The Soul Eater was a minion of the Devil. How could anything he wanted be good? It wouldn’t be. Better to just resign myself to the inevitable rush of horror that will happen when I discover what it is.
If I discover it, she quickly corrected herself.
She drew close to the front steps. There was no sign that anything had even happened here. No tape marks from where the police would have put up the yellow crime scene tape. After all, there was no crime scene. No bodies. No nothing.
Darkness had fallen on the neighborhood almost an hour ago. Deep shadows bled out from the shrubs surrounding the small house. There were lights on in only one or two of the houses further down the street. Most of the people living close by weren’t home from work yet.
Perfect.
Lauren looked at the front door and frowned. It would, of course, be locked.
There had to be another way in.
She saw a small flagstone path running down one side of the house and took it. It led her to the back door. Lauren tried to door handle and found that locked as well.
From her bag, she took out a roll of duct tape and penknife. She drew out a long strip of the silver sticky tape and then cut it. She pressed it diagonally across the pane of glass. Then she repeated the process, this time pressing the line of tape in the other direction so there appeared a gossamer ‘X’ on the back door.
She paused, glanced around, and shook her head. Lauren Fields, she thought, nun and burglar.
She slammed her left elbow at the intersection of tape and heard the glass give. The tape held it fast though, keeping it from shattering and making an awful noise. Lauren kept breaking the glass until she could reach her hand through and unlatch the bolt.
Two minutes after she’d started, she entered the back hall of Sister Donovan’s home.
She closed the door behind her and shivered. Inside the house it felt like a glacier had settled there. Her breath came in small wisps of heated air that warmed her face as she walked.
In the kitchen she looked around. Some dishes still littered the sink. An empty box of spaghetti stood as testament to the dinner Sister Mary had never finished.
Her last meal, thought Lauren. All because of me.
She pushed through the wooden swing door separating the kitchen from the rest of the house. It felt warmer in the dining room. Lauren peered into the china cabinet and saw an old set of dishes. Bone china? She thought it looked so, but she wasn’t there to appraise Sister Donovan’s estate.
She moved beyond the dining room and into the living room. A small television set and VCR sat on a low shelf at one corner of the room. A couch and armchair, both in a blue gingham pattern, occupied the majority of the room. She could see a stack of magazines in a small tray between the two pieces of furniture.
She must have had an office somewhere.
Lauren veered toward the hallway and found herself retracing the steps she’d taken the other night. A weird sense of dreadful deja vu sprung up over her. She felt her heartbeat increase. Her breathing came in short rapid gasps.
Calm down, she told herself. That was then. This was now.
Find the journals.
Find the journals.
Her breathing slowed. Steeled now, she pressed on into the bedroom. The oxygen tank sat close to the bed. Pictures on the walls showed Sister Donovan in a wide array of locales. Most of the pictures she stood smiling with what looked like native peoples. None of the framed photos had captions, but Lauren guessed some showed regions in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia.
Quite the traveler.
The other night, Sister Donovan had started to say something when she’d been killed. Had she been alluding
