Sacrifice

Lily's eyes hard on mine. 'Safe,' she said.

'He's with us,' Mac said. 'At the temple.' She meant the top floor of one of Mama's warehouses. Where she lived with Max.

'And you think Wolfe's crazy?'

'Not crazy,' Storm put in. 'Just wrong.

I turned to face Immaculata. 'So you left him alone with Flower?'

Her eyes dropped. Wouldn't meet mine.

'You don't think Wolfe's wrong,' I said to Lily, voice gentle and flat. If anyone was nuts, it was this crew.

'Luke needs to be in a hospital,' Lily said, not giving an inch.

'We don't have joints for criminally insane babies.'

'I know.'

'What do you all want?'

Storm tapped her fingers on the counter, looking at her sisters, waiting. They'd talked this over before they came. 'We want you to negotiate. With Wolfe.'

'Negotiate what?'

'For some time. We need time. If Wolfe takes him now, she's going to charge him.'

'He's too young to be charged with a crime.'

'No, he's not, Burke. Wolfe says anyone over seven can be charged.'

'Yeah, as a juvenile delinquent, or something. But they can't…'

I stopped talking as the ugly fear banged on the door of my consciousness. I was younger than Luke when they locked me up for the first time. That's what they did to ungrateful orphans who ran away from beatings. And pitch-black closets. And basements that smelled of human rot.

'You talked to him…?'

'He doesn't know anything,' Lily said. 'He'd pass a lie detector.'

'You know what he is,' I said, daring her to deny it.

'Yes, we know. But we don't know why. He wasn't born like this.'

'So you want to make a deal. For treatment or something.'

'That's a job for a lawyer. We can get him a lawyer. We have to know why. That's for you.'

'I'm not a psychiatrist.'

'We know what you are.'

I started thinking like what I was. 'Did the foster parents see you take the kid out of there?'

'I was there first,' Storm said. 'I called Lily. She came over with some more people. We talked to the foster parents while the others took Luke out. They didn't see a thing. Don't know where he is.'

'Wolfe…?'

'Doesn't believe it for a second,' Lily said. 'She said she's got the kid on the books as missing. APB running for him. Said if he doesn't turn up by tomorrow, she'll get a search warrant. For SAFE. For Storm's house. For wherever.'

'It's like that, huh?'

'Just like that.'

I lit a cigarette, buying time. The woman warriors watched me, waiting. 'Remember that time Wolfe had this case…girl about twenty-five…she'd been molested when she was eleven, long time ago? So she charged the guy, even though the statute of limitations was long gone? Remember, Lily? You testified that the girl had been in a psychiatric coma…couldn't even remember what had happened to her until she'd been in therapy for something else.'

Lily nodded, waiting for the punch line.

'It went all the way up to the appellate courts, but they let the indictment stand. Said this freak, it was no different than if he hit her in the head with a tire iron and she just woke up years later. The girl couldn't remember because of something he did, so he wasn't off the hook.'

'I remember. We all do. It changed the law.'

'Yeah. Well, Wolfe likes that kind of stuff. Making people pay.'

We sealed the bargain without another word.

52

I pulled the Plymouth into the warehouse. It looked deserted, like always. Max closed the garage doors behind us. Metal stairs to the next floor, narrow landing. Max's temple to the right, living quarters to the left.

'I don't think you really understand….' Luke's voice.

He was sitting in a straight chair, facing the door. Talking to a young Chinese. Flower crawled around on the floor, gurgling happily.

The young Chinese stood up as we entered, bowing to Max. He was wearing a baggy bright-white T-shirt that