The priest moved closer, and Ryan smelled something acrid emanating from him. Instinctively, he pressed back harder against the chapel door, but when it didn’t budge he suddenly ducked his head, twisted to the right, and bolted for the vestry door behind the altar, certain that wherever it led had to be safer than the chapel itself.
But the priest anticipated his move, and grabbed Ryan’s arm with far more strength than the boy expected, pulling him off balance. A second later Father Sebastian’s free hand was clamping some kind of wet rag over his mouth and nose. Ryan fought to hold his breath against the acrid fumes emanating from the rag, but it was no use.
His own strength seemed to ebb away as the priest’s grew. Within a few seconds, Ryan’s heart was pounding in his chest, and, despite his own will, his instinct for air overcame his reason and his lungs expanded, sucking in great gulps of the terrible fumes.
It was as if a plug had been pulled inside him, and what little strength was left in his body seemed to leak out of his limbs.
He felt himself slump against the priest, and then drop to his knees on the cold stone.
“It’s all right, Ryan,” he heard Father Sebastian say. “When you wake up, you’ll be a new person.”
Ryan gazed up at the priest’s smiling, gentle face — marred only by two cold, empty eyes — and then the blackness poured in from all around him.
With no way to escape, Ryan gave himself up to blackness.
CHAPTER 48
STEVE MORGAN PARKED the patrol car and switched off the headlights. “Let’s make this quick, okay? See if you can resist the urge to start thinking up new questions.”
“Just a signature,” Matt McCain agreed, opening the door to step out into the drizzling rain.
Morgan adjusted his hat, and together the two officers walked up the driveway to the front door. The house was still ablaze with lights; nothing seemed to have changed since they’d left less than an hour ago. Yet even as they mounted the steps to the front porch, McCain’s gut began to burn, always a sure sign that, despite appearances, something had, indeed, changed.
Morgan pressed the doorbell and they listened to it ring hollowly inside the house.
They waited, but there were no footsteps, no “I’m coming!” call from inside.
Just silence.
A silence as hollow as the chimes a moment ago.
Morgan pressed the doorbell again. “Maybe she went to her boyfriend’s for the night.”
Morgan shook his head. “The boyfriend’s car’s still in the driveway.” He opened the screen door and knocked loudly on the wooden door. “Mrs. McIntyre?” he called.
Matt McCain stepped off the front porch into the flower bed and peered through the picture window. Though the curtains were drawn, they were sheers, and he could clearly see into the living room. Probably one of the reasons the house had been hit — anyone watching it for more than a few minutes would have been able to see that no one was home. “Sure doesn’t seem like anyone’s in there,” he said, though the burning in his gut was getting worse, belying his own words. Someone was in there, all right. They just weren’t answering the door.
“Crap,” Morgan muttered. “Now we’ll have to come back in the morning and get this thing signed before we can turn it in.” He knocked again, harder.
McCain leaned closer to the window, shading his eyes from the porch light, then he picked his way through the garden to the other side of the picture window.
And he saw something.
Feet.
A pair of women’s feet, still wearing high heels. Someone was lying on the floor in front of the fireplace.
Face down.
“Jesus,” he whispered, unsnapping the leather safety strap from his.45 and pulling it from its holster. “She’s in there, Steve. And it looks like she’s hurt. Call for backup and an ambulance.”
Morgan keyed the microphone on his shoulder and started talking rapidly even as he drew his own weapon.
“Stay here,” McCain said. “I’m going around the back.” Moving in absolute silence, he slipped around the corner of the house, shining his flashlight ahead, alert for any movement.
Several houses away a dog’s furious barking suddenly exploded the quiet of the night, and McCain knew instantly what had caused it: Teri McIntyre’s boyfriend was gone, but not in his car — he was taking an invisible route through the backyards until he got to the park only a few hundred yards away. And just outside the park was a subway station. From there, he could go anywhere.
No longer worried about keeping silent, McCain hurried along the side of the house and through the open gate to the backyard, then crossed the patio and — after a last glance around — went through the kitchen door that was not only unlocked, but stood wide open.
A few seconds later he opened the front door for Steve Morgan, and was crouching by Teri McIntyre, feeling her neck for a pulse.
Though her head was bleeding, and she was unconscious, she was still alive.
“Search the house,” McCain told Morgan, even though he was certain that Teri McIntyre’s assailant had already vanished into the night.
His weapon still in his hand, Steve Morgan headed upstairs to search as McCain crouched by Teri McIntyre, talking softly to her, telling her that everything was going to be all right.
But even as he spoke the words, he knew everything was not going to be all right. His gut was telling him that this was more than just a simple burglary.
CHAPTER 49
FARROOQ AL-HARBI GENTLY clipped the thread and then inspected the little red pouch he had made. Perfect.
It measured eight inches long by three inches wide. He would fill it from the top and then sew it closed.
He needed to make five more just like it.
He cut the yardage of red fabric into identical pieces, sewed them into pouches, then turned to the three brilliant red cassocks hanging in the closet.
The seam allowances on the inside of the altar server cassocks were generous, fortunately. They were cheaply made, and not well finished, which worked to his advantage. He had plenty of room to sew, but the loaded pouches might bulk up a bit at the sides. Fortunately, the white cotton cotta that each of the children would wear over the cassock would cover any bulges.
Not that anyone would be watching the servers anyway, even in their gaudy high-mass garments.
No, every eye in the entire area would be fixed on only one figure.
The Pope.
His fingers moving swiftly, Al-Harbi pinned the six pouches into the side seams of the three cassocks, then carried the first of the cassocks from the table to the sewing machine. Though he’d failed in one task tonight, he would not fail again.
He felt the spirit of his mother next to him, encouraging his fumbling fingers, as they worked hard to feed the heavy material through the machine. His father used to glower when he watched his mother work at her own machine at home, but he had still watched, though more interested in the machine itself than the use to which his mother had put it. Though the clothes she made fit perfectly well, he’d always preferred the ones his father bought
