'Stop.' Amado raised his hand. She braked, pitching them forward. 'I think… close.' She inched the car as far off the trail as she dared and killed the engine.
Amado opened his door. 'You stay!' Shades of Russ. God, she wished he were here.
'Sorry, no.' She stepped out, latching her door with a click. The decaying leaves beneath her sandals had been compacted into two tire tracks leading upward, disappearing from view as the old road twisted behind a clump of beech trees. Amado frowned but waited for her to catch up. He gestured, hand flowing over the ground, finger to his lips.
She toiled upward, through shafts of sunlight and patches of shade, listening for a sound other than the song of warblers and the cry of jays. A decayed stone wall, tumbled by frost heaves and oak roots, showed the overgrown track had once been a real road. She spotted small, burly apple trees among the maples and red spruce; an orchard overgrown centuries ago, or the accidental fruit of farm boys playing Apple Core.
She heard a sound. She and Amado both stopped. It came again, muffled by leaves and misdirected as it bounced from hardwood to hardwood. Voices. Men.
And then a shot.
She hiked her skirt and ran. For a dozen strides, maybe two, Amado outpaced her, but the Guard didn't give pilots a pass on PT, and her conditioning kept her moving, churning up the leaf-spumed road, reaching Amado, drawing past him, leaving him behind.
The voices were louder, even over her sawing breath and pounding heart. No more shots, thank God. The road curved past a chunk of bedrock granite and she made the amateur mistake of rounding it at top speed, only to see the trees peter out, a sunlit meadow, a barn, a white van, a Humvee.
She threw herself behind the nearest maple with enough force to jar the air out of her lungs.
She dropped to the ground and crawled forward. Between the trees and the open field, a massive rhododendron flourished. She took refuge behind its glossy, impenetrable leaves.
There were three of them, dressed in urban gear so foreign to these woods they might as well have been from another planet. One, half visible around the uphill corner of a pole barn, held a gun pointed toward an unseen opening. Another guarded the downhill side, his weapon steady on a wide second-story door. The third stood at the narrow end of the barn. With Isabel Christie. She was seated on one of many bales scattered near the barn's foundations like cornerstones. Evidently the brothers had been pitching hay when the Punta Diablos arrived.
A flicker of movement in the corner of her eye caught Clare's attention. Amado, leaning against a tree, taking in the scene in the meadow. If he moved a few inches in either direction, he'd be spotted. She gestured for him to join her. He shook his head.
'So where is it?' the third man asked. Clare could just hear him above the insects droning over the field grass. Isabel's answer was indistinct. She got up, walked to the barn wall, and pulled a graying clapboard away from the foundation. The man who had been speaking to her craned forward, his gun drifting down toward his foot, the bad habit of someone who carried a weapon but was never trained to use it.
Isabel's shoulders moved, then moved again. She flattened herself against the narrow opening, as if she could stick her face instead of her hands inside.
'Where is it?' the man demanded.
Isabel whirled around. Said something. Spread her hands wide in bewilderment. Clare heard a moan beside her. She looked away from the drama for a moment. Amado's mouth was a perfect O of despair. And Clare knew, at that moment, what had been hidden that Isabel couldn't find.
He closed his mouth. His face set in lines of terrible determination. Ready to-what? Confess? Lie? What would they do to him to get the truth?
Amado stepped out from behind the tree.
'No!' she whispered. She lunged forward, awkward on her hands and knees, and tackled him around the ankles. It was sloppy, but it worked. He went down with a crash into the rhododendron bush, setting a pair of crows cawing into the sky. From near the barn, someone shouted,
She heard dull thuds, the swish of legs scissoring through tall grass. They had sixty seconds-maybe less. Clare knotted her hands in Amado's shirt and dragged him to her. She pointed to herself.
'Don't shoot!' Clare threw her hands up.
The guy jerked to a stop. 'Who the hell are you?' He stared as if her clerical collar and cross were as bizarre as the three studs sprouting from his upper lip. Maybe they were.
She had four heartbeats to figure how to play it. Looked like Isabel had the lock on terrified, and she didn't think the gangbanger would respond to ecclesiastical authority as well as Amado had. That left crazy.
'Hey!' She converted her upraised hands into a cheerful wave. 'I'm Reverend Clare! I came to see Isabel!' She smiled wide enough to display her eye-teeth.
The guy's mouth formed the words
'Isabel, how are you?' Clare sauntered through the timothy and clover, smiling as if Isabel wasn't wide-eyed and trembling, as if there wasn't an enormous gun swinging like a compass needle between them. 'Is there anything I can help with?' She hugged the startled girl. The guy opened his mouth again, but before he could order them back to the barn, she said, 'Are you looking for the list of distributors? The one that belongs to these gentlemen?'
Isabel gaped at her. Then clicked her mouth shut. She nodded.
'Bitch, you said you had it!' The gangbanger lifted a fist.
Clare flipped one hand up. 'I have it.' She smiled at him. 'Isabel didn't know.' She looked into Isabel's eyes, letting her mask fall away. 'Amado took it. For safekeeping. He's alive, Isabel. He wants you to be safe.'
Isabel's mouth opened. Her eyes filled with tears and a desperate, dawning hope.
The Taurus stopped its movement, finding true north against Clare's rib cage. 'How do I know you're telling the truth?'
'It's a hard-covered composition book, black and white. The entries are written in blue ink.'
'Shit,' he hissed. Clare kept a smile pasted on her face. Finally, he narrowed his eyes at her. 'Where is it?'
Isabel clutched at her arm. Clare squeezed her hand, still smiling at the man. 'I'll take you.'
He poked the gun into her flesh. 'You tell me. I'll go get it.'
She shrugged. 'It's locked in my office at St. Alban's. I'm afraid one of the seven or eight people working there today would phone the police as soon as they see you going in there.' She brightened. 'Maybe you can have a car chase through town! Now that would be something for the tourists to talk about.' She turned to Isabel. 'Do you think that would make people more interested in checking out our church? Or less?'
The faint hope that had lit in Isabel's eyes went out, quenched by Clare's obvious
