Saint (27 page)

“We flying out to L.A. in that fancy plane
of yours, Gabe?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I thought I might like to take a crack at
piloting. I’ve never flown a plane.”

“When I lose the last bit of common sense I
have, you can fly the plane.”

“Deal.”

* * * * *

The solution hit her like a thunderbolt at
three a.m. Maria sat up in bed, wondering why she hadn’t thought of it before
now.

She’d had no choice but to lie about
knowing Lolita’s real name. If the inquisition squad had to ask for Lolita at
work the dancer would be alerted and have a head start. By the time they caught
up to her, Lolita would have stashed the precious package she was holding in a
safe place.

Harris had guessed that she would try to
warn Lolita ahead of time and disabled the phone lines, but she doubted he had
disabled the cell phone in Gabriel’s duffel, the one he had used to call for
his private jet. Now all she had to do was figure out how to get the phone away
from the archangel. Not an easy trick, for sure. Gabriel, as well as the
others, slept with their packs within reaching distance.

He was quartered in the living room.
Francis was at the back of the house, in the den. Harris was next door to her.
She didn’t know exactly where Joan was, but she’d heard his footsteps earlier
and surmised it was another upstairs bedroom. If she was careful and quiet, she
just might be able to get the bag away from Gabriel.

It took her nearly thirty minutes to make
her way down the stairs. She took one step at a time, very softly, very slowly.
The house was old and every plank of flooring, including the steps, seemed to
creak or groan at the slightest pressure. Step by step, she cautiously made her
way around through the kitchen to the entrance of the living room. By avoiding
the back hall she hoped to bypass Francis and his phenomenal ears.

Gabriel lay stretched out on the couch,
snoring lightly. Maria decided to employ some of the tactics she’d learned at
Father Francis’ bootcamp. She lowered herself onto her belly and crawled, inch
by inch, across the floor. Her patience and determination paid off. The duffel
was sitting on the rug in front of the couch. At first she thought to slide the
rug toward her and back quietly into the kitchen to search it, but had to
abandon that plan when she realized two legs of the wooden coffee table were
holding it in place.

Instead, she reached for the handle of the
duffel and eased it toward her. The bag’s contents shifted and something
rattled. She immediately froze, holding her breath. But Gabriel didn’t move.
Moving the duffel, then, was out of the question. If the contents shifted again
the noise could bring Gabriel to full attention.

Maria rested her head on her hands and
thought about it for a moment. There was really only one way—she would have to
unzip the bag and stick her hand inside. Surely she would be able to feel the
difference between a gun and a cell phone. She wasn’t going to think about the
clay square Gabriel had been working with earlier. He may or may not have stuck
it back in the duffel.

Slowly, she inched her body toward the
duffel bag and reached for the zipper. The resulting
zwwiiitt!
was louder than expected.
Maria froze again, cursing the silence of the night. How many people, she
wondered briefly, paid attention to the sound a zipper made when donning their
clothes? Oh, they probably heard the metallic echo, but their brains most
likely registered the sound subconsciously, so much so that if you asked them
what kind of sound a zipper made they wouldn’t actually be able to recall,
exactly.

By the time she had the duffel open far
enough to get her hand inside, sweat was forming on her forehead and upper lip.
Gingerly, she eased her hand inside and began to rifle through the contents,
careful to slide her fingers along the objects lightly, so as not to disturb
them.

Like lightning, Gabriel’s hand caught her
by the wrist, causing her to gasp. “Sister,” he said low, “you’d better have a good
reason for having your hand in my bag.”

“I’d be interested to hear that reason
myself,” Francis said, leaning negligently against the door that led to the
front hall. “There’s lots better places to stick your hand, Angelface, than in
Gabe’s bag.”

Gabriel released his hold on her and she
pushed to her feet, uncomfortably aware she had on only one of Harris’
oversized shirts and nothing else. It covered her decently enough, but only
just. In hindsight, what had she been thinking?

“I was…practicing,” she stammered.

Francis turned on the lamp in the corner. “Practicing
what?”

“Maneuvers. I managed to get downstairs,
into this room and unzip Gabriel’s bag before any of you caught me. Either I’m
getting better or the lot of you are falling down on the job. What if I’d been
one of Juarez’s men?”

“You’d be dead,” Gabriel stated plainly. “Took
you about thirty minutes to get down the stairs and through the kitchen.
Another twenty to crawl across the living room floor and ten more to unzip the
bag. The Christ child could have been twins and it wouldn’t have taken him as
long to get born.”

“You washed your hair again,” Francis
observed, sniffing the air. “I didn’t know Joan was partial to strawberry
shampoo.”

Seth entered the living room, looking
annoyed. “If you three could make a little more racket, they could hear you in
Omaha. Maria, what the hell are you doing?”

“Maneuvers,” Gabriel informed him dryly.

“Seems there’s something in Gabe’s bag that
piqued her interest enough to draw her out of bed in the middle of the night.
What do you have in there, Gabe, that would tempt a woman of Maria’s
sophistication to get on her belly and crawl across a splintered wooden floor,
in only a shirt, to acquire?”

Christ, they could be such asses. “I told
you, I was practicing those stupid maneuvers you taught me. I don’t know why it’s
such a big deal. He doesn’t have anything in that bag I’m interested in. I
couldn’t sleep, that’s all. It seemed like a good time to apply the
practicality of theory.”

Francis smiled benignly. “And in
conclusion, you’ve discovered…?”

She’d discovered not only was Francis’
hearing overly developed, his sense of smell wasn’t far behind. Gabriel, she
concurred, was a very light sleeper whose watch hands glowed in the dark,
enabling him to time her approach. “In a nutshell, zippers make a much louder
sound than you’d expect. Industrial size zippers, especially. Now if you’ll
excuse me, I’m going upstairs to pick the splinters out of my knees and
contemplate using an unscented shampoo next time.”

Harris caught her by the arm as she walked
past him. “Not so fast. Gabe, check to make sure the cell phone is on lock. I
wouldn’t want Maria wasting any more time trying my patience.”

“That still bugs me about Joan having
strawberry shampoo in the house,” Francis muttered.

“Francis, what is the matter with you?”
Gabriel demanded irritably. “Who cares if Joan likes strawberry shampoo as long
as he doesn’t use it on a raid.”

“It’s just damn funny that I never noticed
him smelling like strawberries before.”

It wasn’t something she was going to waste
time ruminating over. Besides, Harris was glowering. He grabbed her hand and
pulled her up the stairs behind him.

“What are you doing?” she asked when he
propelled her past her room and through the door of his.

“I don’t make idle threats,” he replied
evenly, removing the slim braided belt from his pants. “You seem determined to
get my attention one way or the other. Now you have it.”

He wouldn’t dare. But just in case she
backed up a couple of steps. “Joan’s just across the hall. If you try to use
that belt on me, he’ll hear.”

Seth tossed the belt onto a chair by the
window. He shouldn’t be surprised by her reaction but he was. She really
thought he was going to beat her? “I was going to secure you to the bed frame
with it. As I recall, you said you’d been tied to a bed before. Or was that a
lie, too?”

“I wasn’t actually tied down, just handcuffed.”

An unwanted picture of her lying open and
vulnerable for another man formed in his mind. “I’ve no interest in hearing
about your kinky sex life.” He threw himself onto the bed and lit a cigarette.

“There was nothing kinky about it. I was
seventeen and wanted to go to a rock concert. My father forbade it because of
the groups’ reputation for drawing unsavory crowds. He just wanted to make sure
we were on the same page. But, as usual, a man’s mind will wander in the lowest
possible direction.”

So, she’d been just as much of a pain in
the ass as a kid. Surprise. “Don’t try to figure me out, Maria. Either get in
this bed and fuck my brains out or go back to your own room. I never said I
didn’t want you.”

“You never said you did, either.”

“I’m trying to leave you the way I found
you, rose-tinted glasses and all. You may not be looking for a knight in
shining armor, but I don’t think you want a dead man either.”

“You feel. Everyone feels passionately
about something at one time or another. You just don’t want to admit to needing
another human being, particularly a woman whose convictions you disdain. And
you want to know what else I think?”

Did he have a choice? Caught up in the
righteousness of the moment she moved closer to the edge of the bed. “I think
you’re afraid it won’t be just sex. You’ve hated every moment you’ve had to
spend with me, because each encounter renders me less of an object and more a
real person. You’re emotionally paralyzed, more than Francis or Gabriel or Joan
ever thought about being. And anyone who threatens to breech that barrier is
automatically the enemy.”

There was something he wouldn’t miss when
they parted, her little diatribes. “Are you done?”

“No.” She stood there quietly, her gaze
locked on a place on the wall behind his head. What if you don’t come back?”
she finally asked.

She wanted certainty where there was none. “Which
is it, Ria? You want to get close to me or you’re scared not to?”

“I’m scared all the time,” she admitted
haltingly. “Every time I move Juarez finds me and somebody dies. I thought I
had it all worked out. I thought Lolita would be safe because she wasn’t
directly involved. But if you can find her without my help, then how many
others will be affected? The people I work with, my editors, neighbors…”

“It would be too risky for Juarez to shake
down everyone you ever came into contact with. Even if he found the roster he
has no guarantee there aren’t copies. The way you’ve set it up, if something
happens to you Lolita is the only one who can release that information to the
media. If Juarez gets to her before we do he’s going to figure that out.”

“How long will you be gone?”

Evidently, she regretted not striking a
deal with him earlier and assumed he was still planning to be one of the group
going to L.A.

Seeing Maria standing in his shirt caused
something primal to stir inside him. Carolyn had worn his shirts around the
house on occasion, particularly when he was gone for weeks or months on a
mission. To him they were just shirts but she said wearing them made her feel
closer to him. That they carried his scent. She had owned plenty of feminine
nightgowns but in warm weather it wasn’t uncommon for her to wear one of his
shirts to bed.

Seth stubbed out his cigarette, pushed the
memory away. He wished he could push Maria Carvania away, but she had crawled
under his skin. Ignited long denied needs. His mind and body were now working
independently of one another. She thought he was void of emotion. He wished to
hell that was still true.

“You’re not coming back,” she breathed
anxiously when he still hadn’t answered her question. “You’re going to L.A. to
get that roster and then you’re going to kill Juarez.”

As she moved to step away, he caught her
wrist and pulled her down hard against him, speaking each word distinctly. “If
I wanted him dead he would’ve drawn his last breath weeks ago.”

Then he flipped her to her back on the
other side of the bed. “Go to sleep before I change my mind and use that belt.”

* * * * *

Los Angeles

“Do it,” Benito ordered.

Nina backed away from him, shaking her
head. “No. I can’t. Jared was my friend.”

Jared lay in a heap at her feet, where
Benito had dropped him. On his handsome face was a look of shock as he stared
sightlessly up at her.

“Sweet Nina,” Benito cooed, holding out his
hand to her. When she took it he pulled her against him and stroked her hair. “It’s
not your fault. But I will be very unhappy if you do not obey me. You do
remember your wedding vows, I hope? Love, honor and obey.”

“Please don’t make me do this,” she begged.
Not to Jared. Not to her friend. Benito was right. It wasn’t her fault—it was
the woman’s. The woman was to blame for her misery, for Benito’s wild mood
swings and now…now for the loss of her only friend.

“Do it now.”