Saint (36 page)

He was left on hold while the secretary
went in search of Professor Harris, whom she couldn’t be sure was still on the
premises. While he waited he let his thoughts wander back to his wife.

“Hiya, big boy,” she greeted him in the outfit he’d bought and
practically begged her to wear before the saint had called him to action.

He swallowed hard, an instant erection forming at the sight of
her. So innocent. So childish. She even had a lollipop in her mouth. “I didn’t
think you’d be here when I got back.”

“I wasn’t sure I would,” she replied smoothly. “But something
came up.”

“Such as?” He dropped his bag by the door, his mouth dry as
cotton, his erection growing harder by the second.

“What do you see when you look at me?” she asked.

“I don’t understand.”

She lifted the hem of her school-length skirt and he had a
fleeting glimpse of ruffled panties. “Do you think our little girl will look
like me? Like this?”

His mind spun sideways. But she didn’t give him time to dwell
on the question.

“Let’s go into the bedroom,” she invited, lifting the skirt
higher as she sucked hard on the lollipop. “Baby wants Daddy to give her a
treat for being so good while he was away.”

“Baby…?” She’d never talked to him this way before, not even
when she let him tie her up.

“Please Daddy.”

Sweat beaded his upper lip. He was disgusted. “This isn’t
funny.”

“I thought you wanted me to dress this way. Don’t you like it?
Just pretend I’m your little girl and—”

“Stop it!” His cock went limp. “This is sick. What’s the matter
with you? You think I’d—”

“Molest your own daughter?” she finished for him. “I don’t know.
Would you?”

“Seth Harris.”

* * * * *

Murray State University—Western Kentucky

“I have bad news,” Gabe’s voice came
through the line. “I’m just not sure how bad.”

“What?”

“Maria’s missing. Lolita just called in
hysterics saying she left Bethy alone and disappeared. I don’t know how to get
hold of Francis. Why the fuck doesn’t he carry a cell phone like normal people?
Any possibility he’s still in the vicinity of L.A. and can check it out?”

“Police?”

“Not yet. Lolita took the kid and made for
the airport. She’s too scared to be of any use.”

Seth rattled off the number Francis could
be reached at. “Call him and get on it. Let me know what turns up.”

“Right.”

Seth leaned back in his chair, staring at
the phone. It was a mistake. She was probably only visiting a neighbor and
Lolita overreacted. Francis would find her.

She’d left Bethy alone.

It was going to be a long day.

* * * * *

Los Angeles

Francis parked his hog on the lawn and let
himself in. Lock picking wasn’t as easy as they made it look on TV, but then he’d
been perfecting the skill for years.

Standing at the front door, he let his gaze
roam the room. No signs of a struggle. Pregnancy kit on the end table. Small specks
of what looked to be blood two feet from the door, as if someone had started to
bleed but managed to stanch the flow immediately.

Pregnancy kit on the table.

Pregancy. Kit.

Oh hell. He opened the box and took out the
stick. Blue.

The rest of the rooms were undisturbed.
Nothing seemed out of place. Gabe said Lolita had only gotten as far as the end
of Maria’s street, then turned around and came back. Came back for what?

Didn’t matter. It could only have taken her
five minutes at the most to return.

Using his God-given charm, he posed as a
longtime friend of Maria’s here on a surprise visit and asked around at the
neighbors. No one had seen Maria since the day before. As luck would have it,
the neighbors on either side had been out last evening.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up.
No matter how many times he went through the house, there was nothing. Still,
he couldn’t tamp down the suspicion that nagged at him. So many people on
Juarez’s payroll. Powerful people. Who stood to lose everything should their
connection to the dead drug lord be made public? Which one of them had the most
to lose? Which one of them wanted revenge?

Why leave Bethy sleeping soundly in her
bed? Why not take the little girl too? No time?

Damn, he needed a drink.

He picked up a copy of the magazine Maria
worked for. The copy with Benito Juarez’s picture on the front. Flipping it
open, he perused the article. It was what wasn’t mentioned about the drug lord’s
private and public life that caught his attention. There was no mention of
Juarez’s wife.

The colonel said there was a wife. That she
had hightailed it back to Venezuela. The date on the magazine was September
third. Last week.

Maria hadn’t known there was a wife. If she
had, it would have been mentioned in the article.

* * * * *

Murray State University—Western Kentucky

Seth snatched the receiver up before the
first ring finished reverberating through his office. “Harris.”

“How did you know he had a wife?” Francis
fired the question off.

“Harbor patrol officer. He liked the idea
of staying alive, so he rambled a bit. Why?”

“There’s no mention of it in the article
Maria did for the magazine she works for. You know, the one that promised to
give her brother the front cover?”

“Go on.”

“You know the old saying. Hell hath no fury…”

“You’re wrong,” Seth said shortly, his
fingers tightening convulsively around the receiver.

“Am I? There’s something else. I found a
pregnancy kit on the table. It’s positive.”

Hot knives slices into his gut.

“Colonel?”

“I’m here,” he croaked.

“You’re not going down there without us,”
Francis insisted.

“The three of you have done more than
enough. You know the odds.”

“I know the odds. Gabe will be ecstatic.
This time he’ll get to build that mother of a firecracker he’s been itching to
make all these years. And you did promise Joan he could kill the candyman. He
was kinda put out that you scooped him with Juarez.”

“Who says I did?”

“Not a living soul. We’ll meet you on the
mountain.”

Damn, damn and damn! He’d been careful, but
in the end it hadn’t mattered. Maria was pregnant. God must be having a slow
day. That or the He just wanted to see how far Seth Harris could be pushed.

He wasn’t sure he believed in God any
longer. He wasn’t sure he believed in himself. But he was going down to that
compound in Venezuela with guns blazing. If God wanted to help someone, he
could help the occupants within Juarez’s patrolled walls.

This time it would end, if he had to track
down every living descendent to ensure it.

* * * * *

Venezuela

The smell of death was all around her. The
stench of rotting flesh, an indescribable, acrid odor that coated her nasal
passages and throat. Maria wanted to throw up but there was nothing left, her
stomach had been emptied long ago. Dry heaves, hunger and the pain in her thigh
left her too weak to move.

Seth had warned her if Juarez ever got his
hands on her, she would pray for death. He just hadn’t specified which Juarez.
She prayed. But not for death. For deliverance from the evil, twisted,
disfigured woman who promised punishment. Benito’s sister. His delusional wife.
The irrational Nina blamed Maria for the death of her friend—a man named
Jared—for Benito’s death, for everything she’d lost.

She prayed to sinner and saint alike. But
if Satan himself came to rescue her, she would kiss his feet. Because only
Satan would dare to enter into this hellish, evil place.

Before the door closed on the chamber and
darkness surrounded her, she had glimpsed the bone fragments littering the
floor, seen the deep crimson-stained dirt, and she’d wanted to scream but her
throat locked up.

This was where Carolyn Harris died. This
room, this…torture chamber, was where Seth’s wife had met her end at the
demented Nina Juarez’s hand. Seth would never know who really killed his wife.
Nina had taken such savage pleasure in the telling of it, her dark eyes
glittering with an unholy light. And the child, oh God, the unborn fetus she
had extracted and sent through the mail—how had Seth hung onto his sanity after
that?

She’d had time to take a really good look
at her life while waiting to die. It was exactly as Gabriel described—a
do-gooder with no idea what the real world was like. She’d been raised in a
loving home, believed in her father’s and grandfather’s values, and in doing so
had refused to see what Jimmy had become. For all her self-proclaimed
independence she had been conditioned to put family honor first, her own needs
second.

How could Jimmy do this to Bethy? How could
he turn his back on his own flesh and blood for money? Maria supposed she
should be grateful he’d had enough decency to tell her about Bethy before it
was too late.

It was too late for so many others. Buck
and Ray and Simon. Will. A stranger named Jared Dempsy. They all died for the
honor of Jimmy Carvania. They’d died in vain. And now there was no sympathy
left in her for those who’d thrown in their lot with Juarez.

I hope Seth did murder Juarez. And I hope that sick bastard
suffered.

Disgusted with the self-pity she’d wallowed
in of late, Maria pushed into a sitting position, gritting her teeth against
the pain shooting down her leg. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to lay here and
wait to die.”

A wave of nausea gripped her and she had to
pause for a minute to fight it down. After a couple of deep breaths, she
reached out, inching her hand across the dirt floor, feeling for anything to
use as a weapon. The gritty feel of blood-soaked earth, damp and cool so far
below the villa, sent a chill up her spine, but doggedly she continued,
stopping when the pain in her leg overwhelmed her.

Maria suspected Nina had cut the tendon in
her thigh, but she was afraid to probe the wound too deeply for fear she would
infect it. “Like a staph infection is something I really need to worry over
right now,” she muttered to herself.

Inch by inch, with no clue as to how much
time passed, nor how many times she’d fainted from the pain, she pulled herself
across the rough floor, forcing herself to finger everything she touched.

Focus. Don’t think about what it is. Can it be used as a weapon?

Finally, perseverance was rewarded. Her
fingers closed around what felt like a bone shaft, splintered on the end but
long enough to use as a knife of sorts. Relieved to have some kind of defense,
pitiful as it might be, she lay down to rest.

Sweat covered her body. Breathing consisted
of small gasps. Rest. Just for a moment.

She needed to gather strength to slide her
hands along the wall near the base of the foundation in the unlikelihood there
was another way out.

* * * * *

“I don’t know what I expected, but this
wasn’t it,” Francis said as the group stood on the hill overlooking the Juarez
jungle hideaway.

“It looks exactly the same,” Gabe observed.

Seth dropped his pack and surveyed the
compound with steely eyes. “Which means the layout is probably similar to the
former plan.”

Joan shook his head. “All this time the
bitch was rebuilding. Wonder if Juarez knew.”

“We’re not dealing with Benito this time.
We’re dealing with his disturbed sister.” Thanks to Gabe’s contacts in L.A.,
they were able to track down the marriage certificate and the minister who
presided over the service. The minister and Father Francis had a powwow and the
minister confessed he’d been paid well to overlook the incestuous nature of the
relationship.

“So we take it just like last time?” Gabe
asked.

Seth turned and faced them, needing to put
into words what the rest of them wouldn’t. “You know what the odds are. Maria
is probably already dead.”

“Maybe not.” Gabe looked away. “We made
pretty good time.”

“You don’t have to do this, Gabe. You have
a kid on the way and a good life. Joan, that goes for you and Francis, as well.
I can do this alone.”

“You could, but you’re not gonna,” Francis
told him. “Life was good when I was young. Now it mostly just sucks.”

“I promised Bethy,” was all Joan had to say.

Gabe turned on the black man. “What’d you
go and do that for? Shit Joan, you can’t save every kid you come across. You
house half of Mississippi now.”

“Nobody said you had to stay, Gabe,”
Francis pointed out.

Seth saw the past written on Gabriel’s
tense face. He’d run once before, a long time ago. But this time he wouldn’t.
The archangel was through with running. He shook his head. “You guys still don’t
know when to quit.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” the
smiling preacher said.

“Suit up, then. As soon as it’s full dark,
we move in. Gabe, you man the RPG. I’ll go in below and call off when I’m
ready. When I signal, rain hellfire. Joan, mow down anything that moves.
Francis, find me that pain-in-the-ass bitch and clamp down on her. She’s mine.
The room Maria’s in is below ground far enough that leveling the place won’t
cause much damage. I don’t want one single living, breathing thing left in that
compound. Clear?”