by Lacey Silks
“Sara. Sara Cortez.”
“You wouldn’t be lying to a priest, now, would you?”
“No, of course not, Father.”
I hadn’t used the priest card before, and now I was ashamed that I had. Kate was one of the most honest women I’d ever met, and her care for those around her truly came from the heart. Yet when I looked at her, something wasn’t right. She no longer appeared as eager to help as she had been before.
“You came across the name in your detective work?” I asked, and she nodded.
“I’m sorry I lied about Sara. It’s just… the Cortez family is dangerous, Father.”
If there was anyone aware of the danger, it was me; and Kate was the last person I wanted to tangle into my mess.
“It’s pretty hot up here, Kate. You don’t have to do this with me.”
“I owe you. After that water accident, I have a feeling that I’ll owe you for a long time.”
That water accident was way more than an accident. I found it difficult to look into Kate’s eyes each time the image of her hardened nipples flashed through my mind.
“Don’t worry, Kate. If Cortez ever plans to come back, I’ll be the first to know.”
“How?”
“I will trust God’s guidance.”
That was much better than telling her that I had intel, wasn’t it? Besides, Kate had a ghost looking out for her as well; and as much as I wanted to know why someone needed to protect her, I’d promised my brother I wouldn’t interfere.
“Oh. Hey, why are all the G’s in one spot?” she asked.
For a moment, I thought she mentioned the G-spot, and it took a few seconds before her question made sense.
“I don’t know.” I pulled open another drawer, in a different cabinet. “This one has all the R’s.” I then yanked another one open. “Scratch that, both of these are full of R’s. Kate, this is going to take a while.”
“Have you seen the W’s?” she asked again.
I turned around the room and began pulling out one piece of paper after another, all from different drawers, until I finally found it. Luck must have been on my side with this one. Now, if I could only find the C’s. Her hands flew to one side of the cabinet and she started flipping through the files. “Search for Joanna Williams, born in 1960.”
Her chest was falling and raising quicker. It was as if she were on a different mission of her own, and for the first time since meeting Kate, despite the number of times we’d talked, I realized that I didn’t know much about her past.
“Joan… Williams….” My gaze fixated on the printed letters. “Joanna Williams, 1960. Here it is.” I pulled out the file, and Kate immediately grabbed it from me. She ran to the spot in the attic where more light was shining through the window, splayed the papers out on a cabinet, and in the dim light, began reading through them.
“Is that your mother?” I asked, but she ignored my question and kept going through the papers, one after another, and then stopped. I saw the blood drain from her face and her lower lip quiver. She lost her balance for a moment, but she grasped the edge of the dresser to support herself. I wanted to help her. I wanted to hold her under her arm and tell her that whatever was happening here, that we could get through it together. Except there was no we. There never could be. To say that my life was complicated would have been an understatement, and to pull someone else along into my world would be close to sinning in its purest form. I couldn’t let anyone else get hurt because of me, especially someone as innocent as Kate. Sometimes I wondered whether I had blinders on when I looked at her, because truthfully, when I looked at her, I couldn’t see past her beauty and good heart.
“I had a brother,” she finally said. “He was killed here in Pace when he was two.”
Her hands were shaking.
“Kate, I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I already knew my brother died; I just didn’t know it was here. His grave must be in the cemetery behind the church.”
I wondered why Joanna would have hid this information from her daughter who was a detective. Mothers usually hid information from their children to protect them. Was Kate really in that much trouble?
“I don’t know why, but I’m beginning to have that twisted feeling in the pit of my stomach – and I haven’t been drinking, in case you’re wondering.”
“I wasn’t,” I chuckled. “That’s your instinct, Kate.”
“I just don’t know what my gut’s trying to tell me. It’s… confusing.”
Why did it feel like I was the one confusing her?
“I’ve been here for four months, and I didn’t even know this was my little brother’s resting place.” Her eyes glossed over, and I pulled away from the files I was sifting through.
“Do you know how he died?”
“No, my parents never talked about it. It was a bad time in their lives.”
“So maybe she sent you here to find other family members? Maybe this Jack is another one of them, I guess.”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” she asked with hope. “Jack must be a relative.”
“Or John.”
“No, she said Jack.”
I resumed flipping through the files when a familiar name flashed by.
“I think I found something,” I said before thinking. I should have kept my mouth shut and burned those papers. I should have done something… anything from revealing this to Kate. I didn’t want her afraid while she was trying to find her family roots.
“Mateo Cortez.”
She gasped and backed away from the dresser so quickly that all the papers spilled from its top.
Fuck!
Something crashed to the floor. Actually, it was someone. When I turned around I saw Kate lying unconscious on the dirty boards.
“Whoa! Kate!” I ran to her side and lifted her feet up on top of a box, then fanned her face. She had a pulse and she was breathing on her own. Feeling drops of sweat trickle down my back, I realized that maybe we’d spent too much time in the hot attic. Her head moved slightly, and her eyes fluttered. I felt instant relief.
“Kate?”
“What happened?”
“You fainted. Come on, it’s too hot up here. We need to get you to a cooler spot.” When I tried to lift her, she pushed my hand to the side, rolled over, and got up on all fours, after which she began to crawl toward the spilled papers.
“No. I need to find out.”
“Kate, it doesn’t change anything. They’re long gone.”
Despite my words, I couldn’t feel that same conviction in my chest.
Kate held the papers in her trembling hands. She sat on the dirty floor, crossed-legged. When I reached her and saw her fear stricken face, I wanted to take her in my arms and hold her. Her cheeks were smudged with dirt, and the corner of her forehead illuminated with a tiny hint of light from the window.
She looked like a mess, but it was the most beautiful mess I’d ever seen.
“Father John wasn’t exaggerating. It’s true, then. Mateo Cortez lived in Pace.”
“Yes, apparently the entire family did. They left town over twenty some years ago.”
“Why did they leave?”
“I don’t know,” I lied to her once again. It was more difficult to do so each time I had to, but I didn’t want her afraid. I didn’t want to tangle her into my problems. I took her hand into mine and carefully softened my voice. “Kate, why are you so afraid? They’re not here, and I wouldn’t let them hurt you if they were.”
Why was she so invested in this?
“Ahm… like I said, I came across the name at work back home. Cortez is dangerous, Father. They’re… they’re one of the most powerful cartels in the country. If Cortez used to live here, he could come back.”
He or they? Was she referring to a specific Cortez? And if so, why? Her trembling body stole my attention. She blinked repeatedly as if trying to plan an escape route in her mind.
“Kate, there’s no need to be afraid
.”
How could I explain to her that if Cortez was planning to return, I’d be the first to know? Brook would warn me if they came close to town.
“We can always notify the appropriate authorities.”
“Wait – not the authorities.” Her fear twisted into full-blown distress. Her hands shook.
“All right. Not the authorities. Not until we have more information at least, all right?”
She nodded.
“The retreat is next week. It will give us time to clear our minds.” She reached for my forehead with her hand and I stilled. A small skim of her fingers near my hairline and I was gone. I could feel her heat. I sensed the urgency of her shallow breaths and saw her eyes spark with juicy lust.
God help me.
“You had a feather in your hair.” Her whisper held seduction and need.
A feather?
“I’m not sure where it came from,” she explained.
“You’re right. The retreat will take our minds off this attic.” I wasn’t sure where the feather had come from either. But what I was sure about was that Kate’s life was becoming as complicated as my own. My only fear was that I was beginning to need her for much more than a crying shoulder to lean on. I was beginning to crave her much more than a priest should.
Chapter 10
Kate
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been two weeks since my last confession.”
My voice broke as I knelt in the confessional, and my heart hammered in my chest. It had been five months since I’d arrived in Pace, and I was beginning to miss my mother more than ever. When we spoke, or I spoke, I explained to her that she was safe and that I was getting closer to finding Jack. At the mention of his name, my mother always released a deep sigh of relief.
I still couldn’t believe that my mother had been born in the same town Mateo Cortez once occupied. The man I’d stolen from, and whose multimillion dollar operations I’d destroyed one of, could return to Pace at any moment.
Father John answered in his non-judgmental voice, “Speak louder, child. I can barely hear you.”
I hadn’t realized that my voice had lowered to a whisper. It was the same tone I used when I confessed to Father Cameron. God could still hear me, though, couldn’t He?
“It’s been two weeks since my last confession,” I repeated, going over my sins in my mind. The only picture that appeared was one of a shirtless Father Cameron; and just like that, my naughty thoughts returned. Would Father John think less of me if I told him it was his apprentice whom I lusted after?
Grateful that it wasn’t Father Cameron on the other side of the confessional, I cleared my throat.
“These are my sins…”
I’m confessing to God, not Father John or Father Cameron, I reminded myself, and then proceeded to admit my wrong doings. All the sins about Father Cameron I’d manifested in my head flooded to the fore and spilled out of my mouth like dirty little secrets.
Since that morning I woke up to Father Cameron sitting in my room, our relationship had changed. He took care of me. Father Cameron had quickly become someone I could count on for both spiritual guidance and friendship. I was becoming a different woman around him, and my vulnerability scared me. We’d been organizing the attic with minimal progress, but at least it was progress.
Father John coughed into his tissue, and I wondered if his cold would return. He had finally managed to cure his three-month illness overnight and joined us for the retreat. It truly was a miracle that he was feeling better and a good lesson of faith for the kids, who had been praying for his recovery. As many wrongs as I’d done in my life, I was beginning to feel like the scale was tilting the other way. Maybe there was hope for me after all? Feeling ready to clear my heart, I smiled.
“These are all the sins I remember. I am truly sorry for all my sins, and I ask for the Lord’s forgiveness.”
I bowed my head, the way my mother taught me, and waited for my penance. That tight fear in my chest wouldn’t ease until I heard the Father’s absolution.
“I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
I made the sign of the cross.
“Amen,” I breathed out in relief, and proceeded on to my act of contrition. If Father John had caught on to the vagueness of my sins, then he wasn’t saying anything. But neither did Father Cameron when I’d confessed to him two weeks ago. Did they mind that my sins became more obscure each time, or were they just pretending that they’d heard them? If they did hear them, then neither priest had ever let it be known.
Over the past couple of months, it had become more difficult to think of Father Cameron as a priest. How could I, when he breathed and slept on an aphrodisiac? Because I swear I could feel the sexual frustration floating around him. The long cloak he wore didn’t help; in fact, it made things worse, as my imagination took over. I mean, how hot could it get under one of those things? And heat meant a lot of sweat, which then meant a nice cool shower. Yeah, fantasizing about Father Cameron underneath a stream of water was definitely making me sin all over again. The line between his holy duties and those of a man’s blurred each time I wondered how he managed not to get sexually frustrated.
I was hot for a hot priest, and my symptoms of crazy were only getting worse.
“Go in peace.” Free of any emotion, his voice held an even tone, the way it always did.
I made the sign of the cross one last time and stepped out of the small wooden confessional in the camp’s chapel when a shocking scream tore through the woods. I ran out the chapel door and across the communal field toward the edge of the forest.
A herd of teenagers stood underneath an old spruce tree, buzzing with excitement.
I ran up to Lola and followed her gaze up.
“What happened?”
Another loud cry of fear echoed from above. Somewhere between all the spruce branches and needles, which were littering the ground from above, I saw a red sweatshirt.
“Oh, my God! How did he get up there?” I covered my mouth with my hand just as Father Cameron pushed past me through the crowd.
“Help me!” Matt yelled out.
“Stand back, everyone. In case… ” he paused, and I shut my eyes.
Please don’t say ‘in case he falls.’
“…in case a branch breaks.”
There were no branches on the lower part of the trunk, and the more I looked at the nearly shaved bottom of the tree, the more I wondered how in the world Matt had climbed up there.
“How and why did he do that?” I asked Lola. She was the other chaperon on our trip.
“He wanted to show off that he could be closer to God than the rest of us. As for how? I guess like that.” She motioned with her head to where Father Cameron had already removed his cassock, then his clerical collar, and unfastened the top three buttons of his black shirt. I rushed toward him and grabbed him by his arm. “Wait, you’re not going to climb up there, are you?”
“How else are we going to get him down? I don’t see a ladder around.”
Ladder – that would be much safer.
I never panicked. Never. But lately my hormones were so all over the place that I surprised even myself. Plus, there was something to be said about being in the wild with a hot priest.
Sinning in nature.
I turned around and ran back to Lola. “Do you have a ladder?”
“Do you see me holding one?”
“How is he going to get back down?”
“I don’t know. But what goes up must come down.”
I growled at her. By the time I turned around again, Father Cameron was already five feet off the ground, climbing the tree like a monkey.
“Holy shit!” Lola pointed to him, and some of the kids turned her way, giggling.
“Shh, don’t swear.”
“‘Shit’ is not a swear word.”
“It is when you use it in that context. Why are you stepping from one foot
to the other?” I asked.
“I need to pee.”
“Then go.”
She shook her head. “There’s no way I’m missing this.”
Father Cameron’s foot slipped, and a unanimous gasp echoed. I watched him grip the tree tightly, his arms nearly hugging it and fingers digging into the bark for support, and all I wanted to do was throw up.
What the hell happened to my nerves of steel? If anyone from the precinct saw me this broken up, I could never show my face there again.
“He’s a monkey,” I gasped.
“I’d like to think more… like Spiderman,” Lola sighed, with a somewhat dreamy look in her eyes, and I elbowed her in the side.
The group of kids cheered Father Cameron with encouragement and when he reached the first level of branches, grasping one, the tension in my shoulders somewhat eased.
“That was absolutely sinful.”
Was Lola panting? I elbowed her again, but truthfully, I couldn’t have agreed more. One minute I was in a confessional, telling Father John fragments of my immoral fantasies about Father Cameron, and the next here he was, doing just what I’d imagined a sexy man would do: effortlessly climb a tree.
Like Spiderman.
Actually, scratch that. I was pretty sure I couldn’t have imagined it better.
“You heard it first from me: I’m actually enjoying myself at this retreat.” She had a goofy and satisfied look on her face. “These kids never disappoint, do they?”
All I could do was stare at Father Cameron as one branch at a time, he climbed up the spruce. I pictured his black pants as tight red leotards encasing his thick muscles. Actually, Lola was right: a red unitard with a black web pattern, which came with a face mask, would look quite appealing.
Near the top, a wide gap stood between Father Cameron and Matt. He paused to assess his next few steps. They were having a conversation, too, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. At least Matt had stopped his skin crawling screams.
“Wait. Is he about to do what I think he’s about to do?” I asked with concern, as Father Cameron’s interest shifted to one particular branch in front and above his head. Lola had her legs completely crossed, her thighs squeezing together as she held her bladder shut.
