Between the Cracks and Burning Doors: Book 2 of The Extraction List Series

by Meland, Renee N.

  We’ll see, I thought.

  Yes, I was off the street, but I was being carried into a building I had never been in before, by a man I had met in a dark alley in the middle of the night minutes earlier. I was in that alley because I had just murdered my father. I could think of no legitimate reason a priest would need to be out there in the dampness among thieves.

  There was a room upstairs at the end of a small hallway. Carefully, the priest opened the door with one hand, and helped me stay upright with the other. He sat me down on a bed as carefully as he could. It was hard, but it had soft sheets and thick wool blankets. As he covered me up to my chin, I tried to find some words to tell him how grateful I was. Maybe the Blessed Virgin was right after all.

  I opened my mouth, but he put his finger to his lips. “Shhh…save your strength. We will talk in the morning after you’ve gotten some rest.” There was a red chair in the opposite corner of the room with a wool blanket draped over the arm. The priest threw the blanket over his knees and curled up in the chair. He smiled at me from inside his cocoon. “Goodnight, kid. And thanks.”

  I blinked and it was morning. I don’t remember ever sleeping through the night without waking up every few hours. Every creak, every whistle from the wind hitting the roof sounded like my father opening my bedroom door. Dishes in the dishwasher clinking against each other reminded me of my father removing his belt.

  I squeezed the blankets around me as tight as I could. I hoped the priest wouldn’t notice. Maybe I could stay there just a couple minutes longer. The moment he realized I was awake, it was over for me. I should get out before he tells me to leave. Yes, I had helped him out the night before, but I knew there was no way that he would want to pay me back with anything more than a night in a warm bed.

  In my mind, the priest walked around the room, busying himself with his desk or the curtains that draped over the small window across from the kitchen, any meaningless chore to keep him from having to make eye contact with me as he explained that he couldn’t very well keep a runaway in his home, to be reasonable, and that me going home was really the only option. Then, he gently pushed his hand against the small of my back, leading me toward the door.

  Wrong.

  He did the exact opposite.

  I felt a gentle poke in my shoulder as the scent of bacon and eggs hit me. When I peeked out from the covers, the priest gently sat a tray on the nightstand by the bed. “I’m not much of a chef, but I do fry up a good egg.” In the light, I could see more of the man who took me in. He had a bald head, and his dark eyes were kind. He was not in his priest uniform anymore. He wore gray sweatpants instead of black dress pants. The arms that spilled out of his white tank were as thick as wine barrels. I could even see the edge of a tattoo. If I hadn’t already seen him the night before, I would have never guessed he was a clergy member.

  I smiled as I shoveled the eggs and bacon in my mouth. During bites, I managed to spit out a thank you. He laughed when little flecks of egg landed on the bed. “So what’s your name?”

  I swallowed. “Cain. Cain Foley.” As soon as it came out, I wondered if I should have spoken. “I mean—”

  “It’s okay, Cain. You can stay here as long as you want.” He came over and took the tray from me. I hadn’t even noticed when I first arrived, but there was a small kitchen on the opposite wall. He spoke as he rinsed my plate, “This place is small, but it’s mine. It’s really all I need anyway, besides what’s downstairs.” He smiled again. “Mind if I sit down?” I shook my head, and he sat down on the edge of the bed. I still hadn’t managed to make myself leave the safety of the church. “You don’t have to tell me details, but do your parents know where you are?”

  I shook my head again.

  “I’m sure they’re worried.”

  Panic surged through me like an electrical charge. I leapt up and started toward the door. “No! You can’t call my parents, I can’t go back there.” I was halfway out the door when I felt a strong hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s okay. I’m not going to say anything. There’s no need to run off.” I looked at him. My feet felt heavy as I stepped back into his apartment. “You need to tell me something, though. Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  I hesitated. “Father, I—”

  “Father Dominic. Or just Dom.” Something about his eyes…they looked nothing like my father’s.

  “I did something bad and I can’t go home. Ever.”

  “Police bad?”

  I sucked in a breath. “Yeah.” Dom stood silently for a moment and the thought crossed my mind that I had made a mistake. But instead of kicking me out, he walked over to his desk and pulled something out of the top drawer.

  It was hair dye.

  “Well, let’s make you look like somebody that doesn’t match what they’re looking for.”

  He motioned for me to follow him into his tiny bathroom. “You ever done this before?” I shook my head. “Sit.” I sat on the toilet, and he opened the box, putting on a pair of white plastic gloves. He got out three bottles and mixed two together. “How do you feel about black hair?”

  “Okay?”

  “Good, ‘cause that’s your only choice.” He smiled and squirted the dye into my hair, mixing it around my scalp with his fingers.

  I couldn’t help but wonder why a bald priest would have hair dye laying around in the first place.

  When he was done, he told me to wait twenty minutes and then rinse the dye out in the shower. In the meantime, he was going to grab me some clothes from the collection bin downstairs. As he opened his bedroom door, he looked back at me. “Stay here, okay?” He lingered there for a moment, and then disappeared.

  I wondered if there was a part of him that thought he would come back and find his apartment empty with drops of black dye making a path toward the door, down the stairs, and out into the world.

  I stayed put.

  He returned right about the time when the hair dye needed to come out; awful stuff that smelled like flowers and laundry soap. I could hear him exhale, probably in relief, when he saw me still sitting on the toilet where he’d left me. He tossed a black shirt at me along with some jeans. A pair of sneakers landed next to me on the bathroom floor. When I went to take my shirt off to get in the shower, I realized I wouldn’t be able to get it off without getting hair dye all over it. I mentioned it to Dom. “Doesn’t matter. After you’re out, we’re gonna burn it.”

  I let the hot water run over me and leaned against the wall. Pools of black swirled over the white tile and down the drain, weaving in and out from between my toes. I held my breath as I threw my face into the spray, and let the water push away the dirt and the sweat from the night before. A strange feeling crept through my veins, something between numbness and peace. I didn’t recognize it, so I guessed it was what other people called “calm.”

  Even dead, my father had a way of poisoning the best moments, between the warm steam and the running water, long enough to snatch them away from me. I had pushed away the thoughts about what I had done so far, but with exhaustion releasing its hold, they came charging in. Why hadn’t I stopped hitting him? I looked at my abdomen and saw purple shapes staring back at me. Each movement hurt.

  He was down. The danger was over. I could have just walked up the stairs and out of the house forever.

  But I didn’t. I swung that pipe again and again. The sound of bone snapping in two belonged to him instead of me, and after each swing, I had to hear it just one more time.

  I heard a knock on the bathroom door. “Bout done? Hot water doesn’t last too long here. Don’t want you to get a jolt.” With one last inhale, I shut the water off.

  “Done. Be out in a minute.” I gingerly picked up the shirt that Dom had grabbed for me. Even though it came from the collection box, it smelled as if it was fresh from the dryer. I slipped it over my head and threw on the jeans.

  When I came out, Dom was sitting at his desk, scribbling something on a yellow pad of paper. The televisio
n played the local news softly in the background. The moment I realized what the announcer was talking about, my stomach dropped to the floor. I turned toward it and saw an image of my father staring back at me: Local grocery store owner and pillar of the community Benjamin Foley was reported missing by his janitor this morning. After he did not show up to work, he called the police. Foley’s wife could not be reached for comment. If you have any information, please contact your local police department.

  Dom’s pen stood still, hovering over his desk. He didn’t miss the significance of the missing man’s last name. Every muscle in my body tightened as I prepared for the worst. I thought to myself, This is it. This is going to be the moment that he would toss me back outside, and leave me for the gangs to finish me off. But instead, his eyes never leaving the paper, he said, “I’m working on my sermon for tomorrow. Do you want to help?”

  I exhaled.

  He waved me over to his desk and relinquished his chair. “Give it a read, would you? I’m going to hop in the shower.” As I sat down, I glanced up at him. He smiled. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  Nothing. Not a word about the news report. Though my breathing slowed and my heart stopped pounding, I couldn’t help asking myself, Why? Why was a man I had only met the night before willing to hide me from the police? And how did a priest know how to hide someone in the first place? I didn’t know the details of seminary school, but I was sure that helping fugitives wasn’t covered.

  By the time Dom got out of the shower and dressed, I realized I hadn’t even glanced at his sermon. “Sounds great,” was all the feedback I could come up with. He didn’t seem to mind.

  “I have something else for you.” I looked at him and crinkled my brow. This man had already done so much for me. He dug into his pocket and pulled out four glossy pieces of paper. When he held them out to me, I noticed that there were intricate brown patterns on each piece. “This is going to last for quite a while, but it won’t hurt, I promise.”

  “What is it?”

  He smiled. “The last part of the new you. Hand me your arm.”

  I obeyed. Carefully, he lined up each piece, connecting the four pieces a couple inches down from the edge of my wrist. He wrapped his hands around the bunch of paper and squeezed my arm as hard as he could. My skin burned. Just as I thought my fingers were going to lose all color, he released me and the papers fell to the dark brown carpet below, leaving the brown pattern behind.

  The cross started at my wrist and wrapped around my forearm, like armor hugging my skin. “But I’m only fifteen. I’m too young to have a tattoo.”

  His face hardened, smile disappearing entirely. “Exactly. Once the police figure out you’re missing, they’re going to be on the hunt for a fifteen-year-old with light brown hair, not an eighteen-year-old black haired young man with a hard-to-miss tattoo. You want to give the world what it doesn’t expect right now, do you understand?”

  That was the first time we had said out loud what I was, or what I was at least on my way to becoming: wanted. Somehow, hearing Dom acknowledge my situation made it easier. “You’re tall enough and built enough to pass for older than you are. We need to play on that.”

  We. I’d never been a “we” before. I was always the kid who ran straight up to his room when I got home from school and hid with a book all afternoon. I dragged myself downstairs precisely at six for dinner and shoveled food into my mouth as fast as I could, glancing at the stairs out of the corner of my eye the whole time. The idea of “we”—a family or a friendship, for that matter—was something I only saw while looking out my bedroom window, as mothers and children, husbands and wives, walked through our neighborhood, smiling, probably talking about groceries and school board meetings: the blissfully ordinary. However, there was always a pane of cold, dew-dropped glass between us.

  “For the next few weeks, I think it’s best if you don’t leave the church, okay? You need some time to heal anyway. After a little time goes by, you can make short trips outside. Gradually. See how it goes. But stick to side streets. Don’t draw attention to yourself. You need to be a shadow when you’re outside these walls.”

  I nodded.

  “Not much of a talker, huh?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, that’s okay. Saving your words makes them special. Some people drop words like drool. And being quiet will work to your advantage.” Dom went toward the bed, knelt down, and reached under it. He pulled out a huge bin. When he took the lid off a dust cloud lifted into the air. When it faded, I realized there were books inside. “I can’t stay here with you all day, but these should help keep you company.”

  He pulled out a mix of books that had no rhyme or reason: mysteries, romances, math textbooks, a cook book. The covers were worn and curling at the corners. “Obviously, you can forget about going back to school, so I’m going to pick up some more math and science books when I go out and get supplies.” I smiled as I knelt down next to him and he handed the pile of books to me. They stacked at least two feet tall.

  “Dom?” He turned to face me. “Thanks.” I pushed myself to my feet, careful not to drop any of the books, and carried them over to the chair Dom had slept in the night before. As he grabbed his jacket on his way out the door, he looked back and nodded at me. The door shut hard against its frame.

  He wasn’t kidding about getting supplies. That night he came back with armloads. He blew up an air mattress and stuffed it in the corner of the room. Once it was inflated, he threw a blanket on top of it along with a pale blue bedspread with tiny black and white rockets all over it. When he saw me looking it over, he laughed. “Sorry, cheapest one they had.” He may have thought I was looking at it funny because it was made for a child. But I was actually staring at it because I couldn’t believe he had gone to so much trouble just for me.

  “No, it’s great.” I smiled wide and I hope he knew I meant it.

  It was a whole month before Dom thought it would be okay for me to leave the church. Four weeks under house arrest might have been hard on most people, but I kept myself busy reading every book from Dom’s bin, and helping him with his sermons (or at least I liked to think I was). Not like he needed help in that department, but I think he liked practicing with me.

  I looked forward to every Sunday and Wednesday. There was an area on the second floor that hovered over the congregation that would have been used by lighting people, but since Dom’s church didn’t have enough funds for lighting in the first place, he just used it for storage. I could hide up there amongst the old boxes and extra file cabinets and listen to Dom speak.

  He reminded me of the woman on the television. Every word that burst from his lips had a purpose. No one in the congregation breathed before he was done. Everyone, including small children, sat transfixed, eyes never leaving him.

  Wednesdays, he taught Bible study to elementary school kids. When I had been in school, there was always that kid who chucked wads of paper at other kids, kids who whispered into their friends’ ears when the teacher was talking, kids who flat out didn’t care. Not in Dom’s class. They listened to every word, and each one gave him a hug when their parents came to pick them up. And every time they left, they said, “See you next Wednesday.” I guessed I wasn’t the only one who looked forward to it all week.

  One kid in particular caught my attention. He looked about ten years old, with big brown freckles to match his big brown eyes. His hair looked like no one could be bothered to brush it, and it flew out in a million directions. He always hugged Dom the longest out of all the kids. His parents never came to pick him up, and he would always end up going home with another kid. I asked Dom about it once, and he said his name was Nick, and like most people, his parents had lost their jobs. They were always out of town, selling their clothes, jewelry, even furniture, trying to make sure they didn’t lose their house.

  It crossed my mind to ask Dom if he could live upstairs with us. Seemed like a better idea than being shuffled around, like the Christ
mas gift that no one wanted and always tried to give away.

  A week later, my world was jolted off balance again. This time, it wasn’t a murder that shook me to the core, but a simple knock on the door.

  Dom saw them before I did. I assumed it was someone wanting Dom’s advice, some last minute evening confession. When we both heard the knocking, Dom jetted toward our window and glanced out instead of immediately going to the door. The color drained from his cheeks. “Stay here.”

  He didn’t even look at me.

  When I ran to the window to figure out who was there, who had upset him so much, I figured out why.

  Police officers.

  I only managed to do what I was told for about five minutes. I paced around the apartment, wringing my hands together wondering how I could have been caught. I was so careful. Maybe my mother had turned me in. But why would she have bothered to tell me to run if she was just going to do that anyway? Maybe she just gave me a head start, for sentimentality’s sake.

  Any time the news reported on someone getting arrested, my father would make a comment about the conditions of the jails. The police had to drive around in regular cars instead of police cruisers, and the money they made barely kept them going, so you can imagine how little money was spent on the place where our society sent the people who they thought had broken their rules. That sat with my father just fine: “Finally, jails are as they should be. Used to be a time where it was like going on a goddamn vacation. Let ‘em live in the dirt where they belong.”

  I had no interest in ending up there.