Getting off on the fourth floor, the priest turned right and headed down the hall, watching the numbers on the doors of the rooms as he passed. A nurse looked up as he passed her station, but she smiled and looked down again when she saw his clerical garb.
He continued down the hall, a shark moving through murky waters with no one the wiser.
It took him a few moments, but eventually he found the room he was looking for. He knocked politely and then, when no one responded, opened the door and stuck his head inside the room.
It was empty.
The bed was neatly made and the room appeared to have been recently cleaned. All of the equipment was stored in its proper place and from where he stood the priest could even see a paper sanitation strip lying across the seat of the toilet.
It was obvious that this room wasn’t being used, but was instead waiting for its next occupant.
The Miracle Woman of Juarez clearly wasn’t here.
Frowning, the priest pulled his head out of the room and let the door close behind him. He turned, spotted the nurse still seated behind the nursing station, and retraced his steps to reach her.
“Excuse me,” he said in a middle-American accent that was a far cry from the one he’d been born with in Somerville, Massachusetts. “Has Ms. Rodriguez been discharged?”
The nurse looked up at him and smiled uncertainly.
“Um…Rodriguez, well, you see…”
The priest noticed that the nurse tensed up when she said Rodriguez’s name and he guessed that she was on orders not to discuss that particular patient with anyone other than medical staff. Before she could continue he leaned in a little closer, smiled, and whispered conspiratorially, “It’s okay, I’m a priest. Anything you tell to me is protected by the sanctity of the confessional, you know.”
He added a quick wink and a little bit of a mental nudge to go along with it.
That did the trick.
The nurse looked up and down the hallway, as if checking to be certain they couldn’t be overhead, and then leaned in closer to him with a smile of her own, saying, “If I could talk to you about that patient, which I can’t, I’d probably say that she disappeared at some point the night before last. Morning shift came in and ‘poof!’ found the bed empty and our little miracle woman gone, just like that!”
“Vanished, huh? And no one has any idea where she went?”
The nurse shook her head. “I certainly don’t, but if you ask me some people around here know more than they are saying.”
“What do you mean?”
Another glance around, then, “Her doctor has been acting funny ever since she disappeared. Funny strange, not funny ha-ha, if you know what I mean. Locking himself in his office, shouting at someone on the phone at odd hours; I’m telling you, if anybody knows anything, he’s the one.”
The priest nodded, as if agreeing with her logic. “And where might I find this Doctor—?”
“Vargas, Dr. Vargas. His office is around the corner at the end of the hall, fourth door on the left.”
He gave her another sly grin, one conspirator to another. “Thank you, Judith. You’ve been very helpful.”
The priest moved off down the hall in the direction the nurse indicated and found the doctor’s office a few moments later without difficulty. He could see through the frosted glass on the door that the lights were off inside and a quick turn of the doorknob told him the room was locked.
No matter. I’ll wait, he thought.
He gave the knob all the way to the right as far as it would go and then, when it reached its limit, he gave it a savage twist, nearly half again around. He was gratified to hear the metal inside the lock crack and pop in response.
The priest stepped inside, closing the door behind him.
# # #
Vargas couldn’t believe this was happening. No sooner had he made the call to that arrogant asshole of an FBI agent than his prize patient up and disappears from her room! He’d spent half the night searching the building, to no avail. At this point he had little doubt that she had left the building. The question plaguing Vargas was whether she’d left of her own accord or if she’d been coerced into leaving.
As he unlocked the door to his office and stepped inside, he found himself desperately hoping it was the former.
If she was out in the city on her own, he might be able to find her and bring her back to the hospital before anyone was the wiser. She had little clothing and no money – he’d made sure of that – so he didn’t think that she could get very far on her own. If he could find her before the FBI arrived, he could still see his way to getting that payday.
But if someone else had figured out how valuable she was, just as he had, and had come to get her, then she could be miles away at this point with no way for him to know where she was going. Not only would he lose out on the money for turning her over, but he’d have to deal with an irate FBI agent on top of it all.
That was not something he wanted to do.
He flipped on the lights and crossed the room, stripping off his lab coat as he went. As he hung it on the coat rack beside his desk, a voice spoke from behind him.
“Hello, Doctor.”
Vargas whirled about, staring in shocked surprise at the man seated in the chair in the corner. The stranger was dressed all in black – shoes, shirt, and trousers – and wore a white dog collar around his neck signifying his status as a Catholic priest. He was young and clean-shaven; if pressed, Vargas would have put his age somewhere in his mid-thirties.
The doctor was not a religious man, but the nature of his work brought him in contact with the clergy on a regular basis. Sometimes they were a bit judgmental for his tastes, with all their holier-than-though preaching and suggestions, but for the most part he found that they were genuinely interested in helping those under their charge.
This man was…different.
Vargas didn’t know what it was, but something about the stranger set Vargas’ nerves to jangling just being in the same room with him.
When the doctor got nervous, he tended to go on the offensive but something told him that might not be the best option at this moment.
Instead, he said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.” He gave a curt little nod and went around to the other side of his desk, unconsciously putting its bulk between him and the priest. “How can I help you?”
The priest frowned.
“That’s it?”
“I’m sorry?” Vargas asked, both puzzled and strangely unnerved at the question. Who was this guy and what did he want?
“You find a stranger sitting alone in your office in the dark and your only response is to ask how you can help?”
“Well…uh…” Vargas began nervously, “this is a hospital.”
“So?”
The image of a cat playing with a mouse flashed through the doctor’s mind, but he ignored it, still trying to understand what was going on.
“So we help people here. I assume that’s why you’ve come? To get help?”
It sounded stupid even as he said it – no, not just stupid, weak, which wasn’t like him - but there was no taking it back now.
The stranger cocked his head, a gentle smile on his lips. “Quite right, doctor. I’ve come to get help. And you are just the man to provide it.”
“Well, ah, good then,” Vargas said, unconsciously nodding again as if that put an end to the confusion he was experiencing. He settled into his chair, tried to flash a quick smile at his unwelcome guest, failed, and finally settled for repeating his earlier question. “So how can I help you?”
“You can tell me where the Miracle Woman of Juarez has run off to, for starters.”
It was a simple request. It was even said in the same, gentle tone that the priest had been using since he’d entered the room, but something in the nonchalant manner in which he said it made Vargas’s blood run cold.
He tried to bluff.
“Last time I checked she was asleep in her room.
Let me call the nurse and see where she is now.” He reached for the phone, intending to call the nurses’ station if only to let someone else know that he wasn’t alone here in his office, but his hand never reached the receiver.
The priest jumped up, faster than Vargas had ever seen anyone move before. He crossed the room in an eye blink, snatched a pen from atop the blotter on Vargas’ desk, and plunged it through the back of the doctor’s hand, pinning it to the desk several inches short of its destination.
Vargas opened his mouth to scream in pain and terror, only to find he could not; the priest had reached across the desk with his other hand and seized him by the throat, cutting off any cry before it could pass between his lips.
With one quick yank the stranger pulled Vargas out of his chair and halfway across his desk, until they were practically nose to nose.
“I’m so glad you did that, Doctor,” the priest said, teeth bared in a rictus-like grin. “Involuntary confessions are so much more exciting, don’t you think?”
# # #
When the priest was finished, he stepped away from what remained of the good doctor and shook his head in annoyance. As it turned out, the man truly didn’t know where his patient had gone. The most the doctor could tell him was that the woman, Anna Rodriquez, disappeared at some point the night before. He’d scoured the hospital for several hours without finding any trace of her before returning to his office where the priest had been waiting.
Worst case scenario, she had been missing for twelve hours.
A person could cover a lot of distance in twelve hours, the priest knew. Especially if properly motivated, as the woman no doubt was.
The priest knew that superior would not be pleased with his failure to find her.
He glanced at the bloody mess that had once been the hospital’s Chief Neurologist. The man had told him everything he’d known; the priest was quite positive of that.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Davis was just starting the briefing when Riley slipped into the ready room and took a seat in the back. He nodded to the knights around him and waved a hand at Davis in the front of the room, indicating that he should continue. Riley traditionally ran the briefing, but the fact was he was tired, still worn out from the events of the day before, and more than happy to let his second-in-command handle this one.
“All right,” Davis began, “we’ve pulled the short stick on a shifter take-down in the Allegheny Mountains of northern Pennsylvania. Intelligence tells us it’s a standard wolf form that’s developed a taste for young, female flesh. Four teenage girls have gone missing from the surrounding towns in the last month. All have been found a few days later, their bodies half-eaten and abandoned in this general area.”
Riley leaned forward, studying the map that Davis had just put up on the projection screen. It showed a heavily wooded area centered between three small towns, with a small offshoot of the Alleghenies rising in the center. It would be hard-going, he knew; thick forests with little sunshine and low visibility. Perfect hunting ground for a shifter, he thought.
Davis continued. “An investigative team has linked the deaths to Leroy Wilson, a backwoods hillbilly who has a cabin on the far side of Dalton’s Ridge. We’ve been tasked with raiding the homestead, subduing Wilson, and transporting him to Longfort for trial and sentencing.”
A hand went up in the front.
“Stevens?”
“If Wilson has been linked to the murders, why isn’t local law enforcement dealing with him?”
Riley nodded to himself. It was a good question and showed Stevens, one of the newer members of the team, was thinking things through. Riley liked that.
“The means of connecting Wilson to the murders is outside the perview of the locals and would not stand up in court as a result,” Davis replied.
Riley translated the official-speak in his head. It was magic, not forensics that had linked the victims to the murderer, which meant it was a team of holy mystics that had provided the necessary information. Clearly not the kind of thing a Sheriff’s deputy could use to obtain a warrant to search Wilson’s cabin, never mind arrest him for the murders.
Besides, he thought, a shifter would rip even a squad of deputies to shreds. Best the mission was left to those with the experience to handle it.
Having answered Steven’s question, and not seeing any others, Davis went on.
“The weather hasn’t been all that cooperative, so we don’t have any satellite recon photos of the target site. Information gleaned from the locals says that Wilson’s location has one, maybe two structures, but that’s all. Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy way in or out. We’ll be taking the Blackhawks to here,” he said, pointing to a location on the map to the west of the target site, “and then hiking in overland. Emergency extraction is via chopper from the ridgeline five hundred meters to the north of the target site.
“First and Second Squads just came off-duty last night after being in the field for several days, so this one will be Third’s responsibility, with Fourth Squad tagging along on the ride as back-up.
“Questions?”
There were the usual back-and-forth regarding rules of engagement and equipment draws, but nothing out of the ordinary and the meeting wrapped up fairly quickly. When it was over and the men had been dismissed, Riley walked up to the front of the room and stood staring at the map for several minutes.
“Something wrong, boss?” Davis asked.
“I don’t know.”
Truth was, he didn’t. On the face of it, it looked like a typical mission, but something about it was bothering him. He stared at the map for several minutes, trying to give detail to his disquiet. The terrain was going to be difficult, but certainly nothing his men hadn’t handled before. Same went for the lack of intelligence about the target site itself. Hell, half the time they didn’t even have that much to go on.
So what was it?
“Did the briefing give any details about the evidence that linked Wilson to the murders?” he asked.
Davis dug through his paperwork for a moment and then shook his head. “No. Just the usual B.S. that doesn’t really tell us anything. Do you think there’s a problem? I can check in with the officer in charge down in Intelligence and see if they can give us anything more, if you want.”
Riley thought about it for a moment and then shook his head. “No, we’re good.”
Still…
“I’m going to accompany Third squad on this one. I want to see how Bautista handles himself.”
Bautista was the new sergeant in charge of Third Squad and Riley hadn’t had a chance to see how he operated with the men in the field yet. Joining them on the mission would allow him to do so, while at the same time help assuage the uneasy feeling he was having about the mission itself. On the off-chance that things went sideways, he’d at least be there to help get the mission back on track.
Davis, however, wasn’t convinced.
“You sure about that, boss? You just came off duty; you should probably get some rest. I can accompany them if you want.”
But Riley shook his head. “Nah, I’ve got it. How are we doing on those equipment recs that we put in last week?”
The conversation turned to day-to-day logistics and Davis let it go at that, for which Riley was grateful. He didn’t know why the mission was bothering him, it just was. And the best way of being sure everything went according to plan was to have him right there in the thick of it.
After leaving the briefing, Riley returned to his office, intending to dig into the stack of reports on his desk that needed reviewing. His attention, however, kept wandering back to the coming mission and what he considered to be a potentially dangerous lack of intelligence about their target. Knight Commander Williams might have been happy to run out on the edge of things from time to time, but Riley’s style was markedly different. He preferred to plan things down to the last detail; that way, if anything went wrong, everyone knew what to do and when to do it.
&nbs
p; Truth was, he and his team had precious little to go on here. They had a name and a photograph of their target, but little else. No information about the place where he was supposedly holed up beyond the GPS coordinates. No information about whether or not he was armed. Riley assumed he would be – at the very least he would have access to teeth and claws in his shifted form – but there was a huge difference between going up against a man armed with a shotgun and one armed with an assault rifle. They needed to know what they were facing.
And then there was the matter of evidence. Riley knew he would feel a lot better if he had something definitive that tied this guy to the four murders. Not realizing information to the troops was one thing, but he was the acting commander for the Echo Team and his clearance certainly should allow more insight than he was getting.
He decided it was time to have a chat with the Preceptor.
“I’m a bit busy at the moment, Knight Captain,” Preceptor Johannson said, as Riley entered his office. “You’ve got two minutes, no more. Make it quick.”
“Yes, sir,” Riley said. “I have concerns about this afternoon’s mission.”
“Concerns?” Johannson asked, looking up at Riley with what was clearly impatience. “Such as?”
“Well, for starters, can you tell me how we linked Wilson to the murders of the four teenagers?”
“No.”
Riley frowned. No?
“Does that mean you don’t know or-“
The Preceptor cut him off. “What does it matter, Knight Captain? You’ve been given an order to take down this clearly dangerous individual. It isn’t for you to determine if the evidence is satisfactory or not; that’s for those above you. Your job is to carry out your orders.”
“I understand that, sir. But you are sending my team in blind with little to no-”
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