A hand flew over her mouth, and Sister Mary Elizabeth hugged herself, worry lining her bright face.
“Sister, I’d be very open to some prayers if you and the other sisters would be willing.”
“Absolutely. I know they will be. But I also have a message from the mother superior.”
“Oh?” I took a long draft, daring the scalding coffee to burn my throat.
“She wanted you to know—on the down low, mind you—that, well, we suspect the Vatican has allowed Quentin to stay at the convent for ulterior motives.”
“As motives so often are. What do you mean?”
“They’re asking questions. About…” She cleared her throat and started again. “About your daughter.”
And the hits just kept coming. I froze in place as a rancid kind of anger washed over me. It was one thing to go after me. It was another to go after mine.
“What do they know?”
“I have no idea. They’re not very sharing. They’ve just been asking questions. The mother superior wanted me to tell you they’re trying to be subtle about it, which has raised her suspicions even more.”
“What does Quentin have to do with it?”
“We believe they’re using him as an excuse to come into the complex and talk to the nuns. And they’ve questioned him, too. But I have to be honest. I think he knows what they’re doing. His answers are always … vague.”
That’s my boy.
“Who are they, exactly?”
“A bishop from Santa Fe and another man. An investigator of some kind. And if I’m not mistaken, he comes straight from the Vatican.”
I nodded. What the hell were they up to?
“I can let you know when they come back. If they come back. In the meantime, we’ll pray for your success, Charley.”
We stood, and she crushed me into a hug. She was strong for such a tiny thing.
“Thank you for bringing this to me, and thank the mother superior for me.”
Sister Mary Elizabeth nodded, then hurried out the door.
“You’ve had quite the day,” Cookie said.
“I can’t help but wonder if everything we’re working on is tied together somehow.”
“I agree. Robert called. He said the first victim, Indigo Russell, had been in therapy for something that happened to her about a year ago. He’s working on getting a court order to find out more.”
“Good deal. I’m waiting on a call from Garrett. He’s working a skip today. Something he couldn’t get out of. A woman up on distribution charges decided she had better things to do than go to court. But he’s promised to get back to me the minute he’s tracked down the supplies we need. Any news on a mobile blood collection unit?”
“There’s one operating at an event tonight, some kind of charity fair.”
“Perfect.”
“I thought we decided you were not going to steal blood.”
“I’m not. I’m going to borrow some. Speaking of which, what are you doing tonight?”
“I’m not robbing a mobile blood collection van.”
“Excellent. Neither am I.”
“Then why—?”
“We aren’t robbing the van. We’re stealing it.”
“Oh. In that case, I’m in.”
* * *
I decided to hunt my old friend Rocket down. He could have some information on Reyes—namely, information concerning Reyes’s human side. Is it still there? Is it something that can be saved? Or is he 100 percent deity? Is my husband truly gone?
Rocket, who died in the fifties, lived in an abandoned mental asylum. The same asylum in which he’d endured terrible things. The same asylum in which he’d died. I couldn’t be entirely positive, but I suspected he’d had electroshock therapy. His mind, part of it at least, had been erased. He was a child trapped in a man’s body.
But Rocket was a savant, especially when it came to the departed. He knew the name of every human in history who’d died. Would my husband be on that list?
I was so deep in thought, I didn’t realize I’d turned down the wrong street. I pulled a U-turn and tried again, then realized I was on the right street. But it was different.
I pulled up to the locked security gate that led to the asylum. It was the right gate. I was at the right place, but the building, the asylum, had been destroyed.
Practically falling out of Misery, I stumbled to the entrance and scanned the area. Debris from the building lay in massive heaps. Thick slabs of crumbling concrete sat scarred with thin scorch marks. The entire property had been leveled.
Reyes. It had to be Reyes.
I pressed my hands over my mouth to keep from yelling Rocket’s name. Had Reyes hurt him? Could he?
Without a clue as to how long I’d been standing there, I finally snapped to my senses and pressed shaking fingers to the keypad that opened the security gate. A couple of kids on bikes rode up. I listened as they spoke.
“I told you it was gone, pendejo. It was there yesterday, and today it’s gone.”
“Wow,” the other one said.
“Right? My mom called the cops. She thought we were having an earthquake last night.”
I whirled around. “Last night? This happened last night?”
The smallest one nodded. “My mom freaked. There was a loud crash. The building was there, then it wasn’t.”
“That creepy building has been there since I was a kid,” said the ten-year-old. Eleven at the most.
“It was here for decades,” I said, a pain throbbing in my heart. “I can’t believe it’s gone.”
“Hey,” the small one said, “you know the code? You know who owns this building?”
“Yes.” I opened the gate and stepped inside the chain-link fence. Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I said, “I do.”
“Oh, man. Do you know what happened?”
“I don’t.” I looked at the rubble that used to be Rocket’s home. “But I’m going to find out.”
I walked around the massive pile, careful where I stepped. Once the kids had pedaled out of sight, I started calling for Rocket.
“Rocket, are you here?” I tried to find a way into the middle. The walls where Rocket had written name after name in preparation for Beep’s army were nothing more than debris, fragments of an incredible mind. “Rocket?”
I could’ve summoned him, but he had to be scared and disoriented as it was. Despite my best effort, tears slipped down my cheeks.
“Strawberry?”
Strawberry Shortcake, or Rebecca Taft, her real name, lived with Rocket and his little sister, Blue. I could only hope she hadn’t been here when this happened. I couldn’t believe Reyes would do something like this, but who else? He knew how to hurt me. He knew where to insert the knife to do the most damage, and he’d started with my beloved Rocket’s home.
Then I heard him.
“Miss Charlotte?”
I spun around, trying to localize the sound.
“Miss Charlotte?” Rocket repeated. “I didn’t say anything, Miss Charlotte.”
I grew more frantic with each heartbeat. “Rocket, where are you?”
“Down here.”
I stumbled up a mound of debris. A small opening between slabs of concrete showed a route to the basement, and the part I stood on looked like it could collapse at any second.
“Rocket? Are you down there?”
His face appeared in the opening at last, round and bright.
“Rocket.” I put my hand through the opening.
He reached up and took hold of it. “I can’t find Blue. I have to find her. She’ll be so scared, Miss Charlotte. You have to come help me.”
He tugged on my arm. Rocket, completely oblivious to his own strength, could pull it completely off if he were scared enough. Or suck me down into the debris.
“Rocket, I can’t get down there.”
“I’ll help.” He tugged again, and the debris shifted beneath my weight, lowering at least a couple of inches.
I had to wrench my hand from his grasp, peeling my fingers out of his meaty fist, or be pulled under.
“I can’t go down there, Rocket. It’s too dangerous.”
“But I can’t find her, Miss Charlotte.”
I lay my forehead on a slab of concrete in frustration. I could summon the departed, but only if I had a name to summon. Everyone called his little sister Blue, but that wasn’t her real name. I couldn’t call her.
Or could I?
I may not have been able to summon the little doll, who’d died of dust pneumonia at the age of five, but I could certainly call her.
“I’ll be right back, Rocket.”
With each move carefully calculated, I eased off the pile of rubble, slipping once and almost falling to my death—or to the rest of my horribly maimed life. After regaining my footing, I noticed the kids were back, only they’d brought reinforcements. There was now a veritable hoard of bicycle-laden street urchins, watching my every move from beyond the chain link.
My next moves would probably seem a little silly, but that was my middle name.