“Holy shit, Francisco,” she said, staring at him. “I knew when you held that ox of a bishop up in the air you were strong, but what the fuck? What do they put in that communion wine?”
She looked down at her restraints, back at him, and then around the room, frowning. “Jesus. Okay, now what?”
39
“Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.”
A mournful light bled through the window of the motel room, the darkness of the thunderstorm drinking the last of the day’s light. A subsonic rumbling shook through the air as a heavy rain rushed madly against the glass.
“Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”
Former priest Francisco Lopez rocked back and forth on his knees beside a radiator, his left hand on the metal stabilizing himself, clutching a wooden rosary. In his right hand was an ornate wooden cross, its designs obscured and buried in the tight grip. Tears fell down his face, and sobs shook his body.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
Through the flashes of lightning and rolls of thunder, he continued the prayer. He rocked like an institutionalized patient, interspersing the motion with full prostrations to the floor, pressing his forehead firmly against the rough carpet, an abrasion beginning to form beneath his hairline. In several places, patches of hair were missing from his beard, torn in fits of emotion.
“Francisco.”
The muttering continued, the sobs and rocking. Houston stepped closer to Lopez and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Francisco.”
The words ceased, but the sobs increased, and she bent forward and embraced the weeping man from behind. Her hair was wet, hanging very low and taking a rich, honeyed hue from the moisture, the strands splayed over a white bathrobe. Her skin glistened with water.
“It’s OK, Francisco.”
Lopez shook his head. “I’ve betrayed everything I vowed to be today.”
She did not argue with him but walked around to face him, kneeling down beside the radiator. Lopez watched her in disbelief. She began to unbutton his shirt, looking up to his face and staring into his eyes.
“I’m glad you did, because if you vowed to let a woman get raped by murderers in front of you, those were bad vows.”
“Sara, please…”
Houston sighed and smiled sadly. “You do have his eyes. Miguel’s eyes. But something he didn’t have. A gentleness. A deep decency.”
Lopez felt sick. “I killed two men today, Sara. I butchered one and kicked the other to death.”
“And saved my life.” She reached her hand up to his face, her touch sending involuntary shudders through his body. Lopez could not keep track of the emotions or the physiological reactions. The anger, violence, fear, shame, sadness, physical attraction. Love.
Lopez clasped her hand and kissed it, and then pushed it away from him.
“Sara, please. There are so many things right now that I would like to say to you. I don’t want you to misunderstand. Thank you for what you are offering me. You don’t know what it means to me when I am this broken, how much I want it. But right now, I can’t. They’ve taken everything from me. But whatever the bishop said, whatever the Church decrees now about me, I’m still a priest in my heart. I’m not ready to lose that, too.” He felt new tears rolling down his cheeks. “I’m not ready to give up my vow to God. Don’t take that from me now, because if you insist, you can. I can’t stop you. I’m not sure I want to. But it’s all I have left.”
Houston stared at him silently for a moment, her expression unreadable. She cocked her head to one side.
“Wow, when they get you boys, they really get you.” She rocked back to sit on her heels, never taking her eyes off him. “I’ve seen a lot of shit in this job, Francisco, so it may seem strange to you when I say that there are some sacred things to me. So when that monster was going to violate me, it was the worst thing I could imagine. Worse than him simply killing me, because with death, it’s over at least. With rape, I get the hell of reliving that violation until the day I finally do die.”
Lopez shook his head, not understanding. “Then why…”
“Why did I come on to you? Because, you dolt, I know that you have feelings for me. And after nearly having that fuck violate me like that, the thing I wanted most was to erase it, to have a man I trusted and who loved me share his body with me in a sacred way.”
Understanding finally dawned on Lopez. He nodded his head. Had he hurt her by pushing her away?
She smiled, reading his thoughts. “It’s OK. I can see where you’re coming from too, even if I think it’s a bit messed up. Seriously, after the Church betrayed you, what loyalty do you have to them?”
Lopez didn’t have the energy, or the words, to explain. “It’s complicated.”
Houston stood up. “Yeah, I see that. So, for both our sakes, let’s turn to other things, like how the hell we’re going to get out of this alive.”
Lopez pocketed his rosary. He felt childish. She was right — while he was crying in a corner, sinister forces were sweeping the area looking for them. They had barely escaped with their lives today.
“We still don’t know who these killers are,” he wondered out loud.
“There’s more than one set, Francisco. The men today — they were former Agency operatives. Trust me on that one. One had combat experience, the other, I don’t know. But their methods, their talk, their connection to this process as it has spun out of control — I’d bet on it.”
“But there was no ID. No papers. Nothing to mark them as CIA.”
“I don’t think they’re CIA anymore.” She crossed her arms over her chest and fiddled with her hair. Lopez noticed that it had begun to form curled locks again as it dried. “They’re too cut off and working so blatantly inside the US like this. Whatever program they had, whatever is officially legal now, this was pushing it. And they were sloppy, not the best agents I’ve ever seen. We’ve been vulnerable as hell, Francisco, and that should have been enough to end us. They had us, but they fucked it up.”
“Then what are they?”
Houston flashed him a confident look. “Rogue. There’s a rogue group playing dark games. My guess is that it’s the architects of these black-ops snatches in the US. I think they’re hiding and trying to shred the documents.”
“Except we aren’t paper, Sara.”
“It’s the same to them.” She whirled around toward the desk. “I’m going to contact Fred.”
Lopez stood up and walked beside her as she flipped open her laptop. “Wait. So, we have this rogue group of CIA agents trying to kill us, but we’re also chasing Miguel’s killers. They’re different, but how do we know who is who?”
Running through the usual gamut of anonymous servers to disguise her digital identity and location, she was soon checking for messages in an encrypted email account. She seemed distracted by the effort, responding in a distant way.
“Yeah, Miguel’s killers are something else, something different. I think they’re the reason this rogue group has gone as far as it has.” She stopped typing and looked up at him. Her blue eyes were sharp and nearly sparkling. “Miguel’s killers are hunting them, Francisco. They’re panicking and fighting for more than just their reputations and avoiding jail time. They’re fighting to stay alive.”