“Hiding our past. Pretending to be people we aren’t. Letting this injustice go unpunished.”
“I would not say it went unpunished,” said Savas grimly. “And I can tell you that many of us in the CIA and the FBI will do what we can to clean out the festering remainder of what this wraith nearly sterilized. Simon is a good man. He’ll work within the system, and he’s vowed to me that he’ll see to it that there won’t be a next time, not while he’s on watch.”
“I wish I had his confidence,” said Lopez, wearily.
“I know,” replied Savas. “So do I.”
Houston stirred and called out. “Francisco? Are you there? Where are we?”
“Please, let me out of these!” he said, futilely gesturing with his shoulders. “I’m trusting you. I’m not going to do anything. I just want to be with her.”
The men in the back looked toward Savas, who simply nodded. They released the restraints and freed Lopez from the wrist and ankle cuffs. He stood up, wobbling from the stiffness in his legs and torso, and knelt down next to Houston. Her eyes were closed.
“Sara, it’s me, Francisco. Can you hear me?”
Her color was already better. He had considered her skin very pale, but the last few hours had terrified him, as he had watched her fade to a vampiric white marble, the blue of her veins startling, her skin seemingly transparent. Now she looked almost normal. Maybe it was the warm morning light that spilled in from the front window. Or perhaps it was the fresh blood supply.
“Sara?” he repeated.
“Mmmmm,” she hummed and opened her eyes. “I think I must be dreaming. I thought I heard some FBI agent babbling on about us living in the backwoods or something.” She smiled. “Sounded nice.”
Lopez grinned back, his vision blurred from tears. “Yeah, Sara, it sounds very nice.” He placed his head next to hers and held her hand.
She whispered softly. “We’ll get a log cabin, in the mountains. A fireplace. I want some rose creepers on the door. We can hunt. I’ll take you outback, finally teach you how to shoot a damn gun.”
65
Fugitive Pair Escapes Again: Future Mayhem Predicted
By Gerd Miller, Huntsville Times
Caught by law enforcement twice, Francisco Lopez and Sara Houston have escaped a second time.
First, they scandalized a nation with their deviant behavior and treasonous actions. Then, they undertook one of the most startling and embarrassing penetrations of national security in a generation. Most recently, their murderous rampage brought them to the home of the former vice president of the United States, where they are accused of assassinating him along with killing an entire assignment of Secret Service agents.
“There was a coordinated escape operation,” said Special Agent John Savas, who was recovering from wounds sustained during the failed attempt to capture the two fugitives. “As we always suspected, they had outside help. Our SWAT caravan was hit just outside the VP’s house in Virginia by overwhelming and unexpected force. The van was totaled, and in the ensuing firefight, the two fugitives escaped.”
Now their whereabouts are unknown. After weeks of escalating violence from the pair, suddenly they have disappeared, and their wild spree has come to an end. Or has it?
“These two are dedicated to harming this nation,” said CIA Division Chief Jesse Darst, Houston’s former superior. “They are not finished. We will redouble our efforts to bring them to justice.”
They had become known online and in the tabloids as “the priest and the whore,” Houston accused of using sex as a tool and weapon in her double-agent spying, and Lopez a disgraced and defrocked former Catholic priest accused first of a host of sex crimes against young boys and then as the murderous liaison of Houston.
The nation has been riveted by the story of the two, living in fear and wondering what would happen next. Even those who knew them well expressed shock.
“We never expected Francisco of such horrible things,” said Maria Lopez, resident of Madison, Alabama, and sister-in-law of the accused. “He seemed the pillar of the community. Now, after all this, after these deaths, these terrible crimes, we can only try to move on.”s
Epilogue
The shots rang out, one after the other. First, there was the blast: the ringing of metal hurled by gunpowder, the fast rush of air. Then, the slap and thud as the projectile struck its target. Finally, the resounding reverberations off the stones, hard ground, and sides of the encircling cliffs.
The air was crisp and the plant life mostly evergreen at this high altitude. Mosses grew on the rocky terrain, and the thin atmosphere gave a sharpened quality to all objects, to every sound. Sight, sound, and gunplay were all precise.
A male figure stood twenty-five yards in front of a row of targets, silhouetted against a reddening sunset. Black human-like shapes were depicted on the paper before him with the areas around the heart and brain marked with circles. After a number of shots, the figure drew his arm back and removed protective earplugs, looking down at the smoking weapon. A brunette with short-cropped hair walked briskly up to him.
“Damn, Francisco! Eight of ten in the kill zone. You missed your true calling! What the hell were you doing in seminary?”
“Studying, mostly.” He smiled. “So, not bad?”
“Obscene natural talent. Not even Miguel was this good. You’ve barely been training, and you’re a hell of a lot better shot than ninety-nine percent of the agents I know.”
“Who’d have thought?” he said, shaking his head.
“I did. I knew. You’re even better in hand-to-hand.”
“I always could fight.”
“Yes, like a wild boar. But now I’m training you right for the first time. Most men your age couldn’t learn this from scratch. You were born to do this.”
“Natural-born killer?” he said, a sadness in his eyes.
“A natural warrior, Francisco. There is a difference.”
“Not always.”
“Well, there is in your case. I don’t want to hear any more self-doubt. You’ve been trying to be Jesus all your life because you couldn’t accept who you really were!” She looked at him mischievously. “You saw the box?”
He nodded, glancing over his shoulder. In the midst of several handguns, rifles, ammo crates, and target sheets, buried nearly under their two backpacks, there was a large cardboard box.
“I saw you carrying it up earlier. Presents?”
Houston nodded in the affirmative. “Yes. From Russian monks.”
“Russian monks?”
She laughed. It was a free laugh, a kind rarely heard in a world of people who were rarely themselves. Sara Houston was always beautifully, strongly, tenderly, frustratingly, uniquely herself. “I swear, you can find anything online these days. There’s a monastery in northern Russia that has really done quite well for itself with a religious-themed web store. Icons, candles, censers, the like. Also, cassocks.”
“Cassocks?” he asked, a perplexed look on his face.
“Ever since I was a young girl, I loved the look of those mysterious Russian priests. Long, flowing black cassocks. You Papists modernized so much in the Catholic Church — practically a business suit and tie. Not those crazy Eastern Orthodox. Wild beards and flowing robes.” She rubbed her hand on his bare cheek. “Well, you lost the beard.”