Chapter 30
Nico
After confronting the priest, we picked up Zane and have been parked near the church since.
From our spot, we have a good view of the priest’s house, the church and the community center, and nothing much has been happening.
My car smells like coffee and the fast-food junk we picked up for lunch, mostly because Alice didn’t finish her burger and fries and it’s been spoiling all day in the heat.
“You gave him until tonight to turn himself in,” I remind Alice. “The sun is setting and it’s gonna get dark soon, but he’s showing no signs of doing it.”
I keep my gaze fixed on the church, which makes it possible to ignore her sharp look. She let me hold her hand for a while after she spoke to the priest, but not for long. As the hours passed, she closed off more and more.
“If you gave him an ultimatum then we have to follow through now,” Zane says, leaning forward from the back seat and sticking his head in between the two front seats. He gets an equally sharp look from Alice that she just gave me.
“I know that,” she says in a hard voice.
She opens the laptop she’s been cradling and plays the recording of the confrontation in the church again. We’ve listened to it at least twenty times since we got here.
“There’s nothing very incriminating on here,” Alice says. “I hoped he’d say more.”
She plays the part where he speaks about how much little Kate wanted to be with him.
“I could send him this to hurry him along,” she says.
Zane and I exchange a glance through the rearview mirror. A glance filled with a lot of doubt that it will work,
“Try it,” I say anyway. “Maybe he’ll get spooked into confessing.”
“Say the cops got the same email,” Zane suggests. “That should put some fire under his ass.”
“And tell him to just turn himself in, or else,” I add.
I sincerely doubt any of this is going to work, but Alice clearly needs some more time before she can completely abandon her plan of getting some regular justice system justice for the priest. So be it. Let her exhaust all the other options if that’s what she needs to do.
She slams the laptop lid shut. “I should speak to Kate before sending this on to anyone. She should know what’s happening. Maybe she’ll even want to come forward, report him herself.”
I wince and Zane makes a sound to match it from the backseat.
“Would you want everyone knowing what happened to you?” he asks. A valid point.
She turns to him. “I’d have liked to have some recognition of what had happened to me, yes. Me and Nico will go to the Cole house and you can keep watch on the priest in the meantime.”
She’s using her Sarge Alice voice, making this a command rather than a suggestion.
Zane shrugs and kind of nods, but not really. She turns her stern gaze on me.
“You’ll have to change back into Mrs. Baxter for this,” I say.
“Yes, I guess I better,” she says. “Drive us back to the motel.”
I start the car, because I’m sure it’s pointless to keep talking about this. The sooner she gets all this just justice crap out of her system, the sooner the priest will be gone, and we can start the rest of our lives.
Plus, with any luck I’ll get to watch her change into that pretty dress, see some of her milky soft skin, get a sneak peek at all I hope leaving the priest dead will bring.