Chapter 33
ZANE
The ride down to a small town near San Diego where Alice is didn’t take me long at all. Nor did seeing that even though Alice had everything well in hand there, she was crumbling under that tough exterior of hers. It takes having your soul shatter to see the symptoms in another.
That priest she’s hunting—the one that did unspeakable things to her when she was young—is still at it, still molesting little girls. And only Alice’s direct order to wait for her go ahead stopped me from paying him a visit in the middle of the night and getting rid of him for her.
This is her fight. I understand that very well. I’d hate anyone muscling in on my fights, so I decided to stay out of hers. For now.
Nico, the mob boss Matteo Rovina’s right-hand man is with her. The guy is brave and can fight with the best of them—he proved as much in the battles we helped Rovina win a few weeks ago—but I still don’t know if he’s the best fit for Alice.
He’s a playboy, that’s the only way to describe him. And after everything she’s been through, she needs someone a lot more serious and dependable. But he seems very into her, and she’s not annoyed by it, so what do I know?
I’ve been here a night and a day now, and Alice still hasn’t decided what to do about the priest. She’s still entertaining notions of bringing him to normal justice, taking him through the courts, and seeing him locked up. As if. Men like him always get away with hurting little girls.
I knew that when I was still a teenager—when I killed that priest Sienna said had hurt her—and it’s no different now. Possibly worse.
The night is dark like blue velvet, hardly any light coming from anywhere as I sit on my bike, watching the priest’s house.
It’s a peaceful-looking, two-story farmhouse type place and I’m pretty sure I know what all the rooms in it are by now.
The kitchen to the left of the front door, and his bedroom right above it.
On the other side of the house are the living room on the ground floor and probably a spare bedroom above it.
One of the smaller windows on the side of the house must be the bathroom, which he’s visited a few times since I’ve been here.
Alice’s plan was to give him until tonight to give himself up to the police. Tonight has come and gone. He’s not gonna do it.
He’s packed to leave and just sitting in the kitchen now. Probably waiting for the night to get a little deeper before slithering off into the darkness like the snake he is.
Alice has some good evidence on him, and he probably cleared this hasty exit with his church, which will protect him no matter what.
If Alice doesn’t decide to dispatch him to Hell soon, I’ll do it. I can slip into the house undetected and can be standing behind him with my knife to his throat before he knows I’m there.
The first priest I killed was messy business. Before, during and after. I couldn’t sleep for a week. Couldn’t stop my hands from shaking.
This killing won’t be messy. And I won’t regret it. Not the way I regretted the first anyway.
I’m a lot harder than I was then. I’ve killed many times in between then and now. Lost so much of my soul that I didn’t think I still had any left.
But Sienna showed me different.
She might’ve been the reason I shattered my soul in the first place, but she’s also the remedy I needed to find I still had one. Talk about things coming full circle. I never imagined they would for me.
But I can’t think of Sienna now. I lose too much focus on the here and now if I think of her soft curves, her singsong voice and moans that are better than any music ever made by men.
I told Alice about Hydra and the need for her to get back to LA sooner rather than later. But that hasn’t sped up her decision-making regarding the priest.
I get a ping on my phone—a barely perceptible vibration, actually. It’s Alice, sending me a text to let me know that she and Nico are here.
I leave my bike where it is and make my way through the darkness to them. They’re not speaking when I reach them, but there’s a tension in the air between them that makes me sure I’ve interrupted some kind of intimate conversation regardless.
I hope it was about going into the priest’s house and finishing the job.
I tell them that I’m pretty sure the priest is getting ready to make a run for it. I’d already told Alice as much earlier, via text, but I think this is a good time to repeat it.
“We’re going in,” Alice says and the words fill me with a nervous tension even though they’re a relief to hear. That’s how it is with these missions when someone’s gonna lose their life at the end.
“He’s had long enough to turn himself in,” she adds.
“I think it’s safe to say he’s not gonna do that,” Nico says, taking the words right out of my mouth.
“We’ll go through the front door,” Alice says, meaning Nico and herself. “And Zane, you make sure he doesn’t escape through the back.”
“Yes, Sarge,” I say automatically and make my way towards the back door, which I’ve been eyeing as my point of entry since I got here to watch the house.
I don’t enter as I reach it. I stop right beside it, standing there in the darkness and waiting for Alice and Nico to join the priest in the kitchen.
He’s wearing plain clothes—a pair of black pants and a dark blue T-shirt.
It makes it easier to forget he’s an ordained priest with direct links to God if you believe all that crap.
I don’t. But I was raised Catholic and some things are as good as etched into my soul.
Eternal damnation and all that. But I’m already going to Hell for all I’ve done, so there’s no use worrying about it.
Especially not right before I kill another priest.
I fully intend to do it so that Alice won’t have it on her conscience. She’s been through enough with this guy in this life. She doesn’t need him hounding her in the afterlife too.
She and Nico enter the kitchen, startling the priest. I try the back door, thinking I’ll probably have to break one of the glass panes on it to join them, but it opens right up.
A very trusting man not to lock his doors at night, given what a monster he is.
He doesn’t even notice me coming into the kitchen.
“You thinking of running?” Alice asks him.
“What else am I to do?” the priest says. “These wild accusations you’re throwing at me… there is no way to defend myself against them.”
This guy really can bullshit with the best of them. If I didn’t know the accusations were all true, I might actually be inclined to believe him going by the innocent tone in his voice.
“Yeah, that’s because they’re true,” Nico says.
“They are not,” the priest protests. “They are vile lies. Damnable lies.”
“Save it,” Alice says. “Kate Cole has accused you.”
That’s the little girl he’s been molesting in this town, his latest victim. Alice and Nico visited her parents this afternoon to let them know what had been happening to their daughter.
“She’s a little liar,” the priest says and stands up. “She will have to answer to God for that.”
He grabs the handle of his suitcase. “And I will answer to no one.”
I move closer to stop him leaving, but Alice is faster.
She strides over to him and grabs him by the throat.
She might be just a touch over five feet tall, but she’s the fiercest person I’ve ever known.
The priest is just opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water, his eyes full of shock and surprise.
“You didn’t think I had the strength to come for you,” Alice says in a firm, brave tone. “You thought I was still the weak, shy little girl you hurt and abused. The one who was too scared to do anything about it. I’m not.”
She releases his throat and he gasps, rubbing away the pain of her grip.
“What do you want from me? I will turn myself in if that’s what you want.”
My breath lodges in my throat. Is she gonna go for this? It’s clearly a lie. But it doesn’t even matter. Because however she responds to this, I’ll still kill the guy here tonight.
Thankfully she shakes her head. “You’ve had your chance, but it’s too late for that now.”
The room fills with the sour scent of fear. The priest turns to escape… and runs right into me, bouncing back a little.
His face was full of fear to begin with, but contorts into an even uglier shape as he takes me in. Me and the large hunting knife in my hand. He knows what’s coming now and going by the intensifying stench in the room, I think he just shit his pants.
I’m just about to stick the knife in his stomach, which will make this a messy killing, but whatever, when bright lights from outside flood the kitchen.
I look at Alice, but her face is just as confused as mine must be. Have we been found out? I didn’t see anyone following us, or checking us out, and I’m pretty good at spotting that kind of thing. But did someone know what we planned to do here tonight anyway?
I don’t get to ask Alice any of those questions before six men rush into the house. Three from the direction of the front door and three from behind me through the back door.
The priest’s face lights up in relief. He clearly recognizes these men and thinks they’re here to save him. I hope to Christ that he’s wrong. I’m sure between Alice, Nico, and myself we can take these six plus the priest, but I’d rather not do too much killing tonight.
“You see? I am not abandoned by my flock,” the priest says pompously. “The people of my town have come to rescue me from your evil intentions.”
“Not exactly, you dirty pervert,” one of the men who entered says in a voice so full of dark hate I’m pretty sure I know who he is just from that alone. It must be the little girl’s father.
The expression on the priest’s face suggests he didn’t understand what was just said.
“My daughter told me everything,” the man says to Alice, confirming my suspicions about who he is. “I know you have a score to settle with this man, but he’s mine. No one hurts my child and gets away with it. No one.”
I see Alice wrestle with the decision of whether to let him kill the priest, and I see now that it would have been a mistake to deny her this kill like I’d planned to do. She is fully committed to dispatching the priest herself.
But then she says, “He’s all yours. Your pain is fresh. Mine is old. I just want to be sure there is no chance that he will ever hurt another little girl ever again.”
“You can be sure of that,” the girl’s father says firmly.
The five men with him all have identical looks of hate on their faces. And that hate is all for the priest.
“What is this? What are you going to do to me?” the priest asks in a stuttering voice.
“You will die tonight,” Alice says in a cold voice. “It is the only way to stop you. And it is what you deserve. You killed a part of me, the best part of me, all those years ago. Just as you killed the best part of many other little girls.”
The priest tries to run again, but the girl’s father grabs him and holds him tight.
“You won’t get away with this,” the priest yells at Alice. “You’ll be caught. I’m a priest of the Catholic church. I’m untouchable. They’ll catch you.”
Alice shakes her head. “No. No one will miss you.”
So brave. So fierce. I’ll be even prouder to call her my Sarge after witnessing this tonight.
“Best to make it look like an accident,” Nico says to the girl’s father. “Just a suggestion.”
The guy responds by kicking the priest in the knee, making him fall to the floor with a scream.
“We will handle this from here,” the girl’s father says. “The Sheriff’s Deputy is here with us. He has a daughter too. And as you said, no one will miss this priest. And no one will find him.”
“You should go now if you want to stay clear of what’s about to happen,” another man says. I assume it’s the Sheriff’s Deputy.
Alice nods. “Yes, I think that would be best.”
“You’ll burn in hell for this,” the priests hisses at her.
“I’ll see you there then,” she replies cooly and motions to me and Nico to follow her out of the house.
Screams and the sounds of a man being beaten hard follow us into the night.
“We could stay until the end,” Nico says. “If you want.”
She looks back into the house where the beating is still going strong.
“I made my peace here,” she says and that’s exactly what the expression on her face is saying too.
“He had it coming,” I say. “This was the only way to stop him.”
“I know,” Alice says, still looking back at the priest. “I know it was.”
“We should get the hell out of here while the going’s good,” I say. “There’s plenty of trouble waiting for us back in LA.”
I can sense they want to be alone, just like I want to be alone with Sienna soon. That’s why I don’t wait. I just head for my bike.
In a few short hours I’ll get to hold Sienna again. And I didn’t have to kill tonight. That will make it easier to make love to her, which I plan on doing as soon as I get home. Not that it’d be hard either way, because this priest had it coming and she’s who she is… the love of my life. I think.