A Righteous Kill (48 page)

Mazure groaned and spat blood onto the ground, but stayed down. “I don’t care what you do to me,” he said from behind the hand that caught the blood pouring from his nose. “I know Hero’s safe, and by now, she knows all about who you are.”

Pinning Mazure to the ground on his stomach, Luca slapped his cuffs on one wrist and quickly reached for the other hand, now slick with blood from cradling his nose. “I told you not to say her name,” he said against the psycho’s ear.

“You won’t get to her now, John the Baptist!” Mazure screamed. “He’ll tell her who you are!”

Luca froze for a shocked breath. “
What
did you say?” he demanded, jerking Mazure onto his back to face him.

The madman smiled, revealing blood from his nose and mouth etched into the gaps of his teeth. “I know
all
about you,” Mazure rasped, his chest heaving from exertion and pain. “It’s been you all along killing those girls. Who would suspect the agent working the case?”

A nauseous dread spread through Luca’s gut, turning his extremities cold. “
Who
?” He shook the front of Mazure’s blood-spattered shirt. “Who said that?”

“How could you do it, you sick fuck?” Mazure’s eyes looked as ill as Luca felt. “Pretend to protect her while terrorizing her? When did you plan to kill her, tonight?”

Luca couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Mazure had been duped, and only one of two people could have been pulling his strings all this time. In a fit of desperation, Luca drew his gun and shoved it against Mazure’s forehead. “Which one of the priests told you that?”

“Just kill me,” Mazure hissed. “I’ll be one more stain on your black soul.”

“I just might,” Luca’s finger tightened on the trigger. “But not before you say his name.”

Mazure’s face was a mask of hatred and blood, illuminated by the light pollution from the festive city. “He told me that it’s not your fault,” he spat. “That you’re plagued with demons, but I don’t believe him. I think you
are
a demon and you’re going to burn.”

Fuck.

Luca frantically searched the night for backup. The church still glowed like a beacon on a hill, shadows milling about, shouts echoing through the darkness, the wail of sirens piercing the distance, but no one was running to his aid yet. He and Vince had forgone the telling signs of an ear-bud, so all communication with his team was effectively cut off.

Luca did the only thing he could think of. He pistol-whipped Mazure on the side of the head, effectively knocking him out, then leapt off his limp, handcuffed body. A tight pain in his ribs set his head to spinning, but he let as much breath out of his chest as he could and regained his balance.

He had to get to Hero. She was still in danger, and now he knew who wanted her dead.

Heart pounding, he raced back up the hill toward the cathedral. Taking out his phone, he pushed the button that would wirelessly connect him to the other’s ear pieces. “Gunman secured by the gardens!” he yelled into the receiver, which was mostly true. “Someone get their hands on the priests and cuff them!” He didn’t hear the reply as he leapt up the church steps two and three at a time. Most of the people had scattered or were gathered in the parking lot, wrangled there by the FBI and Portland Police arriving on scene. An ambulance pulled up as he tore into the cathedral and took in the shocking scene in front of him.

Andra was still on the phone, barking at what sounded like a 911 dispatcher. Reinhardt was being checked by Trojanowski, but seemed mostly okay. The blond agent, Drexler, was kneeling by Corelli, working on undoing his battered vest. Rown and the rest of Hero’s family huddled around a prone form in the middle of the aisle.

“
No
,” Luca gasped as the band around his chest tightened. Was he too late? Racing across the plush carpet, he wedged his way in-between Demetri and the female Agent, Brighton, too petrified to care about what happened to whoever got in his way.

Brighton had a finger to her ear piece and she lowered it before informing the gathering that the ambulance had arrived.

Luca pulled up short to see Knox putting pressure on a bleeding wound in Vince’s thigh. “Jesus Christ!” he swore, unable to believe his partner had been shot.

Hero’s father crossed himself, turning his curse into a prayer.

Dropping to his knees, Luca inspected his closest friend for other wounds. “How did he get you?” Vince had been
behind
them, hadn’t he? He lay too far up the aisle to have been shot. This made no sense.

Skin waxy and he sweating profusely, Vince was in obvious pain, but he was still conscious. “It—wasn’t Mazure,” he gasped through pale, pinched lips. “I was shot from behind.” From the looks of it, the bullet had gone clean through the meat of his leg, but missed the artery.

“Where are the priests?” Luca snarled, turning to Agent Brighton. “Where’s Hero?”

Vince’s face went impossibly whiter. “She’s not with you?”

“I left her with Pop,” Rown said.

Brighton seemed more defensive than worried as she explained. “Drexler and I followed you outside, but you’d disappeared by the time we pushed through the crowd. When we returned, Hero was missing and Di Petro, Corelli, and Reinhardt were down—”

“She should be fine,” Andra said, leading the paramedics up the aisle. “We saw her helping Father McMurtry outside toward ambulances. Some idiot kicked his cane out from under him and he was almost trampled.” She shook her head, disgusted as the paramedics went to work.

Luca stood and said a few things that God would never forgive him for. A white-hot terror the likes of which he’d never known sliced through him.

“What’s the matter?” Rown asked. He wouldn’t know. He hadn’t had an ear bud, either.

“He’s got her,” Luca’s hoarse words stunned the family. For the second time that night, Luca found it impossible to breathe as he drew his gun. “McMurtry is John the Baptist!”

Leaving them with the fallout of that nuclear information, Luca raced for the door. He searched every wide-eyed face in the darkness for Hero. Her shimmering gold shirt should have reflected the bright lights. He saw police-issue flashlight beams from the direction of where he’d left Mazure, but no sign of Hero or McMurtry. He felt like a volcano about to blow its top. “Fuck, fuck,
fuck
!”

“Agent Ramirez?” A shaky male voice called out to him from the shadows of the street-side steps.

Luca whirled to see a pale Father Michael laid out on a stretcher, his white robes soaked with blood at the stomach.

“I knew that was you,” the priest said. “I—I think he took her—he shot me—I can’t believe…” He trailed off.

Luca advanced on him. “I swear to Christ if you had something to do with this, I’ll—”

“Sir, please!” A large African-American paramedic stood with her hand up, as though that would stop him.

“I didn’t!” Father Michael held out a hand to Luca and struggled to sit up, but the paramedics wouldn’t allow it. “There’s—a van. We borrow it from the Hebrew Senior Center sometimes.” He winced and gasped in a few pained breaths.

“Where?” Luca demanded.

Father Michael shook his head and lifted his hand as though to point. “It was parked—across the street today—didn’t think about it …”

Luca looked to where the wounded man gestured. An empty spot big enough for a van interrupted the line of cars parked along the road.

“Did you see him leave? Where did he take her?”

Father Michael just shook his head, his eyes closing.

“We’ve got to move him,” the paramedic said. “
Now
.”

Luca pushed past her and shook Father Michael by the shoulder. “Where did he take her?” he yelled as the priest’s eyes popped open and he looked around as though muddled.

“I didn’t know…” A tear streaked down his cheek and he kept shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what was happening. “I didn’t—see,” his speech was beginning to slur.

Luca bit out some more obscenities as he left the priest and ran down the hill toward his car. He had a hunch about where Father McMurtry had taken Hero.

To the place this all started.

As he yanked his door open, Luca grabbed his phone and pressed the button to his boss’s cell. “Come on, come on, come on,” he chanted.

“Where the fuck are you, Ramirez?” Trojanowski screamed in his ear. “You just left the gunman on the ground beat all to shit and trussed like a Christmas turkey. I have three agents and a priest down, and what’s this I’m hearing about the crippled father taking Hero? Tell me what the hell is going on!”

Luca was blocked by the front end of some officer’s shitty Crown Vic, and he did the guy a favor by backing into it and pushing the car out of the way. Both entrances to the parking lot were likewise blocked, so Luca flipped on his lights and sirens and jammed his foot to the floor, clearing the sidewalk, grass, and curb with some air to spare.

“He took Hero in a van belonging to the Hebrew Senior Center.” Luca ignored all his boss’s questions. “I want the information on that vehicle given to all units in this fucking city.”

“Ramirez, don’t do anything stupid,” Trojanowski sounded panicked and Luca could hear the squeal of his own tires burning the road through his phone as Trojanowski raced outside in time to see him leave. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he demanded.

“I think he’s going to try to kill her at Cathedral Park,” Luca said, then threw his phone to the seat beside him and focused on driving.

Street lines and traffic lights blurred in front of his tunnel vision. He navigated through the sparse late-night traffic like a getaway driver and for the first time in his life, he
prayed
. He prayed like a dying man that he was right about where to find her. That he would get to Hero before it was too late. Because God, the devil, the holy fucking Roman Empire couldn’t protect
anyone
from what he would do if something happened to her.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“When sorrows come,

they come not single spies,

but in battalions.”

~William Shakespeare, Hamlet

For the second time in her life, Hero regained consciousness tied up in the back of a windowless van. Grey-lined upholstery abraded her cheek, and she knew, without a doubt, she’d been here before.

This time, her hands were secured behind her, rather than to a cross, and her ankles were free. She did her best to breathe through the initial wave of panic pounding through her body exacerbating the throbbing in her head. She needed to gain her bearings.

They were moving. Very fast, as far as she could tell, and making a few jerky, frenzied turns, so they were not on the freeway. She couldn’t hear any sirens behind them. Which meant no cops.

Balls.

Terror seized her muscles, though she tried to remain absolutely motionless so Father McMurtry would think she was still out cold.

A cowardly part of her wished she were still unconscious. As much as she wanted to live. To fight. She knew what was coming next. Spikes and hammers and spears. Torn flesh. Drowning.

Father McMurtry would make certain she didn’t survive this time. Maybe he’d even shoot her first.

She valiantly held on to a sob by gritting her teeth so hard her jaw ached. How could it have been Father McMurtry all along? She’d known him her
entire
life. She’d been so very fond of his sweet, sparkling eyes and his dashing, wrinkly smile. He was so kind and gentle and pious. A shocked part of her was still swamped by disbelief.

He’d shoved a gun in her face and told her to walk out with him. When she’d refused, he’d pointed the gun at the back of her mother’s head. He’d told her he could kill most of her family as they gathered around Vince before Rown had a moment to react. His voice told her he would regret the deaths, but his eyes told her he would relish them.

How could she not have followed him out of the church? She’d
gladly
give her life for any one of her family.

No one had paid them the least bit of mind as they’d limped down the Steeple Hill and across the street milling with panicked victims. Hero had desperately hoped someone would catch her eye. That she could telegraph her need for help. That Luca would leap from the shadows and rescue her.

She’d seen a ridiculous amount of the people who were supposed to protect her gunned down already, and the rest were desperately trying to deal with the ensuing chaos. Luca, no doubt, went after Mazure, and God only knew where they both were. Or if he was all right.

The last thing she remembered before McMurtry knocked her out was his limp disappearing as he rushed them to the awaiting van.

Her heart squeezed in her chest as she thought of Luca and also Vince. What if both of them were dead? God, that would be… unthinkable. Compounded with the tragedy of the loss, her family wouldn’t know to suspect McMurtry until it was too late.

A dark hopelessness bloomed and threatened to take control, but Hero fought to contain it. Even though she wasn’t exactly religious, if her parent’s faith had taught her anything, it was to cling to hope. On the other hand, their pragmatism had taught her to remain calm and consider your options in a desperate situation.

It didn’t get more desperate than this.

She needed to see more of her surroundings. She was curled on her left side with her feet facing the double-doors and her head toward the driver. Chancing that McMurtry couldn’t see her on the floor, she tilted her head back. A black metal cage, like the one found in a police vehicle, protected the driver. It ended halfway down and was bolted to a metal paneling that made up the rest of the van’s interior.

Well shit
. There was no bum-rushing the bad guy while he was driving. Which, now that she thought about it, happened a lot in movies but was probably a bad idea. She’d be tossed like laundry in the dryer if the van ended up rolling.

The rest of the interior seemed pretty standard and infuriatingly clean. Hooks where seats could be installed or removed spaced evenly for up to three rows. The carpeted floor had been recently vacuumed. Hero scowled, her gaze beginning to bounce around the inside as she fought to maintain her composure.