In the Wind: Out of the Box, Book 2 (8 page)

“Uh, okay,” I say, and look around the hallway. There are tourists everywhere. “Where, then? And when?”

He looks a few degrees down from panic, even as he remains seated with the cell phone clenched in his hands. “Two hours. There’s a café just down the Via della Conciliazione. A block from the Castel Sant’Angel.” He mentions the name of the café and then clams up. His expression is furtive, and I wonder what a priest in the middle of the Vatican has to be nervous about.

Also, I dig his ringtone choice. I’ve been rocking the Pharrell ringtone for a while myself.

“Two hours,” I say, nodding at him, and then head back down the hall. Dr. Perugini falls in beside me, and I can tell by her expression she overheard everything. “What do you think his deal is?” I ask, more rhetorically than anything.

“He looked like he needed a change of undergarments after you spoke to him,” she observes. Her wry humor is the first hint of emotion I’ve caught from her.

We finish the tour, meander around St. Peter’s square, but don’t go into the basilica. It’s a little crowded, but not too bad. I try to imagine the place on a day when the pope is doing something here, and I envision a crowd so intense that Sienna would lose her shit just from the sheer volume of people.

Perugini leads the way and we walk from the square down the big damned street, the Via della Conciliazione. We make it almost to the end before I realize that the Castel Sant’Angelo is hiding behind some trees, directly ahead. It’s a fortress, a massive circular structure that towers over Rome. I saw it when we crossed the Tiber to get here, but I hadn’t realized how close it was to the Vatican.

We stop in the nearest café and wait. I watch the clock for the first five minutes. Perugini says nothing, just orders a Coke Light and sits there, sipping. I squelch my fantasy about being that Coke within seconds.

“Why did you come here?” I suddenly blurt out.

She cocks her head at me, and finally she takes off her sunglasses. I’ve seen her eyes many a time. They’re a lovely, lovely shade of brown. “Because you asked,” she says. And that kind of warms me for a moment, until she goes on. “And because it’s a free trip to Italy, of course.” She sips the Coke. “This is a paid vacation, you know this, yes? All funded by the agency. How can I refuse a chance to go home for free?”

My brief moment of hope at “Because you asked,” dies in a fire. “Okay, then,” I manage to get out, hopefully without squeaking. “You deserve a vacation.” She probably does, too. The last year or two haven’t exactly been kind to any of us, and if I recall correctly, she ended up locked in a car trunk because of Kat at some point.

She nods in agreement—basically with herself, since I was already agreeing with her—and sips some more Coke. We sit in a companionable silence, and the minutes drag by.

I’m groping for another (probably idiotic) icebreaker when I see Father Emmanuel appear in the entry to the café.

I have never been so happy to see a holy man in my life. I would even confess right now—in private, of course—if that would save me from saying something else stupid to Dr. Perugini. His Lord may move in mysterious ways, but my mouth moves in pretty knuckleheaded ones.

“Thank you for coming,” Father Emmanuel says as he takes a seat next to me, as though I’m doing him some sort of favor. I blink at this, but for once I shut I mouth and let him go on. “When I reached out to Giuseppe after receiving his name, I was concerned that no one would be able to help me.”

I raise an eyebrow at Perugini. She raises one back at me. We both keep listening.

“I hate to …” Emmanuel lowers his head, and it’s clear that what’s on his mind is something with weight. “… I hate to … squeal? Is that the word you use? To complain outside the organization?” He looks up and I can see he’s a little tortured. English is plainly not his first language, but he does a pretty good job considering that he probably also speaks Latin and whatever his native tongue is.

“That’s right,” I say. Now I’m just mystified. He wants to talk about internal Vatican matters? What does this have to do with me? With Giuseppe? I’m just smart enough to know that revealing my ignorance while he’s pouring his soul out on the table is one sure path to shutting him up, so I stop talking. Again. If only I had similar control around Perugini, alas.

“They are simply not set up to deal with this level of treachery,” Emmanuel says, shaking his head. “This level of … deceit and indecency.” I stifle a completely unproductive joke about the history of the church. Even in the few moments that I’ve known him, Emmanuel seems like a good guy.

“Go on,” I say. Helpful. Super helpful. “Maybe just getting it out there will help you work through the solutions.” And vague. Alpha Male is nothing if not vague.

“I do not even know where to start,” Emmanuel says, and his desperation is thick in the air.

“The beginning,” Perugini says, and I realize that I don’t have the market cornered on vague. She’s inscrutable again, even with the sunglasses off.

“I came here from Mombasa over a year ago,” Emmanuel says, and his head is still down. He won’t meet my eyes, and I wonder if he’s ashamed. “I needed sanctuary, and the church knew this.”

“Sanctuary from what?” I ask, and then the answer comes to me before he can answer. “From the extinction. From Century wiping out metakind.”

He nods, but still won’t raise his head to look at us. “There are other priests and nuns, of course, that are like myself. The church knows us.” He finally looks up. “There is no shame; we are all children of God, all loved. But when Sovereign began to move—” I shouldn’t be surprised that a priest can knowledgeably discuss events I was intimately involved in, but somehow I am, “—they reacted differently than almost any other country. They gathered us together and protected us here in Vatican City. They isolated us from exposure to the outside world, limited access, used the intelligence they accumulated about Century’s methods to keep us hidden and safe.” He opens his hands and I can see the sweat glistening on his palms. “They managed to do what no other country could.”

“They protected their meta population,” I say in a low voice.

He nods. “But not only theirs, I found out.”

This elicits a frown from me. “Did they take in others?”

He looks away and nods again. “Some. Where they could, and where they were certain that these people were not Century spies.” He purses his lips. “This is where the problem lies.” He folds his hands. “Where
my
problem lies.”

I lean in, very serious. “So what is your problem?” I ask, now unconcerned about dispelling the image that I’m totally informed. He’s in the boat; there’s no reason to be coy now. (Because we’re not in a koi pond, har har.)

“One of the outsiders that they gave sanctuary to,” Emmanuel says, still looking down. “
He
is the problem. He is using us—the church. He’s hiding now. He got in because his brother is a priest, and now we continue to shield him while he—while he—” Emmanuel makes a noise of utter frustration, something a holy man trying to avoid the sin of wrath might make, and I suspect his next confession will be interesting if he doesn’t keep this to himself. “He’s still using us to hide.”

I narrow my eyes as I realize that this is moral outrage. It’s as serious as can be for him; whatever this situation is, it offends him on a deeply personal level. “What’s this guy doing?” I ask.

Emmanuel looks up, and his dark eyes flash. “It’s not just what he’s doing, but who he is. He is a criminal,” Emmanuel says, “and I think he’s still committing crimes—while using our sanctuary to keep himself hidden.”

Father Emmanuel doesn’t give us much more than that. He’s jumpy, and he leaves a few minutes later, promising that if he can find more—proof of his claims, for instance—he’ll be in touch. I get the sense he’s carrying a bit of a load, but I also get the sense he’s not telling me everything.

Like how he figured out this guy is still active as a criminal. Did Emmanuel witness something? Or is he a telepath?

Dr. Perugini and I head back to the hotel. I spring for a cab, because her gait is showing the first signs that she might be developing a blister and I’m sensitive like that.

On the ride back to the hotel, we’re pretty quiet. The windows are cracked, letting cool air drift in on the stretches where the cabbie revs the engine up to redline. Then he slams on the brakes as we come to a traffic light and audibly protests in muted Italian. I decide he must be related to the last swearing cab driver I had.

Dr. Perugini says nothing, hiding behind her sunglasses, eyes fixed straight ahead. She’s lost in thought, I can tell even through the lenses, and I don’t want to be the one to disturb her.

The threads of my little Italian tapestry (not the “Jesus is watching you” one, but the one I’m spinning from all the different things I’m dealing with here) are getting more and more complicated. I’ve got an info broker’s murder. One of the old goddesses. A guy with powers like mine. A priest who’s a meta and says that there’s a criminal meta hiding in the Vatican. And a villain who’s dropping the name of my old organization in a letter to a former colleague.

I’m gonna need some help tying these strands off, I decide, so I whip out my phone and make a call. When Dr. Perugini glances at me, I give her an apologetic look. I hate when people start fiddling with their phones or take phone calls in my presence without excusing themselves first. And from the look on her face, Perugini feels the same way.

“Helloooooo?” the voice at the other end of the phone says, pretty chipper. But then, it’s like ten in the morning there.

“J.J., my man,” I say, “it’s Reed.”

“Reed for speed!” J.J. says. “How’s the crazy race going?” I know what he’s trying to say with that. He and I have some geekhood in common. He might be stretching it a little with that metaphor, but J.J. is good people.

“Not bad, not bad,” I say breezily. “Hey, I’m in Rome chasing some stuff down. Running into some walls here.”

“And you want me to come in LIKE A WRECKING BALL?” He delivers the last bit with gusto, and I imagine the people in the cubicles around him turning their heads to stare as if they can see his weirdness through the grey plastic.

“Nailed it,” I say, a little singsongy. Perugini gives me a look, and I calm down eight notches to be all serious business on the phone. “Yeah, if you can help me get a lead on some things, I’d appreciate it.”

“What’s the what?” he says. No, he did not misspeak. “What’s the what?” is an actual sentence. It means, roughly translated from the geek, “What’s up?” or “What do you need help with in this instance?” He and I speak the same language.

“Did Sienna or Rocha fill you in about these email intercepts that sent me over here?” I pause, hear a snicker, and go on. “Right. Of course not.”

“You know I’m a mushroom over here, bro. In the dark, 24/7. I’m growing fungus—”

“Okay, so,” I interrupt, “Rocha and the NSA picked something up referencing Alpha, my old organization. Kind of an introduction letter from a former member to someone else. They go by code names, and I met one of them last night, but with a mask on.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” J.J. says. “Slow it down. Did NSA not give you a suspected identity on the email sender?”

“They did not,” I say. “I assumed it’s because they didn’t have it. All I got was the tag ‘Known Bad Guy.’ Highly technical term, I am assured.”

“Bad assumption, thinking they don’t have it,” he says. “It could be classified. We’ve run across that before. Or it could be coded as ‘need to know,’ and you have to ask.”

I frown. I assumed when Sienna handed off the info that she’d given me everything she had. She probably did; but we’re still pretty new to this whole thing where we’re actively networking with other agencies, so it’s possible she didn’t think to dig deeper than what Rocha sent. It’s also highly probable she didn’t think this thing would blow up in my face the way it did, so there’s that. “Can you dig?” I ask him.

“I’m already in the dark and in the dirt anyway,” he says, almost chirping. “I’ll get right on it, bro. Anything for you. So, hey … when are you coming back? Because the new
Captain America
movie is coming out next week in Italy, a full week earlier than we get it stateside—”

I see Perugini staring at me through those dark sunglasses, and I’m suddenly aware that she can hear every word he’s saying. “Gotta go,” I say and hang up before J.J. has a chance to embarrass me further. I shoot Perugini a muted smile, a tight one, and wave my phone. “J.J. He’s … helpful.”

She gives me barely more than an “Mmm,” before nodding slightly and turning to look back out the window.

When we get to the hotel, she follows me to the elevator and we head up. I realize for the first time I don’t even know where her room is, so I ask. “Down the hall from yours,” she answers. “Two doors.”

“Ah,” I say, nodding. We get out on the same floor and I follow her awkwardly, fumbling for my key—because I actually have a key, a giant oversized one. My five-star hotel has yet to upgrade to the card key system embraced by even the cheesiest off-ramp motels in America.

She stops two doors down, cool, still hiding behind her sunglasses, and favors me with a look. “Dinner in an hour, say?” she asks, and it hits me like two by four to the back of the head—she wants me to go to dinner with her.

Then it strikes me like a bucket of cold water poured down the back of my shirt: we’re here on business, and we’ll be eating dinner together as colleagues. “Sure,” I mumble, still managing a smile. Then I fumble open my door and shut it, clicking the lock and putting my back against it like I’m a teenager in an overly dramatic high-school movie.

I’m about to take a moment to wallow in self-pity when I realize that the air currents in the room are all wrong. There’s a smell, a hint of something, and the shades are open, giving me a view of the rooftop across the way. The window is shut, though, so at least there’s that. The maid service at work, I guess, getting my heart back down off the ledge.

I take a few steps in and glance in the bathroom as I pass. Everything seems to be in order, there—