AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He tucked it back under his shirt again, half hating it there but needing it too. “I know this is… unconventional, but I wouldn’t be asking for help if I didn’t need it. You’re a priest, you’re a doctor. I have nowhere else to go. Please, can you help me find him?”
Mia and Federico exchanged glances, until Mia muttered, “I knew he was trouble.” She shook her head but managed a smile that eased some of the tension between them. “I will take you to Miguel Sanchez. If Vitari has been taken, Miguel will know who has him.”
“Thank you.” He glanced at Federico, who appeared to be more concerned by the minute. “Gracias, Padre. Will you please light a candle for us?”
“I already did.” He opened the door and left, muttering a prayer under his breath.
Francis would take all the prayers he could get. The words might have more weight not coming from him.
“Francis, let’s go,” Mia said, grabbing a bunch of keys and heading out the back.
Francis hurried after her. She climbed behind the wheel of an old pickup, and Francis climbed into the cab beside her. He clicked on the belt. “Who is Miguel?”
She smiled. “You’ll see.”
They drove a little ways down a rough track, bouncing and jarring into and out of potholes, and then, after it seemed as though they’d traveled miles, Mia pulled up outside a dilapidated cabin. Francis left the pickup and eyed the cabin’s timber walls and palm frond roof. He couldn’t tell whether the place was in the process of falling down or if it was supposed to blend in with the jungle around it. A few tattered deck chairs had been placed around a cold firepit.
“Miguel?” Mia called, approaching the cabin. She added a few words in Spanish too.
The screen door clanged, and a huge man emerged from the gloom. His sweat-stained shirt clung to a round belly and gaped at his neck. Miguel—Francis assumed he was him—had muscles like Sasha Zhukov. He had big, broad limbs, white whiskers dusted his dark, wrinkled face, and a scar continued from the right corner of his mouth, through his cheek, and toward his eye, giving him a permanent smile.
Francis’s gaze dropped to the curved, rusted machete in his grip.
Miguel grunted at Mia, and as his shrewd eyes took in Francis, he said something in Spanish.
“Sorry, I don’t speak much Spanish,” Francis said, ungluing his stare from the machete to look the man in the eyes. He had deep-set eyes—two dark holes, eager to swallow hapless tourists, like Francis. “Some, a little. But…”
Mia tilted her head and arched an eyebrow. “Francis, this is Miguel Sanchez. Miguel said he knows you.”
“Really?” That seemed unlikely. He couldn’t imagine where they’d met before and would surely remember him.
Miguel stomped down the steps, then sat on the final step and shoved the machete tip-first into the dirt. “Padre Blanco.” He chuckled.
Mia arched an eyebrow and studied Francis with a little more intent. “Father White?”
He had no idea where to even begin explaining how he’d gotten that name or how Miguel could possibly know him. “It’s complicated.” How did this man, living in a nowhere shack, know Padre Blanco?
“I’ll bet,” Mia drawled. “That gunshot is not looking like such a freak accident now.”
He’d never actually said it had been an accident.
Miguel took a cigarette from his pocket and Mia was quick to offer a lighter from hers. He lit the end and handed the lighter back. “What can I do for you, Padre?” Miguel said in a deep, rich combination of smoker’s drawl and South American Spanish.
Mia nodded Francis on.
“A friend of mine has been taken, and uh… Mia said you might know about that?”
“‘Taken’.” He didn’t say it like a question, more as an assessment, and took a drag on his cigarette. The smiling scar tightened his cheek. “Nombre?
It seemed as though the truth might take him further here than lies, and Miguel already knew of Padre Blanco, so… “Vitari Angelini.”
Miguel narrowed his eyes.
“Angelo della Morte,” Francis added, and recognition sparked in Miguel’s eyes. “You know him?”
“I know of him, the Battaglia’s vicious attack dog. I know who has him.”
Mia muttered something that sounded very much like swearing.
