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“You don’t know those are because of him,” Davis said, raising his voice over loudening sirens. “He might be back at any moment?—”
Francis spun on his heel, cassock whipping around his legs. “Then wait here, but I’m not waiting, I’m not. He does this, he leaves when I’m asleep because he knows I’ll get mad, and something happens, something terrible. When we’re together, we’re safe, but like this? You don’t understand. I have to find him.”
“All right, then I’ll wait here, should he come back. But what if you get picked up by the Mafia? What then?”
“I’m not scared of the Mafia, Father, I’m terrified of losing Vitari.”
Vitari needed him, and Francis wasn’t wasting another second on a morally corrupt priest who may or may not be on their side. He strode down the alley and out onto one of the main streets. If the sirens were for something else, so be it. Then he’d have gone for a midnight walk for no reason. But if they were for Vitari, he needed to be there, needed to be beside him. Whatever he’d done, Francis would always stand with him.
A police car raced by, lights flashing.
“Lord make haste.” He quickened into a jog, and as he turned a corner, more police cars sped toward the direction they’d run from earlier in the evening, from the hotel.
But Vitari wouldn’t go back there, he wouldn’t be so stupid…
Unless he’d been maddened by rage and despair, unless he’d been so angry, and so afraid, that he’d believed he could end Sasha. Unless he was afraid and grieving and lost. Unless this was Vitari’s Hail Mary…
A blacked-out armoured vehicle with giant white letters on the side roared by, chased by an ambulance.
Francis ran.
The scene outside the Hôtel de Paris and the nearby casino was like a scene from a movie, with flashing lights, fast cars, and men and women in elegant wear hugging each other.
Armed police had cordoned off the scene.
This was real. Not a movie, not a dream.
He pushed through to the front of the line, where the police held the crowd back.
Nobody came and went from the hotel. The steps out the front were vacant, empty, and the doors closed.
What was happening in there? Was Vitari inside?
Across the sealed-off square, at the front of the casino, paramedics loaded a stretcher into the back of an ambulance. A sheet covered the person from head to toe.
Because they were dead.
Vitari…
Francis’s heart constricted. What if…
He didn’t know what to do.
“Officer! Officer!” He thrust out a hand, catching a nearby officer’s eye. The uniformed cop said something about standing back in French. “Officer, what’s happening?”
“Nothing to be worried about, Father,” the officer said in fluent English.
“It’s just… if I say a name… can you tell me if it’s related?”
“A name?” The officer studied him closer.
“Vitari Angelini?” Francis ventured, hoping this man knew the name, but also, that he didn’t. Hoping that Vitari was somewhere else and this commotion was nothing to do with him.
A few people in the crowd took note of the name. If Francis was wrong, Vitari would laugh at him. And he hoped he was wrong, he really did, but the way the officer had hesitated suggested he might, in fact, be right. The officer muttered something into his radio, then said Vitari’s name and ran his analytical gaze over Francis, taking in the creased cassock once more.
“What is your name, Father?” the officer asked.
“Father Francis Scott.”
