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“Yes, apparently by his own hand,” I said. “And he left the GPS coordinates to what we assume is Derek’s island for us to find.”
“Do you think Father Jim was trying for redemption?” Charlie asked. “Offing himself and giving us the clue we needed?”
“Could be,” I said. “Or someone could have made it look like a suicide and planted the coordinates to send us on a wild goose chase.”
“He was a priest, after all,” Matt said. “Maybe he had a crisis of conscience.”
Riley didn’t look convinced. “Honey, I’ve been around degenerates my entire life. They can’t have a crisis of conscience.”
“Why not?” her husband asked.
“Because they don’t have consciences. It’s like they’re born without souls or something. A good man can do a bad thing and feel regret. A bad man… Well, he’s just bad. He can’t feel regret. He doesn’t have it in him.”
“Still,” Charlie said, “if Jim wanted to go into the priesthood, he must have been a good man at some point.”
Riley shook her head. “No. Remember, he and my father were friends from childhood. If there was ever any good in Jim Wilkins, my father choked it out of him.”
“Why would he go into the priesthood, then?” Matt asked.
Riley sighed. “It’s a good cover, I guess? I mean, how many news stories have there been about priests abusing children? It’s disgusting and sick.”
“This entire situation is disgusting and sick,” Roy said, grimacing.
I nodded. “At least we have Morgan. Thanks for coming at this time of night.”
“It’s not like any of us are sleeping well anyway,” Riley said. “Not with this hanging over all our heads.”
“You got that right.” Matt kissed Riley’s cheek.
I looked around at my new family. Wonderful people, and not one of them deserved what was going on.
We were making progress, but not quickly enough.
And Rock was gone. He and Reid were en route to some vague coordinates in the Pacific.
The thought I’d been suppressing nudged into my brain.
They were walking into danger.
And I might never see my husband again.
31
Reid
“Got some startling news,” Buck said.
“Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“That priest? Father Jim? Turns out he’s not dead. They fucking revived him.”
I nearly lost my footing. Had I heard him right?
“Surprised the hell out of me,” Buck continued. “You sure he was dead when you and Rock left his place?”
I racked my brain. “Yeah. Yeah, he was. But he had a faint pulse when we got there. He was unresponsive, though.”
“And you guys left before the squad got here?”
“Hell, yeah. We had to. We couldn’t let them find us there.”
“If he’d only been dead a minute or two, they could have revived him. Or maybe he wasn’t dead. You just couldn’t feel his pulse.”
Possible. I wasn’t a damned doctor. He’d sure felt dead to me, though.
Was this good news or bad news? Father Jim being out of the picture had taken one person off our radar, but if he was alive, he could answer questions.
If we could get to him.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“He’s at Memorial in ICU.”
“I need you to get in to see him.”
“I figured you’d say that. I’m already working on it.”
“I don’t know when Rock and I’ll get back. You’ll need to coordinate with Leif.”
“What about your other siblings?”
“Riley’s been through enough. She and Roy are both newlyweds. If we can leave them out of this, that’d be best.”
“Right, but isn’t Roy the one who actually saw Father Jim with your father when that showgirl escaped?”
I cleared my throat. “He is. But if you can do this without him, do it.”
“Gotcha. I’ll be in touch. Anything else?”
“Nothing.” At least not at the moment. No one knew Rock and I were in Helena, and I meant to keep it that way.
“Good enough. Later.”
I shoved the burner phone back into my pocket and headed back to where Rock was holding court over Nieves, Hoss, and Manny.
“What’s the good news?” I asked my brother.
“I actually have a little,” he said.
I lifted my eyebrows.
“Nieves here let something slip that she shouldn’t have.”
Nieves’s pale cheeks were rosy under the starlight. Yeah, rosier than usual. She’d fucked up.
Good.
“Do tell,” I said.
Nieves bit her bottom lip.
“Tell him,” Rock said. “Or I will, and you won’t like my version of the events.”
“Okay, okay,” she said. “The phone call I got the night your father was killed.”
“We already know about that,” I said.
“Except your little Freudian slip,” Rock said. “Keep talking, Nieves.”
Nieves chewed on her lip again.
“I’m fucking ageing here.” I darted a glare to her.
“All right. The phone call. I know who made it.”
“Oh? The number was untraceable.”
“Your brother,” she said. “Your brother made the phone call.”
My eyebrows nearly flew off my forehead, and my stomach did a flip. Roy? No way.
“Yeah,” Rock said. “She flubbed up her story. I was interrogating her about the voice on the other end of the line when she stole that message from my answering machine, and she said it was Roy who made the call the night of the murder. Funny thing happens when you lie, Nieves. You have to keep all the stories straight, and it gets more and more difficult, especially under duress.”
