I swallowed, anxiety running white-hot through my veins before he nodded once. His full lips turned up slowly before he slipped behind the shower door, running a towel across his biceps and over his head quickly before tossing the spent towel on the floor at his feet.
The stretch of his broad body walking away from me, his last kiss goodbye.
EIGHTEEN
Tressa
As I came down the narrow steps of Bastien’s stairway ten minutes later, still dripping wet from the shower when Ronnie John—one of the kids from Bastien’s catechism class—sped around the corner, climbing the stairs two at a time with fear painting his features.
My heart pummeled my throat as I realized how bad this looked.
So very bad.
There was no sensible reason I should be sneaking down Father Bastien’s private stairwell so early in the morning. This kid would definitely run off and tell everyone he knew, and then where would that leave us? And Bastien’s job? The parishioners would revolt, the cardinal would come, Bastien would be ripped from St. Mike’s.
Our very worst fears were materializing on the face of this boy.
“I can explain.” I choked on the statement, because I couldn’t.
I couldn’t explain.
“Run.” He clutched my elbow.
“What?” I shook my head, confused.
“Run, Ms. Tressa,” Ronnie John urged, begging me to follow him a beat before seemingly giving up and scrambling up the stairs as quickly as possible. He landed at the top of the staircase and launched himself down the hallway just as a series of booms echoed through the tiny chambers of the house.
“What the fuck is going on?” I breathed, fear causing my palms to prickle with sweat as the smell of gunpowder circled my nostrils. “Ronnie!” I screamed up the stairs, eyes darting from the door he’d slammed closed behind him to the long, dark hallway down which he’d come. The one that led deep into the bowels of St. Mike’s.
I gulped, fear pulsing through me as realization dawned that danger lay ahead, in exactly the direction Bastien had gone.
“Oh God.”
I’d been so wrapped up in our sin, I hadn’t even realized the boom from earlier was something far more serious than I could have imagined. Indecision iced my veins before I launched forward, pushing myself down the long hall and bursting into the sacristy.
Horrifying, deafening silence.
I crossed the room, conscious of every footstep on the aged wooden floor.
My hand quaked as I turned the doorknob that led from the sacristy and into the nave of the church. Rustling against the other side of the door shook me before I sucked in a shallow breath and opened it a crack.
Centuries-old incense laced with the scent of blood pulsed in the air as Lucy clutched Ms. Watson against her body, blood leaking between her fingers, spread across her face, seeping beneath her folded legs and soaking the smooth wooden floor.
“Oh God.” I covered my mouth, holding back vomit and my wildest scream. Tears pierced my eyes and stung my cheeks. “No.”
I yanked the door wider, pulling Lucy and Ms. Watson into the tiny room with me, scanning quickly behind them for the cause of all this blood.
“Bastien’s out there,” Lucy choked out, eyes wide with fear as our gazes met for the first time.
“I don’t see him.” A sinking feeling ate up my stomach.
“He’s in the vestibule.” Her hands began to shake as fresh blood soaked between her fingers. It looked like it was coming from Ms. Watson’s chest, but it was so hard to tell.
I’d never seen so much blood.
Bile rose in my throat as a crimson river traveled down the cracks of the wooden floor I’d just crossed, unaware of the massacre happening just on the other side of the door.
“Are you hurt? The baby?”Fuck. Where was my phone?Both of them needed an ambulance.
