“How am I supposed to get inside while Oates is standing in the damn vestibule? She’ll spot me the second I open the door.”
“Then we’ll just have to find another way in.” I pulled into an empty parking space around the side of the church. I scanned the length of the building. It was an impenetrable wall of stained glass and brick. There were only two secondary doors that I could make out. One was marked as a staff entrance, which meant it probably led to an office or, worse, the deacon’s chambers. The other was a fire door that appeared to open directly into the chapel.
Vero thunked her head against her window. “This is hopeless! We’re never going to find a way to get into that… Oh!” She ducked forward in her seat and tipped her head to look up, searching the wall directly in front of our bumper. “That’s it!”
“The roof?”
“The windows! We’re right outside the women’s bathroom. It opens into a hallway on the other side of the chapel. We can sneak into the building through those.” She pointed at a set of high casement windows above us. A light was on inside them, the panes tilted outward to let in the air. The voices of the church choir carried toward us on the cool evening breeze.
Whatever we were doing, we’d have to do it quickly. Norma had texted us during communion, and that had been at least ten minutes ago. I didn’t imagine a Mass in Spanish was much different from any of the ones I’d attended in English, which meant there should be only a handful of prayers left, and maybe a few announcements, before everyone got up to leave.
I followed Vero out of the van.
She turned to stare at me. “Where do you think you’re going? The Mass is in Spanish. If you go in there, you’ll stand out like pizza sauce on a taco.”
“If one of us gets caught sneaking in, it shouldn’t be the one with a tracking bracelet on her ankle. I’ll go in first and make surethe bathroom is empty. If the coast is clear, you can follow me in.” I climbed onto the van’s bumper and stepped onto the hood, reaching above me for the window. The hinge protested with a pneumatic hiss as I pushed it all the way open and poked my head inside. I peeked down into an empty stall. The mirrors above the sinks gave me a clear view into the toilets on both sides of it. “It’s empty,” I whispered. “Help me up.”
Vero gave me a boost. I put both shoulders through the open window and grabbed hold of the partition. My jeans scraped the frame as I wriggled the rest of my body through the opening and lowered myself into the stall. I felt around with my feet for the floor. When I was safely on the ground, I hurried to the bathroom door and used my body to brace it shut.
“Hurry!” I called up to Vero.
The hood of my van buckled loudly in protest as Vero used it as a springboard to jump. Her strained face appeared in the window, and she grunted as she pulled herself through it. She grabbed the top of the metal partition and lowered her feet, her sneakers squeaking against the wall as if she were searching for a foothold. The toilet roared to life. Vero yelped. I heard a shriek and a loud splash.
“What happened?” I whispered over the gurgling commode.
Vero threw open the stall door and glared at me across the bathroom. Her ankle monitor flashed red as she slowly pulled her foot out of the toilet and shook it off like a dog. She hobbled to the towel dispenser, dripping a trail of water behind her. She yanked a paper towel from the dispenser and paused. We stared at each other, our eyes going wide as the choir started singing again.
“The final blessing,” she said.
“Shit!” we cried in unison. We grabbed fistfuls of paper towels. She swatted them at her wet jeans while I frantically spread piles ofthem over the growing puddle around her shoe. I gave up trying to dry her off and dragged her toward the door. “The service is almost done! You need to get out there before it’s over.”
“I can’t go out there like this!”
“We don’t have any choice!” I grabbed the sopping towels from her hand and tossed them into the trash can.
I opened the bathroom door and shoved Vero through it as the deacon began reciting the final blessing. We sprinted down the hallway, our sneakers screeching against the tile. We threw open the chapel door and skidded into the sanctuary.
The entire congregation turned to gape at us. Everyone—including the deacon—was staring at the sputtering light on Vero’s ankle.
She cleared her throat. “And peace be with you,” she said, her voice echoing through the pews.
A few school-aged boys giggled. Vero’s mother made the sign of the cross. Gloria clapped a hand over her mouth. Officer Oates stood, arms crossed, at the back of the room. She didn’t look amused.
The deacon raised his voice to reclaim the congregation’s focus. He spoke a few words in Spanish, then came the usual salutations and handshakes that marked the end of the mass. As the congregants began filing out of the chapel, Vero and I quietly slipped out with them.
“Veronica!” Norma shouldered her way down the aisle with Gloria at her heels. She took Vero and me firmly by the arms and whisked us out of the building. “Where have you been?” she asked Vero in a furious whisper when we were all safely outside. “Officer Oates is here. She asked me during communion where you were. I told her you were at home, but she saidyoutold her you were going to church! And now I have to come back for confession again forlying to a police officer!” They argued in hushed, rapid-fire Spanish as Officer Oates wriggled her way toward them through the crowd.
Vero whispered frantically to her mother. “If anyone asks, I was here the whole time.”
We all turned, wide smiles plastered on our faces, as the officer approached. “Wow! Look, everyone, it’s Officer Oates,” Vero said cheerfully. “What a coincidence! I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.” The officer’s shrewd eyes raked over both of us. “I’ll be damned if I didn’t check every inch of that church looking for you not fifteen minutes ago.”
“We must have just missed each other. I was there the whole time. Right, everyone?”
Norma’s tight-lipped smile was pained. Gloria jumped in to save her. “Yes, Officer. Our Veronica would never miss mass.”
Officer Oates sucked a tooth. She glanced back at the church, raising an eyebrow at the open window Vero and I had just wriggled through. She turned back to us and jutted her chin toward Vero’s dripping pant leg. “Problem in the ladies’ room?” she asked mockingly.
