24.

Debra stood on the crowded sidewalk beneath the el tracks and watched the two of them come back out of the building. She was too far away to hear what they said, but she knew they’d been up to the bitch’s office and found the magazine. The bitch was hiding it well, but she’d gone at once for her husband … and she was afraid. Debra smiled.

Fear was a darkness that had clouded Debra’s days as a child, crept into her dreams at night. But as she grew older, the shadow of fear was slowly replaced by anger. And anger became rage that grew and glowed red, until the day came when, still in her teens, she struck for the first time to take her revenge. By then she felt no fear at all. And now, though determined not to be caught, she still felt none. Or none for herself, at least, but only for Carlo. He could not survive without her.

As she crossed the street a train roared past overhead and she closed her eyes against the grit and dust that fell from the tracks above. When she reached the sidewalk she turned and headed for where she’d parked the van. No need to follow those two now. God had already turned another disappointment into a blessing.

She had intended to take Father Stieboldt back home with her, where she could help him atone fully for the pain and terror he had inflicted. But he was cowardly, weak. While she was removing something from him to leave behind, to show that she had taken him and he hadn’t just wandered off, his heart gave out and he died right there in her van. She’d been upset and angry at first, almost in tears. Then, though, she remembered that the pervert’s premature death was obviously God’s will, so something good would come of it.

And it did. With the pervert Stieboldt carefully wrapped in plastic in the back of the van, she’d had the time and opportunity to play with the woman’s mind again. She’d very nearly been caught, too, but even then she hadn’t been afraid. She would simply have killed the bitch on the spot if she’d had to. Of course, what a disappointment that would have been! One far greater than Father Stieboldt’s too-hasty death.

Now, though, she had to drive home, feed the hungry hogs, and be all the way back by tomorrow morning. She had never felt stronger or more energized, and she would give these people no rest. Three priests still to go, and the woman, and time was growing short.