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DAMIEN RAISED THE KNIFE to Kat’s neck, a switchblade that glinted in the foggy glare. “We’re coming down.”
The girl’s eyes went wide. She tried to turn to face him, but he held her fast. “Damien, what’s going on?”
“Please, listen to him,” I called to Sokolov, hoping she'd guessed he was holding Kat hostage.
I still preferred to keep Kat in the dark so she would cooperate. The girl might go full Valkyrie on her uncle if she understood he was falsely accusing her dad. So I aimed for a calm tone. “Everything’s okay, Kat. We just have a misunderstanding to work out.”
“Everything is not okay,” Damien hissed, fury and hostility smoldering in his voice. This, I suspected, was the real Damien, so much anger hidden deep beneath irresistible charm. “And it’s that bitch’s fault.”
Kat blinked. “Alma?”
I knew this time he meant Dara. My curiosity stirred like a waking beast, wanting to know everything. But I wanted to protect Kat from knowledge more. She might panic, making Damien more desperate and the situation more dangerous for us all. If we got out of this spire safely, she would learn the truth.
“Let’s talk about this later, Damien,” I suggested nonchalantly—my mantra for the day—as if we just had boring grownup stuff to discuss beyond the teenager’s earshot.
“Later?” He scoffed. “There is no later, Alma. Don’t you see.”
A freezing gust of wind blew through the spire like thread through a needle. I shivered. Whose later was running out? I wondered. His, or all of ours?
“I don’t understand,” Kat whimpered. “Whose fault is it? Mine?”
“Everything is not about you, Kit Kat.” His voice was cruel, still full of anger, but as icy as the wind.
She flinched.
His eyes were glued to me, and—Oh, look at that—in those glacial blue depths, I recognized something familiar to every priest: the desire to confess.
I whispered, “Tell me about you and Dara.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing above his clerical collar. “It started back in Berkeley, all those years ago, a quick and torrid affair. She broke it off, then ran away to England and married Shortwall. I didn’t see her for a decade until she sought me out a few weeks before the gala where she met Brent. Jorgé and I were on the rocks, and she reminded me of better times, so we hooked up again. We saw each other for months, meeting at her place or in hotels. When Jorgé saw one on my credit card statement, it was the final nail in the coffin of our marriage. Then a love-sick Brent told me he’d been dating her since the gala. She’d been fucking us both at the same time.”
“I don’t understand. You were fucking Dara?” Kat asked.
The charming, phony Damien would have said language, darling. This real and angry version spat, “Shut up.” He met my gaze. “I was furious, but I couldn’t make myself end it. I wanted her to choose me, but she knew I wouldn't publicly claim her as my girlfriend. She said I had nothing to offer but sex, and so she’d keep taking that. The night Brent proposed to her, she broke it off with me by text. That lasted two weeks before she started calling again, showing up at my house over and over again for one last fuck. Since Brent got her, it was irresistible to me, the sneaking around, the getting away with it.”
I tried to keep my revulsion off my face. This confession would not contain any remorse. Rarely had I heard one that didn’t move me to compassion, but I braced myself for The Very. Reverend Damien Gough to set a precedent. In fact, this wasn’t a real confession. I wasn’t wearing a stole, and he of all people knew what that meant: legally, it wasn’t a formal rite. I was not bound to keep his secrets under the seal of the confessional.
To protect Kat from any physical threat, as well as the ugly truth of his personality, I needed to keep his attention off her. So I prompted him. “When did Dara tell you about the baby?”
“That night, at the Tonga Room. I was stunned. She’d said she was on the pill. But I wasn’t upset. I’d always wanted to be a father, to see little versions of myself running around, and Jorgé wasn’t interested. Especially in the little versions of me part. So when Dara told me—”
Kat gasped. “You got her pregnant?” I could only imagine how confusing these revelations were.
He ignored her. “I felt this burst of joy, like a bomb had exploded in my chest. And I wanted everything—her, the baby, the whole thing Brent was getting. I told her to call off the wedding, to raise the baby with me, instead. She laughed, said I’d make a terrible father, I was too self-involved.” An ironic rasp of a laugh punctuated the sentence, echoing my pot/kettle thoughts. “She planned to tell Brent the baby was his. My joy flipped into jealous rage, and I argued, insisted, told her I'd tell him everything. She refused. Warned that if I did, she'd leave us both, and I’d never see the baby.”
I leaned forward, fascinated by the dark drama of his story. I’d expected him to confide desperation that his secret might come out—the charming first gay Dean of Grace Cathedral was screwing his brother’s female fiancée. Instead, he was describing a very different crime of passion.
“You were jealous of Brent raising your child?”
“And more. I loved her. I hadn’t realized it, not until I learned about the baby, until I felt the loss of something I hadn’t known I wanted. With her, I never had to pretend. But when that baby was born, the pretending would never stop.”
Kat whimpered, possibly understanding that meant he’d been pretending with her and Brent. Although surely that couldn’t be true—some of that charming, caring man had to be real, right?
Then my mind surfaced, a more practical question. “Didn’t your argument draw attention?”
His answering laugh was hoarse, and he took his focus off me to stare over my shoulder. “Dara could be such an ice queen. We never raised our voices. I told her I loved her, and she laughed at me, told me I was just like her—too selfish to love someone. Another way of saying she didn’t love me.”
I was spooling up Krav Maga moves to catch him off guard when he returned his focus to me with haunted eyes. “She called me a convenience, an indulgence, a vacation from her pretense.”
Dara had been right. Damien was too selfish to love, but she’d miscalculated just how deep his narcissism ran, hadn’t guessed him capable of violence when she dealt his ego such a harsh blow. Now, finally, I understood the motive, maybe even the symbolism of her laid out in the wedding dress at Grace Cathedral—a bride for the Dean, or no one’s bride at all. But how had she gotten there?
Then I remembered the drugs. “Maybe she was an ice queen because Kat had slipped her Klonopin, and then she drank a zombie bowl on top.”
Kat made a strange, twisted, gurgling sound.
“Yeah. But I didn’t know.” His throat rippled with a swallow that I might interpret as remorse, if I was feeling generous. “She started acting weird, sleepy, her eyelids drooping. Like the future of my life and my baby was boring to her. I couldn’t believe it—was so fucking mad, I stormed off to the men’s room and stayed there, splashing water on my face, trying to cool off. It took forever to get my pulse to slow down.
“I expected her to leave. When I came out, most of the lights in the restaurant were off. I went back for my coat. They'd cleared our table, and it looked empty. But when I stepped closer to the booth, she was curled up on the bench, asleep. Pans clanked in the kitchen, but there was no sign of wait staff. The front of the house was vacant. She looked peaceful, and beautiful, and she was pregnant with my baby and planned to give it to Brent. I couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t live that lie for the rest of my life. I picked her up, carried her to the gate with water access, and held her face under. She never even stirred. If she had... if she’d fought back, I might have...” Again, his chin lifted, as if he was gulping down an enormous emotion. “I’m not a murderer.”
“And I suppose Alice Ma walked into that knife you’re holding enough times to kill her?”
His jaw hardened, and any glimmer of regret vanished.
The designer’s gaydar hadn’t been broken at all, but I was certain giving Damien her number wasn't to plan a hook-up. “She knew about the baby, and she wanted you to pay her for Dara’s dress.”
“She wanted me to pay for six dresses, that skank.”
“Kat! Damien! What’s going on?” Brent’s panicked voice drifted up the stairs. “Are you okay?”
Seriously, Sokolov? She couldn’t at least keep him clear of this dumpster fire?
“Dad!” Kat cried, trying to pull away. Damien’s grip on her shoulder tightened. “Ouch. Stop. Please.”
Damien’s nostrils flared, and I could see white all around his eyes as they darted every which way like he was searching the tiny space for an escape route. Short of a stairway to heaven, there was only the exit I blocked, with Sokolov and Brent below me, to lead him safely to the ground.
I tried to channel the supreme clergy sleuth—the always calm, practical, and pastoral Father Brown. “So what now, Damien? You might make it out of the cathedral with Kat as a hostage, but from here, I don’t think you’ll get far. Why not put down the knife and let Kat go to Brent? We can discuss what to do next.”
He yanked her in front of him like a shield. She let out a sob. Her face was red and shiny with tears.
Inhaling slowly, I tried not to panic. We didn’t need three irrational people in the fifteen square feet at the top of the spire. If I could keep a level head, I might convince him to see reason. “Damien, you have the chance to do the right thing. Let her go, and she will know all your affection for her wasn’t pretend. Or was it?”
He closed his eyes, shook his head, and shoved her gently toward me.
I tightened my grip on the handrail just in time to brace myself against her weight. She grabbed me, squeezed me tight, shuddering against me. I gave her a squeeze back and shuffled to the side. “Hurry. Go downstairs. Show your dad you’re okay.”
She moved past me, blocking my view of Damien for a mere second. I wanted to watch her round the curve but Krav Maga had taught me not to take my eyes off my opponent. He’d moved—not closer to me, but onto the low wall of the spire. If he jumped, he’d splat right on the courtyard pavement, twenty yards from the labyrinth where he’d laid out Dara.
“Don’t!” I shouted.
He turned and looked at me. “Why not? I have nothing left.”
“You have God’s love. Mercy. Forgiveness.”
“I’m counting on that.” Then he jumped.