Consumed by Fire (41 page)

It was the old man, the priest who’d given her the last rites before he planned on killing her. He was so intent on James he didn’t notice her, and there was a gun in his hand. She wanted to call out, warn James, but there was no time. If she screamed the old man would probably shoot her and still manage to kill James.

She had no choice. All conscious thought left her mind then, as something outside of her seemed to take over her body. She lifted the heavy candlestick high over her head and brought it crashing down on the old priest’s skull.

He collapsed on top of James and the man he was beating; blood and brain matter splattered everywhere, and all feeling and strength drained from Evangeline. She sank down on her knees, just as Merlin leapt forward, whining with relief and love, licking her face, her hands, licking the gore off her while she stayed there, dazed. She hugged him, dry-eyed, in shock, ignoring the blood splatter on her bare arms. It was over.

Everything was over.

Ryder was the one who came to her. At first Merlin didn’t seem like he’d let anyone close to her, but a one-word command came from a few yards away, the only proof that James was alive and unharmed, and Merlin sat back, a warning growl still rumbling in the back of his throat.

“I’m getting you out of here,” Ryder said in his cool, emotionless voice. “You don’t need to be tied in with this, and it would be better all-around if you weren’t.” He had taken her arm, half supporting her, and she didn’t want to think what she was walking through as he led her away from the altar, toward the back of the church. She tried to turn, to find James, but Ryder was too strong.

“He’s fine,” Ryder snapped. “And he can’t afford to be distracted by you. You’ll see him as soon as he’s taken care of business.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck,” she said bitterly, but the words came out in no more than a whisper, and he ignored her. Merlin was pacing by their side, and Ryder stopped.

“Call the fucking dog off, Bishop! I can’t bring him with me to the hospital.”

“I don’t need . . .” Evangeline began.

“Shut up,” Ryder snapped. “Call the dog.”

“Merlin, come.” The only words she heard from him. The last words she would ever hear from him, the heartless bastard. She could walk away from a hospital, walk away from Ryder, who would no longer give a damn what she did.

Merlin protested noisily, sitting on his haunches and whining. But he obeyed James, and she knew she would never see Merlin again either.

Ryder’s manner was brusque but his hands were gentle as he pushed her into a dark sedan. “Put your seat belt on,” he said, climbing in the driver’s side. “I need to get away from here fast, before New Orleans’s finest show up.”

“What about James?” She wanted to kick herself the moment the question came out. She didn’t care about him. He didn’t care about her.

“He and the dog will be gone by the time they show up. He just has to take care of a few things, and it’s better if I look after you.”

“Why?” She told herself she didn’t care, but her questions kept coming.

“Because you distract him, and he’s already furious with himself for letting this happen. I want him to take care of business, not get distracted. Things need to be cleaned up as quickly and efficiently as possible, and he’s better off where he is.”

She wanted to ask why again. Why would she distract him, what the hell did it matter, but she finally had the sense to shut up, to shut down. She didn’t care. She wanted to go home. She wanted her dog. She wanted the man she loved. She wanted to run away.

She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes. She wasn’t going to think, to feel, to remember. She just wanted to shut everything out, the sickening feel of the old man’s skull cracking beneath the candlestick, the mess, the smell, the unbearable hideousness of it. She was past crying, past fear, past everything.

But curiosity got the better of her. She at least needed some answers. “Will you tell me what was going on? Why were those men pretending to be priests? Why did they want to kill me?”

“They weren’t pretending,” Ryder said grimly. “The man you did such a fine job with was a man we call His Eminence, one of the bishops in New Orleans named Raphael Corsini. He was a monster—that’s all you need to know. You did the world a favor.”

“That’s not all I need to know. I killed a man tonight. I have to know why.” Her voice sounded desperate, and she decided she was glad that James wasn’t there to hear her break down.

“He was going to kill Bishop. Wasn’t that enough reason?”

She remembered the sickening sound of the ornate candlestick crushing the man’s skull. “Reason enough,” she said, thinking of James.

Ryder sighed. “Okay, I can’t tell you much. Corsini was in charge of human trafficking for the crime family. It all started when he was a young priest, assigned to a small town in South America. It was easy enough to send the young girls and children to the States, supposedly to devote themselves to the church and live better lives. Of course, they never saw the outside of the container ship until they reached their final destination, where they were to work either as sex slaves or cheap labor, and the villagers never asked questions. It worked so well that Corsini expanded the operation, bringing promising young men into the priesthood to help him branch out his activities, and when the family moved him up to New Orleans, it made a perfect headquarters for the operation. We’ve been after them for more than a decade, and this won’t end their business, but it will put a big crimp in it. The man Claudia killed in Italy was in charge of bookkeeping for the operation, and we’d hoped his elimination would screw things up enough for us to take everyone down, but the Corsinis are more resilient. And that’s all I’m going to tell you, and it’s a hell of a lot more than I should have, so don’t bother asking me any more questions. Just know you delivered payback for a lot of women and children who lived lives of abject misery and died before their time. And you kept Bishop alive while doing it, though I’m not sure whether you think that was a benefit or not.”

She could see his face as he drove through the still-lively city, and it looked cold and brutal in the reflected lights. “Just one more question.”

“No, I don’t know when Bishop will come and see you, if he will at all. He’s an idiot.”

“Yes, he is,” she said. “But that wasn’t what I wanted to ask. Where is Odila? And Jenkins?”

Ryder hesitated. “They didn’t make it.”

And then, finally, she wept.

“Where the fuck is she?” Bishop snarled. He hadn’t slept in three days; instead he’d flown to London to report to Madsen, paid off all the necessary people, had the already deconsecrated church torched, dealt with Merlin’s extreme case of the sulks, and worked out help for Odila’s family and Jenkins’s brother, all the time expecting to find Evangeline waiting for him when he finally got back to the shell of a house that was slowly being renovated and retrofitted for their headquarters.

She wasn’t there, and Ryder wasn’t saying anything. In fact, he did his damnedest to always be around someone else so Bishop couldn’t demand to know where she was. Bishop ended up lying in wait, and when Ryder was finally alone, he slammed the man against the crumbling wall of the old house in the Garden District.

“You know I let you do that, right?” Ryder said. “You’re just lucky I knew it was you or you’d be dead by now.”

“One of us would. Where is she?”

Ryder’s smile was cool and inscrutable. “That all depends what you want with her.”

It was the last thing James was expecting. “What the fuck business is it of yours?”

“Because I know where she is, and I have no intention of telling you if you’re just going to keep putting her through the wringer. She’s good people, Bishop. You know it and I know it. She deserves better than you, but for some reason it’s you she wants. She’s in love with you, and if you aren’t going to do right by her, then leave her the fuck alone.”

Bishop blinked. “She’s not in love with me,” he said instinctively. “How could she be?”

“Beats me. I never said she was levelheaded. In fact, she’s a fool for you, and if she can’t protect herself, then I’ll protect her from you. So I’ll ask you again. What do you want with her?”

“We’re still married,” he said stubbornly.

“You said you were going to have Madsen take care of that. Did he?”

“What business is it of yours?”

“Did he?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“I could break your jaw, you know.”

“We’ve already tried that,” Ryder drawled. “We’re evenly matched. Evangeline has been through hell and back, and there’s only one thing she wants and deserves after all the shit she’s put up with.”

“The dog,” Bishop said flatly.

“Okay, make it two things, and the dog’s the more important one. What are you going to do about it?”

“I’m no good for her.”

“Agreed. She still wants you. Give it up, Bishop, and stop acting like an asshole. What are you going to do?”

Bishop just looked at him, wishing to hell he could summon enough self-righteous fury to slam him across the jaw. “What do you think I’m going to do?” he growled. “I’m going to buy her a fucking Winnebago.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

The new school year had started, but Evangeline didn’t care. She was still supposed to be out on sabbatical, and it was easy enough to hand in her notice, much to the shock of the dean. After all, she was tenured, well respected—one didn’t just throw that away.

But that was exactly what Evangeline was doing. It had been two weeks, and there was no word from Bishop. She’d put the house on the market, prepared for it to take months or even years to sell, but to her shock it sold in three days, leaving her essentially homeless in less than a month. Her research had shown up at her house one day, already preloaded on a brand new Mac, and she knew she could thank Ryder for that. Bishop had already forgotten about her.

She still couldn’t decide whether she was married or not, but since she never planned to go near any man again, it hardly mattered. Everyone who wanted her dead was gone—the members of the Corsini family, including that wretched old man, were out of the picture, and Claude had drowned in Texas, though as far as she could tell his body had yet to turn up. She was safe to continue on with her life, just as if James hadn’t walked back into it.

She wasn’t sleeping well. She missed Merlin, she told herself, knowing full well there was more than that troubling her. Maybe Ryder could get him back for her. Bishop was probably incapable of caring about anything, including an animal, but Ryder seemed reliable, at least. Or maybe she was wrong. Maybe Bishop could love something. Merlin, not her.

It was only seven o’clock when Evangeline dragged herself out of bed one late-September morning. She’d fallen asleep sometime after three, and she wanted nothing more than to bury her head under her pillows and shut everything out again.

But something had woken her, some unexpected noise, so she dragged herself out of bed, threw on a pair of sweats and an old T-shirt, and headed downstairs for her first cup of coffee, dodging all the packing boxes that blocked her way. She still had no idea where she was going—her current plan was to put everything in storage and simply take off. There was no reason to make any plans, no one else who mattered in her life. Everything was up to her. She ought to revel in the freedom.