Lacey pushed through the doors and the cool night air hit her, sending a cold tremor through her body. She kept moving, padding across the moonlit concrete to the surrounding shadows. She needed some clothes, and not just for warmth; couldn't turn up in front of the people in the church, especially her Uncle Joe, looking like this. She had to find a house, go through one of the closets—
"It's you!" cried a voice behind her. "How did you get away?"
Lacey turned and stared at the figure advancing toward her from the other side of the street. The bottle blonde from the boardwalk, dressed in lowrider jeans and a cutaway denim jacket. Her boots thudded on the pavement. Lacey saw a flash in her right hand, heard a clink, and realized she'd just flipped open a knife. The stainless steel blade gleamed in the moonlight.
Lacey said nothing. Her brain seemed sluggish. All she could think was, Not now ... I can't handle this now.
"Guess it doesn't matter how," the Vichy woman said with a throaty laugh as she reached the grass and kept coming. "I'm just glad you did. Because we got a score to settle, you and me."
Lacey tried to remember some of the defense moves she'd learned in her martial arts classes and couldn't come up with one. So she started backing away.
"You can run but you can't hide," the blonde sing-songed. "I don't care how much they want you alive, you ain't walkin away this time."
She was closing in. Lacey held up her hands. "No, wait..."
"No waiting. Looks like a few of my friends had a party with you, now it's my turn. I'm gonna cut you, girl... cut you good!"
With that the blonde lunged forward with a vicious, face-high slash, and Lacey found her limbs responding on their own. She didn't need to remember the moves. Hour upon hour of practice had programmed them into her nervous system. Her right leg shot back and stiffened, her left knee bent, her hands darted forward, grabbing the blonde's knife arm at the wrist and elbow, pushing it aside, twisting it, using the woman's own weight and momentum against her to bring her down.
Her Vichy earring flashed near Lacey's face and sudden visions of similar earrings dangling over her while her three captors—
Rage detonated in Lacey. Gritting her teeth she gave an extra twist to the falling woman's arm and was rewarded by a scream of pain as bones ground together, ligaments and tendons stretched, snapped. The woman screamed again, louder. She'd be drawing a crowd soon. Lacey's hand flashed forward, landing a two-knuckle punch on her larynx. With a crunch of cartilage the screaming cut off, replaced by strangled noises as the blonde began to kick and writhe, clutching at her throat with her still-functioning left hand.
Lacey picked up the knife from the grass and stepped back, looking around. Was anyone else coming after her? She and the blonde were alone in the shadows. She watched her struggles, waiting for them to run their course.
"So," Lacey said. "You were gonna cut me, huh? Cut me good. I don't think so."
She checked the knife blade: tanto shaped with the front half of the cutting edge beveled and the rear half saw-toothed. Wicked. If Ms. Vichy had had her way, this blade would be jutting from Lacey's chest about now.
The choking sounds faded, the kicking and writhing ebbed to twisting and twitching. With a final spasm the hand clutching at her throat fell away and she lay limp and still.
Lacey waited another minute, then dropped to her knees beside the dead woman. Mastering her revulsion, she began unbuttoning her cutaway top . . .
CAROLE . . .
Sister Carole trudged through the inky blackness along the street, hugging the curb, hurrying through the moonlit sections between the shadows of the trees, towing her red wagon behind her. She'd loaded it with her Bible, her rosary, her holy water, the blasting caps, her few remaining bombs, and other essentials.
<You're looking for ANOTHER place? And I suppose you'll be starting up this same awful sinfulness again, won't you?>
"I suppose I will," Sister Carole said aloud to the night.
"Hello?" said a woman's voice from the darkness ahead. "Is someone there?"
Carole froze, her hand darting into the pants pocket of her warm-up, finding the electric switch, flipping the cover, placing her thumb on the button. Wires ran from the button through a hole in the pocket to the battery and the cylindrical charge taped to her upper abdomen.
God forgive her, but she would not be taken alive.
She held her silence, barely breathing, waiting. She sensed movement in the shadows ahead, and then a young woman stepped into a moonlight-dappled section of the sidewalk. She held an automatic pistol in each hand.
"I don't want trouble," the woman said. "I just want to know how to get back to St. Anthony's Church."
Carole looked around, wary. Were others lurking in the shadows?
"I think you already know the way," Carole said.
"No, really, I don't."
Carole eyed her spiky hair. "Don't try to fool me. You work for them."
"I don't, I swear."
A plaintive note in the woman's voice struck Carole.
"You dress like one"—although this one's clothes did not fit her well— "and you're armed."
"The clothes are stolen. So are the guns. I've already been attacked twice today. It's not going to happen again."
Again, the ring of truth. Carole squinted through the shadows. This woman did look battered.
"Look," the woman said. "I don't want to hurt you and you don't seem to want to hurt me, so can you just point me toward the church and we'll go our separate ways."
Carole decided to trust her instincts. "I'm headed that way. You can come with me."
"Really? I don't remember seeing you there last night."
"I wasn't." Carole noticed that the woman was barefoot and limping. "You said you were attacked. Did they . .. hurt you?"
The young woman nodded, then sobbed. "They hurt me bad. Real bad."
And then she was leaning against Carole and crying softly on her shoulder. Carole put her free arm around her and tried to soothe her, but kept her thumb on the button in her pocket. You never knew ... never knew ...
After a few minutes the sobs stopped and the young woman stepped back. She wiped her eyes with her bare arms.
"Sorry. It's just... it's been a long night." She pushed\one of the pistols into her waistband and stuck out a hand. "Lacey. With an 'e.'"
"Carole," she said, shaking the hand and smiling, just a little. Something likable about her. "With an 'e.' "
"Were you a member of St. Anthony's parish?" Lacey said as they started walking again.
"I was a nun in the convent."
"Get out! Then you must know my Uncle Joe. He's been a priest there for years."
Carole stopped walking and stared. Could this tough-looking tattooed young woman be related to Father Joe?
"You're Father Cahill's niece?" She couldn't hide her disbelief.