I hadn’t eaten since Rosa’s Cantina, but I wasn’t hungry. Thirst was something else. I set the Winchester on the kitchen table and pulled ice from the refrigerator and a glass from the cupboard. I stood at the sink, taking a long, cold drink, and thinking.
If Rainy had been the target of the bomb that morning, I wasn’t just collateral damage. The people who’d planted it were the kind of people who killed not only their targets but everyone connected with their targets. Killed. There I was, thinking that word again and trying my damnedest not to connect it to Rainy. Trying to hold to hope. Trying to walk through the valley without fear.
I remembered a poem Rainy had taught me. She called it a lovers’ prayer and said it was from the Pueblo people.
Across the dark night, we are not afraid.
Our love is the star that guides us.
Through the empty desert, we do not thirst.
Our love is the water that refreshes.
On the long journey, we do not weary.
Our love is the truth that offers strength.
As the mountains rise before us, we are not discouraged.
Our love is the hope that waits on the other side.
When we are together, let us hold hands.
Our love is the promise that is never broken.
I lay down for the night with that prayer in my heart and the Winchester at my side.
*
I woke suddenly. The bedroom was in absolute darkness. I felt around on the mattress and touched the metal of the Winchester barrel, cooled by the breeze from the window air conditioner. I wrapped my hand around the rifle and slowly sat up.
I listened. Nothing. Still, I jacked a round into the chamber and slid from the bed. I had a good sense of the room, and I crept to the wall next to the door and pressed myself there.
The parsonage was silent.
There is something that happens to you when you have steeled yourself for violence. It’s like an embrace. You want it. You want to do the violent thing so that it’s done and you can let it go. That’s what I wanted, standing by the door, waiting for whatever was coming.
Five minutes I stood there, barely breathing, and nothing came. But something had brought me out of my sleep. I finally eased myself through the doorway into the small living room. There were streetlights outside, not many but enough to cast a faint glow against the drawn shades. My eyes had long ago adjusted to the dark, and that glow was enough for me to see dimly but clearly. I carefully went through the parsonage, checking every corner, every closet. I finally accepted that I was alone.
If what had awakened me wasn’t inside the parsonage, it had to have come from outside. The bark of a dog? A distant backfire? I tried to call up the dreamy memory of sound, but it was gone. I went to the back door, opened it slowly, just a crack. The hot night air came through the narrow gap. I opened the door a little more and risked poking my head into the heat. The backyard was dimly lit from the distant streetlamps and loosely outlined with paloverde trees and low desert shrubs. Nothing moved. If someone was there, they were more patient than I was. I slipped from the house and crouched low, the Winchester cradled and ready. I hadn’t undressed before I lay down, except for my boots, so I stood sock-footed in the dirt of the yard. I began to make my way around the house, sliding along the wall, until I came to the front yard.
Inside the church across the street, I saw a light, of a sort. Not incandescent; it moved. A flashlight? No, not powerful enough. A candle, I decided. I studied the street, empty except for an old Buick parked in front of the little house next door. I darted to the parked car and studied the church for another minute. The candle had stopped moving but still burned. I crossed the street like a deer dodging headlights and pressed myself to the stone of the church wall, which was still warm from the day. I crept to the front door and listened. Voices, too soft to hear clearly. Pastor Michelle Abbott? I tried the knob, turned it ever so slowly, eased the door open.
The voices were clearer now. A male, angry. And a woman’s voice. Wonderfully familiar.
I made my move and was inside the church, the Winchester stock cradled against my shoulder, the barrel pointed toward the altar rail, where Rainy stood holding the candle.
She turned, her eyes huge with surprise and fear.
The man behind her stepped forward. In the flickering candlelight, I saw that he held a big pistol in his raised hand.
“Wait!” Rainy shouted. “Don’t shoot.”
“Quién es?” the man demanded.
“Mi esposo,” she said.
The hand holding the pistol didn’t drop. I kept the sight of my Winchester on the stranger’s chest.
“Who’s that with you, Rainy?” I called.
“Cork,” she began but faltered. She held her empty hand out to me as if begging.
“Who is he?”
I saw her body, which had been held so tense at my appearance, go limp. Her hand fell to her side. She glanced at the man beside her, then turned her dark eyes to me.
It was the man who answered for her.
“I’m her husband,” he said.
CHAPTER 15
* * *
I eyed the man who’d spoken for Rainy, feeling a great urge to pull the trigger of the Winchester, and not just because of the threatening gun in his hand.
He was tall, powerfully built, with a face so damn good-looking it could have been taken from a Hollywood movie poster. His hair in the candlelight was black and shiny, polished onyx. He wore a black T-shirt stretched across the kind of chest that would have made a weight lifter proud. His pants and running shoes were black as well, as was that pistol he still held trained on me.
“Husband?” I said.
“Ex-husband,” Rainy clarified.
“In the eyes of the church, mi amor, we are married for eternity.”
“What about Consuela?” Rainy said. “In the eyes of the church, wouldn’t that make you a bigamist?”
He shrugged. “Solomon had hundreds of wives.”
“Are you all right, Rainy?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “You can put that rifle down.”
In the candlelight, I studied the face of this man who was a stranger to me, but far from a stranger to Rainy. At the same time, he was studying me. At last he nodded, and I returned the gesture, and we both lowered our weapons.
“This is Gilbert Mondragón, Cork,” Rainy said. “Berto, meet Cork O’Connor.”
“I’ve heard about you,” Mondragón said.
“You’re one up on me there.”
“Let me talk to him, Berto. Explain things.”
He thought it over, leaned to Rainy, and kissed her hair. “I’ll wait outside, querida.”
When he’d left, Rainy said, “Let’s sit.”
She set the candle, which was secured in an antique brass holder, on the altar rail, and we took the first pew. For a moment, Rainy just sat there, her head lowered, her face a flickering of shadows in the inconstant light.
“This is the drug-addicted, low-life ex-husband you never talk about? A man so loathsome to you that you’ve never even mentioned his name in my presence? Ancient history, you’ve always insisted.”
“There are things you didn’t need to know before, Cork. That’s changed.”
“Clearly. So what’s the real story?”
“I met Berto when I first enrolled at U of A,” she began.