Mary Nealy - Ten Plagues

“You can trace her?” O’Shea asked. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“Because I was searching for her in this apartment first.” Paul turned to Higgins. “Where’s the computer?”

At that moment, one of Higgins’s agents pulled a sheet of plywood off a window and climbed out on the apartment’s only fire escape. The distressed metal shrieked.

“Did you hear that?” Higgins asked Paul.

“No,” Paul said. “No way did he go out that fire escape. Even if he found a way out without letting light in, I’d have heard that racket. He’s gone, and he’s got Keren. She left her gun and her phone behind, but she’s still wearing the tracking device I put in her hair tie.”

A man carrying a laptop computer burst into the apartment.

“Check Detective Collins’s location.” Paul ran to where the man had set up the little computer on the bloody table where Rosita had been tied only minutes before. The computer began a relentless beeping. The screen filled with a map of Chicago, with a little white dot flashing.

“He’s stopped,” the computer operator said. “The signal just came online and it’s stationary.”

Higgins bent down to study the screen. “He’s by the airport. Several condemned buildings in that area. It’s a good bet he’s holed up in one of them. I’ll have an address by the time the GPS is done working.”

Paul grabbed Higgins’s arm. “Let’s go. They can call you with an address while we drive.”

“I’m going to put an end to this right now.” Higgins charged out of the room.

Paul glanced at O’Shea, and the two ran after Higgins.

Keren heard the fabric of her white blouse rip. She willed herself to be calm.

“Francis, take charge of your life. I’m here to give you a chance for redemption.”

Caldwell looked up from his cutting. “You’re here because I brought you here. I’m in control. I’m enjoying my power over you far more since you struck me.”

Keren wondered if she had miscalculated when she attacked him. She saw the fire in his eyes and the blood dripping from his broken nose and couldn’t regret defending herself. But, if it was possible, the feeling of evil that oozed out of him was worse.

“Francis, you’re not in control. A demon is telling you every move to make. If you really want to be in control, you have to get him out. This demon only controls you if you let him. If you pray with me, if you turn to God, you can be free.”

Caldwell looked up and for a second, something flickered in his eyes, but it was quickly gone.

This kind of demon only comes out with prayer and fasting .

“God, help me,” Keren prayed aloud. “Touch Francis’s heart. Give me the words to speak. I know You want him to come home. I know—”

“Shut up.” Caldwell lunged so his face was inches from hers. “No one will save you. You’re mine.”

“the demon that lived among the tombs, when he saw Jesus, cried out, ‘What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name, don’t torture me!’ Jesus has command over demons.” Keren had tried reaching Francis by appealing to his humanity, but now she spoke to the demon. “God is more powerful than you, Pravus. You know that if He willed it, you would be back on the floor, just like you were when I hit you. You’d be curled up, begging for mercy.”

Caldwell raised his hand to strike her.

“Do you know you can’t even lay a hand on me unless God allows it?” Keren asked. “Good is stronger than evil, Pravus. God is stronger than Satan. You think you are victorious when you kill a woman, but God is in charge. He can slap you down with a single wave of His hand, if He chooses.”

“Then why doesn’t He? Why will He stand by and let me kill you, like I’ve killed all the others, if He’s so good?”

Keren tried to calm her voice. “That is something I have to deal with every day on my job. I’ve finally made peace with the simple fact that bad things happen because the earth is the earth. We are human beings with human failings. If we want perfection, we have to go to heaven to find it. God’s main work is in our souls. And He’s in my soul, Pravus. Even if you batter my body, even if you kill me, I’ll still be fine, because I’m a believer in Jesus Christ.”

Keren remembered Paul’s constant comfort. “To live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Caldwell used his chisel to run a slit the length of Keren’s other sleeve. The rip of the fabric would soon be replaced with cuts to her flesh. “Then you should thank me, Kerenhappuch.”

“Thank you? Why?” Keren felt her sleeve fall open.

“Because you are about to gain.”

“We’re doing this one right,” Higgins snapped as they raced toward the location the tracking device registered. “If you had waited, Morris, Detective Collins wouldn’t be in his hands, and Caldwell would be in custody!”

Paul sat beside Higgins in the dark, government-issue sedan. “We couldn’t know that. If you had heard Rosita—”

“Look, you’re too emotionally involved to use your brain on this one, that’s why you’ve got to let me take charge. I’ve got cars en route. Some of them might be there already.”

“Then send them in,” Paul said with a surge of hope. “Maybe he hasn’t hurt her yet.”

“They will not go in. Not until I order it. We set up a perimeter. We close off any escape routes. We do this right, and Caldwell doesn’t slip away to kill again!”

“And how long is Keren at his mercy while you make sure all your Is are dotted?”

“I don’t know,” Higgins said with vicious sarcasm. “Why don’t you tell me? You’re the one who let him get his hands on her!”

O’Shea said from the backseat, “It was all a setup from the beginning—the pitch dark, the escape route he used. When we finish tearing that place apart, we’ll find he built a secret door somewhere as an escape hatch. If they hadn’t gone in when they did, Caldwell would have disappeared with Rosita, and we’d be no better off than we are now.”

Paul looked over his shoulder at O’Shea. The man was like a rock in the middle of Higgins’s condemnation and Paul’s panic. O’Shea, who knew Keren better and had loved her longer than any of them.

“You’ve got to be crazy to be able to stay so calm,” Paul said to the grizzled veteran of countless manhunts.

“Yeah, I guess that could describe me. But the thing that’s keeping me from acting like a complete jerk”—he threw a fiery look at Higgins—”is Keren. Keren isn’t a woman to be at anyone’s mercy.”

Paul ran his hands through his hair and tried to get a handle on the careening images in his head. Keren cut. PESTIS EX TENEBRAE painted onto a death shroud. Keren trapped somewhere in the spirit-sapping dark, as he had been for those few minutes with Rosita.

Keren.

Paul remembered who he was dealing with. He looked over his shoulder and, unbelievably, found he could smile at O’Shea. “You know what she’s doing right now?”

Higgins raced his car through the busy Chicago traffic, leading a parade of five other dark sedans—sirens shrieking, lights flashing.

O’Shea grinned back. “Sure I know what she’s doing,” he said with a laugh. “Man, nothing gets the best of my little girl for long.”

“What are you laughing for?” Higgins growled. “What about any of this is amusing?”

“It’s not amusing, and if you think I’m not scared to death for her, then you’re a fool, Higgins,” O’Shea said without venom.

“Then what do you mean?” Higgins directed his question at Paul. “What is she doing right now?”