The Chosen

"Hi," she said to A

Byron gave A

"Can I have your card?" A

"Sure." He gave her one embossed with a thumb-size reproduction of the main Santo Niño image.

Out in the main space a middle-aged man with a knobby face and disheveled russet hair had commenced playing an acoustic guitar. He sang a song that seemed, implausibly, to have to do with hunting tigers. A large, mostly young crowd was clapping and singing along on the choruses.

"Billie here does some great stuff," Byron said, nodding to the rainbow-haired woman. "There's some of her paintings hung in the main room. You should check them out."

Billie patted his cheek. "He's sweet, as well as pretty," she said. She firmly grasped his elbow. "Now quit stalling and come with me." With a last, apologetic smile over her shoulder to A

Regretfully, A

A

Father Robert Godin was wearing his scuffed bombardier's jacket open over his black silk shirt and dog collar. The Jesuit was smiling and talking to someone. He didn't seem to notice her. He had the friendly, easy face of an old hound dog. But his eyes were the eyes of a cat.

"Son of a bitch," A

She turned, pushed back into the front gallery, then out into the main room. A quick glance into the main room showed no sign of Godin. She didn't waste much time searching. She felt a sudden strong desire to be gone from there.

I knew I should never trust a Jesuit, she thought. Why is he following me?

Outside it had come down almost pure night, with only a bloody line along the horizon above the river, some purple streaks in the sky and magenta underbrushings on a few clumps of cloud overhead. She made her way upstream of a fresh crowd streaming into the compound and headed out the narrow half-concealed gate right onto Broadway.

She strode down the half block as fast as her long legs could carry her without appearing to hurry. She wondered now at her reaction. After all, Godin had expressed an interest in the Holy Child. Indeed, he had given her the impression he had a professional interest, as it were. He might have come to Chiaroscuro for the same purpose she had. Quite i

I

She turned right on the side street and walked quickly toward her parked Honda. Fishing in her jeans pocket for the key, she heard a car's tires squeal as it turned off Broadway. Its engine snarl crescendoed as it accelerated behind her.

Without knowing why, she launched herself in a long dive, just clearing the ornamental but still perilous spear tips topping a wrought-iron fence sprouting from a hip-high wall of whitewashed brick.

As she fell to the neat but dry lawn behind it the white front of the cinder-block house strobed yellow as an automatic weapon yammered at her back.

Chapter 12

Glass exploded from behind security bars on the house's big front window. The slats of the venetian blinds behind made musical twangs as bullets plucked them like strings.

The car roared by. Cautiously A

Unless the shooting was co

And this was lethal and immediate reality. The vehicle was an American muscle car of some kind, low-slung and painted dark. She saw its brake lights go on just short of the next corner. Then it accelerated backward toward her.

For a moment she lay frozen, unsure what to do. The car screeched to a stop right in front of the house. The doors swung open. Young men in long plaid shirts piled out. They carried guns. Serious guns. Short, blocky MAC-10s with stub barrels, shotguns with barrels sawed back to the end of the pump action.

"Where'd she go?" the driver asked in Spanish.

"I think she went over the wall," the one getting out the passenger door replied.

A whistle came from the direction of Broadway. A

Gotta go, A

She leaped up and sprinted east, down the block away from the traffic on Broadway. The lights and the witnesses drew her like a siren song. But the second contingent of bangers had her thoroughly blockaded.

A dry rosebush clutched a low chain-link fence on the far side of the house's empty driveway. A

On the far side of the fence she immediately tripped over a hunched ceramic bu

Bullets cracked past her. She heard more glass breaking. A motion-sensor light came on from the porch to her right and was instantly shattered, most likely by a stray shot.

She vaulted another low fence. The block sloped slowly upward before her. With her long legs and natural speed she was quickly distancing her pursuers.

There was no question of charging this much firepower, sword or no. Her only hope was to make herself as poor a target as possible while pulling away from the cursing, puffing gangbangers. She continued ru

It finally occurred to somebody that she couldn't outrun a car any more than she could bullets. A second vehicle snarled around the corner and whipped past her, a pimped little Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution with a huge spoiler and pointy tribal-tattoo decals on the sides. It skidded to a stop a couple of houses ahead of her. Three more thugs leaped out.

The driver leveled another sawed-back pump gun at her from the hip. At that range the pellet spread gave him a chance to hit her even with lousy aim. She immediately launched herself in a long, low dive, past a front porch and between a garage door and the front of an old Ford Taurus.

A

She called forth the sword. A banger appeared at the end of the driveway. He fired a MAC-10 at her. Bullets skipped off concrete and punched through the metal garage door as she ducked down in front of the Taurus. By chance she was in the safest location possible in the immediate circumstances. The little pointy 9 mm slugs would never make it through the big car's engine block.