The Omega Factor(99)
Right?
Voices.
He stopped. Labelle did too.
The sound was coming up through the open staircase ahead. Leading higher up were more narrow stairs, to probably where the archer had been stationed. He motioned and they retreated back, away from the stairs, stopping beside one of the outer windows.
Heavy doors opened and closed below.
They both stared out the window.
The archbishop was walking away from the building. He looked at Labelle, who pointed at his chest then down at Vilamur.
He understood.
Labelle turned, but he grabbed the younger man’s arm and mouthed good luck. Labelle nodded, then hurried off the way they came.
Nick turned his attention back to the staircase.
Chapter 65
Kelsey had taken a chance rushing to Sister Claire’s aid. But she’d never firsthand witnessed such heartless physical violence, and it was her duty to help those in trouble. The blow had been sudden and vicious and Claire seemed dazed.
“Are you okay?” she asked, crouching down beside her.
Claire nodded.
Kelsey stood. “You’re a cardinal of the church. These are nuns.”
“Get out of the way,” Fuentes said to her, his voice lashing across the room with an iced menace.
Her resolve strengthened and she did not move.
“Now,” Fuentes yelled, his face a mask of rage.
“Does it make you feel important to strike her?” she asked him. “To put a gun to my head?” She’d always been the one who’d plunged headfirst into things, no sense stopping now. So she checked the fear that threatened to swallow her and said, “What are you going to do? Shoot me? Shoot all of us?”
Fuentes raised the gun and motioned with it. “Not at the moment. But the situation is fluid, so who knows what I might do a few minutes from now.”
“Are you truly here, Cardinal Fuentes,” the abbess said, “on authority of the pope? Or is this a more…personal quest?”
“Does it matter? I’m here. You’re here. And we have things to discuss. Where are the rest of the maidens?”
“In the chapter room. I assumed you would want to speak to us all.”
“You assumed correctly. Please, lead the way.”
Nick listened from the top of the stairs.
What the hell was Kelsey doing challenging that man, Cardinal Fuentes? Apparently, the Vatican was now involved with the Dominicans. Kelsey was headstrong as hell, but these men had come on a mission, and there was no reason to push the envelope. He heard everyone moving, heading off below to his left. Before him a corridor extended twenty feet or so to an open doorway in the same direction.
He edged that way.
The floor beneath him was polished pine planks atop stone. Solid. Not a sound betrayed his steps. At the open doorway he stopped and saw that he was on the upper level of the chapter room, small, not unlike the one in Ghent, only this one had a large barrel-vaulted ceiling and an upper gallery that wrapped on three sides, the fourth broken by windows with deep reveals high on the outer wall. He stood back, out of sight, and watched as the group from below joined the maidens already there. His thoughts were paralyzed with apprehension, so he dropped all speculation, tried to suppress his emotions and stop his mind from questioning.
But there was no denying.
Everything had changed with Kelsey here.
Claire reached up and gently caressed the gash to her cheek. It and her jaw hurt. Never had she taken a blow like that before. But she’d accepted the attack without rebuke. Retaliation would have accomplished nothing. Thankfully, the other maidens had practiced a similar restraint. She felt the power and threat that surrounded her, but was not afraid.
Not in the least.
She stepped into the chapter room and walked to its center. The other maidens were already seated on benches at the tables. The five from the cemetery, and the two Dominicans with guns, joined her among the others. Only their footfalls detonated across the deep silence. Her heart pounded with a heavy throbbing that seemed to beat through the center of her wounded face. Fuentes kept Sister Deal close. The room loomed like a mausoleum, illuminated only by shafts of weak sunlight filtered in through the high mullioned windows.
“I’ve come for the Chapel of the Maiden,” Fuentes said. “Who among the legendary Vautours will tell me where it is?”
No one spoke.
The cardinal seemed pleased with himself. “I repeat my question. Who will tell me the location of the chapel?”
The knot of women continued to cling together in silence.
“All right,” Fuentes said. “You give me no choice.”
He motioned and Friar Dwight grabbed one of the maidens from the cemetery by the shoulder, forcing her to her knees, the barrel of his gun pushed into the soft flesh below the ear.
The hammer clicked into place.
“If I do not have an immediate answer to my question,” Fuentes said, “he will shoot her.”
Nick could hear and see what was happening below. He’d dropped down, lying prone on the wood floor, back from the iron railing that guarded the gallery’s outer edge. He did not want to reveal his presence. But Fuentes’s move on the maiden had changed his thinking. He’d assessed the situation, and was about to vault the rail, when he noticed Sister Ellen, the one he’d taken down in Ghent. She sat across the hall at one of the tables with an angle to spy up to the gallery. She seemed to be the only one not focused on the men in the room.