Noa, wide eyed, clearly not knowing what to do. “I know this place, Beth. And I won’t see any of our family, or Diel’s family, hurt. But we need that ledger, and I know that bastard has it here. Something inside of me is telling me it is here.” Noa sighed. “If you wanted to hide something that important, you’d do it in your least well-known place.”
“Please, Noa.” Beth’s voice was quiet and broken, as if she’d swallowed shards of glass.
“Stay here, Bethy,” Noa said softly. The sky was now dark enough for Noa to move freely, unseen in shadow. “Do not come after me. I’ll return soon. If I don’t …” Noa let that possibility hang in the air. “You drive home and get to safety.”
“Noa—”
“Promise me,” Noa interrupted. Beth began to shake her head. “I haven’t asked you for anything, Beth. Ever. Not once in our lives. But I am asking you this now. Let me do this. I can do this. But I have to do it alone. I …” Noa composed herself from the flash of sadness that burst in her heart. “I have to do this for Diel. For Cara.”
“Noa …” Beth’s voice was wounded. The Coven was a sisterhood. They always had one another’s backs. It was against everything they stood for to allow another sister to do something so dangerous on her own.
“Please.” Noa never pleaded for anything. But she did right then.
Noa left the van before Beth could respond. Relief sailed through her when Beth stayed in the van, brown eyes watery and huge as she watched Noa retreat. But she was doing as Noa had asked.
Noa pulled her hood over her head and buttoned her face covering in place. Then she was moving. She stayed close to the line of trees for coverage, a shadow moving through the tall grass. She followed the perimeter of the old church’s land until the dilapidated white building came into view. An abandoned old Catholic church that hid Auguste’s sinister secrets in its basement.
His personal playground.
Once upon a time there would have been a small community that attended this church, but those days were long gone, the church abandoned like so many around the US due to the decline in the Catholic faith. But the Brethren had made use of them without the wider church knowing. And Auguste had most certainly made use of this one.
Noa ducked behind a bush and studied the church. There were no vehicles outside. There were no lights on inside and absolutely no sign of movement.
Noa’s pulse fluttered in a dizzying mix of excitement and relief. There was no one here. She broke from the trees, keeping low as she cut through the abandoned field and to the window below the church’s steeple. She narrowed her eyes and looked through the cracks in the shutters. The church was in darkness. Noa didn’t waste any more time.
She moved to the door, broke through the old lock and slipped into the building. Memories assaulted her as the dank, musty smell of the two-centuries-old church barreled into her senses. Her skin felt on fire. Her lungs felt like they were filling with water. But Noa allowed herself three seconds of closing her eyes and quickly pulled herself back together.
Noa reached for the small flashlight on her belt. She switched it on and ran past the pews to the nave of the church. She scanned the altar, the pulpit and the many dusty statues of Mary, Mother of God, and the saints. Working clockwise, Noa moved every picture, every crucifix, searching behind them for a hidden safe, somewhere that would hold the ledger.
But after she had exhausted the pictures and statues, her attention kept drifting to the back door. Fear’s sharply clawed hands reached up from hell and wrapped around her throat. She knew what lay behind that door. And once, long ago, when she had been freed from there, she’d vowed never to return.
Yet here she was.
As much as she searched the main body of the church, she knew that the ledger was down there. Noa told her feet to move, but they were frozen in place, glued to the termite-ridden wood beneath her boots’ thick soles.
“Come on,” she whispered to herself, feeling as though her thundering heart was about to smash through the cage of her ribs and escape. Noa reached into the small pouch on her weapon belt. She hadn’t opened this pouch for so, so long. But her fingers seemed