Last Breath by Rachel Lee Page A

of God.”
    “Even what happened to the King kid?”
    “Even that. Some good will come out of it somehow.”
    “Yeah, I know what good will come out of it. I’ll nail the sick twists who did it. And that's all the good I need.”

Chapter 9
    The call to present himself at the chancery ripped a hole in Brendan's day. He wasn't given an option of choosing a better time, or setting a mutually convenient appointment. He was simply told to show.
    He left Lucy scrambling to rearrange his appointments and get Dominic to fill in for him, and climbed into his car for the drive downtown. Somehow, somewhere in the back of his mind, he had known this was coming. There had been too many calls from Monsignor Crowell in the past few months, and with what had happened over the past weekend, things were bound to come to a head.
    For this trip, he had even managed to ditch his shadows. Since he'd been working at the rectory for a change, none of his self-appointed bodyguards had been with him to argue.
    He wasn't sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, it was nice that people cared enough to put themselves out this way. On the other, it was a relief to be going somewhere by himself. He spent so much time in the company of others that his car was an escape, a place of solitude.
    He could listen to music of his own choosing, or just take time to think things over and clear all the junk from his head. Because he certainly accumulated enough junk in the course of a day. Of course, like most priests, he was wonderfully forgetful when it came to information that people wanted to keep private. It was a talent developed over years of hearing confessions from people he still had to be able to greet with warmth and love only minutes or hours later. The worst secrets died a rapid death in his memory cells.
    Today, however, there was little room for anything except discomfort about the interview he was facing. It was strange to him that he'd been in the parish only six months and for some reason was facing serious opposition. He honestly couldn't think what he had done to make any of his parishioners so upset with him. Of course, he knew he must have done something, however minor. He wasn't holding himself free of responsibility. But it troubled him that he had no inkling of who or why. Perhaps today would clarify the issues and give him a clue so he could mend fences. He hoped so.
    But regardless of his hopes for the meeting, he was well aware that Monsignor Crowell didn't like him. Which meant there would be a great deal of unpleasantness along the way as he tried to discern what was really going on.
    He was kept cooling his heels in an anteroom for twenty minutes. Not surprising. He'd been around the block enough times to recognize an exercise of power for the sake of power. He'd seen it frequently in the navy.
    But at long last, he was summoned into the monsignor's august presence, into an office full of enough antiques and icons to suggest it was an extension of the Vatican. The room, however, failed to intimidate him. How Crowell chose to spend his own money was Crowell's business. Brendan vastly preferred his own situation, where he had next to nothing to spend, and what he had could be given where it was needed.
    For reasons known only to himself, Crowell had chosen to wear a cassock in a diocese where cassocks were relegated to the backs of closets as impractical. He also wore a pectoral cross big enough to blind. It was as if he were trying to remind Brendan that the full weight of the church stood behind him.
    Brendan took the chair Crowell waved him to. Pleasantries were exchanged in the briefest possible fashion.
    “Let's get straight to business, shall we?” Crowell said, steepling his hands.
    “Yes, of course,” Brendan replied. Trying to look more relaxed than he felt, he settled back and crossed his legs.
    “I’m sure,” the monsignor began, “that you've noticed this office has had to make a number of calls to you in the