Page 74 of Deep (Chicago Underground 8)
Drew settled me into the backseat. He and Rose took the front seats.
Only when they had directions to St. Mary’s and had set off down the one-lane empty road leading away from Philip’s safe house did Rose demand answers. “What were you talking about? Who has her brother?”
Drew’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. “Do you remember I told you when I started working for Philip, how he told me the most important job, my only job really, was to protect his family, you and Colin?”
“Yes.”
“There were a lot of people to protect you from—other criminal types who would have liked to take his business, enemies he had made. But one of the biggest threats came from his brother. Your brother. Not Colin. He was your father’s son with another woman.”
Rose stared at him across the dark car. “But why? Why wouldn’t he tell us? Why would Philip keep him from us?”
“Shit,” Drew muttered. “He should have told you. He should be the one telling you this now. When your brother approached him, Philip had just begun making a name for himself as a problem solver. This man approached Philip and explained that he was your half brother. He wanted money.”
A dismayed sound came from Rose. “How did Philip know it was real?”
“He had a test done to confirm it. Because Philip would have given him money, if that’s all it was, either out of family loyalty or to make him go away. The problem was that this man… Marco is his name. He… Shit. He hurt people, Rose. I’m sorry. That was what he needed the money for—paying off people to stay silent.”
“I don’t understand.” She glanced back at me from the front seat. “I love my brother, but I know what kind of man he is. He hurts people too.”
“Not like this.” Drew swallowed, and I felt the car speed up. “Not for fun.”
Oh God. This man hurt people for fun, and he had my brother.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I JUMPED OUT of the car as soon as it slowed near the church. I heard Rose shout my name, but I couldn’t slow down, couldn’t wait. The doors were heavy but unlocked, and I pushed them open to reveal a dark atrium—empty.
Drew and Rose followed me in a matter of seconds, coming to a breathless stop behind the pews. More slowly, I walked up the aisle. It felt strange to be in a church at night, with no one else here. There were no lights shining, no candles, only the faint light of the moon filtering through stained-glass windows lining the walls, images of heaven and hell, of a man on a cross, of rebirth. It was an old church with traditional symbolism: suffering and sacrifice.
The only sounds were our breathing.
“They might have left already,” Rose whispered. “Where could they be?”
Drew shook his head. “I’ve never been here. This isn’t one of Philip’s regular meeting places. Or at least it wasn’t when I worked with him.”
Of course not, it was a church. Except maybe he did have churches that rotated through his roster. That would be the kind of thing he’d do, the irony of it. The memory rose unexpectedly, the little wire machines in his library: the bird in the cage, the well.
And I remembered the books behind them. One was about haunted places in Chicago, with dog-eared pages and highlights of a theater, a church. Not this church, but it could have been. I knew from middle-school history that the Underground Railroad had intersected in Chicago, that churches often had hidden passageways and compartments.
Hidden rooms, like the office in Philip’s safe house.
When I reached the alter, I veered left and headed to the hallway that stretched into darkness. There were pictures at regular intervals—depictions of the saints made with mosaics. I trailed my fingers along them, feeling the individual ceramic pieces that made the whole.
“Ella,” Drew murmured, keeping pace with me. “We should go.”
Each picture had a plaque underneath with the name of the patron saint and his patronage.
The patron saint of pregnant women, of the disabled, of children.
Saint Leonard, the patron of prisoners, captives, and slaves.
I stopped and studied this one. In the depiction the man wore a traditional monk robe that tied at the waist with a rope. His hood was back, revealing longish hair and a beard. His face was drawn in sharp lines, focused on prayer, with his palms toward a large open book and a crucifix. He looked to be sitting in some kind of cave with crude steps carved into the rock. The book—a Bible?—rested on a shelf cut away in the side of the passage, but other parts of the wall still sloped like a natural cave.
Something triggered me to run both palms over the mosaic, as if I could read it li
ke braille. It didn’t reveal its secrets to me, though it seemed a little more detailed than some of the other depictions. It was one of the only ones with any background at all—most simply had a halo of light surrounding them or an adoring sheep or child looking up at them.
It was only as I pulled away that my fingertip caught at the frame of the picture and tugged.
