The Envelope at the Altar

Lenore looked as if the storm had reached inside her and rearranged everything. Her gray hair was plastered to her cheeks, and blood darkened the sleeve of her wool coat. She held a brass candlestick in one hand and a ring of keys in the other.

“Camille,” she said.

Camille stepped in front of Lucy. “You called Adam.”

“I did.”

“You sent the envelope.”

Lenore’s gaze dropped to the photograph in Adam’s hand. “Not that one.”

Adam moved between them. “Who attacked the chapel?”

“The same people who have been watching Camille.”

“How long?”

“Since Monday.”

“And you waited until tonight?”

Lenore’s eyes flashed. “I was trying to keep her alive.”

“By staying silent?” Camille demanded.

Lenore looked older when Camille raised her voice. For fourteen years, anger had been the only bridge between them, and Lenore had burned it every time Camille tried to cross.

“I didn’t send you away because I hated you,” Lenore said. “I sent you away because Olivia made me promise.”

“Don’t say her name like it excuses everything.”

Adam watched Camille carefully. The photograph had disappeared into the inner pocket of his coat.

“The fire is out,” he said. “We leave now.”

“The police will be waiting,” Lenore said.

“Good.”

“No.” Lenore seized his wrist. “If you call them, they’ll know exactly where we are.”

Adam pulled free. “You’re saying the police are involved?”

“I’m saying Daniel Rowan paid someone inside the department eighteen years ago, and that person is still there.”

The rain struck the roof like thrown gravel.

Lucy tugged Camille’s sleeve. “Who is Daniel?”

Camille opened her mouth, but Lenore answered first.

“Your grandfather’s son,” she told Lucy. “Camille’s father.”

Lucy frowned. “I thought he was dead.”

“So did everyone who needed him to be.”

Adam crossed to the side door and peered through the narrow glass. “We have company.”

Headlights swept across the wet parking lot. One car. Then another. Neither belonged to the chapel.

Lenore took a key from the ring. “There’s a passage under the sacristy.”

“Of course there is,” Adam said. “Why wouldn’t there be?”

“It leads to the rectory garden.”

“And after that?”

“You take the service road to Mill Street.”

“You’re coming with us.”

“I have to get something.”

“No.”

“The envelope you found was bait. The real evidence is in the office.”

Adam’s expression hardened. “What evidence?”

“A ledger.”

“Whose ledger?”

“The man who paid for Daniel’s disappearance.”

A fist struck the chapel doors.

Lucy startled. Adam crouched beside her. “Listen to me. You stay between Camille and me, and you do exactly what we say.”

Lucy nodded, pale but composed.

They hurried through the sacristy. Lenore unlocked a wooden panel behind a cabinet of tarnished chalices. A narrow stairwell descended into darkness. The smell of wet earth rose from below.

Camille caught Lenore’s arm. “Why did Adam know my mother?”

Lenore hesitated.

“Answer me.”

“He was there the night Olivia disappeared.”

Camille turned to Adam.

His silence was answer enough.

“You told me you met her once,” Camille said.

“I said I had met her.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“We don’t have time.”

“You had eighteen years.”

The chapel doors splintered above them.

Adam took Camille’s face between his hands. It was an intimate gesture, made urgent by danger. “I should have told you. I know that. But if we stand here arguing, Lucy gets hurt.”

Camille hated that he was right. She hated more that his hands steadied her.

They descended. Lenore locked the panel behind them just as boots entered the sacristy.

The passage was barely wide enough for one person. Water ran along the floor, soaking their shoes. Adam went first, using his phone as a weak lantern. Camille followed with Lucy. Lenore brought up the rear.

Halfway through, Lucy whispered, “Someone’s coming.”

Adam stopped.

From above came the muffled scrape of the panel opening.

Lenore gripped the candlestick. “There’s another way out.”

“You said this was the only passage.”

“I said it led to the garden.”

“Lenore.”

She pointed to a rusted iron ladder. “Up.”

Adam boosted Lucy first, then Camille. A second later, a gunshot cracked through the passage. Stone chips burst beside Lenore’s head.

Adam reached down and pulled her onto the ladder. They spilled into a storage shed behind the rectory, breathless and covered in mud.

The headlights had vanished. The attackers had followed them underground.

Lenore shut the shed door. “We have ten minutes.”