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“Just, please don’t—”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say stuff like that again or I’ll get us into a wreck.”
Nora laughed and squeezed his knee.
“All right, Angel. I promise I won’t talk about the night I tied you down and took your virginity. If you insist.”
“Nora, please,” he begged. He loved that she still called him Angel. No one ever called him that except for Nora.
“Fine, I’ll behave. For now. Anyway, here’s the deal. Søren wants us gone for the summer so he can handle things in his own way. I think he knows that if someone started sniffing around me, I’d probably kick their ass, which, admittedly, might not help the situation.”
“Probably not.”
“And considering I sort of kind of committed statutory rape the night you and I were together, well, I think he’s trying to keep me out of this whole mess as much as possible. And you too.”
Michael put on the turn signal at a four-way stop. No cars were coming from any direction. As nervous as he was, he hoped they didn’t encounter another car the entire trip home.
“You didn’t rape me, Nora. I wanted it. I was fifteen, almost sixteen, not five.”
He couldn’t believe he was finally getting to talk to her about that night. He knew Nora and Father S were upset about this whole thing. But today might be the best day of his life.
“The courts have a funny way of not caring about the legal age of consent when underage boys and famous writers are involved. But hey, you aren’t jailbait anymore.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” Michael sent up a quick prayer that he hadn’t been hallucinating when Father S had said he and Nora needed to get out of town together.
“I have a friend named Griffin Fiske. He’s got a farm in upstate New York. I think we should go wait this catastrophe out with him this summer.”
“Griffin Fiske?”
“Yeah. He’s the son of John Fiske, Chairman of the Stock Exchange. Wall Street type. Griffin’s a trust fund baby. But he’s a sweetheart. Søren can’t stand him, but Søren has terrible taste obviously,” she said, pointing at herself.
“Is he—” Michael paused and tried to force the words out. “You know, one of us?”
Nora grinned. “Let’s just say that in the Underground, his nickname is Griffin Fist.”
Michael’s stomach clenched.
“Oh, God.”
“Tell me about it.” Nora patted his knee again. She really needed to stop touching his knee. “So the plan—we’ll go hide out at Griffin’s place for the summer.”
“Hide and do what?”
Michael pulled into the driveway of the small bungalow he lived in with his mother. Thank God his mom didn’t seem to be home.
“This is where you live?” Nora asked with nothing but curiosity in her voice.
“I know it’s not great. But it’s a nice neighborhood.”
“It’s a palace compared to the house I grew up in. Do you like it here?”
Michael shrugged. “Things aren’t great with Mom,” he said. “She’ll probably be glad when I start college.”
“Where are you going?”
“Yorke. Got a full ride. Faxed in my scholarship acceptance letter this morning.”
“Yorke? Good school. My old roommate used to go there. Anyway,” she said and seemed to brush off a sudden sadness, “Søren said this summer might be our last chance to help you. Help you—what did he mean by that?”
Michael didn’t answer at first. But everything within him told him Nora could be trusted. That not only could he trust her but he should trust her.
He leaned back in the seat and shut the car off.
“Two weeks ago … I almost hooked up with someone I met on the web.”
“A dominatrix?” Nora asked.
Michael nodded and said nothing.
“Michael, do you have any idea how dangerous that was?”
“I know, I know. Father S gave me hell for it too. I was just …”
“What, Angel?”
“Lonely. For you.”
Nora reached out and touched his face. His heart fluttered in his chest as her gentle fingers traced the line of his lips, the curve of his jaw.
“Now you don’t have to be lonely anymore. You’ll get me the whole summer. Søren thinks you’re ready to be trained. I think so too.”
“Trained?”
“To be a submissive.” Nora let her hand drop from his face. She got out of the car and Michael followed suit.
“I thought I was …” Michael glanced around to make sure none of his neighbors were out. He’d die if anybody found out what he was. “I thought I was a submissive.”
Nora leaned back against her car and crossed her shapely legs at the ankles.
“Søren trained me for two years before he ever hit me or fucked me the first time, kid. Subs have to be as well trained as dominants if you’re going to do it right and not get hurt.”
“I want to get hurt.”
“Different kind of hurt.”
Michael hazarded a smile.
“Michael,” Nora began and all the mirth had left her voice, “being a sub is hard. Being a male sub is even harder. A woman says she wants to be tied up, everybody thinks it’s sexy. A man says that and everybody thinks—”
“He’s a fag,” Michael finished for her. “At least that’s what my dad thinks. Says I need therapy for my fetish.”
“Forget what your dad thinks. I’ll teach you how to be the best damn sub in the Underground. And to quote the wise and powerful Kingsley on the subject of fetishes,” Nora began and then slipped into an exaggerated but sexy French accent, “‘Fetishes … they’re the pet you feed or the beast that eats you. We’ll feed your beast until it’s tamed. Oui?’”
Michael laughed. Feeding that beast sounded like a great idea to him.
“Oui.”
“Good. So you’re in?”
“I’ve been dreaming about this for … ever. If you and Father S think I’m ready—”
“That doesn’t matter. Do you think you’re ready?”
Was he ready? God, for Nora Sutherlin he’d been born ready. Michael nodded. “I’m in.”
“Great. Now how do we get you out of Dodge without your mom calling the cops?”
Michael scoffed. “You don’t know my mom. She’ll be relieved if I disappeared for a few months. Or forever.”
Nora pushed her sunglasses on top of her head. Empathy shone in her green eyes.
“I’m sure she loves you, Angel. If she doesn’t come around, you’ve always got us. I got in trouble when I was fifteen—big trouble. My mom totally washed her hands of me. Our priest practically raised me after that. How do you think I turned out?”
“Amazing,” he said, and Nora curtsied.
“Your mom will come around, maybe. Hell, maybe my mom will eventually come around.”
Michael hoped it was true. He missed his mom. They lived under the same roof but they existed in two different worlds.
“I’ll just tell her I got a summer job upstate. I was gone most of last summer working as a camp counselor.”
Nora mulled it over.
“When’s graduation?” she asked. “You have to be there if you’re valedictorian, right?”
“It’s Wednesday night. I can skip though. I’m not valedictorian. I flunked AP physics.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Michael.”
“I’m not. I flunked it on purpose.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t want to give the speech.”
He expected Nora to chew him out for his willful stupidity. Instead she just laughed.
“I like your style. Look, don’t skip graduation. Even I went to mine. I’ll send a car for you Thursday morning.” She pulled a pen and notebook from her purse. “Here. This is my email address. Keep in touch, okay? Ask me anything.”
Michael took the sheet of paper with subtly trembling fingers.
She traded the sheet of paper for her keys.
“Nora?” Michael said as she opened her car door.
“What, Angel?”
Michael looked down at the paper in his hands.
“Thank you.”
She smiled at him. “You’re welcome.”
“Father S … it’s going to be okay with him? He’s going to fix it, right?”
“He has his ways of getting anyone to bend to his will. If he doesn’t want to be bishop, he’ll find a way out of it.”
Michael nodded, wanting to believe her. He hated the thought that Nora and Father S would get in trouble just for being in love with each other.
“You really think he’s going to have to deal with the press?”
“The media is all over sex scandals in the Church these days. Probably so.”
“What’s he going to do?” Michael’s stomach formed a tight knot of worry. But Nora only smiled at him.
“He’ll probably do what I do when I talk to reporters—charm the pants off of them.”
“Anything?” Suzanne asked and stretched out her aching arms.
“Not much. Every time I click on a link to a Marcus Stearns, all I get is an essay on the expulsion of the French Huguenots.”
“Me too,” Suzanne said and closed her laptop. She looked down at her notes. In four hours of searching online she and Patrick had found out nothing about Father Stearns. Nothing useful anyway. The anonymous fax she’d received hadn’t merely been a list of names. At the bottom of the page the asterisk had been explained within four ominous words—”possible conflict of interest.” That list of names told her two vital truths—Father Marcus Stearns was on the short list to be the next bishop of the diocese, and Father Marcus Stearns had something to hide.
“Dug around on Facebook, et cetera. A few parishioners mention him,” Patrick said, flipping through his notes. “‘Father Stearns performed a wonderful wedding homily from the Book of Sirach,’” Patrick quoted. “‘I can’t believe Matthew didn’t howl when Father Stearns poured the water on his head.’ Nothing exciting. Going from all this, we’re looking at a perfect priest who’s adored by his church.”
“I don’t buy it. Nobody’s that perfect. And I’ve got an asterisk that says differently,” Suzanne said, holding up the fax again. All day she’d been picking up the fax again and staring at the asterisk by Father Stearns’s name.
“Suzanne,” Patrick said, giving her a level stare, “the phrase conflict of interest could mean anything. You know that, right? He might have donated money to some political candidate the church doesn’t like. It doesn’t automatically mean he’s a child molester.”
Suzanne shook her head. “If it were that innocuous, no one would have gone to the trouble to send me the fax. We’ve got to keep digging.”
“Fine. So what now?” Patrick asked, dragging Suzanne into his lap. She knew he hoped the answer would be Give up and get over it. But she’d only just begun to fight.
“You’re the investigative reporter. What would you do?” she asked.
“Start making phone calls. Get the gossip from the locals.”
