She stopped under the overhang of a little dress shop and caught their reflection in the glass. Faint, as if a superimposed negative over a display of sundresses, was the image of a man and a woman; he in battered jeans and a faded T-shirt, and she in her voluminous habit and veil. An odd couple, and yet, there was more. A glimpse of hidden emotions in the blush of her cheeks, the intensity of his gaze.

The memory of a forbidden kiss.

His gaze caught hers, and her heart began to throb, a pulse beating at her throat. She looked away, blinking, catching a glimpse of something else in the panes, something as disturbing as the clouds collecting overhead.

The wavering image of a man of the cloth—a priest wearing sunglasses. She froze. Something was off about the guy.

“What?” Cruz asked, and in that flicker of an instant, when she turned her attention to him, the image of the priest was gone. She turned to look over her shoulder to the park.

“Did you see him?”

“Who?”

“The priest.”

“What priest? The one helping the homeless guy on the corner?” Cruz’s gaze followed hers to the empty park.

“I don’t know,” she said, thinking maybe she’d conjured up the image, and yet it burned in her brain. Cold as dry ice and just as foggy.

Like the night so long ago.

She had been in Cruz’s car, the radio playing loudly. As if it were yesterday, she remembered that last night of their youth, of the exhilaration of being with him, of doing something dangerous, of defying her father . . . They’d been kids then, teens, and the world had been a big, vast, exciting place where their future had seemed to stretch out endlessly.

Until the moment she’d seen the deer in Cruz’s headlights, the spindly legged animal frozen in fear in the rising mist, twin beams mirrored in the doe’s glassy eyes.

A voice as rough as sandpaper gritted in her ears. “Lucifer’s son is the harbinger of death.”

She’d screamed as the tires spun out of control, the axle twisting, metal groaning. Glass shattered. Panic and pain sizzled up her spine....

Now, looking at the empty park, she felt the same chill, the flesh on her arms pimpling at a dark, unknown danger.

“I have to go,” she insisted, glancing up at Cruz to the cleft in his eyebrow, evidence of that night.

He grabbed her arm. “Lucia, please . . .”

Knowing she would be damned in hell forever, she stood on tiptoes and brushed a kiss across his cheek. He tried to catch her lips with his, but she pulled away. “Cruz, if you love me, please . . . don’t follow me.” And with that, she pulled away, dashing across the street and into the park.

She didn’t look back, but she felt the weight of Cruz’s gaze, heavy against her back.

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 31