His smile stretched wide then, a white slash caught in the moonlight streaming through the open window.

“I am. In time.”

“In time?”

“Uh-huh.” He smoothed the hair away from her face, and she felt his hands tremble. “I love you, Valerie,” he said, his voice gruff with sincerity as he thrust deep into her. “Goddamn it all to hell, I love you!”

Could she do it?

Really?

Leave St. Marguerite’s forever?

Lucia swallowed hard and skimmed down the darkened hallways of the convent on her tiptoes, making certain she didn’t create any sound whatsoever. Her hastily conceived plan that harkened back to the waywardness of her youth, rather than to her time at St. Marguerite’s, had been forming in her brain for the past twenty-four hours, gelling. Perhaps if she left now, before the voice became louder, more insistent, she could save the life of another nun.

Maybe even her own.

Heart thudding, sweat collecting between her shoulder blades and on her palms, she hurried past the sconces, set low, her shadow passing like a ghost behind her, the long hallways seeming endless and narrow, closing in on her.

Around every corner, she expected to run into someone or something, though she didn’t know what. Didn’t want to know. The voice in her head was quiet tonight, but she was scared out of her mind that she would hear it again and that it would force her toward another gruesome death scene where one of her friends, another woman who had pledged her life to God, would be dead, skin cold, eyes lifeless.

She shuddered and kept moving, down the stairs, her feet as quiet as moth’s wings. Along the corridor past the chapel and farther to the back door of the mother superior’s office she hurried.

Over her own shallow breathing and the clamoring of her heart, she thought she heard the drop of a footstep, the scrape of leather against the old, hard floors.

You’re just imagining things. No one is up. No one is following you. You’re the only one stalking around in the middle of the night.

But that wasn’t true, was it? Sister Camille had been walking the halls around midnight, and so had Sister Asteria, right? The police thought they had made it to the crime scenes on their own two legs. And hadn’t she herself seen someone escaping the chapel on the night of Camille’s death? Then there was Sister Edwina—hadn’t Lucia seen her walking the halls late at night?

They weren’t the only ones.

Lucia stopped.

Held her breath.

Closed her eyes and listened, her ears straining.

Was that a footstep?

Or not?

Had whatever she’d heard stopped?