“She woke up to say ‘danger’?” Montoya asked.

Cruz’s eyebrows slammed together. “Maybe I was imagining it all.” He picked up the full bottle. “Who knows?”

“Yeah, who?”

“More importantly, who cares?” After taking a long swallow, he set the bottle down and folded his arms over the table. “So now that we’re done tripping down memory lane, how about you find a way to get me my bike back?”

The last thing Val wanted to deal with was her husband. “You’re out of line, following me around,” she said as they crossed the shaded lawn of the cathedral. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

“Yeah, well, that makes two of us.”

When she tried to open the door, he slammed it shut with a big hand, almost imprisoning her with his body. “What’re you thinking, Val?” he demanded.

She squirmed around to find him staring down at her with eyes she’d once found so disturbingly sexy, a blue that seemed to shift with his moods. “I needed to talk with O’Toole.”

“It’s a matter for the police. You were a cop, Val. You know that. Leave it to the professionals.” His face was only inches from hers. Too damned close. Her heart galloped in her chest, her mind wandering to forbidden places. As if he felt it, too, that sudden physical awareness, he stepped away and glanced back at the cathedral where two nuns, dressed in habits, wimples, and veils, hurried around the corner. “What happened to nuns wearing regular clothes?” he wondered aloud. “I thought all the black and white getup was over.”

“I think it’s up to each order or diocese or whatever, maybe each parish. I don’t really know. I gave up on the church a long time ago.” She remembered the orphanage, the dark hallways, the grief and loneliness, then snapped her mind shut from the memories that crept through her consciousness when she wasn’t expecting them, dark, disturbing images that cut painfully.

“So this place, St. Marguerite’s, can be as antiquated as it wants?”

“I’m sure the archdiocese has something to say about it. Camille told me that this is the way it’s always been at St. Marguerite’s, and most of the nuns, especially that warm and fuzzy mother superior, prefer it that way. What she says goes.”

Slade’s eyes narrowed. “Throwback to another century, if you ask me.”

“No one did,” she reminded him, and added, “And, for the record, I don’t appreciate being followed.”

A smile stretched across his beard-stubbled jaw. “I figured.”

“Really, Slade, you had no business tailing me here, following me inside and telling them”—she nodded toward the cathedral as a bicyclist rode past—“that we’re married.”

“We are.”

“Not for long.”

“Marriage is something the Catholic Church takes very seriously. I figured it would open some doors and it did.”