When she was clothed, one of the men put a swatch of tape over her mouth, wrapped tape around both of her hands and feet, and jammed a hood over her head.

She peered through the filthy burlap but only saw shadows.

The next thing she knew, she was being dragged down the stairs and into the fading sunlight, toward the sound of a strained motor running.

She was squeezed into a vehicle with the sweat of men around her, and the press of metal to her side.

Someone was shoved into the vehicle next to her. She knew from his musk that it was Julian.

Dominique shivered as the vehicle crossed into the desert and cold bitter sand seeped inside. She knew this wasn’t random. And as strong and defiant as she’d been through the years spent in Iraq, she never fooled herself into thinking this wouldn’t be the end game.

She couldn’t stop the knot in her stomach from crooking violently.

She retched but nothing came out.

In the foul darkness she thought of the God she’d howled at. And despite her rage at the heavens, she needed to believe she was being protected still.

Dominique wanted to share this with Julian, but the tape on her mouth prevented the words from coming out. If she could speak, what would she say to him? She didn’t know.

What did she know? What did all of what she knew matter now?

Sorrow poured through her, and in the swamp of regret she leaned into Julian beside her, and asked God for forgiveness, because she’d never loved, had never given of herself. Life on the edge had precluded others. Now, she was out of time.

The air in the vehicle was thick with the scent of sweat and gunpowder. And in her anguish and regret, the smell of roses cut through her.

2

2

It was midnight in the Church of Santa Catalina in Cuzco, Peru. The church was built on a revered Inca site called, “Acllahuasi, House of the Chosen Ones.” It was built during the seventeenth century to honor women dedicated to working for the Incas, an indigenous tribe dating back to the thirteenth century. Erupting volcanoes and earthquakes could not dissuade the church’s founders from honoring these women and the “Virgin of the Remedies.”

Religious beliefs ran bone-deep in this land. Handed down for centuries, they gave a resonance impossible to dispute, one reason being that the “Virgen de los Remedios” had inspired a Catholic Order at the end of the twelfth century that proceeded to free slaves from bondage.

Father Manuel entered from the sacristy. He shuffled across the pearl colored floor, dwarfed by Solomonic columns worthy of Bernini, past the magnificent altar of golden cedar still emitting traces of ancient perfume.