What’s Ike’s first instinct? Well, everybody’s first instinct is fight or flight. Flight? Put in for a transfer. Get out of Nola before the shit hits the fan.

Fight? Fight might mean he kills his blackmailer. Priests had committed murder before. Maybe it was an accident during a confrontation with the blackmailer? Either way, somebody or something ends up on Ike’s conscience. He can’t live with himself after what he did.

He kills himself.

But first he calls Mistress Nora. Why though? Why her? Why right before he eats a bullet? It’s all over by then, right? Not like he was going to make an appointment with a dominatrix he never planned to keep.

To confess his sins? He sinned with a kinky lady, so he wants to confess to a kinky lady?

That didn’t sound right.

Except Nora was sleeping with a priest herself. And if Ike was being blackmailed for sleeping with somebody, maybe he’d want to talk to Nora about it.

Or warn her.

Imagine there was a blackmailer out there going after sexually active priests. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that Father Ike might try to warn other possible victims before taking his own life, as a last act of compassion?

Farfetched? Yes. Impossible? No.

Only one way to find out if it had any legs to it.

He had to go down to Grand Isle, find some locals who lived near that vacation home Father Ike had rented. Ask if they remembered seeing Ike with anyone.

He shot Nora a quick text.

Long story but I’m heading to Grand Isle. Can you come with?

Nora replied a minute later. Can’t. Tied up.

Too busy?

No, literally tied up.

I thought you had a bangover, lady.

Only cure for a bangover, she wrote back, is hair of the Dom that bit you.

Chapter Thirty-One

Søren’s piano was being delivered to his new house that day. He offered to reschedule the movers, but Nora wouldn’t let him. And it wasn’t as if Gmork could fit on the back of Søren’s bike anyway.

Once she sent Søren on his way home, Nora called Kingsley to come and pick her up at her dungeon. That was a mistake. He spent the entire ride lecturing her about letting strange women into her house in the middle of the night. He wasn’t very happy when Nora reminded him that he’d spent his entire thirties letting strange women—and men—into his house in the middle of the night and therefore he had, as they say, no room to talk.

“That’s an entirely different situation. I was fucking them,” he said.

“One of them stole your Rolex, remember?” Nora said.

“Ah, but she was good enough in bed I didn’t mind.”

Clearly, they had very different recollections of that incident.

Kingsley stood guard while Nora packed a bag at her house. She would be living with him, Juliette, and Céleste until she could get a security system installed on her house. Actually, she wasn’t allowed to handle the security system installation. Kingsley decided he would handle it since she couldn’t be trusted to make good decisions where her own safety was concerned.