I hear static of walkie-talkies somewhere beyond the short corridor to the right. Claudia pulls me down the long side of the colonnade to the left, into a reception office. It’s filled with pamphlets in Croatian about some kind of art exhibit, a calendar of events. There’s a door on the other end of the room, but when I try it, it’s locked.

“Audra,” Claudia says behind me.

“We have to find the priest who did the mass. Where are the monks?”

“Murdered.”

I turn to stare at her. She’s pale.

“The officer told me when she let us through. Three of them, sometime last night. It’s too late.”

I refuse to accept this. I go to the door and begin to pound on it. Claudia hisses at me to stop. I bang on it again.

A few seconds later the door unlocks and a monk comes into the office. He looks startled to see us, and I realize he thought we were police. He’s wearing a brown robe, white belt around his waist, almost exactly like the statue of Saint Francis out front. But my attention is focused on one item: the tao cross dangling from his neck.

He says something with quiet urgency in what sounds more like Italian than Croatian, and I look at Claudia.

“What did he say?” I demand.

“Please,” he says in pained English, “there has been a tragedy. I am sorry, you must leave!”

“Who conducts mass at Lubenice?” I say. “Is he still alive?”

“Pardon?” he says. Desperation rises inside me.

“Who conducts the mass? Did you know Ivan? The man living in Lubenice? Did you take anything from the chapel?”

Tell me!

He lifts his hands, looks to Claudia as though for rescue. “I’m sorry—” he says.

Claudia intervenes. I don’t know what she’s saying, but all I can think is, It’s here. Ivan wanted me here.

“Is there someone else we can talk to?” I interrupt.

I recognize the cool lilt of Claudia’s voice, the way the sun through the window seems to seek her where she stands. Her skin in that light is flawless, lending her an ethereal quality that causes the monk to gape. But then something else snares my attention. At first I think it’s a sound, some strain of a distant chorus that lifts the hairs on my arms. But no one is singing, of course. The next moment there is nothing in this room—not even the monk himself—as compelling as the door he just emerged from. I stride toward it and yank it open.

I push into the corridor as the room falls away behind me. There are offices to my right and left, but my gaze is fastened on what looks like a narthex farther down the hall. I skirt past an open door and then run the fifty feet to the chapel, heart thudding.