Wide awake now, Father Michael looked at her more intently.
‘Even murder.’ He chose his words carefully. ‘You are welcome to come in, and I will gladly hear your confession, whatever it is. However, you should know that if a priest suspects a serious crime has been or may be committed, we’re required by law to report it.’
She processed this. ‘I see.’
A pause.
‘So you’re not like lawyers?’
Father Michael smiled. ‘No. We’re not like lawyers. On all sorts of levels.’
‘I see,’ she said again. She turned to go, looking back across the street towards her parked car, her troubled expression still clearly visible beneath the porch lights.
‘God’s forgiveness is boundless,’ Father Michael called after her. ‘All He wants is contrition. For you to be truly sorry for what you’ve done. To try to make amends. And not to do it again.’
It’s the last part that’s the problem, Ella thought, as she drove away. Because right now the only way she could think to ‘make amends’ for killing Athena Petridis was to kill the man who’d tricked her into doing it in the first place.
The man who’d lied to her about her parents’ murders, about The Group, about Athena, about everything.
The man she’d almost believed might be her future.
Confession would have to wait until after she was done sinning.
First, Ella had to find Gabriel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Christine Marshall pulled her skintight Hello Kitty T-shirt in the vague direction of her midriff and straightened her pleated miniskirt nonchalantly as she swung her hips back and forth, happily aware of the men from the building site ogling her as she passed. She was all for #Metoo and women’s empowerment, but Christine’s own particular ‘power’ had always come from the effect she had on red-blooded males. By using that power in the service of The Group – using it to do good and to make a difference – she’d succeeded in building a life for herself that was full of meaning, full of purpose, even if it had involved other sacrifices. And she’d done it all in kitten heels and exquisite underwear, which in Christine’s world had to count for something.
Of course, she wasn’t a heavyweight like Ella Praeger. Although Christine and Ella had only been roommates in Camp Hope for a few short weeks, a time during which Ella’s abrupt manner and simmering anger had frequently frightened Christine, she nevertheless believed the two of them had forged a significant connection. She was honored when Katherine MacAvoy, the Camp Hope supervisor, had summoned her personally to her office and told her that Ella, probably The Group’s single most important asset of all time, felt the same way about her.
‘We all noticed how well the two of you got along during Ella’s training,’ Katherine told Christine, flicking a stray piece of lint from her disappointingly frumpy knee-length skirt. ‘Now that Ella’s indicated a willingness to recommit to The Group, we thought it would be a nice touch to have you make the first, personal contact. Welcome her back to the family, as it were. You’ll go to San Francisco, take her out for a meal and then hand over the detailed brief for her next assignment.’
Christine could scarcely credit that she, of all people, would have been selected for such a prestigious assignment. ‘Are you sure it shouldn’t be someone more senior who goes, ma’am?’ she asked meekly.
‘Quite sure,’ Katherine MacAvoy assured her. ‘Ella asked specifically after you and Jackson when she was debriefed by Mr Redmayne a couple of weeks ago.’
Christine flushed from ear to ear with pure pleasure.
Mr Redmayne? The big boss knows my name?
This just got better and better.
But today was the best of all. A cloudless, blue-skied, crisp fall morning in San Francisco had provided the perfect backdrop for what Christine hoped would be her and Ella’s joyous reunion. Christine wouldn’t be so inappropriate as to ask Ella about her most recent, fabled mission in Europe, or to quiz her on her rumored extrasensory ‘superpowers’, and how she’d used them to outwit the evil Athena Petridis. But she would demand an update on Ella’s love life; whether the mysterious ‘Gabriel’ had ever made a move. Or maybe some British lord or French count had swept her off her feet while she was over there, Meghan Markle style? Christine did hope so. Ella had a lovely side to her, but Christine couldn’t help feeling that the love of a good man might help to knock off some of those rough edges. Very rough, if memory served.
Christine looked up at the smart, red-brick apartment building to her right. According to her phone, she had arrived at her destination. Ella’s new digs were in an expensive neighborhood on a clean, tree-lined street, with doormen outside the front doors and new model Teslas in all of the on-street parking bays. So Ella was rich as well as beautiful, thought Christine, but without envy. Envying Ella would be like envying a bird its flight, or a fish its gills. One couldn’t compare oneself to a creature so utterly different, and special and superior in every way. Her excitement building, she practically skipped into the lobby.
‘I’m here to see Ms Praeger,’ she told the elderly man on the front desk. ‘Apartment 12B.’
‘Okey dokey.’
Christine signed in in an old-fashioned visitors’ book, and was directed towards a bank of elevators. Not exactly state-of-the-art security, she thought. Someone needed to talk to Ella about that.
Up on the third floor, she rang the buzzer of Ella’s apartment, waiting outside nervously, like a first date. After what felt like an age, it opened.
‘May I help you?’
The woman in front of Christine was around Ella’s age, with shoulder-length chestnut hair and an attractive, intelligent face. She wore an expensive cream shift dress and suede pumps and she radiated elegance, wealth and class. Christine had