Bullseye (Michael Bennett 9)

“I like it just fine,” Mr. Peters said, laughing and looking like he was ready for a long tryptophan nap. “That gravy Mary Catherine made was divine. And those biscuits”—the Southerner winked—“rivaled my own mama’s.”

I smiled as I headed into the kitchen.

Mary Catherine had insisted we do Thanksgiving early, for Marvin and his uncle, who were just settling into their new place. I dropped off the china next to Mary Catherine, who was rinsing a platter in the sink.

I stood there looking at her for a second. She’d put her hair up, and she was smiling to herself about something—a memory, maybe a joke. She looked so incredibly beautiful and sweet as she stood there in her apron that I felt a physical pulse, an almost electric shock of happiness, pass through me.

It suddenly dawned on me then, like a name that’s been on the tip of your tongue.

I knew that I loved her and only her, and that I would never want anyone else but her for the rest of my days.

“Yes, Michael?” she said, suddenly hitting me with her blue smiling eyes. “You look like you want to say something.”

“I, eh, uh…” I said, smiling, stalling, blushing.

“You eh, uh, what?” she said, turning, now face-to-face with me, pinning me with those eyes.

“I, um, brought you my plate,” I said, pointing at the counter.

“So you did. So you did. A fine plate it is, too.”

I hugged her then. Fell into the nape of her neck. Never wanted to stop falling.

“You had my plate at hello, my Irish beauty,” I whispered in her ear. “Cross my plate and hope to die.”

St. Peter’s Square, Rome.

White smoke signals that a new pope has been chosen.

Is it possible that the new pope…is a woman?

For an excerpt, turn the page.

PROLOGUE

Twenty Years From Now

One

Vatican City

THE STORY had begun deep inside the Vatican, had leaked out into the city of Rome, and within days had whipped around the globe with the momentum of a biblical prophecy. If true, it would transform not only the Roman Catholic Church but all of Christianity, and possibly history.

Today was Easter Sunday. The sun was bright, almost blinding, as it glanced off the ancient and sacred buildings of Vatican City.

A tall, dark-haired man stood between towering statues on the colonnade, the overlook above St. Peter’s Square. He wore Ray-Bans under the bill of his cap, a casual blue jacket, a denim shirt, workaday jeans, and combat boots. The press corps milled and chatted behind him, but writer Zachary Graham was transfixed by the hundreds of thousands of people packed together in the square below like one enormous single-cell organism.

The sight both moved him and made him sick with worry. Terrifying, unprecedented events were happening around the world: famines and floods and violent weather patterns, compounded by wars and other untethered forms of human destruction.

The New York Times had flown Graham to Rome to cover Easter in the Vatican and what might be the last days in the life of an aging Pope Gregory XVII. The pope was a kind and pious man, beloved everywhere, but since Graham’s arrival in Rome four days ago, he had seen the sadness over the pope’s imminent passing and, not long after, his death eclipsed by a provocative rumor, which if true would be not just the turning point in one of the world’s great religions and the explosion of a media bomb, but, to Zachary Graham, a deeply personal event.

Graham had been born in Minnesota forty-five years before. He was the eldest son of a middle school teacher and a Baptist minister. He was no fan of organized religion, but he was fair-minded. He was a brilliant writer, highly respected by his peers, and clearly the right person for this job—which was why the Times, still the preeminent news machine of the twenty-first century, had sent him.

Now, as he stood in the shadows of Bernini’s massive statuary, watching the crowd show signs of panic, Graham knew it was time to go to ground.

He walked twenty yards along the overlook, stopping at the small, cagelike lift. Other reporters followed him, cramming themselves into the rickety elevator. The doors screeched shut. Graham pressed the Down button, and the car jiggled and lurched toward the plaza below.

From there, Graham walked north through the colonnade, the harsh light