“That’s not all I need to know. I killed a man tonight. I have to know why.” Her voice sounded desperate, and she decided she was glad that James wasn’t there to hear her break down.
“He was going to kill Bishop. Wasn’t that enough reason?”
She remembered the sickening sound of the ornate candlestick crushing the man’s skull. “Reason enough,” she said, thinking of James.
Ryder sighed. “Okay, I can’t tell you much. Corsini was in charge of human trafficking for the crime family. It all started when he was a young priest, assigned to a small town in South America. It was easy enough to send the young girls and children to the States, supposedly to devote themselves to the church and live better lives. Of course, they never saw the outside of the container ship until they reached their final destination, where they were to work either as sex slaves or cheap labor, and the villagers never asked questions. It worked so well that Corsini expanded the operation, bringing promising young men into the priesthood to help him branch out his activities, and when the family moved him up to New Orleans, it made a perfect headquarters for the operation. We’ve been after them for more than a decade, and this won’t end their business, but it will put a big crimp in it. The man Claudia killed in Italy was in charge of bookkeeping for the operation, and we’d hoped his elimination would screw things up enough for us to take everyone down, but the Corsinis are more resilient. And that’s all I’m going to tell you, and it’s a hell of a lot more than I should have, so don’t bother asking me any more questions. Just know you delivered payback for a lot of women and children who lived lives of abject misery and died before their time. And you kept Bishop alive while doing it, though I’m not sure whether you think that was a benefit or not.”
She could see his face as he drove through the still-lively city, and it looked cold and brutal in the reflected lights. “Just one more question.”
“No, I don’t know when Bishop will come and see you, if he will at all. He’s an idiot.”
“Yes, he is,” she said. “But that wasn’t what I wanted to ask. Where is Odila? And Jenkins?”
Ryder hesitated. “They didn’t make it.”
And then, finally, she wept.
“Where the fuck is she?” Bishop snarled. He hadn’t slept in three days; instead he’d fl
own to London to report to Madsen, paid off all the necessary people, had the already deconsecrated church torched, dealt with Merlin’s extreme case of the sulks, and worked out help for Odila’s family and Jenkins’s brother, all the time expecting to find Evangeline waiting for him when he finally got back to the shell of a house that was slowly being renovated and retrofitted for their headquarters.
She wasn’t there, and Ryder wasn’t saying anything. In fact, he did his damnedest to always be around someone else so Bishop couldn’t demand to know where she was. Bishop ended up lying in wait, and when Ryder was finally alone, he slammed the man against the crumbling wall of the old house in the Garden District.
“You know I let you do that, right?” Ryder said. “You’re just lucky I knew it was you or you’d be dead by now.”
“One of us would. Where is she?”
Ryder’s smile was cool and inscrutable. “That all depends what you want with her.”
It was the last thing James was expecting. “What the fuck business is it of yours?”
“Because I know where she is, and I have no intention of telling you if you’re just going to keep putting her through the wringer. She’s good people, Bishop. You know it and I know it. She deserves better than you, but for some reason it’s you she wants. She’s in love with you, and if you aren’t going to do right by her, then leave her the fuck alone.”
Bishop blinked. “She’s not in love with me,” he said instinctively. “How could she be?”
“Beats me. I never said she was levelheaded. In fact, she’s a fool for you, and if she can’t protect herself, then I’ll protect her from you. So I’ll ask you again. What do you want with her?”
“We’re still married,” he said stubbornly.
“You said you were going to have Madsen take care of that. Did he?”
“What business is it of yours?”
“Did he?”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“I could break your jaw, you know.”
“We’ve already tried that,” Ryder drawled. “We’re evenly matched. Evangeline has been through hell and back, and there’s only one thing she wants and deserves after all the shit she’s put up with.”
“The dog,” Bishop said flatly.
“Okay, make it two things, and the dog’s the more important one. What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m no good for her.”