Between the Cracks and Burning Doors: Book 2 of The Extraction List Series (3 page)

By the time Dom got out of the shower and dressed, I realized I hadn’t even glanced at his sermon. “Sounds great,” was all the feedback I could come up with. He didn’t seem to mind.

“I have something else for you.” I looked at him and crinkled my brow. This man had already done so much for me. He dug into his pocket and pulled out four glossy pieces of paper. When he held them out to me, I noticed that there were intricate brown patterns on each piece. “This is going to last for quite a while, but it won’t hurt, I promise.”

“What is it?”

He smiled. “The last part of the new you. Hand me your arm.”

I obeyed. Carefully, he lined up each piece, connecting the four pieces a couple inches down from the edge of my wrist. He wrapped his hands around the bunch of paper and squeezed my arm as hard as he could. My skin burned. Just as I thought my fingers were going to lose all color, he released me and the papers fell to the dark brown carpet below, leaving the brown pattern behind.

The cross started at my wrist and wrapped around my forearm, like armor hugging my skin. “But I’m only fifteen. I’m too young to have a tattoo.”

His face hardened, smile disappearing entirely. “Exactly. Once the police figure out you’re missing, they’re going to be on the hunt for a fifteen-year-old with light brown hair, not an eighteen-year-old black haired young man with a hard-to-miss tattoo. You want to give the world what it doesn’t expect right now, do you understand?”

That was the first time we had said out loud what I was, or what I was at least on my way to becoming:
wanted
. Somehow, hearing Dom acknowledge my situation made it easier. “You’re tall enough and built enough to pass for older than you are. We need to play on that.”

We.
I’d never been a “we” before. I was always the kid who ran straight up to his room when I got home from school and hid with a book all afternoon. I dragged myself downstairs precisely at six for dinner and shoveled food into my mouth as fast as I could, glancing at the stairs out of the corner of my eye the whole time. The idea of “we”—a family or a friendship, for that matter—was something I only saw while looking out my bedroom window, as mothers and children, husbands and wives, walked through our neighborhood, smiling, probably talking about groceries and school board meetings: the blissfully ordinary. However, there was always a pane of cold, dew-dropped glass between us.

“For the next few weeks, I think it’s best if you don’t leave the church, okay? You need some time to heal anyway. After a little time goes by, you can make short trips outside. Gradually. See how it goes. But stick to side streets. Don’t draw attention to yourself. You need to be a shadow when you’re outside these walls.”

I nodded.

“Not much of a talker, huh?”

I shook my head.

“Well, that’s okay. Saving your words makes them special. Some people drop words like drool. And being quiet will work to your advantage.” Dom went toward the bed, knelt down, and reached under it. He pulled out a huge bin. When he took the lid off a dust cloud lifted into the air. When it faded, I realized there were books inside. “I can’t stay here with you all day, but these should help keep you company.”

He pulled out a mix of books that had no rhyme or reason: mysteries, romances, math textbooks, a cook book. The covers were worn and curling at the corners. “Obviously, you can forget about going back to school, so I’m going to pick up some more math and science books when I go out and get supplies.” I smiled as I knelt down next to him and he handed the pile of books to me. They stacked at least two feet tall.

“Dom?” He turned to face me. “Thanks.” I pushed myself to my feet, careful not to drop any of the books, and carried them over to the chair Dom had slept in the night before. As he grabbed his jacket on his way out the door, he looked back and nodded at me. The door shut hard against its frame.

He wasn’t kidding about getting supplies. That night he came back with armloads. He blew up an air mattress and stuffed it in the corner of the room. Once it was inflated, he threw a blanket on top of it along with a pale blue bedspread with tiny black and white rockets all over it. When he saw me looking it over, he laughed. “Sorry, cheapest one they had.” He may have thought I was looking at it funny because it was made for a child. But I was actually staring at it because I couldn’t believe he had gone to so much trouble just for me.

“No, it’s great.” I smiled wide and I hope he knew I meant it.

It was a whole month before Dom thought it would be okay for me to leave the church. Four weeks under house arrest might have been hard on most people, but I kept myself busy reading every book from Dom’s bin, and helping him with his sermons (or at least I liked to think I was). Not like he needed help in that department, but I think he liked practicing with me.

I looked forward to every Sunday and Wednesday. There was an area on the second floor that hovered over the congregation that would have been used by lighting people, but since Dom’s church didn’t have enough funds for lighting in the first place, he just used it for storage. I could hide up there amongst the old boxes and extra file cabinets and listen to Dom speak.

He reminded me of the woman on the television. Every word that burst from his lips had a purpose. No one in the congregation breathed before he was done. Everyone, including small children, sat transfixed, eyes never leaving him.

Wednesdays, he taught Bible study to elementary school kids. When I had been in school, there was always that kid who chucked wads of paper at other kids, kids who whispered into their friends’ ears when the teacher was talking, kids who flat out didn’t care. Not in Dom’s class. They listened to every word, and each one gave him a hug when their parents came to pick them up. And every time they left, they said, “See you next Wednesday.” I guessed I wasn’t the only one who looked forward to it all week.

One kid in particular caught my attention. He looked about ten years old, with big brown freckles to match his big brown eyes. His hair looked like no one could be bothered to brush it, and it flew out in a million directions. He always hugged Dom the longest out of all the kids. His parents never came to pick him up, and he would always end up going home with another kid. I asked Dom about it once, and he said his name was Nick, and like most people, his parents had lost their jobs. They were always out of town, selling their clothes, jewelry, even furniture, trying to make sure they didn’t lose their house.

It crossed my mind to ask Dom if he could live upstairs with us. Seemed like a better idea than being shuffled around, like the Christmas gift that no one wanted and always tried to give away.

A week later, my world was jolted off balance again. This time, it wasn’t a murder that shook me to the core, but a simple knock on the door.

Dom saw them before I did. I assumed it was someone wanting Dom’s advice, some last minute evening confession. When we both heard the knocking, Dom jetted toward our window and glanced out instead of immediately going to the door. The color drained from his cheeks. “Stay here.”

He didn’t even look at me.

When I ran to the window to figure out who was there, who had upset him so much, I figured out why.

Police officers.

I only managed to do what I was told for about five minutes. I paced around the apartment, wringing my hands together wondering how I could have been caught. I was so careful. Maybe my mother had turned me in. But why would she have bothered to tell me to run if she was just going to do that anyway? Maybe she just gave me a head start, for sentimentality’s sake.

Any time the news reported on someone getting arrested, my father would make a comment about the conditions of the jails. The police had to drive around in regular cars instead of police cruisers, and the money they made barely kept them going, so you can imagine how little money was spent on the place where our society sent the people who they thought had broken their rules. That sat with my father just fine: “Finally, jails are as they should be. Used to be a time where it was like going on a goddamn vacation. Let ‘em live in the dirt where they belong.”

I had no interest in ending up there.

I frantically searched under the bed, hoping there was something I could use as a weapon. I felt around until my hand felt something heavy. I pulled it out and gripped my hand around it: one of Dom’s barbells.

Perfect.

I crept out the door, gently closing it behind me, barbell in hand.

By the time I got out, Dom was coming up the stairs.

The police were right behind him.

When he saw me, his eyes widened. He shook his head frantically, mouthing the words, “No. Hide.”

I slipped back inside. Barbell still in hand, I raced toward the bathroom door and shut it as quietly as I could. When I heard the front door close, I held my breath.

Footsteps.

On the other side of the door was Dom’s voice. “I told them I needed to come up and get my coat. Stay here and do NOT leave the church until you hear from me, do you understand?”

No. I didn’t.

My palms were so sweaty I almost dropped the barbell. “What do you mean? Aren’t they going to arrest me?”

A nervous scoff reached me through the door. “Cain, they aren’t here for you. They’re here for me.”

I inhaled to speak but his footsteps were already heading toward the edge of the apartment. With the snap of a slamming door, I was alone.

Again.

I don’t remember falling but I remember the coolness of the laminate floor under my hands. The room became a smudged, blurry version of its former self, like a car windshield on a rainy day, and I realized tears were in my eyes.

I slapped myself across the face.

Don’t be stupid, pull yourself together.

With a couple deep breaths, I shook the tears away. I still had no idea what to do next. Dom was gone. He’d told me to stay at the church until I heard from him. I had watched enough TV to know that when someone got arrested, they at least got a phone call.

For lack of a better idea, I got up and left the bathroom. Dom’s chair was facing away from the window, so I scooted it around so I could see outside.

What did he do? The man who had taken me in had been snatched away from me in handcuffs. He walked to the police car with his head high, but I couldn’t help notice his muscles stiffen as the officers guided him into the back seat.

I stared out the window and watched people wander past the church, having no idea what had just happened, no idea that a great, kind man had been removed from the outside world. What would become of him? He was a priest, after all. Until I found him in that alley when we first met, I would have thought that even the nastiest criminal would still show respect to a priest.

Apparently not.

I didn’t care one bit what he had done. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious; he did have a lot of tips for hiding from the police. But I was a murderer. Who was I to judge him? Maybe that was why he had taken me in when I needed it the most: he and I were the same.

I stared out the window for hours or days; I couldn’t be sure. Night had fallen by the time the phone call I had been waiting for finally came. Or maybe it was the early hours of morning. It didn’t matter. I almost dropped the phone when I picked it up, not even bothering with hellos and how-are-yous. “Dom? What happened?”

“Hi, kid.” Clinking of metal on cement echoed behind him. “I’m sorry.”

I braced myself against the wall. “What are you talking about?”

Dom paused. “I’m not who you think I am.”

I waited. The barely audible crackling in his voice made my legs weak. I knew that whatever he was about to say would decide how long he would be away from me. “Who are you then?”

Dom sighed. “I’m not really a priest. At least not on paper.”

“What are you talking about? On paper? I’ve seen you.”

“Back when I was younger, I made some bad choices. More like terrible choices. The kind that make it impossible for you to go to seminary school. The church saved me while I was in jail. Well, maybe not the church, ‘cause it wanted nothing to do with me, but God did. I wanted to devote my life to Him and His teachings. I wanted a church, my own congregation.”

I held my breath, cursing myself for not knowing what to say.

Useless. After he saved your ass, you can’t even comfort him.

“I prayed for an opportunity, and God gave me one in the form of the priest who worked at my local church growing up. He’d managed to fall in love, and not just with God. Her name was Lauren, first love and all that.” Dom paused his story to cough, and a sound escaped him that I could tell came from deep in his lungs. I shuttered thinking that the dirt and disease of where he was had already gotten to him. “He’d tried to ignore it when he went to seminary but it just got stronger. So when he was offered a position here, in D.C., he asked me if I wanted it.

“I argued with him, telling him there was no way we’d get away with it. That it would get us both caught. Nevertheless, I knew it was my only shot. So I got some fake paperwork, and I took his title, position, and his name.”

He lowered his voice. “You have to do something for me.”

My response escaped my lips before I even thought about it. “Anything.”

“These policemen have bigger problems than a little identity theft. They’re gonna let me out in six months. Stay at the church and tell everyone that I’m on a goodwill trip, Africa or something. Doesn’t matter. Just don’t let them find out I’m in here. Tell them you’re taking care of the church until I get back. There’s money hidden in the apartment. You can have a place to stay and I can have my life back when I get out of here. No one will find out. Deal?”

“Deal. I’ll take care of it, I promise.” My voice quivered.

“I’m out of time. I gotta go. And kid? Be careful.”

The phone went dead.

Without Dom, the apartment was too quiet. I could hear the wood of the antique walls creak every time a slight breeze crept by, something I never noticed while he was around. The pipes talked too, sounding as if they were scraping against each other, like a villain rubbing his hands together while plotting his next move.