The Vatican Children

A second car door slammed shut.

Arthur's hand found the gun on the coffee table before his mind fully processed the sound. He'd expected one visitor—Father Niccolo Paladina, arriving alone. Not two.

Outside, leaves and gravel crunched as footsteps approached his cabin in the forests of Colorado. The sharp scent of pine sap drifted through the cracked window, mixing with woodsmoke from the fireplace. He crossed to the window, careful to stay out of view. Had someone found his hideout?

His newly finished cabin sat deep in the middle of uninhabited forestry, and it served as his sanctuary away from civilization. It would prove difficult to find even with a map and closely-detailed directions, which meant that either Niccolo had brought a friend with him—which would be bad—or someone else had driven up.

Weapon held ready, he flipped the curtain aside and peeked out through the small gap.

But the gun in his hand wasn't his revolver—a fact that left him practically naked as he leaned against the wall. His revolver lay under the pillow in his bedroom. He gripped a tranquilizer gun designed to fire darts.

The weapon weighed less than his Colt revolver, which made it awkward in his hands. Also, it held only three darts and seemed cumbersome and tricky to load. He shifted it in his hand continually, willing it to become more comforting.

Arthur had opted to carry it, though, because he wanted to get used to using it. Some comfort lay in knowing his revolver waited nearby, along with a pair of shotguns and an assault rifle, but hopefully, he wouldn't need any of them.

When he saw the car sitting in front of his cabin, though, he relaxed and let out a sigh. In hindsight, he should have known: only one person would be brazen enough to bring a friend to his sanctuary uninvited.

"Frieda," he mumbled, sliding the tranquilizer gun away into his shoulder holster.

Frieda had climbed out of the little blue sedan and now walked toward the cabin. She spoke to someone on the other side of the car, and it took a second for that person to walk around the hood and into his sightline.

Abigail.

He groaned. This was perfectly bad timing.

Arthur rushed over to the door of his cabin and out onto the front porch. Hastily, he closed the door behind him and used his body to block it.

"Hey, Frieda. Uh … what's up?"

The woman stopped walking midstride, a suspicious frown blooming on her face.

"Hi, Arthur." She put out a hand to stop Abigail, and then turned her attention back to Arthur. "We've come here to visit."

"You didn't call ahead."

"I didn't think we had to," she said, nodding toward Abigail.

Abigail looked exhausted from the long drive, but she beamed at Arthur. The girl was closing in on her eighth birthday—by the best guesses of multiple physicians—and had long black hair and a narrow face.

His chest tightened at the sight of her, pulse quickening. She represented his second chance at life, a chance to try again. This time, he would get it right.

She acted nothing like the little girl he had saved in the manor of West Virginia. Back then, those ten months ago, she had worn torn and tattered clothes and a vacant expression in her eyes, the broken shell of a little girl who had undergone years of torture and abuse.

Now, she was a normal youngster.

Abigail started toward him, ready to run up for a hug, but the tension between him and Frieda stopped her short. She kept glancing between them, confusion plain on her young face.

"You don't have to call ahead," Arthur said. "I expected someone else to show up, and you two caught me off-guard. What are you doing here?"

"We came to visit." Frieda folded her arms across her chest and gave him one of her famous looks of disapproval. "We've come out of our way, but it's been a few weeks since you checked in with us in person, and we wanted to make sure you were doing all right. What are you doing?"