Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

free?”
    “Yes.”
    Aleks stared out the window; it was raining harder. He watched the pink mimosa blossoms fall under the cascading droplets, fluttering softly before surrendering to the pavement.
    Lee Campbell leaned forward, resting his elbows on the ancient oak table.
    “Is there any chance — in this hypothetical scenario — that this person is making up the entire thing just to screw with the priest’s head?”
    “I’m afraid not.”
    The waiter shot an inquiring look in their direction, and Aleks nodded, though he knew all the amber ale in the world couldn’t fill the gnawing hole in his heart. He stared out the window at the soggy puddle of pink petals on the sidewalk, and knew it was going to be a very long night.

    A T HOME IN bed later, he watched car headlights flickering across the walls of his room, unable to sleep, tormented by the unwelcome knowledge locked inside his heart. Finally he arose and thumbed through his volume of the collected works of Jakob Böhme. His eyes fell on a passage from
Threefold Life of Man:
Man, Böhme said, “cannot see the whole of God’s One,” and “it follows that a part of it is hidden from him.” In order to reach God, Böhme claimed, man had to go through hell itself.
    These ideas, which had been little more than an intellectual puzzle to him when he was a philosophy student, now struck him as deeply personal. He felt as if Böhme were talking directly to him and that the key to solving his dilemma lay in Böhme’s words, if only he could dig deep enough to uncover the wisdom there. Perched on the side of his bed, he turned the pages, searching desperately for something to help him. One quote in particular gave him some cause for hope: “What now seems hard to you, you will later learn to love the most.”
    Finally exhausted, he fell into a fitful sleep sometime before dawn. His dreams swarmed with disquieting images of masked murderers stalking their victims inside the stern marble interiors of churches, their steps echoing against the unforgiving floors. He followed them down endless corridors, but they always remained ahead of him, just out of sight. Finally he turned down one hallway to see his sister standing there gazing at him. She was glowing, as in his vision years before, but her large brown eyes were searching, beseeching him — to do what?
    He awoke in a sweat, the book still in his lap, unable to shake the feeling that she wanted something from him. His eyes fell on the passage on the open page: “The anguished work of the creature in this time is an opening and a generation of divine power by which God’s power becomes moving and working.” He sensed the words had a deeper meaning for him, but he didn’t know what they were.
    Later that morning, after a quick breakfast, Father Milichuk dragged himself to St. George and took his usual place in the confessional. His hours were rigid: He was at his post every weekday morning from ten o’clock until noon. He had a wicked hangover, and that combined with his lack of sleep had put him in a foggy state of surreal, dreamlike consciousness.
    It felt even more like a dream when the door to the adjoining booth creaked open. He slid open the wooden cover of the metal grate between the two sides in order to listen and was stunned by what he heard.
    “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
    It was the same voice Aleks had heard the day before. More weary, perhaps, and more wary — but the same. There was no mistaking it.
    He tried to speak, but no words came out. Finally, he croaked out a response. “B-bless you, my son.”
    Jagged rays of light sliced through his field of vision, interrupting his sight — the familiar aura telling him another migraine was on the way. He pressed a hand to his forehead; he could feel the blood vessel in his head throbbing through his fingertips.
    “What do you have to confess?” Aleks longed to peer through the metal grate separating them so he could see the man’s face, but he could hardly bear to keep his eyes open. Pain sliced through his head, and he stifled a groan.
    “I have committed another mortal sin.”
    “What is it, my son?”
    “I have killed again.”
    Father Milichuk’s intestines turned to ice. Cold sweat spurted onto his forehead, and he fought to control the buzzing in his ears.
    To his horror, the man continued. “Not only that, Father, but I enjoy it. I like killing. Even now I’m thinking of the next time I can go kill