The Immortality Plot

The Immortality Plot - chapter 37

Mike Delaney was standing in the center of his living room at the beach house in Monterey. The place felt cold and unloved. He had prowled around the house, throwing junk mail and mouldering food into the trash, reminding himself that all of Maria’s clothes were still hanging in the closet. Her cosmetics were still in the bathroom cupboard; even the bar of soap she had last used in the shower was still where she had left it.

It was a painful and poignant homecoming. The wreckage of the office was still in evidence although sand had covered the charred ground proving that nature would always win in the end against the will of man. Delaney felt as though it had been years since he was last here when it was just a couple of weeks. Two weeks in which his life had changed irrevocably.

He knew he had to come to some kind of partial closure or go crazy. Maria was dead. He was alone. He was lonely and empty but life had to go on. He would sell the house and start again somewhere else doing who knows what? He had no idea right at this moment.

He gazed out of the large French windows out over the beach to the ocean. He could just hear the rush of the waves, endless and timeless, pounding the shore. He felt himself slipping into a meditative trance. He stood there motionless, feeling the energy of the universe flowing through him.

Delaney’s hearing was acute. He could detect the trace of a whisper in the wind.

He heard something now. It was barely perceptible, like the briefest of sighs.

Or the intake of breath.

He could sense something or someone behind him. He had heard no one enter the house. No animal could be this quiet. He moved onto the balls of his feet.

He sensed rather than heard the blow coming. He stepped forward and whirled in a blur of speed.

But he was not quite quick enough.

Delaney was surprised by the other man’s speed. He let his shoulder drop as he moved to the right. Still, the man’s fist connected, brushing his bicep, missing the complete impact. Just the slightest touch of the fist was enough to stun Delaney’s muscle and knock him backwards out of his stride.

The man standing before him was tall. He was well built, but not a hulk. He was stunning to look at with black close-cropped hair and almond eyes. The eyes were magnetic.

Delaney had seen those eyes very recently. He would never forget those eyes.

They were the eyes of Chantelle Dubois. But this was not the woman who had been at the Harvard Club dressed in dark blue organdy or who had driven the Dodge camper van or who had been the last person to see Herman Letski alive.

This was the man who had killed Maria Montalban – the man who had killed his wife.

This was the serial killer known as The Priest.

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