"Okay, Danny. I promised to help you, and I will." No one else seemed to be able or willing to—not the doctors, not God himself. So it was up to Bill. "It's just you and me, kid. I'll help you."

* * *

Bill waited patiently through the change of shift, until the incoming nurses had been briefed on each patient by the outgoing crew. The reports were completed more quickly than usual, and with wishes of a happy New Year to one and all the three-to-eleven shift was on its way out of the building in record time. It was party time for them.

Bill made some small talk with Beverly, the head nurse on eleven-to-seven, as she checked Danny's useless IVs during her initial rounds. Then he waited a while longer.

At 11:45 he scouted the hall. No one in sight. Even the nurses station was deserted. Finally he found them. The entire shift was clustered in the room of one of the older children, a twelve-year-old boy recovering from an appendectomy, all watching as Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve show geared up for the traditional countdown to the drop of the illuminated apple above Times Square.

Bill slipped back to the charge desk and hit the OFF switch on Danny's heart monitor, then hurried back to his room. Working feverishly, he peeled the two monitor leads from the boy's chest wall, then removed the IV lines from both arms and let the solutions drip onto the floor. He untied the restraints from Danny's wrists and slid his painfully thin chest out of the posey. Then he wrapped him in the bed blanket and in an extra blanket from the closet.

He checked the hall again. Still empty. Now was the time. Now or never. He turned back to the bed, reached to lift Danny, then paused.

This was it, wasn't it? The point of no return. If he carried through his plan tonight there would be no turning back, no saying I'm sorry, I made a mistake, give me another chance. He would be accused of a hideous crime, branded a monster, and hunted for the rest of his life. Everything he had worked for since joining the Society would be stripped from him, every friend he had ever made would turn against him, every good thing he had done in his life would be forever tainted. Was what he was about to do worth all that?

Bury me… in holy ground. The words seared his brain. It won't stop… till you bury me…

There was no other way.

He lifted Danny's writhing, blanket-shrouded form.

Good Lord, he weighs almost nothing!

He carried him along the empty hall to the rear stairway, then down the steps, flight after flight, praying he'd meet no one. He'd chosen this moment because it was probably the only quarter hour out of the entire year when, unless they were in the middle of a crisis situation, almost everyone's mind was more or less distracted from his or her job.

When he reached ground level Bill placed Danny on the landing and checked his watch: almost midnight. He peeked out into the hall. Empty. At its end, the exit door. And just as he'd hoped—unwatched. The guard's seat was empty. And why not? Georgie, the usual door guard on this shift, had always seemed fairly conscientious, but even he'd have to figure that since his job was to screen the people entering the hospital instead of those leaving it, and since no one could get in unless he opened the door for them, what was wrong with leaving his station for a few minutes to watch the apple drop?

Bill lifted Danny and started for the exit. Up ahead he heard voices through the open door of one of the little offices. He paused. He had to pass that door to get out. No way around it. But could he risk it? If he got caught now, with Danny wrapped up in his arms like this, he'd never get another chance.

Then he heard it: the countdown. A mix of voices, male and female, began shouting.

"Ten! Nine! Eight!…"

Bill began to walk, gliding his feet, gathering speed until he was moving as fast as he could without actually running.

"Seven! Six! Five!…"

He whisked past the office door, then began to run.

"Four! Three! Two!…"

As he reached the door he slowed for half a second, just long enough to allow him to hit the lever bar at the same instant the voices shouted, "One!"

The noise of the opening door was lost in the ensuing cheers as he rushed headlong into the parking lot. He had parked St. F.'s station wagon illegally, hoping his clergy sticker would buy him some leniency. The last thing he needed now was to find that the wagon had been towed away.

He sighed with relief when he saw it where he'd left it. She was a rusting old junker but at that moment she looked like a stretch limo. Gently, he laid Danny on the back seat and arranged the blankets loosely over him.

"We're on our way, kid," he whispered through the folds of fabric.

Then he heard a slurred voice behind him.

"That him? 'S he the one?"

Bill whirled and saw the two ragmen from earlier this evening, one big, the other shorter and slight. How had they got into the lot?

"No, that's not him," said the smaller of the two. "Hush up about that."

The big one stepped closer to Bill and peered into his face. His beard stank of wine and old food.

"You the one?" Another moment of too-close scrutiny, then, "No. He's not the one."

He turned and lurched away.

The little one scampered after him for a few steps.

"Walter! Walter, wait!" Then he hurried back to Bill. "Don't do it!" he said in a harsh whisper. "No matter what you've been told, don't do it!"

"I'm sorry," Bill said, shaken by the man's intensity. "I'm in a hurry."

The little man grabbed his arm.

"I know you! You're that Jesuit. Remember me? Martin Spano? We met long ago… at the Hanley mansion."

Bill jolted as if he'd touched a live wire.

"God, yes! What—?"

"Not much time. I've got to catch up to Walter. I'm helping him search for someone. Walter was a medic once. He sometimes can cure people but he can't cure that kid. He can't cure anybody when he's drunk and he's drunk almost all the time these days. But remember what I said. Don't do it. An Evil power is at work here. It's using you! I was used once—I know how it is. Stop now, before it's too late!"

And then he was off, running after his fellow derelict.

Thoroughly shaken, Bill got in the front seat and sat for a moment. Martin Spano—hadn't he been one of those crazy people who'd called themselves the Chosen when they'd invaded the Hanley mansion back in 1968? Spano had been crazy then and was obviously crazier now. But what had he meant—?

Never mind. He couldn't allow himself to be distracted now. He shook off the confusion and drove out of the lot, forcing a smile and waving as he passed the guard in the booth. He drove north, toward the Bayside section of Queens, toward a place he'd spent much of the early evening preparing for Danny.

Renny slammed the phone down and threw off the covers. "Damn!"

"What's the matter?" Joanne asked from the other side of the bed. They'd spent New Year's Eve at home, catching up on their lovemaking.

"The kid's gone!"

"The one in the hospital?"

"Yeah," he said as he pulled on slacks and a sweater. "Danny Gordon. The nurse went in to wish Father Bill a happy New Year and found the room empty."

"The priest? You don't think—"

"They were both in the room before twelve, they were both gone after. What else can I think?" He gave her a quick kiss in the dark. "Gotta go. Sorry, babe."

"It's okay. I understand."

Did she? Renny sure hoped so.

The priest! he thought as he raced toward Downstate. Could he have been the one who cut up on that kid?

Nah! Not possible. No way.

And yet…

Renny thought again about how everyone he'd interviewed at St. F.'s had mentioned good old Father Bill's attachment to little Danny, like father and son. How Danny would always sit on his lap. What if that attachment hadn't been entirely on the straight and narrow? You heard about fag priests, about priests molesting kids. It hit the papers every so often. What if the thought of giving the kid up for adoption had scared him? What if he'd been afraid Danny would talk to his new parents about things he'd had to let Father Bill do to him?