Free In the Wind: Out of the Box, Book 2 by Robert J. Crane Page A

Vatican.
    We stop in the nearest café and wait. I watch the clock for the first five minutes. Perugini says nothing, just orders a Coke Light and sits there, sipping. I squelch my fantasy about being that Coke within seconds.
    “Why did you come here?” I suddenly blurt out.
    She cocks her head at me, and finally she takes off her sunglasses. I’ve seen her eyes many a time. They’re a lovely, lovely shade of brown. “Because you asked,” she says. And that kind of warms me for a moment, until she goes on. “And because it’s a free trip to Italy, of course.” She sips the Coke. “This is a paid vacation, you know this, yes? All funded by the agency. How can I refuse a chance to go home for free?”
    My brief moment of hope at “Because you asked,” dies in a fire. “Okay, then,” I manage to get out, hopefully without squeaking. “You deserve a vacation.” She probably does, too. The last year or two haven’t exactly been kind to any of us, and if I recall correctly, she ended up locked in a car trunk because of Kat at some point.
    She nods in agreement—basically with herself, since I was already agreeing with her—and sips some more Coke. We sit in a companionable silence, and the minutes drag by.
    I’m groping for another (probably idiotic) icebreaker when I see Father Emmanuel appear in the entry to the café.
    I have never been so happy to see a holy man in my life. I would even confess right now—in private, of course—if that would save me from saying something else stupid to Dr. Perugini. His Lord may move in mysterious ways, but my mouth moves in pretty knuckleheaded ones.
    “Thank you for coming,” Father Emmanuel says as he takes a seat next to me, as though I’m doing him some sort of favor. I blink at this, but for once I shut I mouth and let him go on. “When I reached out to Giuseppe after receiving his name, I was concerned that no one would be able to help me.”
    I raise an eyebrow at Perugini. She raises one back at me. We both keep listening.
    “I hate to …” Emmanuel lowers his head, and it’s clear that what’s on his mind is something with weight. “… I hate to … squeal? Is that the word you use? To complain outside the organization?” He looks up and I can see he’s a little tortured. English is plainly not his first language, but he does a pretty good job considering that he probably also speaks Latin and whatever his native tongue is.
    “That’s right,” I say. Now I’m just mystified. He wants to talk about internal Vatican matters? What does this have to do with me? With Giuseppe? I’m just smart enough to know that revealing my ignorance while he’s pouring his soul out on the table is one sure path to shutting him up, so I stop talking. Again. If only I had similar control around Perugini, alas.
    “They are simply not set up to deal with this level of treachery,” Emmanuel says, shaking his head. “This level of … deceit and indecency.” I stifle a completely unproductive joke about the history of the church. Even in the few moments that I’ve known him, Emmanuel seems like a good guy.
    “Go on,” I say. Helpful. Super helpful. “Maybe just getting it out there will help you work through the solutions.” And vague. Alpha Male is nothing if not vague.
    “I do not even know where to start,” Emmanuel says, and his desperation is thick in the air.
    “The beginning,” Perugini says, and I realize that I don’t have the market cornered on vague. She’s inscrutable again, even with the sunglasses off.
    “I came here from Mombasa over a year ago,” Emmanuel says, and his head is still down. He won’t meet my eyes, and I wonder if he’s ashamed. “I needed sanctuary, and the church knew this.”
    “Sanctuary from what?” I ask, and then the answer comes to me before he can answer. “From the extinction. From Century wiping out metakind.”
    He nods, but still won’t raise his head to look at us. “There are other priests and nuns,