Page 22 of Deliver us from Evil

Soon as I figure out where the hell that is.

“Coffee?” Rube asks.

“Yeah. Can we get something to eat?”

He frowns, and then nods. “But no lobster.”

With Zachary gone, we only have a handful of cash between the three of us. We never figured a day would come when Zach wouldn’t be there, swiping a card for whatever we needed.

How naive.

I still can’t get over what he did, even though I kinda expected something like that to happen eventually. He’s never been on board with Trinity. He’s been treating her like the enemy from day one. And we went right along, because he laid it out so logically that it only seemed right.

I guess we’ve trusted him for too long.

Cass saunters back a minute later with a piece of paper dangling from his fingertips. I snatch it from him before he even has a chance to sit down.

I snort when I see what’s written on the back. “She gave you her number?”

Cass shrugs, lounging in his chair like he was born without a spine. “Told her I wouldn’t call.”

Reuben rolls his eyes and then watches me type in the password.

It’s one of those generated ones that are supposedly so secure. But the more random a password is, the easier a hacking program can crack it. It’s passwords made out of words or phrases that are the hardest to crack. That’s why Bitcoin wallets are usually protected with a seed phrase—a string of twelve random words that are easy enough to remember, but near impossible to crack without the use of a supercomputer.

That’s why I know for a fact that the password to Gabriel’s secret archive is some kind of phrase. My program’s still trying to crack it, but I doubt it’ll happen any time this century.

Soon as my laptop connects to the diner’s wi-fi, I start looking for Trinity.

The world dissolves as I hunt through every database I can access.

Baptism.

Reuben laughed when I told him. We all laughed. Because it was so damn basic, we should have thought of it hours ago.

Trinity was baptized. Had to have been. Catholic parents and a priest as a family friend? No way around it.

And parishes keep baptism records. They have all kinds of useful shit on them like parent information, addresses, stuff like that.

I have Trinity’s date of birth from the admin file. Her parent’s first and last names too. But the rest of the file was empty. There were a few notes sent to Social Services requesting more info, but I guess their turnaround time is longer than she’s been at Saint Amos.

All I need to know is which parish keeps her records.

I hop around the Internet, finding bits of information to add to my search.

Someone shoves a cup of coffee my way. I drink it down without tasting it, but fully appreciating the jolt of caffeine. A plate of food arrives, and it smells damn tempting, but I’m already down the rabbit hole so it grows cold beside me.

The light changes. Hues shift. Streetlights come on. The temperature drops.

And then I have it.

An address.

I look up. Cass and Rube are staring at me. “Well?” Cass says. “Tell us.”

“It’s not much.” I grab a fry off my plate, swallow it down despite how cold it is. “But it’s a start.”

Chapter Eleven

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