Bad Samaritan by Aimée Thurlo Read Free Book Online

pursue.”
    â€œI’ll ask Our Lord to help me, and He’ll find a way,” Sister Agatha said.
    â€œI sure wish I had that kind of faith, Sister,” Chuck said.
    â€œSo do I,” she said without thinking. Seeing the confusion on his face, she managed a wry smile. “I’m far from perfect, Chuck.”

4
    A LTHOUGH THE ODDS OF FINDING SCOUT WERE SLIM TO none, they decided to walk to the bridge anyway and cross over. Together, they searched for footprints or anything else that might give them an indication of which direction Scout had gone.
    After a half hour, they were forced to give up the search. The ground was too dry and hard to track man or animal here at the edge of the bosque. Hoping that Scout would come back later and retrieve it, they left the bag with the hot dogs resting in the crook of a tree branch.
    â€œDo you happen to know Scout’s real name?” Sister Agatha asked Chuck as they headed back into the park.
    â€œSister, I don’t think that the guy himself remembers anymore. A lot of our homeless people have some serious psychological problems. Whenever I see Scout, he’s usually searchinggarbage cans. The closest I’ve ever gotten to him is maybe fifty feet.”
    As they walked back across the grass, not much was said between them. Finally, as they reached the parking lot and the monastery’s motorcycle, Chuck broke the silence.
    â€œWhat’s next on your agenda?” he asked.
    â€œFunny you should ask,” she said with an impish smile. “I’m still not getting a clear enough picture of what happened here yesterday. I haven’t been to an Independence Day celebration outside the monastery in over twenty years. If you covered the event, I’d sure like to see the photos you took.”
    â€œI was here most of the day and night. My boss even paid for my three hot dogs and two cans of soda. How American is that? Follow me back to the office,” he said, walking off to where his beat-up old sedan was parked.
    As Sister Agatha headed back into town, Pax in the sidecar, she tried to come up with a strategy for finding Scout. He probably hadn’t gone far—the bosque was undoubtedly his home—yet locating him was going to be anything but easy. He now knew they wanted to speak to him, and that would make it even harder. He’d make it a point to avoid them. Yet in her gut she knew that finding him and getting him to talk would be well worth the trouble.
    Sadness crept over her. She’d met many of God’s wounded children over the years, and although the world had broken them into pieces, they remained surprisingly resilient. Scout, for example, had shown remarkable resourcefulness surviving by his own rules.
    Sister Agatha felt a twinge of guilt for having worried so much about the future of her own home. At least she knew she was going to be welcomed with open arms when the move took place, as, barring a true miracle, it most certainly would.
    Sister Agatha parked in front of the small newspaper’s office as Chuck got out of his car, attached Pax’s leash, then walked inside. The adobe building had been completely rewired and modernized. It felt good to walk into a place cooled by refrigerated air instead of swamp coolers. Those all too often barely made a dent in the heat, and everything felt muggy from the moisture in the air.
    â€œI’ve decided that I’m a winter person,” Sister Agatha said, leaning back and making the most of that heavenly cold blast of air. Pax sat beside her, panting.
    â€œConsidering that habit you wear, I don’t blame you,” Chuck said, “but I like summer. Clothes don’t have to be as heavy or bulky.
My
clothes, that is,” he added with a grin as he reached for a small laptop computer. “All the photos I took that day have been uploaded into this laptop. I can preview and edit the shots at home, then send the results back here