The Judas Line by Mark Everett Stone Read Free Book Online Page A

that I had his tells down pat. If he’d been a poker player, I’d have cleaned him out ages ago.
    The Corolla chugged its way through Oklahoma and at Oklahoma City I switched off the 35 to the 44, taking us to Wichita Falls, Texas. As drives went, it rated up there with watching the grass grow. Mike was no help. He kept his eyes closed as though asleep or attempting to absorb what he’d read and seen.
    Did I feel sorry for him? Almost. He may be a Catholic priest, but he’s also one tough son-of-a-gun. The only thing that had kept him from becoming an outlaw biker was his calling, his faith.
    He thought I didn’t know about his wild side, but thanks to the Internet, I had found out a lot about Mr. Mike Engel, the Catholic priest. No father, mother dead of a heroin overdose when he was nineteen, one older sister—whereabouts unknown—and a stint in the army at eighteen to avoid jail time for boosting a motorcycle. Hoofed it over the sands in Desert Storm, ended his time in service with a couple of years in Germany. Finally, the call to God.
    By all rights he should have exited the army a raving lunatic, hell-bent on wreaking havoc and drinking himself to death, but I guess he took to discipline in the service because he emerged straight as an arrow and left his past behind. Although he did keep a 1985 Harley FXWG 1340 Wide Glide in his garage that he’d been restoring for the past couple of years, a lingering reminder of his younger self.
    The rest is, as they say, is history.
    It ate at me, though, that I had let him come. Maybe the desire for company had overwhelmed common sense or maybe, better yet, he was the one man who might understand my whole sordid history. Hell, he helped me parse through the more difficult passages of the Bible (the Song of Solomon bored me to tears ) and explained the Americanisms and obscure references in East of Eden .
    “Where are we going, Jude?”
    Mike’s question derailed my train of thought. “West Texas.” He was still leaning back, envelope in his lap and eyes closed.
    “What’s in west Texas?”
    “A whole lot of nothing.”
    “Then why?”
    I grinned. “It’s what’s under that nothing that I want to get at.”
    “What’s under that nothing?” he asked patiently as Wichita Falls receded in my review mirror.
    There was no harm in spilling the beans. “After I established myself in Omaha, I traveled all over America to secure some spookers.”
    “Spookers?” Mikes eyes cracked open and he stared at the surrounding countryside without interest.
    “Stores of cash and false papers, just in case.”
    “In case you had to go on the lam?”
    I laughed. “Lam? Who talks like that? Really, Mike, you should stop watching television. Rots your brain, man.”
    His icy blues rolled up. “You still haven’t answered my question, smart aleck.”
    “Yes, in case I had to leg it. Passports, driver’s licenses, cash, the whole lot. Enough to disappear again and land comfortably on my feet.”
    Mike snorted. “How very CIA-like of you.”
    “You’ve read a bit of what my Family is like, Mike,” I said, voice cooling to just above absolute zero. “They would do, and spend, anything to find me, to get what I have.”
    “That silver thing of yours?”
    “Yes, the Silver. One of the most powerful magical artifacts in the world, second only to the Grail and the Arc of the Covenant.”
    The explosion of incredulity I half expected didn’t come. When I spared a glance from the road, it was to see Mike staring at me with eyes colder and more pitiless than the spaces between the stars.
    “What?”
    “The Arc of the Covenant? The Grail? Like the real ones, the ones Indiana Jones found?” The arctic tundra was warmer than his voice.
    “When I left the Family, I liquidated my assets and I’ve used a lot of that to find something that would help me destroy the Silver.”
    “What about throwing it in the Laurentian Abyss?”
    The vanishing point met my eyes as I answered.