Having sent Heather to spread the alarm and having discovered that Brendan Crowe’s briefcase no longer contained Sister Lucia’s handwritten account of the secrets of Fatima, Traeger did what both training and inclination prompted him to do. He vamoosed. The situation was not one in which to become embroiled, not until he had some clearer notion as to what had happened. He took Crowe’s briefcase with him, on impulse, to make sure there wasn’t some unzipped zipper that would refute his immediate judgment that the document was lost, and then he left. When he came into the corridor, he realized that he had registered the layout of the residence building instinctively. If the one who killed Crowe had gone out of the building, it would have been onto the walkway he and Heather had just come along. No, he would have gone away from the main building where there were people who might see him fleeing. Across the corridor from Crowe’s suite was the door of another, and at the end of the corridor were the pale gray doors of an elevator.
