Moving Target by J. A. Jance Page B

Anselm, and I’m happy to meet you. Not happy to meet under such difficult circumstances, of course,” she corrected quickly. “Your son must be very important. My bishop made special arrangements for me to come here from Arizona to look after him.”
    “Your bishop?” LeAnne asked, feeling stupid. “You mean you’re a nun?”
    “Yes,” Sister Anselm answered, smiling. “I’m a Sister of Providence. I’m also what’s known in the trade as a patient advocate.”
    LeAnne noticed something very comforting about that smile, but none of this made sense. Sister Anselm had come because a bishop had sent her? What bishop? And what’s a patient advocate?
    “I’m sorry,” Leanne said finally. “There must be some mistake. Our family isn’t Catholic.”
    “Oh no,” Sister Anselm disagreed. “There’s no mistake. None at all. What Bishop Gillespie told me on the phone when he was making the transportation arrangements was that one of his friends had called in a marker.”
    There were two hospital beds in the room, but only one was occupied. Sister Anselm went over to the other bed, retrieved the chair that was sitting there, and dragged it to Lance’s side of the room. Once it was in place, she sat down on one chair and motioned for LeAnne to take the second. “Tell me about your son,” the nun said.
    LeAnne glanced at her watch. “I can’t,” she said. “My five minutes are up.”
    “Let’s not worry about minutes just now,” Sister Anselm said. “I’m here to be of service to your son and to you. To do that, I need to know as much about him as possible.”
    LeAnne hesitated, but for only a moment, and then she settled gratefully into the offered chair. There, for the second time that morning, she found herself spilling out her tale of woe into the listening ears of a complete stranger.

O nce Leland disappeared into his room, Ali went to hers, stripped out of her clothing and into her jammies, and then returned to the sitting room. During tea, her phone had vibrated with several incoming-mail announcements, but she hadn’t wanted to open any of them while they were dealing with the aunties.
    In looking at her mail, she was pleased to see that the first message was from B. When she opened it with her iPhone, she saw a photo of B. smiling back at her. He was one of several businessmen in the photo, all of them wearing suits and smiles while posed in front of a window with a bite-sized view of Tokyo’s nighttime skyline showing in the background. Naturally, B. was head and shoulders above his counterparts. The accompanying message said:
    Last night’s dinner at the Crown restaurant in the Palace Hotel. I guess you can see why I’m standing in the middle of the back row .
    Love, B .
    The message seemed innocuous enough, but Ali’s instincts told her that something else was going on. Retrieving her thumb drive, she reopened the e-mail using her steganography program and password.After unzipping the enclosed file, she used her encryption key to unlock and read B.’s real message.
    After I got off the phone with you this morning, I still couldn’t sleep. This whole thing stinks. See additional accompanying files from Stuart. My gut tells me someone is after Lance Tucker, and just because he’s out of the juvie facility doesn’t mean he’s out of danger. I’m contacting Bishop Gillespie and asking for reinforcements .
    It didn’t take an encryption key for Ali to understand what B. meant. He was going to Bishop Francis Gillespie in Phoenix to ask for help from the bishop’s traveling patient advocate and emissary, Sister Anselm Becker. The idea that Bishop Gillespie would send Sister Anselm to look after the welfare of a seriously injured burn-unit patient wasn’t at all surprising. What was surprising was that he’d send her all the way to Texas.
    Years earlier, a burn unit was where Ali first met Sister Anselm, who was now a valued and trusted friend. In that instance, a woman named Madeline