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a pleasant room with hardwood floors and cream walls.
    “There’s a three-bedroom apartment in the basement, along with an industrial-sized kitchen on the other side,” she added.
    For first time since walking through the gate, Wade turned and seemed to be seriously listening to her. “A three-bedroom apartment?”
    “Yes, the place was designed so the pastor and his family could live inside the church. But come upstairs with me first.”
    Without waiting for a response, she walked down the hall and up the stairs, emerging into another hallway, this one with a red-and-tan carpet like the sanctuary’s. Three doors lined each wall, and she flicked on the light and moved onward, opening doors as she went.
    “Most of these were Sunday school or meeting rooms, but they’re empty now. We could turn one of them into a room for Rose.”
    The moment those words left her mouth, she regretted them. Both Philip and Wade had agreed to come to Portland and see this mysterious “place” she had in mind, but so far, neither of them had expressed sharing her determination to find this woman who’d written asking for their help. And although she’d meant her outburst back at Maggie’s, that she’d find Rose alone if need be . . . the truth was she wanted Philip and Wade to be part of all this.
    Finding a proper safe house was the first step. But she needed to pull them in one step at a time.
    Wade and Philip walked the floor, looking inside all six of the bare rooms. Neither one responded to her mention of Rose.
    Finally Philip said, “Too many exterior windows. We’ll have to seal most of them up.”
    Wade stared at him. “You’re standing outside a Sunday school room, and that’s all you can say? ‘Too many windows’? Have you missed the irony here?”
    Philip shrugged and put his hand against the wall. “Old buildings are best. This is an église solide .”
    Eleisha had picked up enough French from him to know he’d called the place a sturdy church. Excitement began building inside her. He was clearly considering the idea. Regarding this part of her plan, though, she hadn’t worried too much about convincing Philip. Spending four weeks at Maggie’s was probably the longest stretch he’d stayed in one place in decades. Before becoming entangled with Eleisha, Philip had not been a cautious hunter—leaving bodies wherever he dropped them. And he’d hunted more often then he needed to, so he was constantly on the move. No, he would feel no hesitation to leave Maggie’s. He didn’t care where he lived as long as Eleisha and Wade lived with him.
    Wade was a different story. He didn’t like making decisions, and he was a big fan of “thinking things through”—which she viewed as a euphemism for sitting on the fence.
    She nearly ran back to the stairs. “Come on. Let’s see the basement.”
    Not waiting for them, she jumped off the bottom step into the hallway and jogged to the stairs leading down, emerging into a sitting room. Overhead lighting down here was more sparse, as the place must have contained lamps before. She moved to the apartment’s small kitchen and switched on a light. Then she walked back into the sitting room.
    Even dimly lit, the sitting room was lovely, with soft yellow walls and white molding around the floors and ceiling.
    When she turned around, Wade and Philip were standing quietly behind her. “It only has one bathroom, but the bedrooms are over there,” she said, pointing through an old-fashioned archway. “And there is a small family kitchen that way. The big congregation kitchen is on the far side of the building.”
    Wade cooked sometimes—when he didn’t order pizza—and Eleisha and Philip sometimes made tea. They could not eat or digest food, but their kind could absorb tea and even small amounts of wine.
    She stood tense, unable to read either of her companions. From the moment she had seen the photos, something about this place had called to her . . . as if calling her