He was, Soledad said, keeping most of what he stole cached in the tunnels, building his fortune slowly toward the night he would finally carry it all out at once and vanish for good, leaving behind only a convent that would spend years wondering, quietly and privately, where its little treasures had gone — and never once looking in its own walls.

It was the sedation that had been his mistake.

The theft alone might have gone undiscovered for a decade.

But drugging the sisters left marks, and left tape, and left three steady young women describing the same stolen nights, and greed had made him reckless enough to risk it.

He had wanted to rob the house faster than patience allowed, and in his hurry he had reached for the cloth, and the cloth had undone him.

Chapter 14 — The Cloth and the Tape