Angel's Breath (Fallen Angels - Book 2) (9 page)

There was a growing feeling of dread as I neared the gate. All it took was a simple phone call from David to warn Jorge, and the guard would stop me long enough for the authorities to show up and arrest me.

Because he hadn’t shot me, there was always the possibility that David wouldn’t call the cops on me.

I didn’t have any other choice but to chance it, so I didn’t break my stride until I was at the gate.

Jorge spotted me and stepped out of his booth. He offered a congenial but concerned smile as I approached.

“Not going to wait for Carl?” he asked.

I slowed to a stop and leaned over slightly, my hands propped on my thighs, while I caught my breath. I shook my head.

“I found my wallet,” I said, lying through the smile I manufactured for his benefit. “Someone must have emptied my locker. All my stuff was in a box in the change room.”

“Oh.” Jorge glanced toward the main road. “Your friend is long gone. Want me to call him for you?”

I waved off the suggestion and pointed to the bus stop across the street. “He’s got places to be. I’ll just wait for the Metro.”

He stared at me. “Something’s different about you. Where are your glasses?”

I struggled to think what to say. “Oh, I mostly just need them for reading,” I lied.

“All right.” Jorge reached back into the guard booth and pressed the button to open the gate. “Best of luck to you.”

“Thanks, Jorge.”

With a relief I could almost taste, I walked off the Kingsway Airfield and crossed the street. I was very proud of myself that I didn’t look back until I reached the bus stop.

If I was wrong, and David was going to call the cops, I would see them from a mile away.

As it turned out, I wasn’t wrong. A few minutes later, a large bus grumbled up to the stop in front of me. I got in, paid my fare, and made my way to the back. I looked out the window across the distance to the Worldwind Avionics administration building.

Perversely, I had almost hoped I had heard the telltale sounds of a police siren. That would have been a normal and expected conclusion to the events of the morning.

The fact that David had not called the authorities meant things were probably going to be much worse for me than going back to jail.

Chapter Eleven

With Kingsway Airfield
out of sight, my heart stopped pounding and my breathing evened.

This early in the morning, the bus was crowded with people heading to work, and it was standing room only. I kept thinking someone would pull out a cell phone any time now and report me to the police.

Fifteen minutes later, without any sign of a squad car or siren, my paranoia lessened enough for me to go over in my mind what had happened in David’s office.

I didn’t focus on the CEO’s murder, or that David and Al were behind it. I didn’t try to think about the setup and what that meant for Chuck and me, or that I suddenly didn’t need glasses.

I thought about that internal force that had burst out of me when Al grabbed my arm. What the hell had it been?

Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I knew it had come from me.
How was that possible?

I had heard an electric shock could throw someone several feet away, but static buildup couldn’t produce that much force, could it?

There was one other possibility, but I dismissed it from my thoughts as quickly as it developed. No, I wasn’t going to go down that path.

But was there any explanation other than paranormal that fit? How was it even possible? It defied logic and physics.

I had to think through it, if only so that I could laugh at myself later for even considering it.

I didn’t believe in the supernatural, Atlantis, black magic, or ghosts and goblins … yet, I couldn’t explain what had happened in that office this morning.

So, if it wasn’t some kind of supernatural event, what was it? Where did it come from? Did it have something to do with where we were, or was it something generated from within me?

If that last was the case, it only followed that I should be able to reproduce the effect.

I tried to recall all the sensations I felt in the moments before the power hit Al. I had felt an electric tingle in my skin and an incredible buildup of pressure within me. Unless it was an unconscious reaction, I didn’t know how it had started.

Staring at a scrap of a newspaper tucked underneath one of the benches, I
willed
it to move.

If anything, it was remarkable how much it
didn’t
move.

I took a breath and trained my eyes on the paper once more. If only to say later that I tried everything, I concentrated my hardest on making the piece of scrap move. To the exclusion of everyone else on the bus, I focused on it.

Just when I thought I couldn’t push myself any further, the paper lifted a few inches into the air and swirled two seats down. For a moment, I didn’t believe it had happened. I had the ability to move objects!

Then I noticed several other pieces of waste—a gum wrapper, an empty soft drink can, a pen—rolling in the general direction of the newspaper.

I looked up. Someone had cracked open a window several rows down, and I laughed silently when a gust of cool wind blew across my face.

* * *

After catching several connecting buses, I finally got off about a block away from Chuck and Stacy’s apartment.

I assumed he would head back to his place after leaving me, and I needed to let him know what had happened. Perhaps he had some idea what was going on, or could at least offer some suggestions, or maybe even help me figure out what my next step was.

As I neared the apartment, I saw my mother’s car parked out along the curb, and I quickened my stride. By the time I got to the walkway, I had broken into a light jog, and slowed down when I reached the steps at their front door.

I knocked and waited for a handful of seconds. When there was no response, I went to the basement window and peered inside, hoping none of the neighbors thought I was trying to break in.

Chuck’s laptop was gone from his desk, and I couldn’t see any sign of him.

I went back to the door and on a hunch tried it. The door was unlocked, and it swung open with the barest hint of a creak. That was odd.

“Chuck?” I called out. “You here?”

After a moment’s hesitation, I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. The main floor was deserted, and I quickly made for the basement, taking the steps two at a time on the way down.

There was no sign of Chuck, and both of his computers were gone, but other than that, nothing else seemed out of place.

My first thought was that, in light of the botched burglary attempt, he had decided to get rid of any incriminating evidence, on the off-chance that someone figured out what we had tried to do. There was no way Chuck could have known what had happened after I called him, so I guessed it was a precaution on his part. Maybe it was a standard procedure for him to destroy his computers periodically and replace them with new ones.

Stacy and Chuck shared a car between them, and Stacy had used it to drive to my place. As far as I knew, she and the car were still there. Wherever Chuck went, he must have either gone on foot, or gotten a lift.

Still, the front door was unlocked. I didn’t think Chuck was the kind of person to leave his house open like that. Maybe he was tired and had gone to bed, forgetting the door.

Just to be certain, I ran up the stairs to the top floor and checked the bedrooms. There was no one in the house except me.

A cold chill ran down my spine.

Was David responsible for Chuck’s disappearance? He had as much as admitted that he knew about Chuck hacking into the network, and laid the trap for him. Perhaps, I speculated, he had somehow traced Chuck to his house and prearranged to have evidence of the setup removed.

Was it possible David had had someone watching their apartment all along? I dashed to the window and looked outside, scanning up and down the street, but I didn’t see any suspicious vehicles.

I shook my head. I was jumping to conclusions. I was overtired, and the events of the morning had obviously pushed my ability to think logically. It didn’t make sense that David would go through all that trouble to get rid of Chuck and his computers, when, on the other hand, he had let me go even though I witnessed him murdering his father.

It was more likely that Chuck had decided to make himself scarce. Maybe Stacy would know where he was. If she didn’t, he was sure to contact her at some point.

I didn’t look forward to it, but I would have to explain to my mother and Stacy what Chuck and I had attempted. At the very least, I would have to get as far from Seattle as I could, or return to prison. I didn’t think there was a chance in hell that Stacy wouldn’t simply dump me on the spot once I told her what I had done. Nevertheless, I owed her the truth.

After a quick and fruitless look around for my car keys, I headed out of the apartment and down to the street. Grabbing the spare key I had put under the tire well with one of those magnetic containers, I hopped in my mother’s car and headed for home.

Despite all my efforts, my life was getting worse by the hour.

Chapter Twelve

Still feeling paranoid
, I slowed my mother’s car to a crawl as I approached my street, and kept a watch for anything out of the ordinary. The likelihood of David calling the police was next to none, but that didn’t negate the possibility that he might change his mind about letting me go, and send Al to finish the job.

I didn’t see any unfamiliar vehicles in the street, or silhouettes behind any trees. The neighborhood looked calm and clear.

Stacy’s car was still parked at the curb, and I felt my gut clench.

I had told her how I was trying to be a better person, but it was apparent that I wasn’t able to change the patterns of my life that had led to my incarceration.

On top of it all, I had a choice between going back to jail or running, and I had vowed never to set foot in prison again. There was no way Stacy would go on the run along with me, and that thought put a heaviness on my heart like nothing I had felt before.

Pulling into my driveway, I turned off the car and took the key out of the ignition, but I didn’t immediately get out.

I smacked the heels of my hands against the steering wheel. “Damn it!” I cursed aloud. I had made a royal mess of things.

My goal in prison was to learn to take ownership of my mistakes and make better choices. That was difficult to do when I kept making the same mistakes.

Weariness began to settle over me. Whether it was from the lack of sleep over the past two days, or from my body coming down off the adrenaline high of the morning’s events, I didn’t know. All I knew is that I would trade a significant amount of my worldly possessions for a few hours’ sleep.

Feeling defeated, I pulled myself out of the car and slowly walked up the path to the house, my feet dragging by the time I reached the door.

I remembered I had locked it when I left—an ingrained habit—and searched for the spare we kept under a flowerpot. Finding it, I slipped the key into the lock, but the light pressure I applied caused the door to open. I didn’t have to turn the key.

The hairs on the back of my head stood straight up. Under any other circumstances, I would not have thought anything was out of the ordinary. Perhaps someone had stepped out for a breath of fresh air with their morning coffee; maybe Stacy forgot something from her car and gone to retrieve it … there could have been a dozen other reasons for the door to be unlocked.

Today, however, everything was suspect.

I stood stock-still and strained my ears. I couldn’t hear anything, and that made me feel even more alarmed. My mother was an early riser. I couldn’t remember a day when she wasn’t awake at the crack of dawn. Sleeping in on weekends, to her, meant seven or eight o’clock at the latest. Even with the strain of the past two days, I couldn’t believe she wasn’t awake yet.

Trying my hardest to keep quiet, I pushed the door all the way open and took one step inside the foyer.

—And that’s when I heard the metallic click from beside me, where the closet was.

My first reaction was to run, but the voice accompanying the sound kept me from bolting. I felt the cold metal of a gun barrel resting gently against my temple.

“After the stunt you pulled on me this morning,” Al said, “if you so much as twitch, I’ll put a round in your head. You got me?”

I didn’t answer, but I did let out my breath in resignation.

“Good,” he said. “Now, very slowly and calmly close the door behind you and step into the living room.”

I didn’t feel that electric rush from this morning when Al had grabbed me, but my heart was thumping in my chest so hard I thought it might burst out.

Cautiously, I did as I was told, and took the three steps down the entrance hall to the archway of the living room, and looked in.

Both my mother and Stacy were awake and sitting on the couch next to one another. My mother was in her night robe, and her eyes were watery and puffy, either from sleep or from crying. She saw me, and her eyes widened briefly in hope.

Stacy gave me a look that was a cross between worry and anger, and I suddenly felt like the world’s biggest ass for putting them in this situation.

Behind them, holding guns, were Al’s men, Tom and Nick. Tom was tall, square-shouldered and square-jawed. Nick was on the shorter side, but he made up for it with his heavily muscled torso.

Like Al, they had the dead eyes and bland expressions of men who had seen too much violence in their lives. They were not amateurs at this sort of thing.

I was outmanned, outgunned, outmaneuvered, and I was running on less than five hours’ sleep.

“Richy, what have you done?” my mother asked, her words coming out small and helpless, rather than the sharp accusatory tone I was expecting.

I opened my mouth to say I was sorry, but Al cut me off.

“Shut up,” he said evenly. “Now, I want everyone to listen to me very carefully. I don’t want any misunderstandings. I don’t want anyone acting the hero. All of us are going to get ourselves together and go for a ride in a calm and orderly fashion.”