Archangel Zach

by Lisa Hughey

  “The change?” Angelina snorted. “You sound like Grammy.”

  “The change, change of life, menopause, The Big M.” Janine sucked down a dirty martini, her collagen-enhanced lips perfectly outlined and slicked shiny in a shade of bold red that matched her toenails and her Prada bag. “It sucks.”

  “Is there a reason you’re treating that olive as if it were attached to a penis?”

  Janine practically shimmied in her seat, and surreptitiously eased her shoulders back. Somehow, with that one small move, her saline-enhanced breasts stuck out just a little bit more. “Eleven o’clock is a hottie.”

  Angelina started to shift.

  “Don’t look straight at him,” Janine hissed, and nothing on her face moved more than a millimeter.

  Angelina stroked the tiny sun spot, the shape like a target symbol with three circles that had recently appeared on the inside of her right wrist. “I may be old but I’m not stupid, Janine.”

  “He’s been checking out our table for the last twenty minutes.” Janine patted her hand gently. “And you’re not old. Look at me, fifty is the new forty, darling.”

  Why did she let herself be put through this every Tuesday night? Janine was on the hunt for a new husband. Angelina could have told Janine she wouldn’t find him here but she didn’t have the heart. And after all, what did she know? Wasn’t she almost divorced herself?

  Her sister was lonely. She wanted a companion. The Guerisse women did not have good luck with men. She wanted to ask why Janine tortured herself like this every week but she kept her mouth shut.

  “Do you think he’s looking at me or you?” Janine asked.

  There was no way in hel...eck he was checking Angelina out. She looked more like Janine’s spinster aunt than her younger sister. And it showed. Angelina knew it. So did Janine, although she was far too sensitive to mention the demise of Angelina’s appearance. Janine just tried to drag her to the plastic surgeon every chance she could.

  As if Retin-A, saline and Botox could magically morph Angelina back into an attractive woman. The problem was she didn’t feel attractive. She felt old, used up, and discarded by the roadside like a wadded up wrapper from McDonald’s.

  “He’s looking at you.” Angelina was way too young for him. “I’m too young to be starting menopause,” she quietly wailed.

  A tuxedoed piano player trilled an intricate opening on the baby grand while no one listened, the music layered over the muted flirting and discreet drinking as desperate people got quietly loaded.

  Janine took a healthy sip of martini, swallowed sultrily. She gave the guy an eye-popping profile. “Tell me about the dream.”

  “How’d you know I dreamed?”

  “Everyone dreams. It’s just a matter of whether you remember or not.” Janine aimed her laser focus at Angelina. Angelina figured she had ten minutes tops before he made his way over to them and she ended up driving home by herself. Again.

  Frankly, Angelina hated these girls’ night out. She loved Janine. But going out with her emphasized where Angelina would likely be two years into her divorce, if she followed in the footsteps of her sister and friends, primped, primed and prowling for action. Just the idea of adding ‘find a man’ to her to-do list was daunting.

  “Come on, give.”

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to share the dream but it was starting to freak her out. “I’m in a really hot place. It’s a white background all misty and sort of like I’m looking through chiffon. But it’s hot, my skin seems to sizzle and the air stings, you know how when the temp hits 105 and then you get in the hot pool and everything is hyper-sensitive?”

  “Hell?”

  “How should I know?” That wasn’t the part that freaked her out. She barely paid attention to the background. “I’m naked. But....” Not embarrassed about it.

  “But what?”

  “Like I look now.” Before Gary’s infidelity, she could have given Janine a run for her money even without the cosmetic enhancements. Now, she wouldn’t even be caught dead in a one-piece swimsuit, and Spanx was her new best friend.

  “So far, so good.” Janine grinned wickedly. “Any sex?”

  Heat flooded through her, as if she were right in the middle of one of the damn dreams. Her face felt like she’d spent too long at the pool and forgotten sunscreen. “Uh, yeah.”

  “Give me details.”

  “It’s always the same,” she whispered. The guy was gorgeous. Wasn’t that the way of dreams? “He’s tall, at least six-five. Lots of muscles, but not bulging, more sleek and solid. He’s dark. And he has the most beautiful, tortured--”

  “Get to the good part.” Janine sucked the swizzle between her lips, never forgetting that she was putting on a show for the guy in the corner. “Is he naked too?”

  “Eyes. He has the most beautiful, tortured eyes. All smoke and--”

  Janine gave her the death stare.

  Angelina relented. “Yes, he’s naked too.”

  And the things he did to her, to her body, were sinful and decadent and reverent all at the same time.

  “It’s pretty one-sided.”

  “Does he screw you blind?”

  She squirmed in her seat. Arousal flooded parts that hadn’t seen a man in months. “No. We don’t get that far.”

  “Well, damn.”

  “He just...worships me, over and over with his hands and his mouth.” Eyes closed in reverence. Of course, she didn’t know why she thought he was being reverent. It was weird. She knew she was dreaming, remembered when she woke up. She never remembered her dreams. “Until he’s just about to...you know.”

  “Jesus, Ange, it’s a wonder you ever had children.”

  She ignored Janine, caught up in the sheer eroticism of the memory. The slick glide of his tongue along the inside of her thigh, the slightly rough skim of his fingertips along her breasts before he molded and cupped, the brush of his hair against her collarbone as he closed his mouth over her nipple, the wiry curls and heavy, solid weight of his sex against her softer, swollen and ready body. The heady scent of ancient herbs smoldered in the air. The whole experience was extremely sensual and erotic, right until he opened his eyes.

  He presses a kiss to the sunspot and bolts of fire shoot through her body. And then....

  “He opens his eyes and he looks down at me with sheer horror, as if he’s committed the most grievous sin on earth, in heaven or hell...and then I wake up, sweating like a pig.”

  And I think, great, even a dream guy doesn’t want me.

  “That’s just what that prick Gary did to you, honey. You’ll get over it. You need to find someone else. Someone to replace the dream and Gary and then you’ll feel better.” Janine frowned as much as she could with the botulism toxin freezing her forehead. “You don’t want to be lonely.”

  She was wrong. That was exactly what Angelina wanted. To be alone. She had too many responsibilities as it was. The care and feeding of a man would be just one more.

  Janine offered up her target du jour for her. “You want eleven o’clock?”

  “No.” Angelina hesitated. “You don’t want him either. You need someone who wants you, not just your looks.”

  Janine pulled back into herself.

  “Thank you, though.” That’s what Janine didn’t get. Angelina didn’t want some anonymous face and body. She didn’t want anybody except maybe the dream guy.

  “Forget the dream. You need a real man.”

  Angelina looked around. “The guy in my dream isn’t real either. I mean, he really isn’t a guy.”

  “What?” Her perfectly shadowed eyes rounded. “What’s that mean, it’s a woman?”

  “No! Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But....” Angelina eyed the scant distance between tables and hoped no one was actually eavesdropping on their conversation, knowing she was crazy. She had to be. She rubbed the spot with her thumb. “He’s got wings.”

  Excerpt from Stone Cold Heart

  Family Stone #1 Jess<
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  In the early evening dusk, Jess Stone lay on her stomach in the twenty foot high rubble of a demolished church, underneath a black and gray city-scape tarp intended to camouflage her position. A sharp-edged chunk of debris dug into her lower rib cage, the scope of the Remington M24 cool and familiar against her face.

  Her standard uniform of jeans, running shoes, and plain black t-shirt rendered her just another anonymous and transient relief worker...which she was actually. A black baseball cap hid her distinctive multi-hued blonde hair. The paper mask kept out the contaminated dust from the destroyed buildings but did little to stem the overwhelming stench of decaying bodies.

  Tanks rumbled through the destroyed coastal town, their public address system blasting warnings for citizens to stay in their homes, curfew was in effect. The threat was a joke. Ninety percent of the people in the town didn't have homes left. Those who did were terrified to go back inside. In the fetid, humidity choked air, the tent cities erected in the parks and on the beach were seething masses of the injured and shock struck.

  The substandard construction in the small country had never been enough to withstand the angry might of Mother Nature. Buildings had toppled like a stack of Tinkertoys, and left crumbling cement walls with twisted rebar poking out of the jagged ruins like a skeletal hand.

  Trapped in the concrete pieces that littered the ground, the heat from the tropical day seared through her thin sturdy clothing. The stank of the raw sewage that ran in rivulets through the streets overpowered the salt-laden breeze off the ocean. People, covered with the grit of pulverized buildings and humans, shuffled along with blank vacant stares. Two weeks after the quake, still in shock, their lives decimated first by nature and then kicked and beaten by the ineffectiveness of a flawed relief system. Hundreds of humanitarian agencies had descended on the population duplicating efforts and yet completely missing the need in other areas. The government was ostensibly trying to coordinate the effort, however the mass chaos was undeniable.

  Through the Leupold Ultra M3 fixed power sight, she tracked the movements of Henri LeRoy, leader of this tiny island nation, violator of human rights and dignity, and all around poor excuse for a human being.

  Sickness roiled in her stomach. The power bar she’d eaten for breakfast threatened to add to the rubble pile as she tried to figure out how in the hell she'd ended up here. Back behind a sniper rifle with the power over life and death trembling in the muscles of her right trigger finger.

  Dammit. When she'd decided to take control of her life and quit the FBI, she hadn't wanted to do this anymore.

  She'd wanted to be a simple relief worker. She'd wanted to connect with her family, brothers and mother.

  But that bitch, fate, had slapped her upside the head and now here she was, where she'd sworn she never wanted to be again. Looking through the scope of a high-powered rifle, with a crystal clear head shot and a murky sense of right and wrong.

  With little fanfare, she could blast LeRoy's brain matter all over the silk-covered walls and the antique Louis the XIV scrolled chairs in the receiving room of his ridiculously elegant weekend mansion which, since built properly, had sustained minimal damage. Her muscles twitched with the knowledge and acceptance that with one slow slide of her finger, the despotic, amoral leader would be history.

  Jess didn't want to kill him, didn't want to be directly responsible for another death. She didn't want this choice. She’d given up this kind of life. She'd left the FBI after a series of high stress cases to get away from the doubt and guilt that had crippled her. To make her own decisions about right and wrong rather than carry out the commands of her bosses.

  But if Henri LeRoy lived, chances were astronomical that many other citizens would die.

  And yeah, she'd probably been manipulated into this. Actually no probably about it. Assassination had not been listed as one of her duties when she'd joined Global Humanitarian Relief. Damn her brother anyway.

  But now all she could do was lay here in the desecrated remains of the former church and hope that her special skill set wouldn't be needed.

  Fortunately, she was secondary backup.

  And unless several things went horribly wrong, she would break down her weapon, get back to the relief aid encampment, back to actually helping people, and be out of here without ever firing her rifle.

  Then she could hand out seed packets to her heart's content and figure out what she was going to do next. If she'd stay with GHR and her brothers, or go. First, she had to get through the next two hours.

  But if something did go wrong...she prayed that if she was called upon, she could make the right decision. Make the shot. Cold zero.