Angel of Death

by S. Massery

  “If you could,” I murmur.

  He puts his car back in drive. I watch him go through the rearview mirror.

  The sun is setting by the time I type in my code and head back down to the house. The nurse frowns at me when I walk in, then points to one of the back bedrooms.

  I push the door open slowly, not surprised that she’s asleep again. There’s gauze taped to her arm from where they must’ve taken blood. Even in her sleep, the dark circles under her eyes give her an exhausted appearance.

  I close the door. Kick my shoes off.

  I crawl into bed behind her and tug her close to me. The peace and agony that come over me at the same time almost rip me in half. I kissed her earlier and could feel her hatred.

  She turns in my arms, her eyes fluttering but not opening. I kiss her forehead. Her eyelids. Her nose. She tilts her head up and gives me her lips. Her hand slides up, around my neck and into my hair, pressing me down to her.

  Her lips part, and her tongue touches the seam of my lips. I open for her, deepening the kiss. She pulls me on top of her. We stay like that, exploring each other’s lips, until I feel something change. Her enthusiasm lessens. Her breathing is more labored. She touches my cheek when I stop.

  I sweep her hair off her shoulder and kiss her neck. “Sleep, Hadley,” I whisper.

  Her beautiful blue eyes pin me in place. “Make leaving worth it.”

  “I will,” I promise.

  I savor the time we lie there. Her breathing evens out. The room darkens. The night crawls by, and I can’t bring myself to close my eyes. I etch this into my memory, knowing I have to leave soon. Knowing the seconds tick past, and each one feels faster than the last.

  Eventually, the sky lightens. I extract myself from Hadley slowly, inch by inch, and a brutally cold feeling in my chest replaces the warmth she gave me.

  Without looking back, I pick up my shoes and leave the room. Faster is better, like ripping off a Band-Aid. That’s how it usually goes, anyway.

  Once we land back in Paris, Smith comes down the plane aisle and sits across from me. He leans back and kicks his feet up on the table between us. I watch him with blank eyes. Something fell away from my soul when I left Hadley. It was like a string in my heart was pulled taut, and the farther away I got, the more it stretched—until something in me snapped.

  “You didn’t ask where I stored the package,” he says. “It’s under your seat.”

  “Great.”

  “I thought you might have changed your mind about staying with her,” he says. “No?”

  “No.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I narrow my eyes. “I’m going to hunt down the son of a bitch and put a bullet between his eyes.”

  Smith turns away. “Sounds about right. I have some paperwork to do. Holler if you need me.”

  He stands and disappears into the cockpit, and I finally get up. I open the hidden hatch in my seat, pulling out a large duffle bag. Before I close everything up, I put it on the table and unzip it, checking the contents. Then I lock the hatch and leave the plane, the bag in hand.

  Dalton leans against a car. His eyes are covered by sunglasses, but his eyebrows shoot up when he sees me. I contemplate flipping him off. He shakes his head and motions for me to get in the car.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask once we’re both seated.

  “You look like shit,” he answers. “No, you look like shit that was stomped on and tracked through the house. A disaster. Jesus.”

  I shrug. Paris always felt like home. I can’t help but note how it now feels off. “I thought you went back to Miami. Again.”

  “Is she going to forgive you?”

  I grit my teeth. “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, well, put it on the back burner. Finding that son of a bitch is our top priority.” He pulls a cigarette out of his breast pocket, along with a lighter, and manages to do it one-handed. While driving.

  We roll down the windows, and he exhales a stream of smoke.

  “Is there any news?” I ask.

  His lips flatten into a line for a moment. “I sent Shade home. He was doing more harm than good. Took his kid’s car with him, because God only knows it would get traced back to us.”

  I grunt.

  “Mason took a look at his systems while he was distracted. There isn’t usually a trail in the dark web. Something about writing a message on an Etch A Sketch. You can shake it, but if the system is old, a faint layer remains. That’s how Mason explained it anyway.”

  I look over at him, and the fucker is smiling. “You’re going to make me ask?”

  “Whoever responded put a Trojan horse in the message. Basically, as soon as Shade opened it, it created a back door into Shade’s whole network.”

  “They could see whatever Shade was doing… Including what passports he was making?”

  Dalton nods. “Apparently. You haven’t flashed that thing around, have you?”

  I shake my head. “No need. Did he know?”

  “You want to just call up Mason and ask all of these questions? He only told me so much.” Dalton shakes his head and throws the cigarette out the window.

  He tosses me his phone, and I call Mason.

  It rings for ten seconds before he answers. “More questions? It wasn’t rocket science,” he says.

  “It’s Griff,” I say.

  Mason laughs. “You ask too many questions for D to answer?”

  “Yep.”

  I fill him in on what I know, and Mason chuckles.

  “Shade is good for a few things, and a few things only. Keeping sharks out of his business, when he drops a fucking chum bucket in the ocean, is not a specialty of his.”

  “But it’s yours.” Computer stuff always confuses the fuck out of me. “Did you help him?”

  “No,” he says. I can hear the frown in his voice. “I wiped our information from his hard drive and left his ass to rot with the consequences.”

  “We need a plan,” I say. “We’re floundering around. Who do we have?”

  “Zach is tied up with work, Jackson is hopping islands with Delia. Spike and I are tied up with something here, unfortunately. How’s Hadley?”

  “She’s fine,” I say.

  Dalton shakes his head. “She didn’t lay into you for dropping her off in the middle of nowhere? She’s kind of a saint… and you’re totally fucking with her head.”

  “When did you get so buddy-buddy with her?” I growl.

  He shrugs. “When did you get so close to Delia? Like calls to like and all that shit.”

  Mason snorts. “You and Hadley, D? Similar? No fucking way.”

  “It’s true.” Dalton parks the car, and we both climb out, making our way into the apartment. He lights a new cigarette right there in the middle of my living room, taking a long drag and blowing out smoke rings. Once they dissipate, he says, “We both try not to let people in.”

  “And you let her in?” My mouth is unhinged.

  Dalton is the most reclusive man I’ve ever met. And yet Hadley—my Hadley—was able to slip past his guard. A guard, I’d like to point out, that took us almost eight months to break down. I fight against jealousy.

  “She told me it was probably because she was dying.” He grins. “She said she was a no-commitment friendship.”

  Mason snorts.

  I turn away, unwilling to let him see the pain that flashes through me. “She’s safe,” I say to the wall. “She’s safe, she’s getting treatment, she’ll be as good as new—”

  “You know that’s bullshit,” Dalton says. “My aunt was an ER nurse. She was always going on about how you could never guarantee success with cancer. Sometimes it just wins the battle.”

  I scowl at him. The urge to punch something resurfaces.

  “And you left her there. Alone.”

  “Enough with the fucking guilt trip,” I snap. “She’s in paradise. Anything she could want—”

  “Except, she probably wants you, ri
ght? She probably wants someone she trusts beside her.”

  I grit my teeth. “Once we finish this, I’ll go back for her.”

  “You fucking better,” Dalton says.

  Mason sighs. “Okay, focus. What’s the game plan?”

  “First, we find Santos,” I say. “And we figure out why he’s after me, specifically. There has to be something.”

  “I doubt that information is just anywhere,” Mason says.

  “Scrawled in his diary, maybe,” Dalton mutters.

  “You’re supposed to be—” I lower my voice. “Help me.”

  “We’re trying,” Dalton says, “but you’re being a dick.”

  “Which is surprising,” Mason says through the phone. “Usually Dalton’s the dick out of the two of you.”

  “I’m not,” Dalton says.

  “I cannot deal with both of you.” I cross to my room, sliding a jacket on. I leave the phone on the counter, next to Dalton. When I reemerge, I say, “Let me know if you find something. I’m going to do things the old-fashioned way.”

  They don’t understand—I’d give anything to end this and go back to Hadley. The guilt is already nearly unbearable. Any longer, and I might burst. The problem is, I don’t have any more tricks up my sleeves.

  Part II

  19

  HADLEY

  Day 3.

  I kindly refrain from throwing my mug of tea at the wall like I want. This house isn’t my home to break. And it would appear, this body isn’t mine to break either.

  They run tests, then we begin chemotherapy. Once my immune system is sufficiently shot, I will be given a bone marrow transplant through a central line. Dr. Shaw warns me that the preservative in the stem cells will cause nausea, headaches, and/or shortness of breath.

  I scour my bag for my phone. I scour the entire place while I still have the energy to do so. One of the nurses tells me there’s no internet. No cell signal. No telephones. Any plan of calling my parents, calling Leigh, reaching literally anyone on the planet… dissolves into dust.

  * * *

  Day 10.

  The nurses are cold, the doctor is colder. No, that’s not true. They’re warm and cheerful, if not a little pragmatic, and it’s me who’s cold. I lie in bed—it’s smells like bitterness and sweat—and let them poke needles into my skin and drip poison into my veins.

  I hate every second of it.

  I try to leave the house, but the nurses stop me. My immune system is too weak from the chemo, too vulnerable to leave this environment and risk getting sick. When they tell me that, I press my forehead against the door and practice self-control.

  * * *

  Day 15.

  The nausea is the worst part. There’s a bucket by my bed, because sometimes it comes out of nowhere. Making it to the bathroom is out of the question.

  The island is a prison. The house is a prison. The bed is a prison.

  I yell until my throat hurts, cursing the day I ever handed Griffin Anders any piece of my heart. He twisted it into this, the exact thing I was afraid of. My hate bounces between him and the cancer.

  * * *

  Day 19.

  A new nurse starts, and she brings books with her.

  She’s the youngest of the three—closer to my age, anyway. The other two are older, more motherly. She’s… I don’t know. She’s a puzzle I have yet to figure out.

  At any rate, she breathes newness into a stale situation. Her arrival heralds the a turning point for me: the bone marrow transplant is working, the preservatives that have been making me horribly sick are flushing out of my system, and my energy is returning.

  My hate isn’t so volatile. When I think of Griffin now, part of my heart aches. Confusion takes up the rest of my focus.

  The nurse becomes more of a friend, and the loneliness of the past month filters away.

  And did I mention books? They’re so much better than movies.

  * * *

  Day 27.

  “Up early,” Elizabeth, my now-favorite nurse, comments. “How are you doing?”

  “Peachy,” I mumble. “The doc said I was doing better, so there’s that.”

  Apparently, leukemia can migrate. When I first arrived, they did a million different scans and blood tests. My doctor in New York had sent my records to them, so they already knew exactly what they were dealing with. However, cancer progresses quickly. The doctor wanted to make sure nothing changed.

  I started rounds of drugs to help the growth of those stem cells, and had my blood drawn daily to check my numbers. I was watched almost constantly. It was an exhausting, eternal twenty-six days, but things are looking up.

  For example, I’ve lost the skin-and-bones appearance I sported in the week leading up to Griffin dumping me here. My eyes aren’t sinking into my skull anymore. My ribs have some padding on them.

  “I was thinking we should get out of the house,” Elizabeth says, jerking me from my thoughts. “Take a walk.”

  I brighten. I haven’t been allowed past the walled-in garden. The ocean has been a stone’s throw from the house, and yet the closest I’ve gotten to feeling it has been tasting the salt on my lips, carried to me by the wind. “The beach?”

  She grins. “Where else?”

  “Are we allowed?”

  Elizabeth scoffs. “Yes, Hadley. We’re totally allowed. You just shouldn’t go without one of the nurses in case something happens.”

  “Something exciting might happen on this small island? Doubt it.”

  The other nurses bring me stories. One grew up here. One, along with the doctor, came to the island for me. They live in a villa not five minutes from this one. Unlike me, they get to go into town. Socialize.

  “You have a compromised immune system,” Elizabeth says, like she’s a mind reader. “You can’t blame Dr. Shaw for asking you to remain at the house.”

  “I guess not.”

  “How are you feeling?” She points to a chair.

  I sink into it as she pulls on gloves.

  “The nausea is going away,” I say.

  She inspects my chest where the port was. They removed it last week, and it developed a nasty infection. She cleans it, and I force a smile.

  “I’m gaining weight back, too.”

  “I’m so pleased,” Elizabeth says. She finishes and bandages it in silence, and then she claps. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  I look down at my white t-shirt and linen shorts. “I don’t need shoes, right?”

  She laughs. “What’s the point of walking on the beach if you’re wearing shoes?”

  I decide I definitely like her. I follow her out the back door and down the three wide steps into the garden. She unlocks the gate door that has been my only good view of the ocean, and swings it open.

  “After you, m’lady.” She bows.

  “Why thank you, ma’am,” I respond. I giggle and step over the threshold. There’s a path through the dunes, and then we’re on the sand. My body relaxes. “Now this is therapeutic.”

  “I’m glad,” she murmurs. She hoists a backpack up on her shoulders and points down the shoreline. “Let’s go this way.”

  “What’s in the bag?”

  “Just supplies in case you pass out on me. A water bottle. An IV kit with sterilization. A blanket if we want to sit. Some granola bars.”

  I glance over at her. Her dark hair is in a tight bun, but the wind has freed some strands. She’s almost exactly the kind of beautiful I’d expect on an island like this, except her tan skin probably fades to pale in the winter. She’s not native to the island—that’s apparent by the American accent.

  “You came prepared,” I say eventually.

  A wave surges up and touches my toes, and I jump. There are still remnants of my time with Griffin etched into my brain. No, that’s a lie. Not remnants. The full memories are there, hot as the sun, even as I try to keep them locked away. Being out of the house gives me an unexpected vulnerable feeling.

  “I thought about it last
night,” she says. “But I wasn’t going to say anything if you were unwell.”

  “I would’ve hated to miss this,” I admit.

  We veer toward the water, and it rushes over our feet. It’s hard to imagine that I put my feet in this same ocean. I swam in it as a kid. Just… thousands of miles away.

  “This is amazing.”

  “Hadley?”

  I glance over at Elizabeth, whose focus is on a man walking toward us. He smiles at Elizabeth, and I automatically take a step backward.

  “Who is that?” I ask.

  She turns back to me, her smile falling off. “A friend,” she says. “He won’t hurt you.”

  I snort. The abrasiveness of it wakes up some of my fear that’s been sleeping in my chest. I try to breathe, but the air just won’t come. I press the heel of my palm over my heart. “I don’t believe you.”

  Her eyes narrow. “What are you feeling?”

  “Just—” I can barely breathe.

  She comes forward and grabs my shoulders, pulling me farther up the beach. “Panic attack,” she says.

  We both kneel, and she rubs her hand up and down my arm.

  She glances over her shoulder toward the man. “You’re freaking her out.”

  “I’m not here to hurt you, Hadley.” He gets closer, pushing right in next to Elizabeth, and goes to his knees in front of me. “I’m actually a friend.”

  I shake my head. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “You don’t.”

  Elizabeth grunts. “You could prove it.”

  “Are you on her side?”

  She rolls her eyes. “This is clearly your first time dealing with a woman.”

  “Besides you,” he says. “My charm worked on you.”

  “I think my charm worked on you,” she answers.

  “Someone please tell me what the hell is going on,” I snap.

  He sighs. “I can’t tell you much, Hadley. But I can tell you that I knew Griffin a long time ago. We were friends once.”