Angel

by Victoria Johns

  Placing the photos down carefully, I picked up a newspaper clipping. I was desperate to sit and read them all, to see if I could piece together all the oddments stored in the chest.

  As I went to place the pile back, one drifted to the floor. Its headline read, ‘Youth sentenced in manslaughter case’. As I scanned the opening paragraph, Declan’s name jumped out at me and my hands shook as I read the age-weary scrap of paper. It detailed how Declan had been sentenced for killing his father, Patrick Foster. Declan, who had been nearly seventeen at the time, was tried and convicted as an adult, receiving three years for the crime of manslaughter. It said that during a fight, Declan had seemingly lost control and rained a number of ‘severe, death resulting’ blows to his father’s skull. Patrick Foster never regained consciousness. The prosecution argued that the act was pre-meditated as he let his father get drunk before beginning to challenge him. Their case relied upon the jury believing that Declan should have restrained his anger, that after years of abuse, he’d chosen his moment and sought the much-needed revenge the apparent troublesome teen desired. Declan’s defense claimed the young boy had finally fought back after a history of physical and mental attacks, that things had simply got out of control. The news story finished with, ‘In a twist of luck for Mr. Declan Foster, Judge Ames, involved in many local charities for victims of domestic abuse, dismissed the prosecution’s calls for a retrial on the grounds of pre-meditated murder and sentenced him to three years in federal prison. In an interview with the prosecution after the trial, they claimed that Mr. Declan Foster smiled in relief at getting away with his crime as he was led off in handcuffs, leaving friends and relatives of Mr. Patrick Foster grief stricken at the injustice.

  I couldn’t help the snort of disbelief that left me. Declan’s dad had been a horrible man and to my knowledge he didn’t have many friends and Declan was his only family. Many nights, after my mom had passed out, I’d let Declan come and share my cot in our trailer. He’d appear crying after being hit for no reason, trying to hide both his suffering and the physical bruises. The sorrow I’d felt earlier at seeing a miserable Throttle in the photos was nothing compared to what I felt for Declan. I’d seen the real damage of an unhappy home and in my eyes, Declan’s dad hadn’t suffered enough before he died. Slipping off into a coma was far too easy for him. A little pain and conscious suffering would have been my preference every time.

  I swiped away a stray tear that had dribbled down my cheek. Thinking of Declan and how we were raised brought out real emotion in me, emotions that weren’t there when I thought about Throttle and his circumstances because I’d lived through it with Declan. I knew that soon I was going to have to be honest with him. He was a friend, a very good one, but that was all I felt for him and I couldn’t keep leading him on.

  Before my brain got sucked into thinking about the past, I shoved all the papers back, unable to understand why Throttle had the newspaper clipping about Declan, but starting to understand why he hated the Carnal’s President so much.

  The only thing left in the chest that I hadn’t picked through was the cardboard box in the corner. Placing the clippings back, I easily pulled back a flap on the box, as the sticky tape holding it together had long since turned stiff and yellow and lost its adhesive. Inside was a jar and as soon as I put my hands around it, I realized it was too ornate to be considered just a jar. It was more of an urn. When I got the weighty thing out of the box and into the open space of the chest, I saw a small, sad sticky label that simply said:

  Patrick Foster

  Seeing those words caused me to fumble and nearly drop the damn thing in shock. I shook it gently and felt a mass like talcum powder lump back and to, to each side.

  I was holding Declan’s dad’s ashes in my hands.

  Convinced I was wrong because that was just way too creepy, I shook the urn again and couldn’t deny that I knew it was powder shifting from side to side. Now I was really confused, and a little bit grossed out. Breaking into the bunker had given me so many questions that I knew I couldn’t ask Throttle. Putting the urn back, I went back to the pictures and if my assumptions were correct, Throttle wasn’t as old as I thought. There was a connection between Throttle and Declan and I knew it was huge.

  Huge and scary.

  I wanted to carry on searching the information, but I knew I was pushing my luck. Putting everything back as I had found it, I re-constructed the door handle, praying that my shaking hands managed it before Throttle returned and caught me.

  “You know what, I’ve no idea what your surname is?”

  We were sat on the deck eating grilled shrimp and salad when I launched the seemingly out of the blue question. I watched as he stopped eating and frowned in my direction while I tried to feign casual inquisitiveness.

  I’d spent days going to the little shed and dissecting all the information I could find. It was like every little step of discovery I took came with equal parts confusion and secrets.

  “I know.” He went back to eating, just like that.

  Okay, so this was how it was going to be. Like pulling teeth. Obviously, men didn’t understand that the fastest way to shut us up and stop us asking more questions was to just answer, not make us more intrigued.

  I was determined to get to the bottom of all this and there was only one way to get him to tell me what I wanted to know. I set about my task and prayed my eyes didn’t stray in the direction of his information bunker and give me away.

  “Where are you from?

  “Why?”

  “Just taking an interest.”

  “Why?” I began to fear that my face had ratted me out. I watched as he drank his beer and wondered why he felt the need to deflect the questions before he reached for a hot dog and busied his mouth with food rather than answers.

  “Look, we’re stuck here. You know everything about me and I know nothing about you. I’m female. It’s in my DNA to be nosy.”

  “Shit, sounds like I’m one step away from being water boarded.” Throttle’s joke put us back on easy terms, so I carried on.

  “Why don’t you have a girlfriend or, you know, a life? How can you just up sticks and stay here with me?”

  “Do I still need to spell it out? I don’t have a girlfriend because there’s only one girl I’ve ever wanted.”

  I’d noticed that over the last few days, he’d upped the rate of compliments in my direction and now more than ever, dropped hints about us being together. For some reason, he felt the time was right and he was brave enough to go there whereas I just felt more confused. All the puzzle pieces were strewn everywhere and I couldn’t figure out how to slot them together. The only thing they did was cement my disenchantment with him further. The one point in this whole mess I was sure of was that he was not the guy for me.

  “So, any brothers to go with you and your sister?”

  My question made him pause. “Sister?” He looked at me oddly until he remembered I was wearing his sister’s clothes, or so he said. His little slip made him panic. I could tell this time he knew I’d caught him in a fib and his jaw went solid before he slammed the plate that was resting on his chest down on the table. As soon as I asked the question, I knew it could trigger some of the missing pieces. His reaction all but confirmed it, and even if I hadn’t discovered all the other stuff he was hiding, this would have been obvious.

  “I mean, I was an only child. I had only one friend in my life and then I came to live with the Sentinels,” I blurted, desperate to rationalize my prying.

  “Two brothers. One who cared for me and one who didn’t know I existed at all.”

  Bingo! There it was. I was completely sure of it. I had to stop the smile of satisfaction giving me away. “At least you had a family. I never knew my biological dad, and my mom… Well, I guess you know. What about your folks?”

  “Dead. This is depressing. Talking of dads, I spoke to yours today.”

  Disappointingly, Throttle knew how to play me. I was like a magpie distract
ed by something shiny, but I couldn’t help myself from seizing upon the words. “What’s happening?” I begged, praying he was in the mood to share.

  “Things are coming to a head.”

  “You mean I can go home soon?”

  “Anyone would think my company was dull.”

  “Is Wolf still on the scene?” It was the first time I’d mentioned him in a while and it just kind of slipped out. But as the puzzle was coming together, it was harder to ignore the part I was convinced he played in all this. I also knew that when I pushed Throttle’s buttons and got him a little bit riled up, he slipped and gave me information.

  “Really?” he said in a quiet, yet stern voice. “I’m the one keeping you safe. That fucker is the one who’s caused this shit in your life, our world, and you show him concern?”

  “I… uh… just…”

  “You what?” Throttle’s whole demeanor had changed. It was like I’d opened the gates to that wild animal again and he was there, waiting to pounce. This was different to how he usually got when I pushed him. There was an unleashed anger there that was a little bit unsettling.

  “Forget it. You’re right,” I backtracked quickly.

  His shoulders visibly relaxed when I backed down and I realized this was the reason I knew we’d never have a future. He was too quick to succumb to pleasing me, and there was no fun in that. It was predictable, and predictable became boring. And to me, boring was always uninteresting in the end.

  I really needed to get back home. Whatever my family was protecting me from couldn’t be this bad. Staying here and riding it out was a form of torture in itself. It was like they were trying to bore me to death.

  “I think I should go home—fight alongside my family, our family.”

  Stupidly, with that one admission, I’d regressed all the steps I’d just taken to get him to calm down. Throttle was back to checking his anger and taking in calming deep breaths while looking at the heavens for divine intervention.

  “I’m heading into town. Some space will help you see just how fucking ludicrous that idea is.” As he stood up, he glared at me. “Hopefully, by the time I get back, I won’t have to slap some sense into you.”

  He grabbed the plate he’d been eating off as he walked away and threw it in the sink. I heard the porcelain crack. I decided it was wise to let him leave, so I didn’t move a muscle until his motorcycle was well on its way. Grabbing the screwdriver, I bolted for the hideaway. Once again, I cursed my inability to pick a lock and vowed to rectify this lacking skill when I got home so I didn’t need to wrestle with door handles the next time I chose to break and enter somewhere. With the last screw undone, I panicked as sense kicked in. I realized he’d never disappeared at this time of day before and had no idea how long he would be gone. The risk I was taking at the moment was too much. I was too on edge and before I could talk myself out of it, I replaced all the screws but stored the screwdriver beneath a nearby rock instead. Needing to calm down, I went to watch the sunset by the lake instead.

  Throttle didn’t come home before I went to bed. I should have worried that he could be hurt and I was marooned out here all alone in a cabin no one knew about, but I wasn’t. I was happy for space from him and pissed that I’d abandoned my earlier nosy parker mission for fear of getting caught.

  Whatever was going on with the Carnals, Sentinels, and Davis, one thing was clear: time was running out and I couldn’t afford to bypass any more opportunities to solve the puzzle.

  I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep when the noise of an engine jolted me awake. The thing was, though, it wasn’t a Harley. I figured I was wrong, so I sat up in bed, trying to see if I was dreaming, but it was definitely a car engine that had stopped in the forest. It didn’t hang around long before the sound I was expecting—Throttle’s motorcycle—came riding up to the cottage and parked.

  I waited for a few minutes before I went in search of my baby-sitter. When I found him in the kitchen, he had his back to me and was drinking whisky from an open bottle.

  “Are you okay?”

  His drinking arm action stalled when I interrupted before he continued and threw another slugfull back. “Go back to bed.”

  “Did I just hear a car?”

  “Please, just go back to bed.” His voice was tired and disconnected.

  “I thought no one knew about this place,” I persisted.

  “For once, just do as you’re fucking told.”

  “Don’t you speak to me like that!”

  In a blur of movement, he grabbed the nearly full bottle of whisky and hurled it against the wall. The action made me yelp and jump all at the same time. When he turned around and looked at me, his face and cheek were bleeding. Whoever had hit him had seen to it that he’d also have a puffy bruised eye socket. “What happened?”

  Throttle shook his head and looked to the sky again for inspiration or intervention. “For once, Angel, just for fucking once, do as I ask. I want you to leave me be. We can talk in the morning.”

  “Will you be okay?” I didn’t receive an answer this time. He just glared at me. “Sorry. Yeah, shut up and go to bed, Angel,” I mumbled and did as he requested.

  I didn’t sleep easy for the rest of the night and when his Harley woke me up first thing, I felt like my eyes had only been shut for five minutes. Even with the lack of decent rest, I knew he had gone to save himself from my interrogation. I didn’t care that he wasn’t there to give me the answers. I was going to find them because there was a hidey-hole full of information and tire tracks to follow. I was done staying here. If I had to hitch a lift from town back home to the Sentinels then I would, and woe betide anyone who got in my way.

  I dressed quickly in some over nice, girlie clothes that someone else had played house in. I wanted my own death metal t-shirts, or suits, or dresses. Without any breakfast or morning caffeine, I hot footed it to the shed and found the screwdriver where I’d hidden it, and with more speed than usual, I had the screws out and the door open.

  A blood-curdling scream escaped my body when I saw what was inside.

  A man. Bound to a chair by his hands and feet, with a hood over his head.

  As soon as he heard me, he started to pull at his restrained arms and shuffle in the chair. The noises he made were not for the faint of heart and I came close to wetting myself in fear. Swallowing lots of calming breaths, I manned up and took a couple of steps towards him. The muffled word ‘help’ could be heard from under the hood.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” I danced around, willing myself to retreat, lock the door and pretend I had seen nothing and never found the stupid fucking shed. Taking another step inside, I reached forward and snagged off the hood in a sharp, snappy movement.

  “Oh my fucking God!”

  The disheveled man blinked his eyes to get accustomed to the light and then he started to whimper and cry.

  It was Davis.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “Ummumummum.” His words were muffled by the gag in his mouth, but his face was bloody and bruised. In his current state, I wouldn’t need to be his date dumper wing man. In fact, if he didn’t heal properly, it was possible he would never date again.

  “Shit, sorry.” I reached forward and pulled the gag from his mouth.

  “Water,” he wheezed. I spun around and grabbed a bottle from the doomsday prep pile. Cracking the seal, I gave him a few small mouthfuls and waited until he was ready to talk.

  “We need to get out of here,” he spluttered. I looked at him confused. This was one big puzzle piece and I wanted answers first. “Untie me. They could be back for us any minute.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Don’t be silly, Grace. Fucking look at me. You think I want them to have another turn? I’ve already been tied up and left in a basement for fuck knows have long.”

  “It’s a shed, well bunker, kind of hidey hole. Think zombie apocalypse shelter.”

  “No, before they moved me here. I don’t care if
it’s a fucking palace. Hello! Cut and bleeding, bound and gagged over here. What’s with the twenty questions?” Davis’ was definitely afraid of something, but I still wanted the information.

  “Tell me what’s going on first?”

  Davis had been impatiently pulling at his wrist binds before his head spun exorcist style at me, and he snapped. “Fucking hell. You’re part of this!”

  “Of what?”

  “Typical. I thought I was being rescued, but they’ve sent you in here to get the information. I can’t believe you’d betray me like that.”

  “Get what information?”

  Davis’ fear had retreated, and his anger was in full center stage. “The ledgers and account numbers.”

  “What numbers and ledgers?” I asked again.

  “Here we were, all worried about you, and you’re tripping around in a fucking sun dress. People are losing their minds over you.”

  Davis was making no sense. His first comment was right, though. We were running out of time.

  “Davis, you dick, I don’t know what you think I know, but if we’re caught in here I’m guessing it gets a whole lot worse for you. Tell me what you think I’m in on.”

  “Untie me.”

  “Not until you stop acting like a crazy person. You want out of this place, start talking.”