by Osborne, Jon
Jared von Waldenberg’s face was the last thing she saw before her world melted away.
“Not the abortion drug, Miss Monroe,” he said softly. “Just a little something to help you sleep.”
In Angel’s drugged mind, she was playing with her baby in a beautiful park on a perfect summer’s day. A gorgeous little girl with jet-black hair and bright hazel eyes who was looking up at her and cooing softly. The sound was enough to shatter Angel’s heart into a million tiny little pieces right inside her badly constricted chest.
So this was what true love felt like.
CHAPTER 150
Twenty minutes later, Angel’s eyelids fluttered open again.
She gave a start when saw that she was now tied to a sturdy wooden cross constructed of reinforced I-beams that was cemented into a barbecue pit behind the Brotherhood’s white-supremacist compound deep in the woods of Creek Run, Mississippi, which was positioned on the map some forty miles south of Tupelo and a million miles in any direction from anything that might reasonably be considered civilization.
A dozen white hoods flanked the fat one in front of her on either side, angled off in a V like a flock of oversized Canada geese. Most of them were holding torches.
The one they called Buck leaned down and placed a match against the kindling made of human bones at Angel’s bare feet. Femurs, ulnas, and vertebrae shaped like tiny horse-collars. Something that looked like part of a broken clavicle. Something else that looked suspiciously like a shard from a bashed-in skull.
After a moment, the bones began to smoke.
Just then, though, the sharp sound of a gunshot suddenly pierced the pitch-black night and the one they called Buck staggered backward, clutching at his massive neck where the bullet had ripped through his thick throat. Drowning on his own blood with a sickening gargle, the obese man collapsed to the ground three feet away.
Angel looked up at Jared von Waldenberg as he emerged from the darkness with the huge black dog at his side. Von Waldenberg nodded to the white sheets all around them, then stepped forward and slipped a sharp knife through the restraints on her wrists and ankles.
He held her gaze and motioned to the woods on their right. The tight-lipped smile never left his handsome face. “I’ve decided that this one will be Bane’s kill, Miss Monroe. You have a five-minute head start. If I were you, I’d use it wisely.”
CHAPTER 151
Angel’s heart slammed painfully in her chest as she plunged deep into the thick underbrush.
Sharp brambles tore at the skin on her arms and legs, ripping open the flesh and drawing hungry little creatures of the night to the fresh feast of oozing blood. Huge insects buzzed loudly in her ears, drowning out her jumbled thoughts. Just breathing proved damn near impossible.
Bleeding badly from twenty different cuts on her body, she stumbled on a large rock in the darkness, almost poking out her left eye on the branch of a huge dogwood tree in the process. Her addled brain raced while her shaking hands groped frantically for moss along the massive trunk of the tree.
What the fuck was she doing?!
What the hell difference did it make what direction she was going? Angel needed to keep running here, to keep moving, to put some real distance between herself and Jared von Waldenberg and his huge dog.
She took a deep breath through her nostrils and forced herself to calm down. Picking a slight clearing in the trees thirty yards to her right, she tried to imagine that she was running along the Lake Erie shoreline. Slow and steady until she needed a sudden burst of speed.
Her strides became more even then as her mind flashed back on everyone in her life. Granny Bernice – dead now, shot once between the eyes, maybe even by Jared von Waldenberg himself. Dana Whitestone – a woman who’d gone so far out her way just to be friendly with her that it wasn’t even funny. Malachai – a flawed man, sure, but one who’s face had lit up like a giddy child’s on Christmas morning when he’d told her that they were going to have a baby together.
Hot tears slid down Angel’s cheeks as her thoughts then focused on the most important person in her life: the tiny little thing growing inside of her womb that depended on her for its survival now; the tiny little thing growing inside her womb that would depend on her for its survival for many, many years to come.
A cold splash of water under her feet jerked her mind back into the present. A stream of some kind, not too deep. On the other side, she took another steadying breath and plunged ahead into the blinding darkness.
Then, the sound of something rustling in the woods suddenly came from no more than a hundred yards to her left.
Angel strained her gaze into the blackness while she continued to run. No use. The night was too dark for her to see anything, pitch-black, like the inside of a coffin.
Time for a sudden burst of speed. Breathing in ragged gasps, she took it, tearing down a slight dip in the earth with the thundering sound of her own heartbeat slamming madly in her ears and again drowning out everything else.
Searing pain. The sharp crack of a thick branch snapping beneath her feet.
Only it wasn’t a branch.
Bright white stars danced in front of Angel’s eyes as her ankle sank even deeper into the gopher hole, snapping the bone clean in half in a dizzying rush of unbearable agony.
She knew then that she’d never be a mother, after all.
CHAPTER 152
Angel writhed in agony on the forest floor, trying her best to keep silent as she clutched at her badly broken ankle. Wasn’t easy. Sharp pine needles dug into the small of her back, opening up even more cuts for the endless insect buffet. Sweat rolled down her face as though poured from a bucket.
A moment later, Jared von Waldenberg and his huge black dog emerged from the darkness. The harsh glare of a flashlight landed on Angel’s face.
“You should have stayed out of it when I sent you your little warnings, Miss Monroe,” von Waldenberg said, shaking his head and holding back the growling dog with a thick steel chain. “It was a courtesy that I didn’t extend to anyone else.”
Angel looked up at von Waldenberg in horror, the pain in her ankle melting his face into some sort of surrealistic Dali painting. “Please, sir,” she sobbed. “I don’t want to die. I want to live. I want to be a mother.”
Jared von Waldenberg shook his head again, more firmly this time. “No, Miss Monroe. I’m very sorry, but I need to do what I need to do. It’s all I have left now.”
Leaning down, he unhooked the dog’s heavy steel chain and pointed in Angel’s direction. “Angriff, Bane!”
The dog’s fierce, luminescent green eyes blazed through the darkness as it came for Angel in a snarling flash of sharp white teeth. In a daze, her mind vaguely recognized the command von Waldenberg had spoken in German. Angriff.
Attack.
Angel squeezed shut her eyes and frantically sought the word from her college days. Suddenly, her mind seized upon it.
“Stoppen, Bane!” she screamed.
Stop. So fucking simple, yet so fucking difficult when your life and the life of your unborn child hung in the balance.
Confused, the huge dog skidded to a halt three feet away. Angel lifted a shaking hand and pointed back to Jared von Waldenberg. “Angriff, Bane!”
In the blink of an eye, the Presa bolted back into the darkness from the same direction it had just come.
A moment later, the Race Master’s terrified screams of pain and disbelief echoed throughout the deep woods all around them as the enormous dog leapt at his throat.
CHAPTER 153
When it was all over thirty seconds later, Angel pulled herself across the forest floor to Jared von Waldenberg’s bloody corpse.
Slipping out the Walther from the holster on his belt, she pointed it directly at Bane’s massive head while the enormous dog licked his master’s bright red blood hungrily off of its thick black lips three feet away.
Closing her eyes, Angel pulled the trigger.
Bane never knew what h
it him.
The next four hours were spent dragging herself through the dense woods on a makeshift crutch that she’d crafted from the branch of a fallen dogwood tree. Finally reaching a little-used highway ten miles away, she collapsed in a heap, much too exhausted to even think straight.
Fading in and out of consciousness for the next two hours, Angel somehow lifted up her head and managed to flag down the first car that passed her way.
CHAPTER 154
Three days later, Angel held a bouquet of bright summer flowers and a small clutch of colorful helium balloons as she hobbled into Dana Whitestone’s private room at Fairview General Hospital – this time on a pair of real crutches.
The FBI agent lifted her gaze and smiled mischievously at her, the woman’s enormous pale blue eyes twinkling like glittering sapphires in a face carved out of the purest ivory. “No big deal, right, Angel?” Whitestone said. “Just a flesh wound, right?”
Angel laughed and leaned over the bedrail to hold the other woman close. “Thank God, Dana,” she said, fighting back tears. “Just, thank God.”
Both women cried for two solid minutes before Angel settled down gingerly into the chair next to her friend’s bed.
The FBI agent sat up straighter and nodded down to the hard plaster cast encasing Angel’s left ankle. “I’d be more than happy to sign that thing for you, but I guess this means we won’t be going jogging together anytime soon, huh?”
Angel shook her head. “Six to eight weeks is what the doctors say.” She paused and wrinkled her face, waving a hand in the air. “Anyway, enough about me already. How are you feeling, Dana?”
Whitestone waved her own delicate hand in front of her face. “I’m fine, partner, ready to get the hell out of here, that much is for sure. Ready to get the hell out of here and finally go be with my son.”
Leaning forward, Whitestone took a careful sip of water through a straw poking out of a blue plastic cup. “Anyway, I hear all hell broke loose after your little field trip down to Mississippi. Tell me about it.”
Angel smiled. “Well, your compatriots in the FBI came swooping down on the Brotherhood’s compound like a plague of fucking locusts after I gave them a general idea of where the hell it was, with Bruce Blankenship leading the way, of course. They got Jasmine Pepperton out of there alive – thank God – but now the poor thing’s on a psychiatric hold at Sibley Memorial down in DC.”
Whitestone was silent for a long moment then. Finally, she said, “It was horrible what they did to her, Angel, but thank God you’re OK.”
Angel didn’t know what to say. Thankfully, Whitestone alleviated that problem by gesturing to Angel’s slightly distended belly. “I heard the wonderful news,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to be a godmother, you know. Just throwing that out there.”
Fresh tears sprang into the corners of Angel’s hazel eyes as she struggled to her feet and leaned over the bedrail to hold the other woman close again.
“Consider it done, Dana.”
CHAPTER 155
Malachai waited on Angel hand and foot for the next six weeks straight. He’d given her a little silver bell to summon him whenever she needed him last week, and Angel had used it to terrorize him mercilessly ever since.
Smiling down at Angel, Malachai handed her a large glass of orange juice. “So,” he said, “since we’re having a girl, do you have any baby names picked out yet, honey?”
Kicked back on the bachelor-chic leather couch in the living room of his condo in Avon, Angel looked up at her man and smiled back. “How does Bernice Dana Grimes sound to you?”
Malachai leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips. “That sounds like the most beautiful name I’ve ever heard in my entire life, sweetheart.”
CHAPTER 156
It was another sunny day in Cleveland one month later as Angel strolled up to the ticket office outside Progressive Field and bought the two best seats they had left. She had started to show a lot more now, and her hand went unconsciously to her belly.
Had to protect the baby. Always had to protect the baby.
As she made her way through the stadium to Section 101 – past the college kids and happy families all fired up about today’s game – she smiled to herself. She was going to the game with her best friend, too.
Angel descended the concrete aisle until she reached Row H, just eight rows behind home plate. The view from here was fantastic, the green leaping off of the field like a sudden, brilliant flash of color in an old black-and-white movie.
When the vendor came around, she ordered two frosty cups of Coca-Cola and placed them into the cup holders on the seat backs in front of her; not even minding that they cost six dollars apiece.
As the first hitter dug his cleats deep into the dirt of the batter’s box five minutes later, Angel turned to the empty seat beside her.
“This is it, Granny Bernice,” she whispered softly. “This is the day we’re finally gonna beat those goddamn Yankees.”
And they did.
CHAPTER 157
They finally released Dana from Fairview General Hospital six long weeks later, holding her pretty much against her will the entire time as a precautionary measure to make sure that she hadn’t sustained any permanent brain damage.
Dana smiled as she stepped through the sliding front doors of the hospital and directly out into the bright sunlight that was shining down from high overhead in the clear blue skies above. Behaving like the perfect gentleman he’d clearly been raised to be since birth e, Bruce Blankenship had dropped off her Protégé in the hospital’s parking lot so that she wouldn’t need to take a cab today. God bless his heart. Because Dana didn’t want to put off what she was about to next for a single moment longer.
Dana widened the smile on her face as she walked toward her car. The good news hadn’t stopped with Blankenship dropping off her car, though. Not even close. Bill Krugman’s wife, Marie, had gone back into remission following her most recent round of cancer treatments, and the Director had been so overjoyed by the exhilarating turn of events that he hadn’t even mentioned the fact that Dana had broken protocol – smashed protocol, actually – by investigating the Brotherhood on her own and by dragging Angel Monroe into the deadly mix. Good thing, too. Because an angry Bill Krugman wasn’t the kind of man you wanted to deal with. On anything. Not if you cared about a career of any length with the FBI, at least.
Reaching her car a few moments later, Dana unlocked the Protégé with the keychain-control and slid behind the wheel before cranking the engine to life. After all this time spent waiting, the time had come for her to take advantage of the most joyful news of all. Because after all this time spent waiting, the time had finally come for Dana to be reunited – once and for all and never to be separated again this time – with her son.
Chill bumps danced across her skin at the absolutely terrifying – and absolutely beautiful – thought.
CHAPTER 158
Half an hour after leaving the hospital, Dana pulled the Protégé into the parking lot of the Cleveland Zoo and eased the car into an empty spot before hopping out.
Ten minutes later, she found Shelley Margolis and Bradley – check that, her son – standing near the gorilla enclosure and giggling uproariously at the primates’ silly antics while the near-humans put on a show for the happy crowd gathered ‘round.
Dana stood there for several long moments, just watching little Bradley and taking in the gleeful look on his face, remembering just how much fun it had been to be a kid. While she’d been in surgery to relieve the pressure inside her skull brought about by the horrific car crash in which she and Angel Monroe had been involved – Dana had finally, blissfully, made peace with her troubled past.
And this time Dana knew she’d finally made peace with her troubled past forever. The past – tenacious as the goddamn thing had been – could never hurt her again. All thanks to her beautiful and loving parents.
Tears wavered in her eyes, blurring her vision. James and Sara Wh
itestone’s advice to her while they’d been standing in the backyard of Dana’s childhood home had been the most precious advice she’d ever received in her entire life. By just letting go – of the pain, of the misery, of the regret, of the loneliness – Dana could now grab onto life with both hands and really start living again.
And that was something she hadn’t been able to do – not in any meaningful sense, anyway – since she’d been four years old.
Dana took a deep breath through her nostrils and felt the fluttering of her heartbeat inside her badly constricted chest. This was it. Do or die time. No turning back now.
“Hey, there, Bradley!” she called out.
The little boy turned toward the sound of her voice. His beautiful face lit up brighter than the runway lights over at Hopkins airport as he dropped the snow cone in his tiny hands to the ground at his feet and raced toward her. “Mommy!” he screamed, his gorgeous blue eyes twinkling with a breathtaking combination of both unmistakable joy and barely contained excitement. “Mommy, you came for me!”
Dana fell to her knees and opened her arms, ready to receive her son, to hold onto him tight and to never, ever let him go. All of the pain in her life disappeared in that very instant, running away from her heart and mind and body and soul like the scared little ghosts they’d always been.
Bradley opened his own toothpick arms, ready to throw them around her and hold on tight, too. Now and forever and ever and ever.
He’d made to within ten feet of Dana when the sharp crack of a gunshot suddenly shattered the carnival-like atmosphere that had been hanging in the air at the zoo, murdering it savagely in cold blood. In an instant, screams replaced laughter. Tears replaced smiles. Fear replaced happiness.
