Angel Face

by Suzanne Forster

  Or was it the killing that energized her?

  He rose with his coffee and walked to the generator, plunging the room into darkness with a flick of the power switch. The thought made him sick, but he couldn’t totally dismiss it. She’d been psychologically tortured from earliest childhood, and her adult experiences didn’t sound much better. That kind of abuse twisted your mind into something evil. It ate away your soul.

  Her dossier said she’d killed her father when she was seventeen, and that same year she’d been recruited by the CIA, who made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. After all, they had the entire murder on tape. They’d had her foster father under surveillance for years, which was how they knew his methods of abuse. He’d done some questionable experimental work for them, and it was understood that he would treat their referrals, no matter how suspicious the injuries.

  Angel Face had been utilized as a courier and an informant on small jobs, allowing her to attend college at the same time. She’d majored in biopsychology, graduated with honors, and gone on to grad school, where she’d excelled. But she’d also excelled at getting the agency the information it wanted, especially from men. Conveniently, most of her sources became romantically obsessed with her.

  Eventually, the agency assigned her exclusively to male sources, and she took on whatever guise was necessary to become a part of the man’s life, whether administrative assistant, personal trainer, or nurse. She was never required to have sex with her sources—unless she herself chose to—and it turned out not to be necessary, according to the records. Almost without exception they seemed content to worship her from afar.

  At some point, the agency realized they had a secret weapon in Angel Face, and they asked her to do the impossible. Adam was the code name for a brilliant recluse who was covertly developing biowarfare applications for sale to the highest bidder. No one had been able to get access to him, but they were betting on Angel Face to change all that, and she did them proud.

  She was assigned to Adam for several months, and during that time he became as fixated on her as all the others had. But then Adam died mysteriously, and Angel Face disappeared. She went underground at times so deeply even the agency couldn’t find her. It was then that the serial killings started, and since all of the victims were doctors who died of heart failure, a CIA psychologist theorized that something about Adam’s death had triggered her sense of powerlessness. The only way she could regain it was to stalk and kill men who reminded her of her foster father.

  According to the dossier, she’d disappeared altogether a year ago, and the killing had stopped. But she’d recently resurfaced, and they had reason to believe she’d added names to her list, that there were new targets, including him. There was other information about her—school and medical records, entries from her teenage diary, but nothing that made Jordan feel any differently.

  His coffee was cold. That realization made him wonder how long he’d been staring out the front window. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see the first glimmers of dawn, the pale pink glow that fringed the great oak in his front yard. He loved the neighborhood. He’d lived here almost forty years, and he’d been a doctor close to twenty. But lately he’d begun to think he needed a change. There were too many names on his waiting list, and he was spending too many hours in surgery. He was afraid of burnout, of making a mistake or of starting not to care, and he never wanted that to happen.

  There’d been some pressure on him to pick a potential successor as one way of lightening his load. He’d resisted the idea because there’d been no obvious choice, but it could be that he wasn’t looking hard enough. Certainly Teri Benson showed great promise. Even Jordan couldn’t deny her talent or her zealous passion for surgery. She reminded him of someone else at her age—of himself—and maybe that was the problem.

  They’d had an exchange recently that had been revelatory. She’d all but accused him of holding her back. She’d even implied that he was threatened by her and that it might be a male ego problem. Jordan had laughed at the time. He’d thought she was crazy and told her so, but now he wondered.

  He took another swig of the bitterly cold coffee and asked himself what he was doing. Suddenly it seemed imperative to pick a successor, even if it was someone he didn’t have total confidence in. What was he doing? It couldn’t be because he was already well on his way to being obsessed after looking at little more than a picture of a woman’s face, could it? Now, there was a great reason to alter his surgery schedule, and it was a pathetic comment on Jordan Carpenter’s social life. Maybe it should tell him something that he was starting to feel like one of them, all the other suckers who’d come into contact with Angel Face.

  It didn’t take him long to get the picture in question back into the bubble envelope it came in—and himself into the kitchen, where he poured the coffee dregs down the sink. He should have had a beer. Even warm, it was better than cold coffee, and he wouldn’t have been up all night.

  The CIA agent had left him a phone number and a sophisticated cell phone that was designed for international use, apparently via low-earth orbiting global satellite links, according to the instructions. Jordan had also been instructed to use the agent’s code name, Firestarter, whenever he called.

  It was all very seductive to an overworked, burned-out, egomaniacal male chauvinist pig of a heart surgeon. But Jordan would not be calling.

  BIRDY was already on the floor, searching for lost sunflower seeds, when the beeping started. This time she knew right where to go. She’d dragged Jordan’s beeper to a bubble at the edge of the nearest rag carpet, where she’d stashed it with several other purloined treasures, including pens, pencils, paper clips, a TV remote, and last month’s light bill.

  Mesmerized again by the beeper’s bright green display, she began tapping on the screen as a message appeared.

  MEET ME TONIGHT AFTER EVENING ROUNDS AT THE WINE BAR AROUND THE CORNER FROM CALIFORNIA GENERAL. YOU KNOW THE ONE I MEAN. YOU'VE BEEN THERE BEFORE.

  The initials that appeared were AF, but Birdy had already lost interest. She’d discovered a twist-off beer bottle cap and was happily making the sounds of a steel drum band with her beak.

  “DOCTOR?”

  “Devil,” Angela responded without hesitation. Her eyes were shut, but she could hear the rustle of paper across the small room, the click of a ballpoint pen.

  “Angel?”

  “Sad.”

  “Sleep?”

  “Escape.” A very slight pause. “Yes, escape.”

  “Love?”

  “Learning . . . I love to learn.”

  “Hate?”

  “Gifts. I was given gifts when I was good. Dolls mostly. I still hate dolls.”

  “Angela, if you would respond with just one word please. When I say a word, you say the first thing that comes into your mind, all right?”

  Angela nodded. She wasn’t particularly comfortable with this exercise, but despite her qualms, the answers had come easily. Perhaps it would help after all. She hoped so.

  “Men?”

  “Fear. No, wait—”

  “Your first response.”

  “All right then . . . fear.” But Angela didn’t fear all men. There were a few she’d learned to trust: Sammy, Peter Brandt.

  “Adam?”

  The word hung in the air.

  Angela’s response was hesitation, a palpitation.

  “Angela, I said Adam.”

  “Eve?”

  “Was that the first word that came to mind?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Very well then, let’s end there.” The pen clicked again, and a tablet slapped shut.

  Angela opened her eyes to the blue and maroon plaid walls of Dr. Mona Fremont’s office. Her psychiatrist of the last year was seated across the room on a blue velvet couch that matched the one Angela was lying on. Her smile was reassuringly familiar, but Angela had sensed the doctor’s agitation when she’d arrived. She’d clicked her pen several times during
their free association session and now she was absently flexing the metal stem of the eyeglasses she’d just removed.

  For as long as she could remember, Angela had been ultrasensitive to mood shifts in the people around her. Some emotions were so distinct they seemed to carry a faint scent. Sadness had always smelled damp and steamy. It was the fog that rolled in at twilight, or a wool coat, wet from the weather. Sudden anger was the snap of a hot iron. Resentment was dying flowers.

  Dr. Fremont was redolent of peppermint, the kind that burned your tongue. Angela had been surprised when the psychiatrist suggested free association exercises. Normally, they stayed with the more traditional talk therapy, and what Angela had wanted to talk about today was the terrifying violent impulses she’d felt in the grocery store. But when she brought it up, Dr. Fremont had quickly reassured her that it was normal for someone with a background like Angela’s to feel sudden and unprovoked episodes of anger or even rage. It wasn’t driven by a desire to hurt anyone so much as a way to let off steam, a release valve, she’d called it. And then she’d suggested they try something different.

  Angela hadn’t been sure about the free association. As much as she wanted to be free of the panic that ticked inside her like live ammunition, she also feared allowing the doctor access to the recesses of her mind. Some things were best not remembered, she’d come to believe.

  Dr. Fremont settled the glasses on the cushion next to her and folded her hands in her lap. She was a pleasant-looking woman, probably in her midforties and roughly twenty pounds over what the insurance actuarial tables said was the ideal weight for a woman of average height. In fact, average would have described her in most ways, except for her clothing. She was head to toe in blue. Today, it was a silk blouse and slacks set, but Angela had never seen her when she wasn’t wearing something blue, including the metal frames of her eyeglasses.

  Most people would have called it royal. What Angela saw was the hue of a peaceful brain. Blue was a good color. It meant less abnormal electrical activity.

  “Angela, how did you feel when I asked you about Adam?”

  “Adam?” Angela brushed at her temples, flicking away the strands of hair that were forever drifting into her eyes. “Did you say that? I didn’t hear you.”

  The psychiatrist went quiet, gazing at her. Angela wondered if she were looking for some sign of evasion, an eyeblink or a shallow breath. But Angela merely gazed back.

  “Yes, I did say Adam. But you don’t remember me saying it? Or your response?”

  “Did I respond?” There was something wrong here. Angela sat up slowly. She shook her head. “Doctor? Did I respond?”

  The psychiatrist moved on. “When I said doctor, you answered with the word devil. Tell me about that.”

  Angela remembered that answer. “What came to my mind was the power they have . . . and too often abuse.” She could still hear the muted cries, the moans.

  “You don’t believe that doctors do good, that they save lives?”

  “Not always; sometimes lives are sacrificed. They experiment. . . . You must know that, Dr. Fremont. They experiment on their patients and call it research. Not all of them, of course. I didn’t mean that you—”

  Dr. Fremont looked distressed. “I hope you don’t feel that way about me, Angela. We try many things in here to help you gain insight into your behavior, but I never think of them as experimentation in a bad way. In fact, I was just going to suggest we try hypnosis. I think we have some fertile ground to work with here.”

  They’d tried hypnosis before, and it had never worked. But that was more Angela’s fault than the technique. There were certain things locked up inside her that would never come out. She had intentionally blocked those memories. No, that wasn’t true. She’d done a great deal more than block them. She’d erased them herself because there were things she couldn’t bear to remember. Didn’t dare to remember. She had wiped out a part of her own memory using methods she’d learned in her grad school research that included hypnotic autosuggestion and psychotropic drugs, so of course standard hypnosis alone didn’t work. How could she allow Dr. Fremont to unlock the door that she herself had locked and barred?

  Angela looked up in surprise to see Dr. Fremont standing above her. She had a glass of water in one hand and a red capsule in the other.

  “I’d like you to take this,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “Something to relax you. It’s very mild, but the more relaxed you are, the easier it will be to remember.”

  “Why is it so important to remember?” Angela asked softly, although it was no longer quiet inside her mind. What if I don’t want to remember? What if whatever’s locked up in there is supposed to stay there? What if—

  “Angela, it’s difficult to make progress when so much is unknown . . . to both of us. You do want to get well?”

  Angela nodded and took the capsule.

  “Good, because I have something else here that will help you talk more freely. If fear is the block, this will make the memories seem less frightening.”

  She knelt beside Angela and opened her arm. Angela allowed her to swab the inner joint with alcohol and tap the vein to plump it. Neither doctor nor patient spoke, and with silence came the understanding that Angela had surrendered herself to this process, that she was forfeiting all other options. Her fate now lay in another’s hands, a doctor’s hands. That was a terrifyingly familiar feeling, and one that Angela had struggled with all her life. It made her want to stop the psychiatrist, yet something wouldn’t let her.

  She did want to get well. She wanted that more than anything, and how could that happen if she didn’t, finally, face her fears?

  There was a sharp prick, a searing stream of fluid, and Angela closed her eyes. Was she taking responsibility by allowing these drugs in her system, by giving up conscious control? Or was she evading it? She didn’t have the answer to that, and it was too late now, anyway. The drug was rushing through her veins, carried by the force of her pounding heart. Whatever would happen would happen.

  “Rain, rain, go away,” she whispered.

  CHAPTER 5

  WHEN a man approaching his fifth decade braved the world of women’s bras and panties for the first time, he needed some moral support. Or a drink.

  They damn well ought to serve booze in this place, Peter Brandt thought as he gingerly picked up a spidery black wisp of silk and studied it. He didn’t know what it was or where it went, which was probably just as well, since he couldn’t imagine his wife, Barbara, wearing it anyway. Not on a bet.

  He wasn’t alone in the lingerie department, but he was the only man, and the sales clerks were hovering like miniature rescue helicopters, anxious to ease his pain. Maybe he should have let them, but to have strange women describing the pros and cons of thongs and miracle bras was more than his forty-eight-year-old heart could handle. He didn’t want to give away how uncomfortable he was. God forbid he should blush.

  He was already sweating. Moisture beaded his temples, which meant that even the plaster of Paris hair gel he’d used that morning wouldn’t keep his naturally curly hair from springing into corkscrews. Maybe his glasses would steam up, too. That would be a nice touch.

  “Did you see our teddies?” one of the clerks called out to him. “They’re on sale right over here.”

  She was standing by a rack of skimpy things across the room, but Peter would rather have walked through a live minefield. He was nervous about looking past the next display case for fear what he might see. He thanked her with a quick nod and turned to a rack behind him, pretending to be engrossed with the silk nighties and robes.

  A luminous kimono and gown set in magnolia white caught his attention. It was done in a rich satin fabric, and the gown looked as if it were made of one large magnolia flower with petals so creamy and pink-tinged he couldn’t keep his hands off them. He hoped no one noticed the way he’d brushed his fingertips over the fabric and stole a caress. It probably wasn’t against the la
w to fondle the lingerie, but the images filtering through his mind ought to be.

  The gossamer softness brought a fantasy of pale skin and quickened breathing. And the unfurling magnolia elicited other images, including how beautiful its rich, milky tones would be against long, dark hair and misty, meadowlark eyes.

  The trouble was, Peter’s wife didn’t have pale skin, dark hair, or meadowlark eyes. It was another woman he was thinking of, someone completely off limits for several reasons, not the least of which was that he loved his wife of twenty-five years. That, however, had never stopped him from also wanting Angela Lowe, his protégée at SmartTech.

  Angela didn’t know how he felt. All of his efforts on her behalf had been strictly professional, but he’d been forced to go out on a limb for her in ways that had put his career—possibly even his life—at risk and he lived every day wondering if he’d made a mistake, wondering if she would revert and cause irreparable damage. And praying. Peter Brandt hadn’t prayed a whole lot in his life, but he’d made up for that in the last year.

  “Isn’t that set beautiful?” One of the clerks had found the courage to approach him, despite the force field he’d created.

  “It is,” he agreed, “but I’m not sure it’s right for my wife. Her birthday is today.” There was no need to mention that he’d just walked off a plane at LAX and realized it. He couldn’t go home empty-handed.

  “What size is she?” the clerk asked.

  Peter shook his head. He didn’t know what size Barbara was anymore. Maybe he’d even stopped thinking of her in those terms, and that was sad. The love was still there, but the physical attraction that had brought them together had faded over the years. He assumed it was because of him that things had changed, and that compounded everything.

  His work was consuming, and the pressure had increased, now that they were nearing the completion of SmartTech’s brain-tapping software. He’d been traveling for weeks, immersed in secret talks with customers and setting the stage for the upcoming launch. There were too many distractions and demands on his time, but none of them had distracted him from a fawnlike and totally unpredictable creature named Angela. For that he felt profoundly guilty and wasteful. All that longing directed where it could do no good.