by Osborne, Jon
Sullivan shifted uneasily in his chair. “A lawyer in New York City, sir. Twenty-five years old and a Harvard graduate. She fits your specifications perfectly.”
“Her name?”
“Laura Settle, sir.”
“And her lover’s name?”
“Michael Timmons, sir. A moderately successful novelist.”
The Race Master took another long, hard pull on his cigar and ran his hand thoughtfully across the back of Bane’s thick neck. The dog lifted its massive head and licked his fingers softly in return. “What sort of books does this Michael Timmons write, Josef?”
“Murder mysteries, sir.’
The Race Master laughed heartily. He just couldn’t help himself. “How very appropriate. And we’re sure the girl has been seeded?”
Sullivan nodded. “Yes, sir. Confirmation came from the doctor just moments ago.”
The Race Master leaned forward in his chair and tapped a short line of gray ash into an ivory ashtray sitting on his desk; an ashtray he’d carved himself from the tusk of an African elephant that he’d brought down while on safari as a young man. “How long has this doctor been in my employ, Josef?”
“Ten years now, sir. He’s proved himself a faithful servant.”
The Race Master considered this for a moment, then waved his hand in front of his face again to disperse the curtain of smoke hanging there. “Very well, Josef. You may proceed with the next execution.”
Sullivan nodded excitedly. “Will we claim credit for this one, sir?”
The Race Master frowned and picked up his dog-eared copy of Mein Kampf; already weary of Sullivan’s presence. “No, not yet, Josef. We still have more work to do. I’ll let you know when the time is right for us to step from the shadows. For now, instruct our operatives to keep their heads down and their mouths shut.”
Thumbing through the book, the Race Mater found his favorite chapter and began to read. Nearly a full minute of heavy silence hung in the air between the two men before the Race Master finally looked up from his book again. “You are dismissed, Josef.”
Sullivan rose quickly to his feet. Growling, Bane immediately did the same at his master’s side, every muscle in his powerful body tensed and ready for action.
The Race Master placed a comforting hand on top of the canine’s massive head and spoke to it softly in German. “Settle down, Bane. Das blut der mutanen in die hande fallen fruh genug.”
The blood of the mutants will be yours soon enough.
CHAPTER 8
Half an hour into their incredibly tense meeting, Shelley Margolis continued to fire one uncomfortable question after another at Dana.
“Have you ever been the victim of a sexual assault, Agent Whitestone?”
Dana dabbed at her watery eyes with a soggy Kleenex, feeling more embarrassed than she had in years. She’d never been one for crying – not in front of other people, at least – but Margolis had broken her down worse than Barbra Walters deconstructed Hollywood celebrities on television for all of America to see.
Dana sniffled and again reminded herself that she was doing this for Bradley. It helped. Leaning forward in her chair, she plucked a fresh Kleenex from the box between them and dabbed at her watery eyes some more. “Yes, Dr. Margolis, I was raped last year.”
Margolis looked up from her chart. “Again, I’m very sorry to hear that, Agent Whitestone. You’ve certainly been through more than your fair of tragedy in your life. What were the circumstances surrounding your rape?”
Hard as it was for her to do, Dana soldiered forward and told the psychologist all about the snowy night the previous December that she’d been held down and violated by two men in the parking lot of the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office while she’d been investigating the crimes of the serial killer known as “the Censor”.
Margolis pressed together her lips into a sympathetic line when she’d finished recounting the horrible story. An apologetic look glinted in her bright blue eyes. “That’s absolutely heartbreaking, Agent Whitestone. Still, I don’t mean to sound insensitive here, but it seems to me that your work may present something of a danger to Bradley’s welfare. Tell me: do you feel confident in your ability to protect him?”
Dana held the psychologist’s stare. ‘I’d die for that little boy,” she said, her voice trembling inside her throat and threatening to shatter into a million tiny pieces like a dropped mirror. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep him safe.”
Margolis nodded and dropped her gaze back down to the chart in her hands. “Wonderful. I’m extremely happy to hear that, Agent Whitestone. Because, as I’m sure you’re well aware, Bradley was exposed to more than his fair share of violence himself in his previous adoptive home, not to mention the fact that he lost both of his parents at such a young age. So we need to make absolutely certain that he’s never subjected to those kinds of horrors again.”
Dana’s heart clenched in her chest at Margolis’s reference to Bradley’s previous adoptive home. She was all too familiar with the YouTube video that showed Bradley being mercilessly whipped with a thick leather belt by the traffic-court judge who’d taken him in following the death of the little boy’s mother – a video that had amassed more than two million hits in its first week on the World Wide Web.
Dana squared her slender shoulders and sat up straighter in her seat. “If my work presents any impediment to adopting Bradley, I’ll quit,” she said, meaning it. “I’ve got absolutely no problem doing that. He’ll always be my number one priority, Dr. Margolis. That much you can count on.”
The psychologist lifted her eyebrows thoughtfully and scribbled something else down on Dana’s data sheet. Then she immediately fired off the next uncomfortable question. “How many people have you killed in the line of duty over the course of your law-enforcement career, Agent Whitestone?”
Dana shifted in her seat and sighed. From the look of things, she hadn’t even known the half of it when she’d left her house that day. But she was finding out. In a big way. With each and every uncomfortable question that Margolis fired off like so many bullets from a gun.
Good God, almighty, was she ever finding out.
CHAPTER 9
When Angel’s alarm clock sounded at six o’clock the next morning, she rolled out of bed with a groan and slapped a pair of New Balance running shoes onto her feet before heading out the door, being very careful to not wake her grandmother on the way out. Anybody who woke Granny Bernice before she’d gotten her full eight hours was playing with his or her own life for the rest of the day.
Fifteen minutes later, Angel was winding her way down the cement jogging path at Edgewater Park along the rocky shore of Lake Erie.
As she ran and looked out at the lake on a slightly windy but still absolutely gorgeous day – diamond-kissed ripples of sunshine on the water winking back at her as they danced in and out of the waves – she let out a contented sigh. It didn’t get any better than this. Still, while the lake was certainly beautiful to look at, you wouldn’t want to ever actually jump in for a swim. No telling what you might catch from it.
Sort of like Beatrice Patterson. The hussy.
Angel shuddered and picked up her pace, trying her best to outrun the thought of Malachai with another woman. It hurt like hell knowing that his lips had been on hers, his hands had been all over her naked body, the two of them had moved together as one…
Reaching down and turning the volume all the way up on her iPod Shuffle, she sought some sort of relief in the sweet, soulful sounds of Etta James, letting Etta’s magical voice wash over her and transport her to another place. A place far away from Cleveland. A place far away from Malachai Grimes and his cheating ways. A place far away from where she always hurt so goddamn much.
Five minutes later, Angel was in the zone. Now it was just her, Etta and the rhythmic, reassuring sensation of her feet slapping against pavement. That was what she’d always loved so much about running. Unlike life itself, no matter what speed you were going, somehow i
t always seemed to be the right one.
When her legs hit the good kind of sore half an hour later, she returned home and took a quick shower before dressing quickly in the brand-new burgundy skirt-suit that she’d picked up on sale at H&M the previous week. As she did her hair and makeup in the mirror hanging above the bathroom sink, she appraised her reflection carefully.
Not too bad for an old broad, she decided finally.
Tiny age-lines were evident around her hazel eyes whenever she smiled or crinkled up her nose, but a few expert touches of Covergirl foundation and you couldn’t even tell they were there. Queen Latifah would’ve been proud.
As for the rest of her, Angel supposed she’d weathered the storm of the advancing years as much as could be hoped for. Her nose was cute enough: small and slightly upturned. She had a tiny dimple in both of her cheeks, smooth, full lips and straight white teeth. All her life she’d been told that her smile marked her best feature.
My body’s holding up OK, too, she thought, craning around her neck to see how her butt looked in her new skirt. Not too bad for a thirty-six-year-old. Not too much junk in the trunk yet, so that was certainly a good thing. But she’d really need to start taking it easy on the Hershey bars if she wanted to keep it that way.
Angel scanned the rest of her physical checklist while she applied her lipstick: flat stomach; somewhat-tapered legs; reasonably pert breasts, although not especially big.
Unlike Beatrice Patterson and her ridiculously huge bazooms. The hussy.
Angel shuddered again at the thought that she’d managed to outrun on the jogging path. Thinking about Beatrice and Malachai together really did make her want to throw up, but at the moment she had much more important things to worry about. After all, twenty-two-year-old Rhodes scholars didn’t go missing for no good reason, and Angel wasn’t kidding herself into thinking that finding Sasha Diggs would be an easy payday.
Finishing up in the bathroom a couple minutes later, she flipped off the light switch near the door and followed the smell of percolating coffee into the kitchen, where she found Granny Bernice scrambling eggs with a steel whisk in a large porcelain bowl. True to her baseball-junkie form, Angel’s grandmother was listening to Mike & Mike in the Morning recap the Indians’ latest loss on ESPN Radio, a half-smoked Newport hanging casually from the right side of her mouth.
“Those things are going to kill you, Granny Bernice,” Angel said. “Kill. You. Dead.”
When her grandmother turned around to face her, Angel felt a sudden flutter in the pit of her stomach. More like a vicious punch in the gut, actually. Because for the first time in her life she found herself thinking that her grandmother looked old.
Granny Bernice had always been a robust woman – there was no debating that simple fact – but at sixty-four years old now with at least a hundred and fifty pounds of extra fat hugging her five-foot-six frame, even the simple act of cooking breakfast was enough to cause a light sheen of sweat to break out on her forehead these days. In the unforgiving morning light that was streaming in through the small window above the kitchen sink, the thinning silver hair on Granny Bernice’s head looked sparser and more brittle than Angel remembered, and not even the excess weight in the old woman’s face was enough to hide the wrinkles anymore. Worst of all, the low, wheezing sound that was coming from deep within Granny Bernice’s massive chest did absolutely nothing to lessen Angel’s very real concerns about the condition of her grandmother’s health.
Granny Bernice removed the Newport from her lips with a soft cough and flicked a long line of ashes into a cheap plastic ashtray sitting on the counter. “You a doctor now?” she asked with a smile.
Angel didn’t smile back. “No, I’m not a doctor, Granny Bernice. But I can read. And the warning on the side of that box pretty clearly states that those things will kill you dead.”
Her grandmother rolled her eyes but humored Angel by stubbing out the cigarette. Wiping her hands against the front of the red-and-white-checkered Kiss the Chef apron tied around her thick neck, she held them up for inspection. “There. All gone, see? You happy now, Little Miss Cranky Pants?”
When Angel didn’t immediately respond, her grandmother’s smile finally faltered.
“Look, Angel,” Granny Bernice said, shifting her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “I know they ain’t good for me, but every time I try to quit I just end up feelin’ more miserable than I do when I’m smokin’ ‘em. It’s a Catch-22, honey, if you wanna know the whole truth.”
“Catch-22 or not it’s time to eighty-six the goddamn habit, Granny Bernice,” Angel snapped, the words coming out much sharper than she’d intended.
Her grandmother stared at her for a long moment before slowly turning her attention back to the eggs.
Angel, of course, immediately felt like a complete asshole for the way she’d just spoken to her grandmother. And why shouldn’t she feel like a complete asshole? Who the hell was she to say anything to this woman who’d spent her entire life going without just so Angel could have whatever she needed? Had Angel ever gone hungry? Cold? Scared?
No, she hadn’t. And it’s all because of that saint over there you just yelled at, jackass.
She crossed the kitchen and came up behind her grandmother, placing both of her hands lightly on the old woman’s shoulders. “Look,” Angel said, “you don’t need those cigarettes, Granny Bernice. They’re just a crutch. Hell, half the time you don’t even inhale.”
When her grandmother turned around to face her again, the deep, wheezing sound inside her lungs reminded Angel of a slowly deflating balloon. “You’re absolutely right, baby girl,” Granny Bernice said, reaching up and softly patting her granddaughter’s right cheek. “You’re absolutely right and I’m absolutely wrong. It’s just as simple as that. Plain as the nose right here in the middle of my face. Smoking’s a nasty habit and I’m gonna quit right now. Right this instant.”
Angel raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “That makes me happy to hear, Granny Bernice, but you’d better be serious about it this time. I’m worried about you, you know.”
Upon hearing this, Angel’s grandmother’s face immediately broke out into a wide smile that lit up the room like a sunburst, allowing Angel a quick glimpse of the beautiful woman she’d once been. “Well now, if that don’t just beat all! You takin’ care of me now! Okay, girly – that works for me!”
Angel smiled back. “Good. It works for me too.”
“So does this mean we can be friends again, or are we just gonna spend our whole mornin’ harpin’ at each other like a couple old biddies?”
Angel laughed and finally felt the tension drain from her neck and shoulders. Taking her grandmother’s beautiful face in f her hands, she looked deep into the old woman’s soft hazel eyes – eyes that were practically identical to her own. “We’re always going to be friends, Granny Bernice. You look out for me and I look out for you too. That’s why we’re the perfect team.”
“Best friends forever,” Granny Bernice said.
Angel nodded. “That’s absolutely right. Best friends forever. Besides, who else would put up with us, right?”
Both women laughed.
Her grandmother gave Angel’s shoulder a quick squeeze before glancing up at the plastic clock hanging on the kitchen wall over the garbage can. “Got time for breakfast, honey?” she asked.
Angel followed her grandmother’s gaze to the clock. Almost eight a.m. If she wanted to catch Razor Diggs while he’d still be in bed, she’d have to leave now. “Sorry, not today, Granny Bernice,” she said. “I want to get an early start on this case.”
Her grandmother nodded. “OK, but you just be careful out there, Angel Monroe. I worry about you too, you know. I love you more than I love life itself, little girl, and I don’t know what I’d do with myself if anything ever happened to you. Probably die of a broken heart right then and there on the spot.”
Sentimental fool that she was, Angel immediately felt her eyes well up at t
hat. Kissing her grandmother softly on both of her plump cheeks, she gave Granny Bernice a long, meaningful hug before leaving the house. “That’s why we’re always going to be best friends forever, Granny Bernice.
“Because you love me and I love you, too.”
CHAPTER 10
Twenty-five-year-old Laura Settle stared at the huge stack of papers piled up high on her desk in front of her and sighed heavily. The stack never seemed to get any smaller, no matter how many hours of overtime she put in or how many case files she took home with her at the end of each exhausting workday.
Laura sighed again, even more deeply this time, sagging her slender shoulders in defeat. The higher in rank she rose at the District Attorney’s office, the larger her workload seemed to get. She’d only just graduated from law school the previous spring, but already she found herself one of the most senior assistant D.A.’s in the building. Sticking around longer than just a few months had certainly precipitated her quick rise through the ranks, of course, but she felt confident that she’d received the necessary training back at Harvard to keep her rising even higher. Hell, who knew? Maybe one of these days she’d even become the district attorney herself. The head honcho. The big cheese. If nothing else, though, she knew she’d eventually find her place in the world here.
What was more, she actually needed to find her place in the world here now. Because it wasn’t just herself that she had to look out for anymore.
The turnover rate at the D.A.’s office was staggering, however, even for a bustling metropolis like New York City. Most of Laura’s younger colleagues had quickly forsaken public defense in favor of more-lucrative private practices scattered all around the country just as soon as the opportunities had presented themselves. Still, she felt happy enough in New York doing the work of the people. She only wished that she could have been in court more, instead of endlessly pushing papers across her desk on the eightieth floor of a downtown high-rise.
