Angel's Breath: The Second Book of Fallen Angels

by Valmore Daniels

  * * *

  When I asked her where we were going, Stacy said, “I know a diner just outside the city. We can get a cup of coffee or something.” She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “It’s about a half an hour away. Why don’t you lie back and take a power nap?”

  I needed more than a few minutes, or even a couple of hours, of sleep. “I don’t think I can. My heart’s racing.” I pointed to the envelope Stacy had tucked between the seat and the gear panel of the car. “Anything in there that will help?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s a ton of papers in there. I’ll have to go through them.”

  It was then that I noticed a tear streaking down one of her cheeks, and I felt about an inch tall. Stacy had put on a brave face since I had come to after the destruction of my house, and seemed to have it all together.

  Gingerly, I reached out my hand and lightly touched Stacy’s arm. “I’m sorry about … everything. We’ll find Chuck.”

  At first, she stiffened at the contact, but then I could feel the shuddering sob she let out. Nodding, she gave me a smile. “I know. It’s just that we’ve never been separated before. If anything has happened to him, I don’t know what I would do.”

  She fell silent then. I couldn’t think of anything to say to make her feel better.

  So much had happened in such a short time, it was a wonder I had any ability to think at all.

  Dimly, I wondered if I was still in shock about my mother. When I thought about it, my heart constricted and my stomach clenched. For some reason, I didn’t feel the acute grief I had expected. Guilt, yes, but maybe my mind wasn’t letting me process the reality of the loss. Although we had never had a close relationship, especially over the past ten years, we had had the same kind of bond that Stacy and Chuck shared: we only had each other in the world.

  Now, she was gone.

  I didn’t want to think about it, and shut my eyes against the thoughts.

  When I opened them again, it was because Stacy was gently shaking my arm.

  “We’re there. Let’s get some late breakfast.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  My senses were muddy, and for a moment, I couldn’t figure out where I was or who I was with. Past the point of exhaustion, my body wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep, but I willed myself to open my eyes and get my bearings.

  Stacy grabbed the envelope and her purse, and stepped out of the car. A moment later, I did the same, and raised my arms over my head in a stretch that lasted longer than I had expected.

  The Pacific Station Diner wasn’t a building. It was a converted railroad car with a large neon sign fixed to the roof. A quick glance at the field running along the highway showed an abandoned railroad track. I had seen several railroad car diners, but had never eaten at one before.

  Half a mile to the south, there was a trailer park and several homes scattered on either side of the highway; not enough to be considered more than a hamlet. I assumed it was mostly housing for one of the industrial parks in the area.

  As I followed Stacy inside, I asked, “Where are we?”

  “I worked here for a few weeks when we first came to Seattle. It was the only place hiring at the time, but the commute was killing me.”

  I frowned. “What if someone recognizes you?”

  Stacy smiled back at me as she led me to one of the open booths. “I hope they do. If Chuck comes here, they can tell him we were here.” She sat down and plucked the menu from between the condiment tray and the wall.

  “But what about…?” I asked as I took my place opposite her.

  In a low voice, she said, “The cops aren’t looking for me. And your ‘friends’ couldn’t possibly figure out where we are.”

  I couldn’t have argued with the logic, even if I had full command of my faculties.

  A waitress wearing a white apron over her faded yellow uniform stepped up and asked, “Can I take your order?” A moment later her voice changed. “Stacy? How are you? Long time!”

  “Nanette! You’re still working here?” Stacy said. “Is Terry still making you work doubles every Friday?”

  Making a hissing noise, Nanette said, “No one else is dumb enough to work it. It’s good to see you. Just passing through?”

  “Day trip,” Stacy said and pointed to me. “Giving the grand tour of my past.”

  “Ah.” The waitress gave me a smile and winked. “She’s a keeper, you know.”

  “Yes,” I said, not sure what else to say. “I’m a lucky man.”

  Nanette nodded in agreement. “What can I get you two?”

  Stacy ordered us eggs and toast, and two cups of coffee. When Nanette left to place the order, Stacy put the brown envelope from the safety deposit box on the table and opened it.

  Pulling out a stack of documents, she quickly sifted through them. Reading upside-down, I saw birth certificates, death certificates (I assumed for their parents), a life-insurance policy, a stock certificate, and several paper-framed family portraits. When Stacy got to the photographs, she ran the tips of her fingers over the faces of her parents.

  “I was very young when they died,” she said quietly. “I only have the vaguest of memories of them. But I remember my dad loved to sing lullabies to put me to sleep.”

  She looked at me and cleared her throat, choked back a sob.

  “My mother had a terrible singing voice,” I said. “I think I inherited it. It sounds like nails on a chalkboard.”

  Smiling at my admission, Stacy spread the documents out. “I don’t see anything here about Chuck.”

  We both looked through all the documents but were interrupted when Nanette came back with two plates of food for us. My stomach growled loud enough for her to hear it.

  “Let me know if you need anything more,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  Setting aside Stacy’s papers, we both dug into our meals like ravenous wolves. When I finished, I felt a little better, but I was falling asleep on my feet.

  I waited while Stacy read every document again. Finally, she slapped the last one down on the table in frustration.

  “There’s nothing here,” she said, and I could see tears begin to form at the corners of her eyes.

  “Listen,” I said, trying to sound as comforting as I could, “we’ve both been through a lot this morning. We’re not thinking straight. We need to figure this all out, but I can barely keep my eyes open. I know we need to find Chuck, but I can’t think until I get some sleep. I’m running on fumes.”

  Stacy looked as if she were going to protest, but then I saw her let out her breath. “You’re right.” Glancing out the window, she said, “There’s a motel half a mile from here.”

  Stacy gathered her documents together and stuffed them back in the envelope. I pulled enough money out of my wallet to cover breakfast, and dropped it on the table.

  Together, we made our way to the motel. After Stacy checked us in, we went to the room. I collapsed on top of the sheets, still in my clothes, and was asleep within seconds.

  * * *

  I bolted out of bed. The room was pitch black, and I reached out blindly.

  “Mom!”

  Then my memories came flooding back. My mother was dead. My house destroyed. My life shattered.

  I looked down. My clothes were drenched and sticking to my skin. I must have been having a nightmare.

  Struggling to a sitting position, I ran my hand through my hair.

  Stacy was sitting at a small round table, and was going over all of her personal documents again.

  “Any luck?” I asked.

  She didn’t look up. “No. How was your sleep?”

  “Good, I guess.” I looked around for a clock. “How long was I out?”

  “About ten hours.”

  I pushed myself off the bed and went over to her. Sitting down on the chair opposite her, I said, “Thanks for letting me sleep. You look like you could use some.”

  She waved off the suggestion.<
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  I looked at the documents upside down. “Was there anything else Chuck said?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If anything happened, he wanted you to drop everything and split. Did he say what he wanted you to do next? How to find him or anything?”

  Stacy shook her head. “No. And I never really asked. I thought he was just going on, you know. I never took it seriously.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Why do you keep asking me? I have no idea.” Stacy glared at me, and then her eyes softened a moment later. “I’m sorry. I guess I am getting tired.” She waved her hand over the documents. “I don’t know, maybe he thought he could find me wherever I went.”

  Quietly, I said, “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. I got you into this mess.”

  “No.” She looked me in the eye. “I don’t mean to be so snappy. I’m just worried.”

  “I know,” I said. “We’ll figure something out.”

  She laughed without humor. “Here I am going on about my brother when you just lost your mother. I’m so sorry, Rich.”

  I sat there without saying anything for a while.

  Stacy asked, “You told me you didn’t have any other family. There’s no one you can call?”

  “No,” I said.

  I had never met my father, and my mother rarely spoke about him. I had tried to bring it up several times, but I only heard the story once. She told me they were never married, but had lived together for six months. His name was Edgar Lineman, and he had just graduated with an architectural degree when my mother got pregnant. According to my mother, he was adamant he never wanted kids, and thought my mother had tried to trap him. He had moved across the country before I was born. That was all my mother would say on the subject.

  One time, when I was fourteen and just starting in my rebellious phase, I dug through some of the papers in my mother’s closet and found a letter she had written to him telling him she regretted the way things had ended. She had addressed it, but never mailed it.

  His address was in Miami, Florida, and I went through directory assistance to find his number.

  I said to Stacy, “I tried to call my father once. It was a long time ago. When I told him who I was, he said, ‘I don’t have any children. Don’t contact me again or I’ll call the police.’ ”

  Stacy reached up and touched my cheek. “I’m so sorry, Rich.”

  “I’m sorrier for my mother,” I said in a croak. “My father abandoned her, and sixteen years later, I did the same thing to her. I’m such a piece of shit.”

  “You were a kid; you didn’t know any better.”

  I choked back a tear. “And now she’s dead, and I never asked her to forgive me.”

  “You know she loved you, right? I didn’t spend a lot of time with her, but I could tell. Every time she said your name, her eyes lit up.”

  It was too much for me to cope with. I’m not sure my words were coherent when I said, “I’m sorry.”

  I stumbled out of my chair and headed for the washroom. At the sink, I ran the cold water and splashed it on my face.

  After a moment, I noticed Stacy standing behind me. She stepped closer to me and wrapped her arms around me, leaning her head against my back.

  We stood like that for some time before she grabbed my hand and led me to the bed.

  * * *

  Without any idea what else to do, we paid for another day at the motel. For lack of a better plan, we decided to hope Chuck would find us. We had left as many breadcrumbs as we thought were safe. The waitresses at the diner knew we were staying at the motel, and throughout the day, Stacy called some of her friends to ask if they had seen Chuck; if they did, could they get him to call or text her.

  I flicked through the channels on the television, not really paying attention to any of the programs, except when the news came on. No one could come up with an explanation for the tornado that ripped through my house, but rescue workers had found one person—my mother—in the wreckage. So far, the police were still investigating, but there was no mention of how she died.

  Several times, I thought about the odd power that had thrown Al and Tom around like dolls, and which had brought that fateful tornado down. No matter how much I concentrated, I couldn’t bring it on again. After a while, I began to think it had been my imagination, as Stacy had said.

  * * *

  Chuck’s whereabouts remained a mystery. The news had stopped talking about the tornado. If not for the fact that my mother was dead and Chuck was missing, Stacy and I could have simply been spending a weekend away together.

  Stacy spent hours going over her documents, looking for any clue she might have missed.

  I tried to help, but I had no idea what to look for.

  “I’m sure he’s all right,” I said to her that night while we sat in bed, watching a few comedies on the television. “He’s a resourceful guy.”

  “Resourceful is right,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “After our parents died, we were put into the foster system. The first home we went to was all right at first. We were there for four years, and that’s when the parents went through a divorce. I was about twelve, then.

  “Chuck and I were sent to a second home, but that only lasted about a year. The mother got pregnant and wanted to focus on her biological child, so out we were once again.”

  Stacy took a moment before she continued her story. “The third was the worst. I was fourteen, and I never felt right with the foster father. I always got a creepy vibe from him. That’s when Chuck started to get into computers. He hacked into the father’s computer and found photos of me while I was sleeping, and video files of when I was in the shower. The father had apparently installed a hidden camera in the bathroom. Chuck reported it to child services and to the local police. He sent them both an anonymous email attaching the pictures and clips.

  “Chuck made the decision for us. We were better off on our own. We ran from the home that night, and we never looked back.”

  Stacy buried her face in my shoulder. “We need to find him, Rich. I don’t know what I would without him.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  We opted to spend one more day at the motel before heading back to Seattle. The waiting was killing me, and I began to feel cooped up in the motel room.

  Around six, Stacy said she was going out to get us some supper.

  “I’ll come with you,” I said.

  “No, you stay here.” She picked up my car key. “I’ll be back in a while.”

  Three hours later I started to get worried, and I found myself pacing the room, going to the window once in a while to see if she had come back. I picked up the hotel phone to call her cell, and cursed when I heard it ringing on the night table. She hadn’t taken it with her.

  I was on the verge of leaving the motel on foot to go looking for here when I heard a rumbling, like the roar of a tornado, coming from outside.

  Making my way to the window again, I peeled back the drapes.

  Half a dozen motorcycles pulled into the parking lot. Several men in helmets slowly dismounted. Some of them slapped dust from their leather pants and jackets; others stretched or did knee bends to get their blood circulating again.

  Opening the motel room door, I stepped out and looked up and down the row to see if Stacy had come back.

  One of the men pulled his helmet off and looked at me askance. He had grizzled features; a full black beard and greasy hair tied back in a ponytail. Dismissing my existence, he strode toward the office. If the other bikers were aware of me, they didn’t show it, either. Instead, they untied packs from their bikes, slung them over their shoulders, and followed their leader into the building.

  I spotted movement from the opposite direction and saw Stacy walking toward me with a bulging plastic bag. She had parked the car at the other end of the lot; I could barely see it behind the ice machine.

  “Sorry I took so long,” she said, hefting the bag as sh
e neared. “I guess I just needed some time. You hungry.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I was worried.”

  Holding the door open for her, I let her go in first. She dropped the food bag on the small round table and ripped the plastic rather than untie the knot at the top.

  “You forgot to take your cell phone,” I said, watching as Stacy pulled out two bottles of soda and two Styrofoam containers.

  “Sorry,” she said, but I got the feeling she had left it here on purpose. She probably wanted a few hours to herself to think.

  I sat down and opened the lid on the food. It was some kind of pasta—I could never remember the different names: this one looked like tubes. There were slices of chicken on top, covered in a white sauce.

  We dug into the pasta, and by the end of it, I had forgiven her for making me worried. I put the plate down on the table, and a drop of white sauce spilled onto one of Stacy’s documents.

  “Damn,” I said, and tried to wipe the sauce off with my finger. As I did so, I noticed that the document was a stock certificate. “I hope I didn’t ruin it.”

  “Oh,” Stacy said. She waived the certificate, and then shrugged. “It’s probably not good for much more than toilet paper anyway. We lost our shirts on this one. It dropped fifty percent six months after we bought it. I haven’t bothered to check on it in a while.”

  Then she cocked her head.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “GingerBeef,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s a tag,” she said.

  “A what?”

  Stacy clicked her tongue. “Gamers use them as their online screen names.”

  “Is it all right for me to say ‘huh’ again?”

  “Chuck uses the name ‘SamuraiChuck’.”

  I asked, “What does that have to do with anything?”

  She pointed to the stock certificate. “We got onto this stock from one of Chuck’s online friends. He calls himself GingerBeef; his real name is Eugene Yates. He’s the one who turned us on to this stock a few years ago.”

  I recalled Chuck’s reaction when we had first talked about the stock market. He had said it was too risky for him. Maybe the experience of losing his investment was what had spurred him into his data-mining venture.