Angel

by Nicholas Guild

  The FBI, with its computerized search patterning and all its other wonderful toys, wasn’t going to catch the Angel of Death. It wasn’t even their fault. They had method and analysis, which was usually more than enough to put the run-of-the-mill sociopath in the bag, but Angel Wyman just wasn’t human enough for all of that to do them any good. She was prey to none of the usual frailties, no more than a fire running through dry grass.

  In fact, the only hint of weakness Pratt had ever seen in her was the fact that Jim Kinkaid had lived long enough to leave this place with her. Her other victims had probably never guessed that that was what they were, not until the last few seconds of their lives, but she had arranged things so that Kinkaid came to her freely, through his conscious choice. She wanted something more from him than simply his death, some more complete revenge, which meant that she could not keep the game in her perfect control.

  Kinkaid had been in love with her once—might, in some remote corner of his soul, still love her. Only fools and songwriters thought that love was understanding, but maybe he knew something about Angel Wyman no one else had ever guessed. Maybe it would even be enough to keep him alive.

  Maybe.

  43

  Somehow Kinkaid had known the house would be like this.

  They left the road and traveled downward on a long driveway walled in with eucalyptus trees the branches of which twisted painfully in the storm, shedding dagger-shaped leaves and strips of bark. The rain was coming in rhythmic sheets, so that between beats of the windshield wipers you couldn’t see at all.

  And then, there it was. The driveway ended in a circle around a patch of bare grass. Another car was parked in front of the house.

  It looked like it belonged there. The dark wood was its own natural color and no light came from the large picture windows. The house was beautiful and modern but forbidding, as if it had been designed for some purpose that had nothing to do with human comfort.

  The car had belonged to Frank Rizza’s two henchmen. Kinkaid had seen it outside the pier that same morning. He did not allow himself to form any comforting expectations, because it was obvious that neither Rizza nor his goons were going to rescue anyone. One way or the other, Angel would have all of that well in hand.

  Still, he would be curious to find out what the car was doing there.

  “Let me invite you in,” Angel said, her smile faint and mischievous. Her bag was on her lap and her right hand was inside it, doubtless closed around the gun he had not seen since he told her to put it away. “I’m afraid you’ll find the place a terrible mess. I don’t do much entertaining, you see.”

  “Is Lisa inside?”

  “Yes.”

  “And is she safe?”

  “She’s all right. As far as her safety goes, I’ll let you be the judge.”

  He started to say something and then thought better of it. She was enjoying this too much.

  So he just got out of the car. He pulled the lapels of his coat tight around his throat and braced himself against the rain and waited for her to follow.

  “Go ahead,” she shouted over the wind. “The door is open.”

  His eyes took a moment to adjust, but the first object he picked out of the darkness was Lisa, huddled by a stone wall.

  She didn’t speak. She merely stared at him, and then slumped against the wall as if abandoning her last hope. She looked dreadful.

  “What has she done to you?” Kinkaid was at last able to ask. “Lisa, has she hurt you?”

  He began to run to her, but he was stopped halfway by the sight of a man lying on the floor. At first he was merely surprised, and then he saw that the man was dead.

  There was another one, lying a few feet away. He knew these two—they belonged to the car outside. They belonged to Rizza.

  Which raised an interesting question. Where was Rizza?

  It took him only a split second to consider all this, and then to decide, more or less simultaneously, that he didn’t care. He didn’t give a damn if the whole house was carpeted in dead bodies. What mattered was that Lisa was in handcuffs. She was chained to the god damned wall.

  “It’s okay, Baby,” he said, his voice somewhere between a murmur and a sob as he took her in his arms. “I’m here now. I’ll get you out. It’s okay.”

  But Lisa didn’t seem to hear him. She raised her hands so that he could see the cuffs on her wrists—the flesh was rubbed raw—and whispered something he didn’t hear. Then she shook her head and repeated it.

  “Make her unlock me.”

  But before he could answer the lights came on with a faint shudder of fluorescent bulbs.

  “Get away from her.”

  Angel was standing about fifteen feet from the door. She had taken the pistol out of her bag and aimed it at both of them.

  “Get away from her, Jim. Or I promise you I’ll blow her fucking head off, just for old time’s sake.”

  It was not a situation which admitted of any uncertainty. The threat was perfectly believeable. Kinkaid disengaged himself from Lisa, who, in spite of the handcuffs, tried to put her arms around his neck so that he had to push her away. He stepped back from her and then glanced at Angel.

  “A little further, if you don’t mind. Over there will be fine. We can’t have you stepping on poor What’s-his-name.”

  She gestured him back with the muzzle of her gun until he was almost precisely in the center of the room.

  Behind her, the front door had been left standing open. It was raining in on the stone floor of the entranceway. Even from where he was standing Kinkaid could feel the wind. He found himself wondering why a door left open struck him as somehow important, as if a vital decorum had been breached, and why it seemed to matter so little to Angel.

  Because, of course, it meant she was finished with this place. The rain on the carpet didn’t matter because she knew the next time she passed through that open door she was never coming back.

  “Who will you be when you’re done here, Angel?”

  The question was a like light flooding a darkened corner—for an instant it startled her, but only because she did not immediately perceive its source. Then she smiled, a smile that might have seemed beautiful had you just met this woman for the first time. To Kinkaid it seemed inhuman.

  “Another variation on the theme,” she said, as if she had to choose that moment. “Another little rich girl, sprung full-grown out of the head of Zeus. Why? Does it matter?”

  “I suspect it won’t to me.”

  Her face puckered a trifle, in what might, in someone else, have been disapproval.

  “Or was I mistaken?” he went on, trying hard not even to glance at Lisa, trying to seem detached and invulnerable, as if nothing held him to this life except a certain idle curiosity. “Isn’t that part of the plan? You kill me as part of the molting process, and then you can reinvent yourself as anything you want. I’d really hate to spoil it for you.”

  “And how would you do that, Jim?”

  “By insisting on having things my own way.”

  She cradled her right hand in her left and locked her arms straight. The gun muzzle steadied on him, so that he was quite sure that, had she pulled the trigger, the bullet would have gone straight through the middle of his forehead.

  “Beg me, Jim.”

  He said nothing. He hardly even saw the gun, although he was looking right at it. His whole attention was on her—on her, and on his determined effort not to care that he might die before he took his next breath.

  After perhaps fifteen seconds she made a quick, impatient movement and swung the pistol around so that it pointed at Lisa.

  “Beg me,” she repeated.

  Crouching against the wall, Lisa stared at him with huge, terrified eyes, as if she had been emptied of everything but fear, and Kinkaid forced himself to dismiss that silent plea. He had to. If he was going to save her life he had to forget that he loved her. This had to be strictly between Angel and himself.

  “That won’t w
ork either, Angel.”

  “No?”

  “No, it won’t. And for the same reason. Shoot her and I’ll make you kill me too. Right now. On my own terms. I don’t think you’re quite prepared to let me off as lightly as that.”

  “I might be, Jim. After all, I might be the sentimental type.”

  “This is where we find out.”

  For a moment anything seemed possible. One quick twitch, a few ounces of pressure on the trigger and Lisa’s head would simply explode, but Angel might have been made of stone. She seemed frozen in an instant of cold, murderous anger.

  “If I kill her, Jim, will you cry?”

  “I won’t have time.”

  She glanced at him as if astonished at the sound of his voice.

  “Pull the trigger, Angel, and I’m all over you. It isn’t much of a distance, remember. You’ll have probably less than a second to turn, take aim and fire, and if you don’t stop me dead with the first shot I’ll roll over you like a logging truck. Believe me, if I get close enough to put my hands on you I’ll break your neck, even if it’s with my dying breath.”

  Maybe she believed him. The pistol suddenly swung back to take aim at Kinkaid.

  Would she do it? Would she kill him right there, simply because he had as good as dared her to? There was something about the way she held herself that suggested she hadn’t made up her mind.

  “You know, Jim,” she said at last, her voice perfectly conversational even as her face was half hidden behind her clenched hands. “There’s one thing I’ve always been curious about—I thought I’d made more of an impression. What made it so easy for you to throw me over?”

  He didn’t allow himself to be surprised. It was a tactic, he thought. She was trying to break his concentration.

  “Does it make a difference now?” he asked.

  “It seems to.”

  “Then I have another question. What makes you think I threw you over?”

  . . . . .

  It was a long story—at least, it seemed a long story to tell with a pistol pointed at your head. But he managed to get the general outline across.

  Angel lowered the gun. She appeared stricken, her eyes unnaturally bright. She stared down at the floor. She seemed to be looking for something

  “It was because of my mother,” she said, almost as if to herself. “Family Tramp Two. Grandmother was getting even.”

  “Perhaps she thought she was protecting me.”

  “Don’t bet on it. Grandmother never did anything for anyone whose name wasn’t Wyman.” With an effort that was almost painful to watch, she lifted her gaze to Kinkaid’s face. “Would you have minded about the others?”

  “I was twenty. Yes, I would have minded. Whether I could have gotten past that is something I can’t honestly say. Maybe. I’d never been in love before.”

  “Then there’s a chance it’s all been for nothing.”

  “Either way, it’s all been for nothing.”

  She looked away. For a long moment she was silent. She didn’t move. She appeared not even to know he was there. And then the gun came up again and pointed at his head.

  “So I’ve lost it all,” she said. “Five Mile, my name, you—everything. Just don’t expect I won’t want something back.”

  “You want to settle the account? Fine—then settle it with me. Because it’s between the two of us, Angel. We’re the only ones left. It doesn’t have anything to do with Lisa.”

  For an instant she looked as if she had been stung with a lash. Then the pain turned to a cold, deliberate anger.

  “You said you would trade for her. It’s funny, but I don’t think you’ve got much to offer.”

  “I’ve got what I had before. I have the power to choose the time of my death. If it suits you to kill me now, then go ahead. Otherwise, let her go. This is not about her.”

  For perhaps twenty minutes he had not taken his eyes from Angel’s face. He had allowed himself to see nothing else in the room but her. The temptation to look away now was almost overpowering, but he knew that if he did she would shoot him in the leg and then his bargaining power was at an end. While he was waiting for it, balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to weave and dodge the instant she lowered her gun, she wouldn’t risk it. But if his attention wandered it was over.

  “You’re right. She doesn’t matter.” Bringing her left hand down, she reached into a pocket concealed in the waistband of her trousers and brought out something small and silver. She threw it to Kinkaid. “Go ahead. You can take the cuffs off her.”

  It was a set of keys. Kinkaid didn’t even glance at them. He simply heard them drop to the carpet beside his foot. She was making it too easy.

  There was a peculiar light in Angel’s eyes, a hard glassy quality that reminded him of a predatory animal.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “I reach down to pick up the keys and you blow my foot off—that should slow me down. Then you have everything your way.”

  She allowed herself a quick laugh. “Good guess. I must say, Jim, you’re making this more fun than I thought it would be.”

  “So I don’t pick them up, and we’re back to where we were. I might even be a point ahead because you don’t have the keys anymore.”

  “Go ahead. Pick them up. I promise I’ll be good. See?”

  She raised the pistol until it pointed straight up at the ceiling.

  “What more do you want, Jim? Go ahead. Risk it.”

  He didn’t allow himself to think. Before she had even finished speaking he dropped to a crouch, snatched the keys, and came back up. His little dance step to one side was unnecessary. She did not bring the pistol back down until he was perfectly still again.

  “See, Jim? You have to learn to trust me.”

  Then he understood what she wanted. He would take the keys over to Lisa, begin to unlock the handcuffs, and Angel would blow her head off. She wanted him to be close to Lisa when she killed her. She wanted him to stand there, covered with blood and brains, too shocked even to scream. Then she would have him.

  No thanks.

  The storm outside was getting worse. The rain on the roof fell like hammer blows. Through the open front door you could hear the sound the wind made in the trees. It was like the agony of God.

  “Lisa,” he called, without looking at her. “Can you catch this? You get one chance.”

  Then he threw them. He waited for the faint clink of metal against stone, but it didn’t come.

  “She’s got them, Jim. Nicely played.”

  Of course it didn’t make any difference. He was glad that Lisa was no longer chained up like a galley slave, but the basic situation was unchanged. Angel still had the gun and Lisa was too exhausted and frightened to be a threat to her. As soon as she had the handcuffs off she sank into a nearby chair. She put her hands down between her knees and began sobbing.

  “The offer is still the same, Angel. You let her walk out of here and it’s strictly between you and me. Otherwise, I’ll make you kill me, and then the party’s over.”

  “I think you’re bluffing, Jim. In my experience, nobody dies for love—what if I call your bluff?”

  At first he couldn’t identify the sound. It was so faint, like a bird chirping in the next room. Then he knew what it was.

  “Your phone’s ringing, Angel.”

  It was as if he had unconsciously given the signal everyone was waiting for, because suddenly everything happened very fast. Angel swung the gun around toward Lisa, whom Kinkaid could see out of the corner of his eye as she stood up and turned toward Angel—it was impossible to know which of them had moved first. For some reason Lisa was holding her arms out in front of her.

  Kinkaid didn’t wait. Even before he heard the sound of shooting he burst into a run, digging in hard so that no matter what happened his momentum would carry him forward.

  He wasn’t sure how many shots he heard. It could have been three or even four. He didn’t know. He had no more than a second or two, and the only thing
in his mind was reaching Angel.

  She turned, looking at him with blank astonishment. Her gun was raised, pointing back at him. He felt the impact of something hitting, but he never saw a flash.

  Then he slammed into her, flat out. She let out a little scream and they went over. They were on the floor, fighting each other like animals. She still had the gun. Kinkaid felt a stab of pain, like a hot knife cutting into him, as he climbed up her arm to get to it. He got it. He heard something snap as he pulled it loose from her hand.

  Then he rolled away from her, wrapping himself around the gun. He had no thought except to keep it away from her.

  It was then, when he tried to take a breath, that he realized he had been shot.

  “Are you bad, Jim? Oh God—oh God, I’m sorry.”

  It was Lisa. She wasn’t dead. She was kneeling beside him, very much alive. He tried to speak her name, but all he could manage was a sob of gratitude.

  “If he dies, I swear I’ll kill you, you bitch.”

  Until then he hadn’t noticed the pistol she held in her hand. Where had she got it? It looked small enough to be a toy.

  He turned his head. Angel was only a few feet away, just beginning to get to her feet. Her face and blouse were smeared with blood and she was holding her right hand, the first finger of which was bent at a peculiar angle, against her shoulder. She didn’t look frightened, or even angry. She seemed amused. She was ready to laugh at them.

  And she didn’t have her gun anymore. Kinkaid had it.

  The phone was still ringing, faint but insistent.

  “Answer it,” he said. “Find the stupid thing and answer it.”

  Kinkaid’s wound was really beginning to hurt now. As far as he could determine he had been shot once, somewhere on the right side of his chest. He couldn’t find any bleeding, and for some reason he had more pain in his back than anywhere else.

  He pulled himself up to a sitting position.

  “I’m not going to die,” he said. “At least not anytime soon. And nobody is going to kill anybody.”