Bishop,_Carly_-_The_Soul_Mate.txt
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catchers, not the advocates of creating your own reality, not Richard
Bach and Jonathan Livingston Seagull, or even. Aspen's most famous
resident, John Denver. All of which put her at odds with half of the
bestsellers of the decade and a lot of what Aspen in the 1990s was all
about.
Robyn Delaney believed in what she could see, hear and touch, and not
much of anything else with one exception. That she belonged, body,
mind, heart and soul, to Keller Trueblood. She felt churlish and
ungrateful with her friends, hateful and disconnected from her family,
because all she wanted was the one thing she couldn't have. She
couldn't have Keller back in her life.
She felt cut off, adrift in a sea of strangers, who even if they were
dear and caring friends, would never understand her as Keller had.
Now, after Massie had trotted out the possibility last night that the
collapse of the old Hallelujah silver mine had been a deliberate
attempt on Keller's life, her despair had shifted shape on her. She
made her living drawing such inferences, pulling together threads of
motive and secret agendas and the deadly passions of real people.
Her head throbbed. She still had waking flashes of rotted timbers
collapsing with a horrible cracking noise. Her leg had been crushed.
Keller had died.
The thought that his death was murder and not an accident seemed
paranoid but way too coincidental as Robyn's beloved Austrian grand
mama Marie would have said long ago, crazy-making.
Robyn had to find out if there was any substance to her suspicions. To
do that she had to return to Aspen.
The heat of the late afternoon sun at Denver's mile-high altitude
sapped even the marigolds and mums, which were wilting on their stems.
The cottonwoods seemed to gasp and shed leaves in small clumps. Fire
bushes glowed red.
Robyn left the shade of the striped awning and waved with her brass:
handled cane to the evening therapy staff and nurses just arriving.
The parking lot had cleared out with the departure of the day crew.
She made a beeline for her midnight blue coupe and unlocked the door.
Heat rolled out in waves, but she sank gratefully down into the
leather-covered bucket seat. Her therapy session had left her muscles
behaving like overdone spaghetti. The steering wheel blazed from the
sun beating down inside the windshield.
"Holy hot," she muttered. Switching on the engine and then the
air-conditioning, she left her door wide open to blow out the hot and
bring in the cold. She turned to put her shoulder bag in the passenger
seat when a wiry, wild-eyed teenager darted up to her car.
His head was shaved and a ring pierced his eyebrow. He planted his
huge, gangly hands on the doorsill above her and demanded she hand over
her purse. "An' while you're at it, the rock on your finger."
Keller's wedding ring? Her temper snapped. "Not a chance." Not
Keller's ring, not anything else that remained of her shattered life.
Not if the hounds of hell were after her. After the year she had just
put in, three long operations and countless hours of grueling physical
therapy, Robyn Delaney was not only tough as nails, she spit in the eye
of death.
She had the vague impression of a statistic flying through her head
proving how unlikely she was to get away with her life while resisting
a mugger. Too bad. If she died defying this cretin and went to
heaven, then, maybe, she could have Keller back again. Part of her
wanted that so fiercely that she just didn't care what happened.
She tossed her long black French braid over her shoulder and glared up
at the would-be mugger. "Get your mitts off my ear, you miserable
little toad," she de-mande
"Yeah?"
Oh, here was a brilliant one, she thought. "Yeah." She tried to pull
her car door closed, but the wiry body stood rooted to the pavement.
Though momentarily startled at her resistance, the mean-ass kid
regrouped and he wasn't joking. He reached down with his overgrown
hand, grabbed the shoulder of her silk tank top and twisted until it
cut into her armpit. "Maybe you don't get I'm gonna hurt you, bitch,
if. you don' hand over the goods," he snarled.
The material bit into her flesh. She stifled her cry and groped
automatically for her cane. He dragged her from the car and threw her
to the baking-hot pavement.
Something cracked inside of her. She knew crime and criminals and all
about the dark places in twisted human souls. She knew all about their
victims, too, their pain,
their impotence and for once in her life, she desperately needed to
strike a blow against the lowlifes who preyed on other people ....
Against a creep who thought he could take Keller's ring from her.
Adrenaline poured through her. Her heart raced, and a voice in her
head squeaked hysterically at her foolish bravado, but Robyn tuned it
out and lashed out at her attacker with her cane and all the pent-up
rage inside her.
Her blow landed on his shoulder, but it just enraged the mugger. She
screamed and clenched her fist so he couldn't strip Keller's ring from
her finger. No power on earth could have opened her hand. Her
attacker backhanded Robyn and the fragile flesh inside her mouth split
and bled.
He might have knocked her senseless and taken Keller's ring from her,
anyway, but a security guard bellowed at the mugger and came running
full out. Robyn seized upon the distraction he provided and drew her
leg up hard and high in the mugger's crotch. He lashed out in his pain
but missed her face and lit out running from the security guard.
The guard, a man named Shelton whom she'd spoken with often enough in
the past year, offered Robyn his handkerchief while a couple of other
security types tackled the kid. She stood up with Shelton's help,
retrieved her cane and, for an instant, indulged the primal
satisfaction of having bested a predator. A second or two later, her
nerves let her down and Robyn began quaking like an aspen leaf in a
very stiff wind.
Sure, now, chimed that same annoying little voice of caution in her
mind. She shook her head and scraped loose tendrils of hair back from
her face. "Thanks, Shelton."
The security guard, a burly, ruddy-skinned ex-cop, steadied her.
"Robyn, what's wrong with you? Are you nuts? You know better than to
take on a mugger!"
She clasped the guard's wrist and gulped as her courage dissolved away
to nothing. Tears bit at her eyelids. Her elbow was badly scraped and
burned by the pavement. Her face hurt like blazes. "I... yes. Maybe
I am, but I'm all right. He just ticked me off, you know? I'm in no
mood to play a wilting violet."
"How about a dead violet?" Shelton jibed, but then relented. "You're
pale as a ghost, Robyn,... Are you sure you're okay? Maybe you should
come back inside."
Robyn shook her head. "I'm fine, really. Thanks." She let go of the
security guard's steadying arm and turned properly in her seat. She
didn't wa
nt to worry him, or trigger a call from her well-meaning
psychotherapist, so she made all the proper noises to reassure Shelton
that she would be okay.
She didn't say, at least out loud, that she was still so angry inside
at Keller for dying on her she thought her being a ghost would at least
be a better alternative to surviving him. Maybe the movies had it
right and Keller was now a ghost. Well, she could be one, too, and
together they could haunt the Halls of Justice.
She bid the guard goodbye, whipped on her sunglasses against the fierce
glare of sunlight and sped off. Aspen was at least a four-hour drive,
maybe more.
She wheeled onto Colfax and headed to a neighborhood meat market. She
hobbled a bit getting inside. The butcher, Cory Janns, a first cousin
of Keller's, nearly came through the refrigerated display case at the
sight of her blackened eye and battered face. "Holy cow, Robyn!" he
exclaimed, wiping his hands on his white apron. "What happened to
you?"
"A mugger happened to me, Cory." She worked up a nonchalant smile that
hurt her face. "You should see the other guy. Do you think you could
give me an ice pack or "
"A piece of beefsteak," he said. "Hold on. I'll fix you right up." He
slid open a door of the refrigerator case and pulled out a hunk of
tenderloin, eyeing her eye. "Jeez. The family's going to come
unglued."
She could imagine the Trueblood family brouhaha not to mention the
reaction from Keller's mother, a powerhouse in local charities who no
politician ignored. No doubt the steely lady would soon be demanding
the entire Denver police department bring Robyn's attacker to justice.
"Cory, please don't say anything to May about this. I'm going up to
Aspen for a few days I'm on my way now, in fact."
She gave him an imploring look. Cory was a soft touch, and the first
to say he was not the brightest star in the Trueblood family firmament.
He wasn't likely to guess why she would be returning to Aspen. "Maybe
you'll cover for me if the family notices I'm gone? Just say I decided
to get away for a few days?"
He frowned. "They'll notice, all right, but I'll do what I can." He
carved the meat and packaged it, then came around the refrigerator case
to show her how she could hold it by the wrapping paper as a poultice
to her black eye.
She exchanged hugs with Keller's cousin and departed, crawling back
into her coupe. Her slacks were badly smudged, her blouse a wreck and
her whole body ached, but she wasn't going to cave in and cry or change
her plans,
She turned onto York Street northbound and headed for the highway. She
intended to be in the resort ski town by eight o'clock, and further up
the mountain, to the eleven-thousand-square-foot home of the late and
largely unmourned Spyder Nielsen, by nine.
This, she knew, was almost certainly Frau Kautz's last vacation day,
giving Robyn the last perfect opportunity to confront Candelaria and
Willetts without having to do some exotic end-run around the formidable
housekeeper.
Today was the day. Now was the time.
Holding the small slice of tenderloin to her cheek, she merged into the
heavy afternoon traffic on 1-70 westbound. The snarled traffic gave
her pause and her cheek ached horribly, and at long last, despite her
fierce determination, the folly of her actions back in that parking lot
hit her squarely. Tears threatened, and a lump clogged her throat.
"What's this about, Robyn?" she chided herself, sorting through her
feelings.
It wasn't about the emptiness of the antique double sleigh bed she and
Keller had shared, though there were nights when she ached for his
touch. Nights when, for the sound of his voice or scent of his skin or
the taste of his lips, she would have traded anything she possessed.
It wasn't that she didn't have enough friends, enough writing buddies,
enough family, to make her feel looked-out-for and encouraged that in
time, she would be fine.
It wasn't even that she still felt responsible. That if it hadn't been
for her wanting to go poking around the old Hallelujah mine shaft in
the mountains surrounding Aspen, Keller would be alive and well
today.
What it came down to was perspective. A year had passed. Keller's own
mother had gotten over his loss. Robyn simply had to pull up her socks
and get on with living her life. Keller would want that. Do yourself
a favor, he would say, a little auto pro bono.
Get a life, Robyn .... The. only life she wanted was the one she had
shared with Keller, but Robyn had tried. God knew she tried. Why else
would she have arranged the small get-together last nigh? She'd been
thinking a ritual gathering like that might be cathartic. That she
could finally lay him to rest in her heart with a celebration of the
life and times of Keller Trueblood.
It might all have worked that way, too, if one thing hadn't led to
another, leading Mike Massie to suggest Keller had been murdered.
Driving in what she had lately decided to call an aggressive manner
better than admitting she was reckless she darted in and out of clogged
rush hour traffic through the heart of Denver. She didn't know why she
bothered justifying her driving to herself. Who cared?
Who? Really? But the same obnoxious little Jiminy Cricket voice it
wasn't a voice, but how else was she supposed to describe thoughts
popping around in her head that were decidedly not her own? - kept
insisting her driving made her an uninsurable, undesirable risk at the
wheel.
She moved in and out of traffic lanes, content to be beating the flow,
even signaling each time to prove herself a safe-driver, right up until
all lanes of traffic came to a screeching halt just before the exits to
the town of Golden.
She switched on the radio to listen for what the delay was all about,
but after a few minutes, she turned the radio off and shoved a
Rachmaninoff CD into the disk player instead.
Her bags were packed and stashed in the back seat. Her mind was made
up. It really didn't matter what the radio sky-spies had to say about
the traffic, or that she was going to have to stop somewhere and change
her clothes.
She was going to Aspen, and she was going now.
AT THE LOGAN STREET address where the Denver Branch of Avenging Angels
kept an earthly presence in a small brownstone surrounded by high
rises, the office receptionist, Grace, sat at her desk. Part of her
job was to steer mortals to other resources should they wander in. Part
of it involved running interference for Angelo, head angel of the
DBAA.
Clarence, the Guardian Angel of the human Robyn Delaney, required all
GraCe's celestial tact to handle. Angelo wasn't given to granting
run-amok Guardian Angels an audience. Yet Clarence wasn't going away.
Feathers, she thought, were going to fly.
Gray-haired, blue-eyed, dressed in a tailored white dress only because
she missed the old days with the flowing white robes, Grace l
oved her
job. The Avengers were the most exciting of all angels to be around,
the ones who worked for truth and justice and got to set things aright
in the mortal world. To all appearances they were mortal, as opposed
to Clarence here, whose visage was only apparent to other angels.
There was no hierarchy in heaven that put Avenging Angels above
Guardians, or even Cherubs for that matter, but human form was one
delicious perk. To have a human body minus the aches and pains and
infirmities! Because she worked in this office, Grace got human form
as well even if it was rather... matronly.
Clarence the Guardian was fit to be tied, though tied with what, Grace
couldn't imagine due to his lack of real substance. Her sense of humor
grew sorely tried, and she scowled at his lack of decorum. Clarence's
earthly charge, Robyn Delaney, it seemed, was moving into dangerous
territory, and Clarence had apparently arrived at the end of his
heavenly tether with her reckless antics.
"Do try to get a hold of yourself, Clarence," Grace advised, breathing
a grateful sigh of relief when Angelo summoned Clarence to his office.
In a flash, the piping-mad little Guardian was gone from her reception
area.
Now, Grace thought, if only Ezekiel would respond to his page .... In a
moment of thinking about the Avenging Angel who went by Kiel, he popped
in, materializing out of thin air.
"Gracie!" He gave her a dazzling grin. Ordinary daylight sparkled off
his thick, wavy golden red hair, and his eyes reminded Grace of the