by Gary Sapp
heard a single heavy thump rise out of the silence of the bedroom where Seth likely was sleeping.
She started for the bedroom but stopped her progress almost after her first step. The microwave beeped in its completion but her eggs were burning so she shut the stove off.
And when she turned back around Joseph Champion was holding a Colt .45 in her face.
“Hello, Angel,” Champion shushed her and waved his own gun at her so that she would back away from him slowly.
“It’s been a long time, Joseph,” She tied her housecoat in a loose knot better to conceal her .22 from him. “How have you been getting along?”
Champion closed the bedroom door behind him where Seth could be dead or worse and leaned his narrow ass on the nearby counter. “I have been a little busy, you know me, Angel… I’ve always got something going on.” He did a little waving motion with his index finger. “Before we start with why I came all this way to see you I need you unfasten your robe, Angel,”
Angel rolled her tongue across her full top lip.
“You haven’t changed a bit have you, naughty boy.”
“It isn’t like that at all, Angel.” Champion was sweating like a pig. Angel knew that the FBI Agents would have been scrambling to activate the bypasses to the complex decoding systems to the alarms on the cabin and the area nearby. The rules stated that her friends with the wire taps were not to immediately fear the worse, but they were to work fast while they ascertained why she was suddenly out of contact from them.
She had to work fast as well…without betraying the fact that she was working on the timer ticking in her brain.
She sighed.
She took off her robe and tossed it away from where he was standing. She saw his face lighten up and his eyes widen when he saw her .22. The question of how she fit even that small a caliber of a gun into the string of her drawers was etched across her face. He gripped his handle tighter.
“I’ll need to take that from you, Angel.”
“Sure,”
She limped over to where he was and let him snatch it from her panties. No tricks, she told herself. Champion’s roughness had popped the string—and now she stood completely nude in front of this man. And this weapon you’ve uncovered may provide me more protection than any gun may have.
Champion wasn’t an idiot however. He saw through her plan. He walked over to and scooped her robe off of the floor and tossed it back at her and instructed Angel to put it back on. Angel could feel the silk hugging her shoulders as she as had asked her to. She tied a new knot that was only faintly tighter than the one before it.
“Is my husband alive in that bedroom?”
“Maybe,” Seth nodded his head twice and showed her a mean looking blade that was in his possession before he laid it on the counter behind him. “The fact of whether or not he remains in any salvageable condition is entirely up to you. I’ve made three surgical cuts in strategic areas that I’m sure a man of his professional experience would appreciate. The short of it is this, Angel: Your husband will die if this conversation between us goes on to long.”
Once again, Angel was reminded that Joseph Champion was no fool. But he may be insane. Either he knew that this room was wired and the FBI was nearby and planned for all three of them to die all along—or he’d truly felt that they were isolated enough to seek her out and reveal what he knew.
“So if looks as if you have the floor, Joseph,” She said. “What would you like to talk about?”
“I know that the FBI has been monitoring you and your husband’s movements. I would have never been able to get this close to the both of you if you hadn’t taken this weekend sabbatical up here.” He did a semi-circle in a small space. “I’m surprised at you, Doc. You should have known that I wouldn’t give up on finding you. I couldn’t give up on you, not this soon. It’s only been six months.”
“You’re right, Joseph,” Angel relaxed her stance and put her forearms on the counter behind her. “I should have known better as well. I should have especially known not to trust you.”
Champion waved his gun at her.
“Save all of those guilt trips for someone who gives a damn. You are far from innocent yourself, Angel. Word on the street is that you are facing a Grand Jury and potential jail time for your involvement with Pandora and with that butt fucker known as Hugh Keaton. You trained him…you trained that monster how to conduct himself while he kidnapped those children.”
“I can’t deny that I spent months with him.” She responded quickly. The FBI should have been done with her checks by now and first point of the operation should be online by now. “And you are also right that I know, at least at a conscious level, that Serena Tennyson would one day unleash this monster as a weapon against people of color. I can tell you that Keaton’s growth into his role went far beyond either of our expectations. By the time he had taken his first child he could have been labeled a machine. He could have been far more deadly. He could have been far more lethal in every aspect.” She dared step towards him. “But he was not any of those things, Joseph. He died as he had lived: A troubled soul with too many time bombs ticking in his brain. He liked to fuck young boys. He wasn’t organized or conniving enough to do anything else beyond what his brain was programmed to do. And that is why I know that he didn’t kill Erica Lovings, Joseph.” Angel’s voice softened and spoke volumes at the same time. “I know that you did kill her.”
“What are you talking about?” Champion laughed like a madman. “You’re crazier than shit, Angel.”
“You could certainly argue that, Joseph. But that point doesn’t change the fact of what you’ve done.”
“Why would I kill her, Angel?” Champion’s bushy brows rose to the top of his forehead. “I had no particular beef with Chris Prince or his estranged ex-wife.”
Angel nodded.
“And that’s why I couldn’t put it all together—at least at first.” She admitted to him. “I know the story of your wife. I know how she was beaten and murdered by those drug dealers in Texas. And I know that Serena helped sooth your pain somewhat when you were able to match an eye for an eye when you killed Erica in what served as your idea for retaliation for wrongs done to you.”
“This isn’t about Chris Prince,”
“I know that now as well,” Angel said and meant. And then she raised her voice. “You believe in paying your debts in full, sometimes two fold, Joseph. Pandora gave you the opportunity you’d sought since your wife’s murder to set things right, at least in your own mind. Erica Loving’s murder was your gift to Serena in aiding in an attempt to throw Christopher off his metal game both of you found necessary if you were going to beat him.”
“And I paid her graciousness with weakness and treachery and betrayal.”
Angel shook her head.
“Save it, Joseph. You’ve played this game—you’ve played this game like a Champion but it’s over now. I know the truth about you, Joseph.”
“What—“
“It has all been a game since we slept together in Macon. You’ve been setting yourself up as a mole, this martyr to the cause of Pandora. Sure, you were running alright. Serena wanted you dead for being disloyal but even she didn’t know the extent of what you had truly done outside of her sphere of influence.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Champion said but his foundation was showing its first sign of cracking. “Yes, I killed Erica Lovings for the reasons that you stated. And all of the personal beefs she had with the Bishop and his people in Carver provided an easy cover for me and my motives when Roxanne Sanchez came looking for her.”
“But Erica wasn’t the only one that you killed was it, Joseph.”
Champions face frowned in confusion at first—and then hardened with a new resolve.
“I didn’t shoot President Adolphus Sweet,”
“I believe you, Joseph,” Angel said. “But you were and still are a member of the renegade band of Pandora working outside out of Oracle’s knowledg
e or consent that forced her to have him shot to cover the poising that you are responsible for. You killed the President of the United States with this poison of yours. You killed the Mayor of Atlanta as well—“
“By God, I should have killed them all.”
“What?”
“Tell me that you aren’t so naïve, Angel. Damn, girl, I’ve got to give you full props. You are a world class doctor, yet I still think you chose the wrong field to make your living. You’re a born investigator, Angel. You’ve figured this whole thing out from its origins. So I don’t want you to go all stupid on me now.”
Seth, sweet Seth, you may be dying just a few feet away from me, but we need to learn the entire truth about this right now. “What in the hell are you talking about, Joseph?”
“The president and the mayor were mere test subjects of a far greater experiment in scope. An associate of mine, a former high level operative of the Atlanta Office for Disease Office, created a toxin that specifically kills people of color while leaving the rest of us alone?”
“What,” She sounded doubtful but the world had witnessed two examples of its lethalness thus far. “How does something like that work?”
“I’m so glad you asked, Angel. You don’t know how long I wanted to share this with someone outside our little group of patriots. Soon after 911 Pandora suspended its initial plans of an assault on A House in Chains indefinitely. We—the renegades as you called my
