“I’ve got this, Zach.” She steadied her aim. “Tell me where Angel is, now.”
“You’re too late,” she spat. “My brother’s on his way to get her. And once he has her and her baby—”
“What baby?” Parker said.
“—the Council will trade me for her.” She smiled thinly at Micki. “So you see, I won, after all.”
“I don’t think so,” Micki muttered, lowered her gun and pulled the trigger. “Try transforming with a bullet in your foot, bitch.”
Chapter Fifty-six
5:58 P.M.
Angel sat on the floor in front of her drawing. She’d pulled the mattress off the cot and over to the spot, then grabbed the blanket and wrapped herself in it.
She couldn’t take her eyes off the drawing. She didn’t want to. It gave her hope.
When the dreams came to her the way this one had, they were prophetic. Of the future, not the past.
She tilted her head. Seth was coming for her. But not the one who had come the night before. She didn’t know how it could be, but that one had been an imposter.
She knew because of the light encasing them both. The way it had once before—and they had triumphed against evil. Together.
She shifted her gaze to the rendering of the circling bird. Their enemy had returned.
Tap . . . tap . . . tap . . .
She lifted her gaze to the ceiling above her. The tapping came again. “Hello?” she called.
The tapping sounded again, this time from the far end of the shipping container.
“Who’s there?” She grabbed the light and headed toward the sound. “I’ve been locked up in here. I need help.” She pressed her hands to the wall. “If you can hear me, bring help!”
“I can hear you.”
A male voice. “Who are you?”
“A friend of Seth’s. He’s coming. He’s almost here.”
A cry of relief slipped passed her lips. “Thank you! I’m Angel.”
“I know who you are. Seth told me. I’m Hawke.”
Her blood went cold. She looked over her shoulder at the drawing, at the circling bird.
Hawke.
“Angel? What’s wrong?”
She shook her head and backed away from the wall.
He knocked again. “Angel?”
“Go away! You’re a liar. I know about you.”
He didn’t respond. The seconds ticked slowly past as she wondered where he was and what he was doing. Then, suddenly, he spoke, “She’s here! She’s okay! I don’t know what happened. She was talking to me, then— ”
“Angel!” Seth, pounding on the wall. “It’s me!”
“Seth!” She ran to the far wall and pressed her hands against it. “Run! Don’t trust him. He’s the enemy!”
“Hawke? No, babe, he’s my friend.”
“Please,” she sobbed, “a bird of prey, a hawk, in my dream—”
“Listen to me. He’s a friend. He and a couple others have been taking turns watching over you because I couldn’t. Hawke told me they’d taken you. They’re coming back. Soon, Angel. I’ve got to get you out of there.”
Her dreams had never been wrong before. She didn’t know what to do, who to trust.
“Move as far away from the wall as you can, Angel. Is there anywhere you can take cover?”
“No! It’s just a box. There’s no place—” Her gaze landed on the cot. “A mattress,” she called. “I could put it over me.”
“Do it. I’m busting you out of there.
“How?” she cried.
“There’s only one way, babe. I’m sorry, but I have to use it.”
His dark side, the power it supplied him.
“No! Seth, it grows stronger when you use it. It’s not worth it.”
“You’re worth it, Angel. Our baby’s worth it.”
“Not that way.” She glanced over her shoulder once more, taking in her drawing, knowing that this time she had it right. “We do it together, Seth. You and me.”
“Babe, I know this will work—”
“And I know this will.” She placed her palms flat on the wall. “Find my hands.”
He did, and she felt the connection, like a magnet meeting metal. The way it was supposed to be. “I love you,” she said, closing her eyes.
“And I love you.”
“Our love can tear down these walls. . . you know it’s true. Picture it, Seth! Believe it!”
The connection strengthened; she couldn’t have broken it if she tried. Eyes closed, she imagined them joined, the way they were in her dream. Encased in light.
“You saved me,” she said.
“And you saved me.”
A glow started at her hand, pressed against the wall, anchored to Seth’s on the other side. A ring of light appeared, tracing their fingers, a bold and brilliant outline. The glow spread until the shipping container filled with light and the walls vibrated, then shook. The steel groaned, as if it knew it had been bested.
The light extinguished, the connection snapped. Angel stumbled backward, Seth’s name on her lips, urging him to run. And then she heard him call hers, urging her to do the same.
She made it to the mattress, managed to pull it over her as a deep rumble came from someplace beyond, followed by the scream of collapsing steel.
And then, quiet. Absolute still, not even a puff of air. Moonlight spilled through the damaged walls, and Angel saw they they stood in a vast, empty warehouse.
Within moments, Seth was at her side, helping her to her feet. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Her hand went to her belly. “We’re fine.”
“Thank God.” He cupped her face in his palms. “You were right. We did it together.”
A hawk swooped in through a skylight, diving toward them. As it landed beside them, it transformed into a young man with one blue eye and one brown one.
“Hawke?” she asked.
“Good to meet ya.” He looked at Seth. “The chameleon’s coming. Go, now. I’ll hold him off.”
Seth held out his hand; Angel grabbed it. “Thanks man, I owe you.”
“No I.O.U. necessary, man. This is what we do for each other.”
Seth and Angel headed toward a door at the back of the warehouse. When they reached it, they looked back.
“I’ll see you at Half Moon,” Hawke called to them, then burst into flight.
Chapter Fifty-seven
7:15 P.M.
Arianna met them at LAM’s back door. Micki and Zach entered, followed by Parker, pushing Isabella in a wheelchair. Parker had called in one of the medics in Professor Truebell’s network.
“Parker!” Arianna cried when she saw him. “You’re back! What about Eli and the professor?”
He hugged her. “The High Council has agreed to release them in exchange for this prize. Isabella Bremmond, meet my sister.”
“Go to hell, Lightkeeper.” She all but spat the words, and her restraints crackled. “My brother’s coming back for me. Wait and see.”
Parker smiled. “Yes, indeed, we will wait for him. In fact, we’re counting on him coming to get you. Excuse me, I’m going to get her set up in the conference room.”
Arianna looked at Micki, then Zach. “Where’s Angel?”
Micki could hardly meet her eyes. “We haven’t found her yet.”
“But we will,” Zach said. “The chameleon’s right. Her brother will come back for her. And he’s the weak link. We’ll make him talk.”
Parker returned. He looked at Micki. “I didn’t get the chance to say it back there, but good work. You had her without any help from me.”
Parker had never said anything like that to her before, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it now. “The chameleon—how do you know her?”
“Izzy and her brother are famous for their exploits.”
Micki thought of her own near death, of King and his daughter, of Sarah Stevens and the three queens who had become victims—and the ones who had become perpetrators.
A
nd of Hank. Especially Hank.
“So that’s what you call the pain and terror she’s inflicted on so many lives? Exploits?”
“Forgive me,” Parker said, expression genuinely remorseful. “You’re right. Her acts are crimes against humanity, ones for which she’s wanted by the High Council. And serious enough for them to overlook the professor’s transgressions and make the exchange for him.”
“Wait.” Micki frowned and looked from Parker to Zach. “What about Eli?”
“For him, they want the brother.”
“You won’t have him!” Isabella screeched from the conference room. “That bird’s hard to keep caged.”
Micki had had enough of her mouth for a while. She strode across to the conference room doorway and glared at her. “Shut up. Or I’ll shoot you in your other foot.”
Isabella turned her malevolent, amber gaze on Micki. “What are you going to do now? You’ll never work in law enforcement again. The tape will ensure that.” She laughed, the sound giddy. “And Natalie King will disappear. Without a trace. Without collecting the huge life insurance payout owed her. Foul play, they’ll think.”
She smiled, and Micki felt cold clear to her bones. “And who do you think they’ll look to? Who will be the prime suspect? Why you, of course. Poor, unhinged Michaela Dare. Your reputation is ruined. You’ll live under a cloud of suspicion for the rest of your days.”
She was right, and it terrified her. But Micki wasn’t about to let her know just how horrifying the thought of that was to her.
Instead she returned the chameleon’s smile. “And you’ll live the rest of your days in a maximum-security prison, no doubt wearing a necklace exactly like you’re wearing now. Have fun with that. I like my odds better.”
She reached for the door handle and snapped the door shut. Then she let out a pent-up breath and looked at Parker. “What now?”
He lifted a shoulder. “We wait for Bremmond to make his move.”
Chapter Fifty-eight
9:25 P.M.
The waiting was hell. Micki paced, stopping long enough to eat a couple slices of the pizza they’d ordered in. They’d tasted like cardboard in her mouth.
They had to locate Angel. And with each minute and hour that passed, she became more afraid that they would never see her again. That she and her unborn child had fallen victim to the Dark One.
She could hear Parker in back, talking on the phone. Arianna was checking in with the center’s small group leaders to let them know LAM was reopening in the morning. And Zach had disappeared upstairs.
She went in search of him, and found him in Professor Truebell’s office. Zach sat at the desk, shuffling the deck of cards he’d found. Micki stopped in the doorway, watching him manipulate the deck, shuffling, cutting, and fanning like an expert.
Was there anything this man couldn’t do?
She tapped on the door. He looked up.
“Hey,” she said. “Can we talk a minute?”
He swept the cards into a neat stack and set them aside. “Sure.”
She closed the door but didn’t make a move toward him. “You’re pretty good with those, partner.”
“Did a stint as a dealer in Vegas. It was short-lived.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“I figured out pretty quickly that with my gifts, I was on the wrong side of the table.”
Micki smiled. “The house already has the advantage, why give them another?”
“Exactly.” One corner of his mouth lifted. “So I quit to work the other side. Blackjack was my game.”
“I’m sure it was.” She made her way to the desk, but didn’t sit in one of the chairs facing it. Instead, she stood behind one of them, using it as a kind of shield. She glanced up at the stained glass, at the hovering angels. Funny how the glass seemed to still glow, even after dark.
She could use those angels now, she thought. What she was about to reveal wasn’t going to be easy.
“What happened then?” she asked him.
“I couldn’t bring myself to lose.”
She laughed. She could see that, too. “They didn’t break your legs, did they?”
“Nothing so dramatic. They politely asked me to leave. And to never come back. All of them.”
“All of them?”
“Every casino on the strip.”
“You don’t do anything in a small way, do you, Hollywood?”
“Go big or go home.”
She laughed. “You could have been one of the greats.”
“True.” He held her gaze. The blue of his seemed to deepen. “But then I wouldn’t have met you, Mick.”
She hated when he said things like that, in that way. They made her forget who he was and who she was, and caused her heart to lurch and her breath to catch—all most disconcerting for a serious girl like herself.
“But,” he went on, “I suspect you didn’t come in here, closing the door behind you, to discuss my thwarted career as a professional gambler.”
“No, I didn’t.” She rested her hands on the chair back, preparing herself. “I feel like you and I have some unfinished business.”
If he made a joke, she would be saved. She would be able to push aside the nagging feeling that there was somewhere the two of them were meant to go, and it couldn’t happen until she shared this with him.
She held her breath, uncertain which to hope for. But he didn’t make a joke. Didn’t grin or wiggle his eyebrows in mock lechery. He simply . . . waited.
No place to run, no place to hide. Not anymore.
Micki swallowed hard. Flexed her fingers. “Remember when we were first partners? And you asked me about my family?”
“And you said, ‘maybe you’d tell me someday.’ Yeah, I remember.”
“It’s someday, Zach. If you’re still interested?”
“There’s nothing I’m more interested in, Mick.”
Her heart rate zoomed; she struggled to catch her breath. Finally, she did. “So I’m just going to say it, straight out. No drama, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I was seven the first time my Uncle Beau molested me.”
She heard the challenge in her voice. As if she was daring him to be skeptical or worse, condescending. As if, in a strange way, she was itching for a fight.
But instead, he was neither. Instead, like a moment ago, he just waited. Allowing her to share in her own time, in her own way. With or without drama.
“Up until then, he was my friend. My only friend in our whacked-out little family unit. We’d play Hide ’n Seek and” —her throat closed over the words and she had to force them out— “make-believe. I’d be the princess and he’d be a knight come to save me from the dragon. That was my favorite game. I even had a stuffed dragon toy. We used it as a prop.”
Micki looked down at her hands, realizing she had the chair back in a death grip. She tried to relax them, but couldn’t. “Then one sticky summer night, he woke me up. He held out his hand and said—”
His words, the sound of his deep drawl, slurred with bourbon and anticipation, filled her head and tripped off her lips.
“Come, Michaela, let’s play a little game of make-believe.”
It was the first time, in all these years, that she’d said the words aloud. They sounded so different in her own voice. Less menacing, but more profane.
She peeked at Zach. He sat frozen, save for the muscle that jumped in his clenched jaw.
She looked away and began again. “I didn’t ask where he was taking me. Or why he wanted to play in the middle of the night.”
She closed her eyes and remembered, as if it had happened the day before, putting her small hand in his big one and trotting along beside him. Happy to play. So trusting.
“The game changed that night. He was no longer the knight.” She paused. “He was the dragon.”
Zach stood, came around the desk. She shook her head, letting him know not to come closer, not to touch her. If he did, she wasn’t certain she cou
ld finish.
“Somewhere along the line, I realized the knight wasn’t coming back, and no one was going to save me. And that I had to save myself. Finally, I found the courage. I went to his room with a knife, I held it to his throat and told him if he ever touched me again, I’d kill him. I was twelve.”
A smile touched her mouth. “He must have believed me, because he never touched me again. I blamed myself for not having the guts to do that sooner.”
“You were just a little kid, Mick.”
“I know. But it doesn’t change the way it felt back then. And now, too.” She cleared her throat. “That moment changed me. It freed me in the sense that for the first time in my life, I felt as if I had power over my own life, my own outcomes.
“Not long after that, I ran away for the first time. They found me and dragged me back. So I ran away again. And again.”
Her medal warmed and she thought of Hank. She brought a hand to it. “Finally, at seventeen, Mama emancipated me. And I left for good.”
“Have you seen or talked to—”
“Any of them? No.”
“Did you ever tell your mother what he did to you?”
“No. I thought it was too late. Maybe if I had when I was seven or eight, but by the end she would have thought I was just lashing out, trying to hurt her. With Mama, everything was always about her.”
“Thank you, Mick,” he said softly. “For sharing that with me. I won’t betray your trust.”
Tears flooded her eyes. She hadn’t cried once while recounting the story—tears hadn’t even pricked her eyes. But now, at his sweetness, she could bawl like a baby.
“I thought I’d moved on,” she said, eyes stinging, “you know . . . gotten over it. Put it all behind me. I never even told Hank. He must have guessed some of it . . . but I wasn’t about to let my secret go.
“Until the chameleon, I really did think I had it all together. I was totally in charge. But she knew the truth. She knew why I held that secret so tightly, she knew what that meant. She showed me what it meant.” Micki paused, eyes brimming with tears. “I was still the dragon’s captive.”
Zach turned her to him, cupping her face in his hands. “Not anymore, Mick. He doesn’t have you now.”
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