Grave of Angels

by Michael Prescott

  He would kill her, but it would be quick. He wouldn’t get to make her suffer. It was a sort of victory, the only one she could hope for.

  Slowly, she withdrew the knife from under her shirt, holding it behind her. She was afraid the blade would catch the light and give her away, though there wasn’t much light in the kitchen, only the dim glow of the bulbs in the canopies over the counters.

  He still wasn’t looking at her. He seemed fascinated by the gun. And still whistling. The tune was familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

  All that was left was for her to do it. She’d worked it out, choreographing it in her mind like a scene in the movie when she had to hit her marks.

  But this scene would end with a cut to black.

  She wished Kate were here. Not to help her, but just to tell her about God and heaven and all that stuff. She didn’t buy into that stuff, but hearing about it—that would be good right now.

  Well, Kate wasn’t here. And who needed that bullshit, anyway? All she needed was the knife and the courage to take the first step. It was like stepping onstage before an audience. The first step was the hardest. After that, it was all instinct and training, and once she got going, she almost wouldn’t hear the pounding of her heart.

  She moved toward Swann. One step, then another, and she’d been right, it was like easing into a performance in front of the camera—her last performance, for an audience of one.

  He still hadn’t looked at her. A stupid thought surfaced—you might really get away—but instantly, she pushed it down. She wouldn’t get away. That wasn’t possible. Even to think about it was a distraction, a false hope. She had to stay focused.

  She shambled closer to him. He popped the clip back into the gun and set the weapon down on the counter. He turned to her.

  “Hey, sugarplum. Feeling ambulatory?”

  He smiled. A strange smile of needs and wants.

  She smiled back, and then the knife was out, flashing in the overhead light, the blade angled at his chest.

  She drove it forward, aiming for his chest, but he was quick, so quick. He stepped aside, making it look easy, and grabbed her knife hand by the wrist. He held the weapon safely away from him.

  “Stupid bitch,” he said.

  With a backhanded slap, he knocked her to her knees, and then he was on top of her on the tiled floor, the knife teasing her throat.

  “We made a deal; we had an agreement. No more bullshit. No more games. And then you go pulling a stunt like this. God damn it, I ought to cut you. Cut you up good, like you wanted to cut me.”

  He let her think about that, then tossed the knife aside.

  “But you wouldn’t be so pretty after that. And I want you to stay pretty. For later.”

  His hand in his pocket, one of the syringes coming out.

  “So I’ll give you another dose. Just till you learn to mind your manners. After a while, you’ll be docile as a lamb.”

  She thrashed and flailed. His knees ground into her hips, pinning her down.

  Then her arm stiffened, pulled taut in his grasp, and he forced the needle in. A hot wire of pain seared her. She whipped her head from side to side, sobbing.

  She didn’t even notice when he pulled the needle free and flicked it away. He rose and left her on the floor. She pushed herself to a sitting position, supporting herself with one arm, and looked up at him.

  “That’ll hold you,” he said.

  Her elbow buckled and she fell sideways, sprawled on the floor. The tiles were glossy and cool. Her feet kicked.

  “What’s the matter, did it go to your head?”

  She didn’t answer, couldn’t speak. It was as if she’d lost control of her body. She tried to flex her fingers. They didn’t respond.

  “Hey, what’s wrong with you? Not going comatose on me, are you?”

  He crouched, turned her onto her back. She felt his hand on her neck, taking her pulse.

  “Christ. Think I topped off your tank a little too much.”

  Her feet wouldn’t stop kicking. She still couldn’t speak. But the words reached her.

  Overdose, she thought.

  Of course that was it. She always knew she would die of an OD. Like Mila.

  But she didn’t expect it to be like this.

  “All right, sugarplum, stay with me.” He fumbled in his pocket, took out a new syringe. “I’ve got the antidote right here. It worked before. It’ll work again.”

  His words strange and echoey and far away.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Swann said, fiddling with the syringe, his fingers trembly, frantic.

  But she was going somewhere. She was going away. Falling down a steep incline into a warm and comforting blackness.

  “You hear me, kiddo? You hang the fuck on!”

  She did hear him. But she wasn’t listening, not anymore.

  His shouts pursued her into the dark.

  SAM took his time getting to San Fernando Road. He was in no hurry to meet up with Swann. And his phone hadn’t rung yet, so he guessed Swann wasn’t in much of a hurry himself.

  Once or twice, he’d tested the rig worked up by that faggoty kid who worked for Malick. It functioned fine. He figured they were listening right now—Malick, the pair of techie queers, and Vicki—listening to the shallow in-out of his breathing.

  The two bodyguards, he was told, had left a few minutes after he took off. They were behind him somewhere, at least a mile back. No use to him if he got in a scrape. But nobody cared about him. The only thing they cared about was their precious movie star.

  It had always been like that, ever since his daughter’s acting career took off. She was the money machine, the cash cow. She was important, and he was just some mooching piece of shit sucking on her momma’s tit. Vicki kept him around out of habit, but she didn’t love him. No one loved him. They all loved Chelsea, the whole world did, but no one gave a crap about him.

  He wondered how much he really felt for his daughter. He knew he was supposed to feel all kinds of tender shit for her. Was supposed to be willing to take a bullet for her. And now maybe that was what he was doing.

  But it didn’t mean he had to like it.

  The truth was, he sort of hated the little bitch. She’d been a pain in the ass her whole life, a deadweight dragging him down. He tried to get away from her by moving to Colorado, but she followed him there, showing up at his trailer one afternoon, smelly and disheveled after two days of thumbing rides. He hadn’t known what the hell to do with her. He wasn’t set up to deal with a kid. And then Swann started coming by and things got even more complicated…

  Swann. It always came back to Swann. How many times had he wished he’d never met that bastard? Only every single day for the last ten years.

  Now he was going to meet him again. For the last time—one way or the other.

  His cell phone burred.

  “Fuck,” he whispered, knowing that the people in the house could hear him, and not giving a shit.

  He flipped open the phone and answered the call, putting it on speaker as he’d been advised.

  “Hey, Jack,” he said, trying to sound friendly and unworried.

  “Hello, Sam. Good to hear your voice again.”

  “Yours too.” He hoped the lie wasn’t too obvious. “I’m on San Fernando Road. Just passed Roxford Street. Coming up on Sierra Highway.”

  “Took you long enough, didn’t it?”

  “I’m a slow driver.”

  “I’m guessing it took a while to fix up whatever tracking device they’re using.”

  “There’s no tracking device.”

  “Sure there is. Your car’s a Lexus. They have GPS built in.”

  “Yeah, but only the company can track it.”

  “And with all the technical know-how Sister Kate has at her disposal, she couldn’t jury-rig a workaround? Don’t bullshit me, Sam.”

  “I’m not.”

  “It’s okay. Your baby girl’s life is on the line. I expected you to play
it safe. And I’ve got a little workaround of my own.”

  “Do you?”

  “Get on Sierra Highway and go north for eight miles to Solemint Junction. That’s where the highway crosses Soledad Canyon Road. A quarter mile past that intersection, you’ll see a ’97 Ford Mustang parked on the shoulder. The keys are under the floor mat of the driver’s seat, but you’ll have to crack a window with a rock or something to get in. I couldn’t risk it being stolen. Okay?”

  Sam listened, his mind running through the implications.

  “You’re going to park your Lexus and get out and take the Ford. Bring your phone and the valise. Turn around, get on Soledad Canyon Road, and head west into Canyon Country. I’ll call again to tell you where to go from there. You got all that?”

  “I got it,” Sam said, licking his lips, which were suddenly too dry.

  “Look forward to seeing you soon, old friend.”

  Swann clicked off. His last words—old friend—resonated in Sam’s memory. There was nothing amiable about those words. They sounded like an epitaph.

  He knows, Sam thought. He knows I ratted on him. He has to know.

  “Sam”—Kate’s voice, calm and soothing—“we heard all that. You’re doing fine. Now, listen, this isn’t a problem. We can still track you. We’ll use your cell phone signal. Alan already set it up.”

  “Right,” Sam said, barely listening.

  Without the Lexus, they could track him only by the phone. And without the phone…

  They couldn’t track him at all.

  He had two million dollars in jewelry in the valise, and in a few minutes, he would have an untraceable car. He could go anywhere. Start over. Buy himself a new life.

  And Chelsea…well, Chelsea was shit out of luck. But since when was that his problem?

  Fuck, it wasn’t like he’d ever been in the running for Father of the Year.

  ——

  Skip looked at Kate as they watched the moving blip that was Sam Brewer’s Lexus. “You think he’ll rabbit on us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Swann’s just given him a way out. If he wants to take it…”

  Kate looked at Victoria, sitting next to her at the computer. “You know him best. How will he play it?”

  Victoria sat unmoving for a long moment, then closed her eyes. “He’ll run,” she whispered.

  Kate got on the phone to Di Milo. “We think Sam’s gone rogue. Swann’s left him a second car, a Ford Mustang, and we’re afraid he’ll use it to take the ransom and go. He’s making the switch just past the intersection of Sierra Highway and Soledad Canyon Road.”

  “On it,” Di Milo said laconically.

  Kate wanted to stand, to scream, to do anything, but she remained seated at the computer console. “There’s no way to track him if he doesn’t take his phone,” she said, not really asking, since the answer was obvious.

  Skip and Alan both shook their heads. “He’ll be in the wind,” Alan said, “unless Vince and Alfonse can intercept him in time.”

  “How far behind are they?”

  “Last time I checked their position, they were hanging back by a mile and a half.”

  “I thought we said one mile, no more.”

  “San Fernando’s a long, straight road. I guess they were playing it safe.”

  On the screen, the blip froze.

  “He’s parked,” Alan said. “Just past Solemint Junction.”

  Kate tried reaching Sam on his set headset. “Sam, you there? Sam?”

  No answer.

  “How can he do this?” Victoria asked the silence. “How can he be like this?”

  He had always been like this, Kate knew. Until now, Victoria hadn’t allowed herself to see it. Denial—Sam had told her about that. This is how she deals, he’d said.

  She resisted the urge to yell into the phone, demanding to know where the chase car was. She knew Di Milo was speeding to the site. He would be pushing the Skylark as fast as it would go.

  But not fast enough. That was what terrified her. Not fast enough.

  The speaker crackled with Di Milo’s voice. “We’re at the location. The Lexus is here and the cell phone’s inside.”

  “And the Ford?” Kate asked helplessly.

  “The Ford’s gone. Brewer could have stayed on Sierra Highway, or taken Soledad Canyon, or the Antelope Valley Freeway, or any side street.”

  “We lost him,” Alan said, sagging.

  Kate shut her eyes. Yes, they’d lost him. And lost Chelsea, too.

  VICTORIA fled from the room, retreating to the rear of the house. Kate heard a door slam.

  Someone ought to console the woman, but there was no time. The situation wasn’t hopeless, not yet.

  “Vince, search the routes Sam could’ve taken. Try them one at a time. Look for the Ford. You could get lucky.”

  “Right,” Di Milo said. If he thought it was a fool’s errand, he kept his opinion to himself.

  “Swann will call me when he realizes Sam is incommunicado,” Kate was thinking aloud. “We’ll have to renegotiate.”

  “Think he’ll be open to that?” Alan sounded dubious.

  “He has to be. He still wants his payment.”

  “Yeah, but there is no payment. Brewer took off with it.”

  “We can get more. Victoria can go back to the Rodeo Drive store, Étagère. She can replace all the items Sam stole.”

  “You think the store will let her run up that kind of tab? She’s already in the hole for two mil.”

  “We’ll find a way to convince them. If we can get Swann to agree to a new exchange.”

  “Who’ll do that drop this time?”

  “I will,” Kate said firmly.

  “That’s not safe, chief. He hates you. He won’t let you walk away.”

  “Vince and Alfonse will just have to get there fast enough to stop him.”

  She knew she was being reckless. But she couldn’t give up now. They still had a chance to get Chelsea back. It had to work out. To lose her now, lose her for good…it would be like…would feel like…

  Like the second time she’d lost a child.

  Yes, she was still punishing herself for that. Maybe she always would.

  We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of, Victoria had said. Some of us, a lot more recently.

  A curious thing to say. Still, whatever she was referring to, it couldn’t have anything to do with the situation at hand. Could it?

  She wondered. The tone of Victoria’s voice when she made that comment…almost as if she’d been ready to share a secret of her own…

  An irrelevant secret? Or one that mattered?

  Kate decided to find out.

  “Stay by the phone,” she told Skip and Alan. “Let me know if the chase car spots the Ford.”

  She left the room and went down the hall to the rear of the house. Victoria had slammed a door, but none of the doors was closed. The woman seemed to have simply vanished, until Kate thought of looking on the deck.

  Victoria was there, leaning on the railing, smoking a cigarette.

  “Bad habit,” she said as Kate came up to her. “I’ve tried to break it, but it doesn’t matter now.”

  Kate stood next to her, looking out over the dark canyon that descended into a pit of gloom.

  “He was never any good,” Victoria went on. “I don’t know why I stayed with him. It wasn’t love.” She drew another long drag on the cigarette. “Just another bad habit I couldn’t break.”

  Kate decided to be direct. “You told me before that you’d done some things you aren’t proud of. I had the impression you wanted to say something more about that.”

  “It’s not important.”

  “Anything could be important. Is there something you’ve been hiding?”

  “We all hide things.” Her voice was hollow and flat.

  She tried a different approach. “Swann got the list of jewelry from your insurance agent. How did he know who your insurance agent was?”

&n
bsp; “What difference does that make?”

  “And Swann knew Sam’s cell phone number,” Kate pressed. “That number has got to be unlisted.”

  “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  “How did Swann get that information?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must have household help.”

  “We have a housekeeper who comes in during the day.”

  “Have you ever seen her looking through your things? Maybe flipping through your address book or your mail or—”

  “My address book.”

  “What is it?”

  “No, nothing.”

  She moved away from the railing and made a slow circuit around the deck, circling the Jacuzzi.

  “Victoria…”

  “It can’t be anything.”

  “Whatever it is, tell me.”

  “It’s personal.”

  “Is it the thing you said you weren’t proud of?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have to tell me. It’s for your daughter.”

  “Chelsea’s lost. We’ll never get her back.”

  Kate closed the distance between them and placed a hand on Victoria’s arm. “We don’t know that. Now, tell me. You have to tell me.”

  “Oh, all right. It’s a trivial thing, really. I mean, everybody does it.” She met Kate’s gaze. “I’ve been seeing someone. For the past few months.”

  “All right,” Kate said carefully.

  “Sam doesn’t know. Not that he would have cared, or would have any right to. We’re not married anymore. He only stayed with me for the money. And the spotlight. He loves being photographed by the paparazzi. I can’t stand them…”

  “Victoria…” Trying to get her back on track.

  “I met someone, and we started…sneaking around, I guess you could say. Meeting at a cheap motel, a real dive, the kind of place I would never go.”

  “What does this have to do with the address book?”

  “Well, it does have Sam’s cell number, of course. And my insurance agent’s name and address.”

  “And?”

  She pulled in more smoke from the cigarette, then expelled it in a rush of words. “One time in the motel, I used the john, and when I came out, I caught him by surprise. He’d taken the address book out of my handbag, and he was looking through it.”