Angel Eyes

by Nicole Luiken

  “Access denied.”

  Crap. Air Traffic Control tried four more times to get us to identify ourselves, each time with more dire warnings, then ordered us to land—which I was happy to do.

  Police and emergency personnel met us on the scene—a small plaza on main street—which saved us knocking on the door of the nearest house.

  Keeping my hands clearly in the air, I told the police our story. They handcuffed the kidnapper, but escorted everyone to the station where they made us repeat our story again, before contacting security at the Historical Immersion.

  The healthy skepticism we’d been dealing with disappeared at that point. The dispatcher’s eyes widened, and her voice became very crisp. “Yes, sir.” She turned to the officer in charge, a fortyish blonde woman. “Lieutenant, Kenneth Jones is on his way here right now.”

  Maryanne turned wounded eyes on me. “My dad knows about the kidnapping already?”

  “I pressed the panic button so they’d close down the highways. Security must have notified your father. Why? Don’t you want to see him?”

  “Not looking like this.” Maryanne gestured to her low-cut vamp costume complete with one broken high heel.

  “All he’s going to care about is that you’re safe,” I told her. I, on the other hand, could probably expect an interrogation. I may have saved Maryanne, but I should have prevented her from being kidnapped period. Anxiety curdled in my stomach. Kenneth Jones’ reaction could make or break my new company.

  “I know,” Maryanne said. “It’s just… he worries about me too much already. Because I’m not brilliant like him. If he sees me like this… I look like a pathetic mess.”

  “Hey, at least you’re not green.” I stood up. “Lieutenant, is there somewhere we can clean up?”

  She pointed the way, then resumed questioning the now-awake pilot. So far he was feigning innocence. To hear him tell it, Maryanne and I had hijacked him.

  I scrubbed off my green face paint, but had to leave my dyed-black monster ‘do. Maryanne fixed her makeup and hair, then practiced smiling in the mirror.

  The sound of an aircar landing outside brought us back out into the station room, but not even Kenneth Jones could fly from New York to Texas that fast. Instead Historical Immersion security, wearing 1960s police uniforms, escorted in the kidnapper that I'd pulled out of the aircar.

  Now that I saw the kidnapper in the light, I saw why he'd worn a box over his alien costume to the frat party. He had wrinkles and bulldog jowls; he would have stood out like a sore thumb among all the students.

  A bandage covered his forehead, the injury probably received when his head smacked against the doorframe, but most of his blue makeup had been wiped away. He turned a new colour—red—and went ballistic when he saw me. "You!"

  He lunged forward, but the security guards held him back. I stared at him coolly.

  He'd abducted Maryanne and probably planned to lock her in a windowless closet or even kill her. Before starting my company, I’d researched kidnapping and found that often kidnappers take the ransom money, but kill their victim rather than risk being identified.

  I’d hated kidnappers with a passion ever since I'd befriended Timothy, the SilverDollar Mining heir, and learned how much he’d suffered at their hands. I'd deliberately chosen to make stopping kidnappers my profession. My business cards read Angel Eastland, Personal Security and Retrieval. If a victim had already been kidnapped I would go in after them. Or that was the plan, anyhow. Maryanne was my first real client.

  "You double-crossing b— Arrest her, too!" He pointed wildly at me. "I paid her off! I paid her half a million to look the other way while the kidnapping went down. She took the money! I have a vid of her accepting the bribe!"

  I huffed in disbelief and rolled my eyes. "Yeah, that's going to lighten your prison sentence: accusing the person who brought you down."

  "I can prove it!"

  And then a bad thing happened. The lieutenant took him seriously. She let him access his Internet account and play a vid of someone who looked like me accepting money from him.

  My stomach sank. "It's a fake," I said instantly. "Analyze it. He's fiddled with the footage. I never accepted money from him; I've never seen him before today."

  The assessing looks I received from the police chilled me.

  "Angel wouldn't do that," Maryanne said. "She's my friend." But I heard a catch in her voice and so did the lieutenant.

  "Thanks for the ringing endorsement," I said, hurt, while the lieutenant finished questioning the kidnapper. "I risked my life to save you tonight. You do remember the part where I hung from the aircar by my fingertips, don't you?"

  Maryanne winced. "Yes. I'm sorry, Angel," she said miserably. "It's just that I remembered how in school you always liked to bend the rules. I know you would never have let them take me, but just for a second I thought—I wasn't sure if maybe you wouldn't think it served them right to be cheated out of their money as well as arrested."

  It did sound a little like something I would do. "If those idiots had tried to bribe me, I would’ve told you about it," I said quietly. "I would’ve had the police there ready to swoop in. I would’ve armed both of us better. I would never have risked your life."

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have doubted you even for a moment.” Tears pooled in Maryanne’s eyes.

  It occurred to me that growing up rich had probably led her to expect betrayal. Mike had a similar mind-set because of his horrible pseudo-parents. “It’s okay.” I patted her back.

  Then another aircar landed, and the circus really began. Kenneth Jones, his lawyer, and three bodyguards invaded the small police station.

  I’d only spoken to Maryanne’s father via the Holophone. The man and woman I’d known as her ‘parents’ back in the 1980’s Historical Immersion had been bodyguards playing the role.

  In person Kenneth Jones made a strong impression.

  His suit was impeccable, and he had the expensive haircut and the too-youthful face of a rich man, but the intelligence in his quick gray eyes kept anyone from mistaking him for a playboy. This was a very smart man.

  One who also loved his daughter, but seemed a little at a loss in dealing with her.

  Maryanne shrank back from the hubbub, though she managed a wobbly smile when her father swooped down and hugged her tight. "You're safe! Thank goodness."

  "Thank Angel, too," Maryanne said quickly.

  “That remains to be seen,” the lieutenant said dryly. She briefed Kenneth Jones about my murky status.

  His arms closed protectively around Maryanne’s shoulders and his gaze raked me with contempt. "If you had anything to do with this, I’ll see that you rot in prison."

  "Daddy!"

  I lifted my chin. "That sounds fair. But when the video is proved fake, I want a public apology to clear my company's name." I'd seen faked video of myself before; Dr. Frank had once used one to convince Mike that I’d betrayed him.

  “Were you hurt?” Kenneth Jones protectively herded Maryanne away, leaving me alone with the police.

  Another officer attracted the lieutenant's attention to her computer screen "Well, well, well," the lieutenant said. “Care to explain this?”

  I looked over her shoulder. "What?"

  "The facial recognition software we ran on the perp’s video came up with two matches: Angel Eastland and a Devon Seawest. Sounds like an illegal pseudonym to me." She tapped the screen.

  I saw what she meant instantly, Devon Seawest, was an inversion of my own name. Angel, Devil. East Land, Sea West.

  My heart started to hammer. Maryanne’s kidnapping was part of a larger plan. Somebody had set a trap for me.

  My first instinct was to run. Part of my mind was already planning it out: sweep the lieutenant's feet out from under her, send that chair rolling into the second officer, spill the bowl of polished round pebbles on the dispatcher’s desk and take off.

  But if I ran, I would look guilty. My fledgling business would crash and
die, and I'd drag Mike down with me—because he would follow me into hiding, no question.

  So I stayed put. "I've been framed," I told her calmly. "I need to make a call."

  They tried to question me, but I kept repeating that I needed to make a call and finally they gave in.

  "Got a lawyer on retainer, do you?" the lieutenant sneered.

  I ignored her and took the plain vidphone, no fancy holo features on this one. I wanted badly to phone Mike, but when he was out of town he usually let his voicemail pick up.

  Instead I called Dr. Hatcher. Dr. Hatcher, who worked for the UN to rehabilitate the violet-eyed, who had persuaded me to trust him two years ago when Mike and I had finally stopped running. Dr. Hatcher had procured identity papers for both of us, smoothed our entrance to college, and in general bent over backward to be nice to us.

  I was so mad at him my hands shook. When his face came on the vidphone, I strained to keep my voice polite. "Dr. Hatcher, it's Angel." I needed to tell him about Maryanne’s near-abduction and the kidnapper's subsequent accusation, the fake video of me accepting a bribe, the name of the town where I was being held—but what came out was something different.

  "Exactly when," I said roughly, "were you planning to tell me that I had a clone?"

  Chapter Four

  MIKE

  Someone was in his apartment.

  Mike paused on the threshold, adrenaline stinging his veins, but a second later he recognized Angel’s voice. She was singing "The Reflex," a cheesy Duran Duran song from the 1980s.

  Instead of immediately calling out to her, he sagged against the wall. His relief stemmed not from the absence of an intruder, but from Angel’s presence. For some time now he'd been expecting to lose her.

  It seemed like every time they saw each other recently—which wasn't nearly often enough—they ended up arguing about their respective career choices. Angel couldn't understand why he was pursuing a sports career.

  "It would be one thing if you loved baseball," she'd told him before leaving for the 1960s Immersion. "If you loved it, I would support you one hundred percent. But baseball is just a job to you, a way to make mountains of money."

  He’d insisted that he did love baseball, and then, of course, he’d ragged her back about her bodyguard business. He'd called it dangerous and worse, naive.

  It had been a flaming car wreck of a conversation. And the three weeks they'd spent apart, with Angel incommunicado, had stretched out to forever.

  Mike promised himself this time would be different. He would avoid becoming defensive and belittling her business. Part of him envied her. Angel had found something that both interested her and tested her abilities. Mike even thought that someday he'd like to work with her—after he had a few million dollars in the bank.

  Keep it light, he coached himself. Be romantic. Don't blow it.

  His thoughts circled back to the purchase he'd made in Denver, the small box weighing down his pocket. He'd kept taking it out to study on the flight back. Maybe tonight—

  One thing at a time. He removed his shoes and coat and headed for the kitchen with a smile on his face. "Hey, Angel, I wasn’t expecting—"

  He stopped, confused for a split second. Angel had dyed her hair black.

  She turned, smiling in delight. "Michael!" He had time to see that she was wearing black contacts to colour-match her black hair before she hurled herself into his arms.

  Mike caught her and spun her around, a tide of gratitude surging through him. She was here. He hadn’t driven her away.

  He bent his head to kiss her, but her head stayed pressed against his shoulder, her arms tight around him. Alarm twanged through him. This wasn't a romantic embrace; this was a desperate cry for comfort. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing.” She pushed back from him, still smiling, but tears shone in her eyes. “I just missed you, that’s all."

  You're lying. No, no! For heaven's sake don't say that. Romantic, remember? "I missed you, too." Mike stared into her falsely-black eyes, cupped her head in his hands and set his lips on hers.

  She kissed him back, but with a certain distance, as if her mind was on other things.

  His gut clenched. He was losing her.

  No, there's just something bothering her, that's all. He’d worm it out of her eventually, but he decided not to confront her now and chance her stomping off.

  "So how were the '60s?" he asked casually. "How was Maryanne? Still as neurotic as ever?"

  "The '60s were boring," Angel said dismissively. "Maryanne was the same old, same old." She turned toward the counter and started grating cheese. From the ingredients sitting out, he gathered that she’d decided to cook. "How was Denver?"

  "Good," Mike said warily. "I got a home run and a single."

  Angel beamed at him. "That's great! I'm sure you'll be scouted soon."

  Apparently, Angel had decided to call a truce for today, too. He couldn’t detect even a trace of snarkiness in her voice, but somehow Mike couldn't relax. And, idiot that he was, he couldn't leave it alone either. "So did Maryanne change her mind about watching JFK’s assassination or is the kidnapping threat past?"

  "Both." Not looking at him. Grate, grate, grate. "I hope you're in the mood for omelets."

  Her voice sounded too cheerful, and Angel usually made him cook if they were at his apartment. Was it some sort of special occasion? Mike racked his brain, but couldn’t remember any anniversaries.

  "Sounds great," he said too heartily. Were they making small talk like strangers? The conversation felt more and more unreal to him.

  He put his hands on her shoulders, and she tensed as if expecting an attack. Wordlessly, he massaged the tight muscles. Angel sighed under his hands, then finally turned to face him again. The black contacts made her eyes look like deep wells.

  "Sorry, I'm not doing this well, am I?" she asked.

  Finally. He waited.

  "Something happened on the job," she said starkly.

  Oh, crap. "Did they get Maryanne?"

  "No." She shook her head. "No, it’s not that. I took down the kidnappers, but something happened after that. I—I don't want to talk about it. Right now it makes me mad just thinking about it, and—" She broke off again and blew a strand of black hair out of her eyes. "Can we just have a quiet, normal meal first? I'll tell you all about it later."

  His instincts prodded him to push, but— "Okay," Mike said.

  Angel smiled, a real smile. "So you haven't told me what you think of my Bad Girl look?” She fluffed her hair. “I dyed it for Halloween, but I kind of like it. I'm thinking about buying some black leather pants to match."

  "It's intriguing," Mike said neutrally. In fact he didn't really care for it. It made her look sixteen instead of nineteen.

  They managed light conversation over omelets and toast, but Angel seemed moody—sparkling one moment and pensive the next. She stared at him as if it had been a lifetime since she last saw him instead of only three weeks.

  She didn’t talk about Maryanne or the Historical Immersion at all, which he found ominous. No funny anecdotes or sarcastic observations.

  Afterward, they moved into his small living room. Angel sat on a chair instead of cuddling on the couch with him. An awkward silence fell. To fill it, Mike busied himself putting on some rock music. On impulse, he selected, “Can’t Fight This Feeling” by REO Speedwagon, the first song he and Angel had ever danced together. He could always rely on it to soften Angel up and make her smile.

  Instead, she didn’t react at all; she just sat on the sofa.

  Mike felt himself go predator-still. His mind began to tick along very fast even as he flashed Angel a charming smile. "Ready to tell me what happened yet?"

  "Not now." Angel bounced to her feet. “I have an idea. Let’s take the afternoon off and go somewhere fun. Maybe check out the Harvest Fair. What do you say?” Her enthusiasm sounded false.

  “I just got home. I’m game to take the afternoon off, but let’s stay in,” Mike count
ered.

  She shook her head. "I'm too restless to sit. I'll call you tomorrow, okay? It was great to see you.” She sounded choked up. “I really missed you." She kissed his cheek.

  His cheek, as if he were her uncle or a six-year-old.

  Eyes narrowed in calculation, Mike pulled her into his arms and poured everything he had into a passionate kiss—

  And nothing. Her mouth was cool, her body subtly resistant, her arms a barrier between them.

  This is wrong.

  She tried to step away. Mike grabbed her wrist, twisted her arm up behind her back and flung his arm across her throat.

  "Hey!" she squawked, turning her head. He saw fear in her eyes instead of anger. "Cut it out!"

  "Not until you explain just who the hell you are and what you've done with Angel."

  Black-eyed Angel tried to bluff him. "What are you talking about? I'm Angel."

  With every breath Mike grew surer; Angel would’ve stamped on his instep if he'd ever tried to put her in a headlock. "No, you're not."

  She sighed, as if exasperated, but the skin around her eyes tightened. "Look, I know I've been acting a little off, but that's no reason to go all paranoid on me."

  Mike barked out a short laugh. "Nice try. Now where's Angel?" He twisted her arm a little higher to encourage her to talk.

  "All right, you win!" Black Eyes sounded just like Angel did when she was annoyed. "I'll tell you what happened in the Historical Immersion, but let's sit down and discuss this like rational adults, okay?"

  Mike pretended to consider the suggestion. "Nah, I have a better idea. Let's stay standing, like paranoid people instead." The second he loosened his grip, he would have a fight on his hands.

  "Fine," Black Eyes snapped. "You know, you're actually making this easier. I was going to break this to you gently, but here it is: I've met someone else."

  That isn't Angel. She's playing me. Even so his stomach clenched. He’d imagined this happening a hundred times. Sooner or later Angel was bound to figure out she was too good for him.

  "His name is Brad," she said, black eyes boring mercilessly into his.