Warrior Angel
Page 26
Now looking very worried, he dismissed her from his office. “Take a month off! You’ve earned it.”
Rachel walked out of the room, dazed. How could there be no record of the trades she made? No record of Zanus? Was she going crazy? She went back to her office and opened her computer files.
The folder on the desktop labeled ZANUS was not there anymore.
Rachel looked at her cell phone. Zanus was still listed there. She stared at his name. Rachel had seen him dragged off to Hell the night before. Or rather, she thought that’s what she’d seen. Trembling, she pushed the button to dial his number. There was an ear-splitting tone and a mechanical voice said dispassionately, “The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Should you believe this message is an error, please hang up and dial again.”
“No, it’s not an error,” said Rachel, shuddering in relief. “Thank God!”
She took a cab back home, wondering what she was going to do with the rest of her life.
The angel had said he might be able to arrange things…
The cab pulled up in front of her building. Rachel stepped out. She walked toward the door, keeping her gaze on her shoes—sensible shoes.
She couldn’t look up to see that strange doorman standing there. This was silly. She knew it was silly. Derek was gone and she’d have to get used to going through the lobby.
She didn’t know what to do with herself. Her apartment was empty. There would be nothing but silence waiting for her up there. No cheerful meows. No cat to walk in circles around her legs, getting under her feet. What would she do now?
She could go back to the Merc, but the thought of all the commotion, the pushing, the shoving, made her almost sick. She thought of calling her girlfriends. They would remember Zanus. Or maybe not. If not, how could she explain what had happened to her?
“I can’t,” she realized bleakly.
Maybe she would call Kim just to talk, just to hear her voice. But Kim hated to be bothered at work. And anyway she’d probably be in a meeting, Lana wouldn’t be awake yet. She was working the nightly news. Beth would be in the middle of three different things at once. They would be living their lives.
Rachel needed to find a way to live hers.
She sighed and, bracing her shoulders, prepared to grit her teeth as the strange doorman held the door open for her.
“Good morning, Ms. Duncan.”
At the sound of the voice, Rachel’s heart stopped beating. She looked up.
And fainted dead away.
“Rachel, darling, Rachel, come back to me.”
Rachel came to herself. She looked into Derek’s eyes. He had carried her to a bench in the lobby and lain her down on it. Now he knelt beside her, stroking her cheek with his hand.
Rachel reached out to touch his face. His skin was warm. His eyes were warm. He was breathing, alive.
“I’m sorry, Rachel,” he said ruefully. “I wanted to surprise you, not scare you to death.”
“Speaking of death,” Rachel said shakily. “You were dead. I saw you die!” She clutched at him, held on to him tightly.
“Shh, shh. I know. It is okay. I am okay.” Derek hugged her, stroking her hair, soothing her. “William says to tell you that they’ve accepted your offer to help us fight. But you need a partner.”
Derek shrugged. “And he says I have still got a lot to learn before Heaven is ready for me.”
He looked at her and smiled. “But you will help me with that, will you not, Rachel?”
In answer, she pulled him close and kissed him, long and lingering.
“Oh, before I forget, I have a present for you.”
Derek unzipped his backpack and pulled out a gold-and-black tortoiseshell kitten. He handed the kitten to Rachel.
Disturbed from his nap, the kitten mewed loudly.
Rachel hesitated for a moment. She looked at the kitten, then at Derek.
“Oh, no, it’s really a kitten. Just the ordinary kind.” Derek smiled. “And I’m Derek. Just the ordinary kind. An ordinary man who loves you with all his heart and soul.”
Rachel smiled and took the kitten and cuddled him close, rubbing his head with her chin as she and Derek walked toward the elevator that would take them upstairs to her new life.
Acknowledgments
We would like to gratefully acknowledge the book Leg the Spread: A Woman’s Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boy’s Club of Commodities Trading by Cari Lynn (Broadway Publishers, October 2005). If you enjoyed reading about Rachel and her life in the pit and would like to learn more about this fascinating subject, we urge you to read this book.
Margaret and Lizz
About the Authors
MARGARET WEIS is a New York Times bestselling author. Her Dragonlance® series has sold over twenty million copies worldwide, and the first book in that series, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, is being made into an animated film by Paramount Pictures. Warrior Angel is her first venture into romance, and it has been an exciting one. She has particularly enjoyed writing with her daughter, LIZZ WEIS, a former novel editor, who currently works in the financial industry. Lizz lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her pet rabbit Terry.
For more about Margaret and Lizz, please visit www.margaretweis.com.
Dragonlance® is a registered trademark of Wizards of the Coast.
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By Margaret and Lizz Weis
WARRIOR ANGEL
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
WARRIOR ANGEL. Copyright © 2007 by Margaret Weis and Lizz Baldwin Weis. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Microsoft Reader February 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-128822-7
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