Conspiracy of Angels Read online

  “You promised,” she said.

  Most of the guys looked right back down at their plates, pretending they weren’t seeing any of this. The whole crew. Big Nelson, whom everybody called Bubba because of his chromed-up Harley. Randall and Duane, the Walker brothers, both with the same shaggy haircut and deep-set eyes. Lanny, the only black guy in the crew and also the man in charge. Usually quick with a smile, but at the moment he was giving Mitch a look like he should know better. Which was more annoying than anything else.

  Mitch cleared his throat. “Fifteenth birthday. You know how it is.”

  The guys all nodded and muttered that yeah, they did.

  Except for Lanny. Lanny tapped his pack of Newports on the table and shook out a cigarette. He turned to Jocelyn and opened his mouth to say something, then saw the look Mitch gave him and decided to keep his thoughts to himself. He lit up his cigarette instead.

  Mitch put on a smile for Jocelyn. “Hey, kiddo, listen—”

  “You know what? Forget it.” She rushed out of the kitchen.

  “Hey. Jocelyn!” He got up, threw his napkin down. “You guys go ahead and start. I’ll be back.” He followed her through the living room and out the front door into the bright afternoon. “Jocelyn! Hey!” He caught up with her halfway to the sidewalk, grabbed her arm and turned her around. When he saw the tears in her eyes, he let her go. “Hey, listen—”

  “You promised. You said when I turned fifteen, you’d teach me how to drive. That’s today.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “We talked about this like a million times.”

  “A million, huh? And what do I say, every time? I say when you’re old enough, I’ll teach you. That’s up to me to decide.”

  “Fine. You know what, I don’t even care anymore. I don’t even exist.” She headed down the sidewalk.

  “Hey! Don’t walk away from me!”

  “Why not? Why do I even live here? Do you even know you have a daughter? Hello?”

  “Look. I know what I said. I also know that today is Sunday, and Sunday’s poker day.” He held up a finger. “But that’s beside the point. The point is that the truck is in the shop. It’s getting a new clutch, and that’s gonna take a couple days. So maybe next weekend—”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine, as in okay?”

  “Okay. Fine. Whatever. Next weekend, it’ll be something else. And the weekend after that. And after that. You know? So next weekend, fine. Whatever.”

  “Look, if I had another car—”

  “You have another car.” She pointed at the black Lincoln Town Car in the driveway.

  “That’s Lanny’s. I gave it to him.”

  “No, you didn’t. You just let him drive it to do business. The license and registration are still in your name.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He leaves me sitting in there when he meets with his people. I got bored. Raided the glove box.”

  “You’re too smart for your own good, you know that?” Mitch rubbed his temples. “Look, it’s a tax thing. It’s complicated.”

  Quietly, she said, “I have the keys.”

  “You what?”

  She held them up. Two keys dangled from the black leather Lincoln fob, glinting in the sun.

  “Did you take those from Lanny?” Mitch said.

  “No. He gave them to me. This morning. Because he knew you were going to be like this.”

  “You have got to be kidding me.” Mitch looked over his shoulder at the house, just in time to see Lanny turn away from the window, pretending he wasn’t watching this whole thing unfold in the driveway.

  Jocelyn watched him, biting her lower lip, barely containing herself.

  Mitch sighed.

  Five minutes later, the Lincoln was idling at the curb and Mitch was switching seats with Jocelyn.

  “Now the important thing is your mirrors.” Mitch fumbled with his seat belt, not used to sitting in the passenger seat. “Most people set up their outside mirrors all wrong. They aim ‘em down the sides of the car, so between that and the rearview mirror, they got three views of the back of the vehicle and great big blind spots on the sides. That’s no good. You listening to me?”

  “Yeah.” She glanced over at him, then flexed her fingers on the steering wheel and started playing with the cruise control buttons.

  “Now, the way you do it, you set your rearview mirror in the center of the back window. Then you adjust your side mirrors so that the inside edges of the picture just barely overlap with the outside edges of the rear-view. And just like that—” He snapped his fingers. “No blind spots. Hey, you listening?”

  “Yeah. Why are you all worried about the mirrors? Let’s just drive.” She pulled the gearshift lever. The car started to roll. Jocelyn’s mouth opened in a scared little “O”.

  “Damn it.” Mitch reached over for the gear shift.

  She grabbed the lever. “I got it. I got it!”

  “Hit the brake!”

  She hit the gas instead, and the engine revved up. Mitch looked up at the back of the neighbors’ pickup parked at the curb. A split second before they rear-ended it.

  The jolt of the crash wasn’t much, but the crunch and tinkle of broken glass got to him. He jammed the lever into Park and yanked the keys out of the ignition.

  Jocelyn shrank back into the seat, looking pale.

  Mitch felt his face turning red-hot. “Get out of the car.” He got out and slammed the door.

  The Lincoln’s chrome grille looked like it had tried to eat the pickup’s trailer hitch for breakfast. The broken sockets of the headlights were pressed right up against the steel bumper. Bits of glass littered the ground.

  Mitch came around to the driver’s side, where Jocelyn stood with her fists clenched at her side, tears streaming silently down her face.

  He hugged her. “Hey, it’s okay. Shh. It’s all right.” He smoothed down her hair.

  She wrapped her arms around him. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  When she let go of him, he motioned her over to the other side of the car, then got in and backed the Lincoln up into the driveway. Jocelyn didn’t look at him until after he turned off the ignition.

  “Tell you what.” He grinned. “I’m gonna tell Lanny he better get this thing’s parking brake checked. Damn thing rolled down the hill all by itself.”

  She didn’t smile. “Guess I can forget about driving until I’m like twenty-one.”

  “Ahh.” Mitch blew out a long breath. “I got a better idea. How about next weekend.” He held up a finger. “And I mean that. Next weekend, we go get you your own car. I been reading up on new cars. Safe cars. Not like this piece of junk. Get you a Toyota, maybe.”

  She stared at him. “Are you serious?”

  “But you’re gonna have to listen to me. Very carefully. And we go at my pace, not yours. Think you can handle that?”

  She slid across the seat and threw her arms around his neck. “Thanks, Dad.”

  Mitch blinked, coming back to the present. Driving home in the dark, alone.

  He didn’t realize until that moment just how long it had been since she’d said that. How many years? And here he was, back in Denver, and the rest of the world had moved on without her. He wasn’t sure he ever could.

  Mitch drove the night-darkened neighborhood streets, wiping his eyes, trying to keep it together. His old life was like a dream, like he had found a box full of old photos and patched some crazy story together in his sleep. It was unreal, getting out of prison, back into the world again and finding out that everything he remembered was gone.

  Jocelyn was dead, now. Died in a hospital, while he’d been locked away and couldn’t save her.

  Bubba Nelson had tried to outrun the cops on his Harley, drove up over the back of a slow-moving car and flipped his body onto the freeway at a hundred miles an hour.

  The Walker brothers split up, he’d heard, after they fell for the same girl in Des Moines. Dua
ne got the girl, and Randall took off. Duane shaped up, put on a tie and went to work selling insurance. Died of a heart attack while he was fishing. Randall got pinched on armed robbery in Florida, got sent up and shanked on his second week inside. Mitch didn’t hear about it until a year later, in the cafeteria, and it still hadn’t sunk in.

  They were all dead, every one of them. Except for Lanny.

  Good old Lanny, still hanging in there, gone legit everybody said. Had his own restaurant now. Built with the money Mitch earned him in their little business. The one that landed Mitch five years inside, while Lanny walked.

  Not that Mitch held it against him or anything.

  Mitch blew out a long breath, tried to relax. Maybe he’d go out later, after a shower, and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken. Bryce’s favorite. A big old bucket of it, extra crispy. Bring it back to the hospital. They could watch some bad movie on the hospital TV, and Bryce could add his funny voice-overs like he always did. They could watch that show with the robots talking over bad movies, whatever that was. Did they even do that show anymore?

  He got home and parked on the street. He hated pulling into the garage, all that junk in there, boxes of Jocelyn’s stuff he still had to go through. Maybe he would just leave it there, not touch it for a few years. Maybe not ever. He walked up to the front door and stopped.

  There, in the light of the streetlamp, was a damp mud footprint on the front walk, a big man’s boot, pointed toward the closed door.

  Someone had been here while he was gone. And Mitch knew damn sure he hadn’t stopped to close the door on his way out.

  FOUR

  Mitch stood on his front step, staring down at the footprint, his mind racing. He didn’t know what it meant, but his gut instinct told him to get out of there. Something about the dark silence of his house spooked him, made him feel like he was being watched. He stepped back, looking around, patting the pockets of his bathrobe as if he’d forgotten something. The goggles were still in there.

  What was it that girl had said? The Archangel Project.

  She’d had some funky high-tech goggles. And a laser gun.

  What if she wasn’t a wacko after all? What if there really was something going on?

  All the windows in the house were dark, even Bryce’s room, where Mitch knew he kept a lamp on twenty-four hours a day.

  Someone had turned it off.

  It gave him a weird feeling, knowing someone had been in the house, might still be there. In the dark, waiting for him. He wondered if it was the girl, come back with some friends.

  He didn’t want to stick around and find out.

  If anyone was in there, they were watching him. So he touched his head like he just remembered something, turned around and strolled back to the car, whistling.

  He got in and started it up, pulled away from the curb and gunned it. If someone was waiting in the house, he didn’t want to hang around and make himself a target. He took the corner hard, tires slipping on the damp pavement.

  He calmed down as he drove the neighborhood streets, passing a Safeway and a liquor store. He tried to figure out what to do next.

  He didn’t want to call the cops and give them an excuse to go through his house. The twelve-gauge was in the hall closet. The .45 was in his bedroom. They’d be easy enough for the cops to find. And considering that he’d bought them with cash out of the back of a van, they just might’ve been stolen. He couldn’t afford to get mixed up in that.

  Mitch stopped at a red light, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and realizing he was being paranoid. All he’d seen was one footprint. Didn’t mean anything.

  Maybe it was a neighbor, worried because they’d seen him drag his brother out of the house in the rain and go four-wheeling across the lawn.

  Hell, maybe it was a solicitor, come to drop off a coupon for vinyl siding. Yeah, probably that. Or maybe triple-paned windows. Or a church brochure.

  In the rearview mirror, he saw big rectangular headlights coming up behind him fast, a truck or maybe a van. A moment later they disappeared beneath the edge of his trunk and he got rammed from behind.

  His head snapped back against the headrest. The sound of the crash was loud in his ears, a bang and a crunch mixed together.

  Idiot. He swore and put the car into Park, hit the hazard blinkers.

  The driver got out of the van behind him and Mitch swore again. Forget about insurance, Mitch didn’t even have a license anymore.

  Then, in the mirror, he saw someone with a beard get out of the passenger side of the van and come walking up, too. Holding something down against his leg, trying to hide it as he came up on Mitch’s blind side.

  Not good.

  Mitch shifted back into gear and floored it. The Toyota’s little engine wound up, needle swinging into the red. Another car came through the intersection, running a yellow, and Mitch swerved around it. In the rearview mirror, he saw one of the guys in the road bring up a submachine gun in both hands.

  Bullets hammered through the Toyota, shattering the rear glass and knocking chunks out of his windshield. Mitch hunched low in the seat.

  Bullets passed so close he could hear them snapping through the air around his head. He didn’t have time to think. He jerked the wheel and the Toyota jumped the curb. The whole body of the car jolted. The rear window crashed in. He took the next left onto a bigger street and headed toward the nearest safe place he could think of.

  Lanny’s.

  He blew past a stop sign, saw a bus out of the corner of his eye, and braked hard, skidded around the back of it. The van charged down the street behind him, its front grille mashed in, one headlight out.

  Mitch took another left, then a right, hoping to lose them. They showed up in the rearview mirror a second later, the van swaying as it took the corner too fast. Mitch came up behind a slow-moving black pickup and found himself trapped. With the oncoming traffic, there was no way to get around it. The van closed in behind him.

  He tromped on the brakes and pulled hard on the wheel, squealing the tires, feeling all four wheels lose traction on the wet road. He straightened the wheel and gunned it, felt the front wheels bite, and swerved out of the skid into an alley.

  He prayed there was no one blocking the other end. He rattled over a steam grate. Flew out from behind the building into a parking lot. The van followed close behind, whacking off a mirror on a telephone pole.

  Mitch got to the other end of the alley and back on the street again, swerving between cars coming at him from both directions. Horns blared all around. He went half a block and turned hard, skidding to a stop in the back lot behind Lanny’s restaurant.

  He jumped out of the car and ran to the restaurant’s back door. Grabbed the door handle, but it was locked. He hammered on the door with his fist, pulling hard on the handle, rattling the door in the frame. The van came around the corner, brakes squealing.

  Just then the door opened and Mitch dove through, yelling, “Get down!” He landed on a sticky tile floor in a T-shaped hallway that smelled like cigarette smoke and spilled beer.

  Lanny leaned over him. He hadn’t changed much in the last five years, a little softer now and more dressed up. But he was still a funny-looking black guy with a gap between his teeth.

  “Mitch? Man, what the—”

  An automatic weapon cut loose outside, chopping the back door to shreds. Mitch grabbed Lanny’s legs out from beneath him, knocking him to the floor. Chunks of wood flew and tumbled around them.

  Lanny flipped over onto his stomach and elbow-crawled around the corner to a pair of back office doors, letting loose a stream of obscenities. Mitch followed him on hands and knees.

  A muscled-up white guy with a shaved head and a gold earring came barreling out of the back office, stepping over Lanny, pulling a giant chrome pistol out of his jacket. He pointed a thick finger at Mitch and said to Lanny, “He cool?”

  “I don’t know.” Lanny scowled at Mitch. “Why you bringin’ this drama to my spot, man?”<
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  Mitch shrugged. “You hit?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then what are you complaining about?”

  The gunfire stopped.

  The bald guy charged around the corner. “Sons of bitches!” He yelled it like a challenge.

  Mitch poked his head around to watch. The guy kicked the door open. What was left of it, anyway. Outside, a taillight went past as the van took off. The bald guy ran out into the parking lot and aimed the giant gun with both hands. It went off like a cannon, kicking up hard in his big hands. He fired twice more. The noise was jaw-rattling even from a distance.

  Apparently, it didn’t do any good. The guy lowered the gun, flipped the finger, and came back inside.

  Mitch let out a long breath. “So how’s business, Lanny? Good?”

  Still peeking around the corner, Lanny said, “What?”

  “You told me, come see you when I got out.”

  Lanny stared at him.

  Mitch smiled. “Guess what? I’m out.”

  FIVE

  Michael jogged to catch up with Geneva before she made it to the garage. He reached for the sleeve of her leather jacket. “Genie, wait—”

  She yanked her arm out of his grasp. “We are so not doing this.” Her voice was rough, but it sounded more like fear than anger. He could understand that.

  “Just listen,” he said. “You don’t know the entire story.”

  She turned on him suddenly, forcing him to a halt in the gloomy hallway. “What the hell have you done? When did we become terrorists? Kidnappers?”

  “Technically, the word is abductors.”

  She punched him in the shoulder, hard enough to hurt. She stormed down to the end of the hall and kicked open the door to the garage.

  “Genie? Damn it. Wait!”

  Keys in her hand, she opened the door of the Cougar.

  “If you leave, Raph will try to kill you, and I’m not sure I can stop him.” Michael regretted the words the moment he spoke them. But if she wanted the truth, he couldn’t do much better than that.