Angel Face (21 page)

“Did I faint?” she asked.

He nodded. “All I wanted you to do was drop the knife, but you went down, too. You’re okay, though. I checked you out.”

She bridled. “I’ll bet you did.”

“Hey, I’m a doctor. That’s what I do.”

“A doctor
bellows
at his patients? He ties them up?”

“I was trying the jaguar thing . . . being bold.”

He gave her a look from across the room that could have been a smile but involved little more than his eyes. Her heart came alert to the threat. She was naked and restrained, and no one knew that better than him. He didn’t look bent on revenge at the moment, but he couldn’t have forgotten what she did to him. She hadn’t forgotten it.

“My fever broke,” she said, ignoring the rest of it for the moment.

“A few hours ago with a little help from my fiends. I had a medical bag in the truck with some antibiotics in it. Somehow you missed it.”

She didn’t think it necessary to inform him that if she’d
been looking for it, she would have found it. He knew what she could do.

“Don’t you want to know how you got that way?” he asked.

“Tied up? Let me guess. I conveniently dropped the knife in your lap and collapsed in front of you.”

“At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor.” He took a long drink from the bottle. “Tell me about Adam.”

It was no longer hot in the room. She was freezing. “What made you ask about him?”

“He’s all you talked about while you were unconscious. Adam. You must have mentioned his name a dozen times. Apparently, he was one of your casualties.”

A casualty, yes, Adam could be called a casualty.
The dream had brought him back. But she couldn’t talk about that. It would destroy her.

Stiff-voiced, she said, “I’d rather not.”

The beer hit the nearest tabletop, and Jordan came across the room. “We’re not negotiating this,” he told her. “You’re going to talk. You’re going to tell me everything.”

“I don’t remember Ada—him.”

“You sure as hell do. You said you killed him. You said you
loved
him. I heard you.”

She drew up her legs to ward off the shakiness. This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. What did he actually know about her, except what he’d read in her dossier, and most of that was lies. What did he know about loneliness? For him it was missing your parents because they’d moved to another state. She was talking about the kind of isolation that separated you from everything human.

She hadn’t believed anyone could be lonelier than she was until she met Adam. Her heart had gone out to him immediately, but no matter how she tried to help, she made it worse, just like when she was a child. What did you call someone like that? A curse? An angel of death?

When she tried to talk, her voice got tangled up on itself. Only one word could be clearly heard. “Poison.”

“You poisoned him? That isn’t the way Angel Face does it.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?” The sheet slid down her chest as she tried to sit up. There was no way to stop it with tied hands. “There is no Angel Face. She’s a software program.”

“What do you mean, a software program?”

“The company I work for has developed a criminal profiling program that uses supercomputers and AIR software to crunch data from brain scans. It can predict violent behavior, but it’s still in the simulation stages. Angel Face is a virtual serial killer. She’s programmed to react to stressors like rejection and humiliation, but she’s not real.”

“Angela, men have died. A doctor in my own hospital died. I found him myself. Someone is killing them, and if it isn’t Angel Face, who is it?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice cracked with an emotion she rarely allowed herself to express. “But someone is lying to you. There is no Angel Face, and I had nothing to do with the death of that doctor, or any other doctors.”

“Except your father, except Adam.”

“My
foster
father was a butcher, and Adam—”

“What was he? Tell me about him.”

“Untie me first. I took off your blindfold when you asked.”

“Not quite the same thing.”

She ignored his mordant tone and came back with, “Do you really think I’m so dangerous that I have to be restrained?”

“I know you are.”

“Coward,” she countered under her breath.

Whatever impulse she may have felt to goad him
further died when he walked over and took hold of the sheet that covered her. It had dropped so low her breasts were nearly exposed. His knuckles were warm as they brushed her skin, and the quickening she felt was almost painful.

He startled her even more by drawing the sheet up to her chin. She hadn’t expected that, or that he would hesitate long enough to study her, his hand still at her throat. She saw the simmering male interest in his gaze. He wasn’t cool or disinterested. That was only a facade.

Why wasn’t he taking advantage of the situation?

The question stayed with her. He could do anything he wanted with her, just as she had with him, yet he was covering her instead of exposing her. Maybe he was a better person than she was. Or maybe he wasn’t as desperate.

He must have seen the questions in her eyes, because he settled himself beside her on the couch, his hip brushing her thighs. It was too close for her, but if she tried to move, she lost the sheet.

“I’m trying to understand,” he said. “Help me understand.” He seemed to sense her confusion. “You, Angela. I’m trying to understand you. Tell me you didn’t do those things. Make me believe you didn’t.”

He wanted to believe her. There was conviction in his voice: power, anger, frustration, fear—and conviction. It was amazing to hear. The huskiness alone made her heart leap wildly.

“Why didn’t you put my clothes back on?” she demanded to know. If she didn’t break the tension, it would break her.

“Your clothes were drenched with sweat and fruit juice.” He got up to show her. Her shorts lay by the door, and he picked them up, dangling them from a finger. “You want them on? I’ll be happy to put them on you.”

She shook her head, not conceding anything. “Why
didn’t you put something else on me then? Why did you leave me naked?”

“You’ll notice there’s a sheet over you. It’s dry.”

She couldn’t argue with that, so she chose something else. “Cut me loose, please. I was going to cut you loose. That’s why I had the knife.”

“Tell me about Adam first.” He crossed his arms and locked in on her, waiting. This was his only condition, he seemed to be saying. He wanted to know about Adam.

Angela wasn’t sure she could do it. She had never meant to hurt Adam, but it had happened, and she’d felt like a monster tormenting a helpless, wounded animal. How could Jordan, or anyone, understand how that felt? He hadn’t lived her life or carried her crosses. It hadn’t happened to him.

“Talk to me, Angela. Give me a reason to believe you.”

His voice was low, hot, and persuasive. She prayed this wasn’t just a ploy to get information out of her. It was one she’d used herself.

“I lost an entire year, and I still can’t remember most of it. Only the part about Adam. But I didn’t kill anyone, not intentionally. I know that.”

“Just tell me what you remember.”

“He was a recluse.” She spoke in a monotone, forcing all the emotion from her voice. Only when it was as numb as her mind could she go on. “He was a brilliant, self-educated scientist, but he was also a survivalist who’d totally isolated himself from everyone. He lived in an underground bunker in the desert.”

She hesitated but didn’t look over to see Jordan’s reaction. “I was asked to get information about a smart chemical weapon he was working on, and I managed to get access to him by posing as a grocery deliverer. The instructions were to put the groceries in a shed on his property and leave immediately, but I pretended to hurt
myself. That brought him out of hiding, and he trusted me immediately, sadly for him.

“After the initial contact, I went back and told Brandt I couldn’t do it, that it would be cruel to take advantage of him. I told him Adam was too vulnerable and confused. I’d never felt that way about any of my other sources, as if I were taking advantage of their naïveté. But Adam was a frightened child in a forty-year-old man’s body, making a weapon he thought would protect him from his enemies, whoever he imagined they might be.”

“Brandt?” Jordan asked, clearly not familiar with the name she’d mentioned.

Angela didn’t stop to explain. She had begun to have her own suspicions of Peter Brandt, but she couldn’t dredge that up, too, not now.

“I finally agreed to maintain contact with Adam,” she explained, “but only because I was compelled to help him. That’s what I thought we were doing, helping him. I tried to make Brandt understand that with some human contact, Adam might come to see that his fears weren’t real. And Brandt agreed, or so I thought. But once I had the information about the weapon, someone decided that Adam was too dangerous to live. And since I was the only person who could get close to him, Brandt implied that I would have to do it. I refused, of course.”

In the same low voice, she told Jordan all of that. And one more thing.

“I think Adam became a symbol of the people I couldn’t help as a child, the patients my foster father hurt and blamed on me. Adam was those people, and he was me, too. He was all the tortured people in the world.”

She sank into the cushions, unaware that she’d been holding herself so rigidly.

Jordan prompted her by asking, “But you couldn’t help him?”

“Help him?” She had to believe he didn’t know how
that question ripped her open. “I foolishly thought I could restore his trust, and instead I delivered him poisoned groceries.”

“You knew they were poisoned?”

“No, but I should have. I knew he was considered dangerous, and they wanted him stopped. Adam trusted me implicitly, and he wolfed down the food as soon as I brought it.”

Her throat caught fire. Tears welled, but she shook them away. “He died right in front of me, and there was nothing I could do to help him. I’ll never forget the bewildered expression on his face as he looked at me, trying to understand how I could do such a thing. I confirmed every fear he had about the human race. No one could be trusted.

“It was terrible. God, it was terrible.”

She could not go on, and Jordan didn’t push her. Her head ached with fatigue. She had to rest. She needed sleep, just a short nap, and she was already tumbling into unconsciousness when his voice brought her back.

“If you’re telling the truth,” he said, “then you did nothing wrong, except what you were trained to do as an informant.”

Anger roused her. “I was an informant because they blackmailed me, and
only
because they blackmailed me. You saw the videotape of my foster father and me. They used it against me.”

“Who are
they
?” he asked. “And who is Brandt?”

God, he was cold. She’d just laid bare her soul to him, and he continued to question her like a criminal. “I don’t know who
they
are. The powers that be, I suppose. Isn’t that always who
they
are? Peter Brandt is my boss at SmartTech, the company I work for.”

“He’s the one who wants you dead? Is that what you believe?”

She turned away, refusing to talk to him anymore. She
didn’t care what he did to her or what anyone did to her. And if you didn’t care, you couldn’t be hurt. At least she’d learned that lesson. What confounded her was why she hadn’t learned that her search was futile. Why she stubbornly held on to the fantasy that there must be at least one good man out there somewhere. God, how stupid was that? She continued to believe it could be him, and he continued to disappoint her. Someone
should
kill him for that.

“If you’re not the serial killer, who is?” he asked from across the room. “Who is Angel Face?”

She shook her head.

“Someone broke into my home, Angela. They left threatening messages on my pager, and when I didn’t respond, they killed my colleague. If you didn’t do it, who did? Who killed those other doctors? Who’s trying to kill me?”

She’d answered her last question for Dr. Jordan Carpenter. But he sensed that and came over to her. He knelt next to the couch.

“Angela, don’t stop talking. Help me; don’t stop talking.”

“You know more about me than I do,” she said bitterly. “You tell me.”

“I don’t know enough, Angela. Not enough to defend you.”

“What do you mean?” She turned to him, afraid. Her heart lifted, but she was afraid to believe what she’d heard. He’d said something about defending her.
Was that what he’d said? Why? Oh, God, no—it was happening again.
She could feel the tiniest quiverings of hope, the quick desperate thrust, and she couldn’t let herself believe anymore. She couldn’t.

J
ORDAN’S
black leather satchel sat on the coffee table. He pulled it to the floor and dug through the contents, searching for the cell phone he’d stashed in one of the pockets. If he couldn’t raise Firestarter, then he would find someone else who would listen to him. That might be the smarter move, since Angela’s story had raised questions in his mind about the agent’s veracity.

“What are you doing?” Angela asked.

“Calling the CIA.”

“Why?”

The hush in her voice made him hesitate. She was frightened. There was so much at stake. For her, everything. But there was no other way to go about this. He couldn’t take her back without the cooperation of the authorities. It was too risky, and he wasn’t leaving her here.

“Because no one’s heard your side of the story,” he told her, “and I’m going to make sure they do. I’m going to explain why you
couldn’t
have done what they’re accusing you of and why they have to let me bring you back without the threat of apprehension or arrest.”

“Why I
couldn’t
have done it?”

“Yes, Angela. Help me make this call.”

“I’ve told you everything I can remember. Please believe me, I
have.”

By then he’d found the cell phone and brought up the phone book function, where the agent’s number was stored. He hadn’t trusted himself to remember this time, especially since he might have gotten it wrong the last time he called.

“Jordan, wait. Don’t call them.”

All it took was one button to initiate the automatic dialing function, and Jordan had already hit it. She sounded almost desperate, but the phone had begun to ring, and he hadn’t expected that. He’d expected to get a recorded message telling him that he was out of range, and the call couldn’t be put through. It was hard to hear over the crackling on the line, but if nothing else, he had to hold on long enough to see if a connection could be made.

“It will be all right,” he told her, mouthing the words. “We don’t have any choice in this.”

“Jordan, they aren’t going to believe anything you say!”

Jordan held up a hand, warning Angela to be quiet as a man’s voice came on the line. The greeting was disturbingly familiar. “Yes?”

“You’re there? Firestarter?”

“You have the right number. Go ahead.”

It was the agent, and Jordan didn’t know whether to be relieved or wary. For now he would play it right down the middle. If anyone was going to show their cards in this game, it would be Firestarter.

“I have something you want,” he said.

“Where is she?”

“In a safe place, and she stays there until I get what
I
want.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about concessions.” Jordan had done some
research on the agency’s chain of command after Firestarter “disappeared” and had familiarized himself with names and titles. In the event he needed a future contact, he was going straight to the top.

“I want a conference call with you and the deputy director for operations. Angela Lowe has an interesting story to tell, and I intend to see that she gets a fair hearing.”

“A fair
what
? Are you crazy?”

Jordan could hear the scrape of chair legs from across the continent. Apparently, the agent had sprung from his seat.

“You know that can’t happen, and you know why,” Firestarter said, steel reinforcing the soft menace in his voice. “Just tell me where she is, and I’ll send someone there to bring her back. There’s no need for you to do it.”

“There’s every need for me to do it. She surrendered herself to me, and I’m not turning her over until I can guarantee her safety.”

“Oh, Christ, not you, too. What the hell has she done? She’s fucked you up, hasn’t she? And now you’re going to fuck everything up.”

“Nobody’s fucked anything up but you. Why the hell didn’t you answer your phone or return my calls?
Listen to me.
Angela Lowe was set up. She was set up by the company she works for, and I’m going to make sure she has a chance to tell her side.”

“Carpenter, don’t be an idiot. Carpenter—”

Angela was frantically shaking her head and trying to tell Jordan something, but the agent’s voice had dropped several decibels. He’d begun to whisper secrets in Jordan’s ear, such disturbing secrets that Jordan had no choice but to listen. It was also clear that he knew where Jordan was, at least generally, probably thanks to the satellite link.

“This is all part of her plan,” Firestarter said, “and she
hasn’t missed a beat. She lured you down there to kill you, man. It’s not hard to dispose of a body in a Mexican jungle. People disappear without a trace, and she knew you would follow her. All her victims did. They became obsessed and walked away from their lives, just like you did.”

“That’s bullshit,” Jordan countered. “She had plenty of opportunities to kill me, and she didn’t take them.”

“Of course not; that’s not her game. She doesn’t want the easy victory. She’ll screw with your head until she’s won you over. But it’s your heart she wants. That’s how she kills, remember? It’s symbolic.”

Jordan remembered. His colleague had died of massive heart failure.

“Once she has you eating out of her hand, the game is over. You’re nothing, man. You’re
dead
. It’s all about control with her.”

Jordan’s mouth curled in distaste. He had accused her of the very same thing, but hearing it from this unfeeling bastard made him sick.

“I want a hearing and a guarantee that she won’t be apprehended or charged with any crimes. If I don’t get it, you’ll never see her again.”

“You can’t do that—”

Jordan raised his voice, drowning the agent out. “She’s regained her memory. She didn’t kill her source. She didn’t kill any of them. It’s a setup, and I swear to you, she will tell her story.”

A sofa pillow hit the floor, and Jordan looked up to see that Angela’s face had gone waxy white. She’d dislodged the pillow to get his attention, and she was trying to tell him something without being heard by the agent.

“They’ll kill me,” she said, mouthing the words. “If they find out I remember Adam,
they’ll kill me.”

Jordan moved closer, but it was impossible to pick up what else she was saying with Firestarter in his other ear.
And it was too late, anyway. He’d already told the agent she’d regained her memory and that she hadn’t killed her source. Who else could Jordan have meant but Adam?

She looked terrified, and Jordan didn’t know how to reassure her that no one was going to hurt her. They would have to get through him first.

He drew a cross over his heart, hoping she understood that he was making her a promise. But by that time, the agent had launched into a diatribe, and he was making accusations against Angela that Jordan couldn’t believe and didn’t want to believe. Among other things, he claimed she was a pathological liar.

“And that’s the least of it,” he said, “she’s been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic by a board-certified psychiatrist!”

“Who was the doctor?” Jordan broke in to ask. “How do I know
you’re
not lying to me?”

The agent was quick to respond. The psychiatrist’s name was Mona Fremont, and she strongly believed that Angela was a danger to herself and to others. Since the law now required that such cases be reported, she had made Angela’s records available to the agency.

He went on to make other claims that Jordan couldn’t refute and hadn’t expected. Jordan felt as if he were carrying a pack on his back, and it got heavier with every step he took. After a time, he stopped pacing and simply stood there, listening. The need to rationalize what he was being told was powerful, but he had to resist it now. He’d never taken the case against Angela seriously, but to dismiss the agent’s arguments would mean that Jordan was as insane as they claimed she was. The consequences were too grave. What if he’d been wrong all along?

His heart was pounding as he turned to look at her, and she was clearly frozen with fear. Was that guilt? Did she know the damning things the agent was telling him? Firestarter believed Angela was an accident that had
already
happened. She was delusional and could revert to that state at any time, and she was too dangerous to be at large. But he no longer wanted Jordan to bring her back. He had another solution.

Silent, Jordan heard the agent out.

“It’s not hard to dispose of a body in a Mexican jungle,” Firestarter reminded him as the tense conversation came to an end.

“Who was that?” Angela blurted as Jordan hung up the phone.

He dropped the cell back into the medical bag and continued to stare at the floor. “The agent who first contacted me about you.”

“What did he say?”

Jordan’s head came up slowly. “He wants me to kill you.”

The ropes cut into Angela’s wrists. They burned until she gasped. “My God, you can’t be serious.”

“
He’s
very serious.”

“But that’s murder. He’s asking you to commit murder?”

He barely reacted to the word. “When you’re on a serial killer’s death list, it’s called self-defense, Angela. The agency can’t take such extreme measures. They have no legal defense, but I do.”

“I don’t believe this,” she whispered.

His eyes were blue and painfully hard. “He said you lured me down here to kill me.”

“That’s not true. I didn’t lure—”

He was moving toward the couch, overriding her. “He claims you’re lying about regaining your memory. It’s all part of your game, and the Adam story is a ploy for sympathy. You fixate on godlike doctors, expecting them to be paragons. But when they turn out to be mere flawed humans like your father, you feel justified in killing them.”

“Jordan—”

“He actually wanted me to believe that you felt pleasure when you killed my colleague, knowing I would be the one to find him.”

“But . . . you
didn’t
believe him.”

“He said you’re a paranoid schizophrenic who imagines people are trying to kill you, and if I untie you, I’ll never leave this hut alive.”

“Jordan, none of that is true!”

Angela watched him kneel and pick something up. She couldn’t tell what it was at first, but she saw a flash of silver and felt an answering flash of despair. He was holding the knife.
No,
she thought,
no.
She didn’t really believe that he would hurt her, but a burning sadness gripped her. This was a man who saved lives. He wasn’t a killer. There had been so few things in her life she could take on faith. She had to be able to trust her instincts now.

“Please, put that down,” she said. “You’re scaring me.”

Jordan laid the blade of the knife in his open palm, as if he were examining it. “Angela, if anything that man said about you was true, then—”

He looked up and sent her imagination stumbling with dread. “Then I’m a monster and
should
be killed, is that what you mean?”

Panic stirred as he started toward her. She still couldn’t believe that he would hurt her, but her heart had gone so terribly quiet. It was impossible to take her eyes off him as he came across the room.

He rolled the knife in his fingers and changed his grip on the handle. The blade shivered and dipped. Angela sucked in a breath as it disappeared, sheathed in a loop on the belt of his shorts.
He had put it away. He had put the knife away.
She should have been relieved, but something was wrong. His hand was shaking. Muscle tugged against bone in his clenched face.

He looked almost angry. Yes, angry.

“Jordan?” she whispered.

“Christ—” He dropped to his knees beside her, shaking his head in disbelief. “A CIA agent is telling me to kill you, that I’ll walk away a free man, a hero, because I stopped Angel Face.”

Harsh laughter stuck in his throat. He looked as if he couldn’t believe what he was about to say, as if he couldn’t believe anything.

“He’s telling me to kill you . . . and all I want to do is hold you.”

Angela let out a tiny utterance. It was incomprehensible, but they both knew what it meant. He gave her a tug and caught her as she fell into his arms.