Fallen Angel (14 page)

"I'll leave you mine," Sarah said. "Please? I'll be careful, and I'll call you and explain everything later, okay?"

Rosemary reached into her pocket and produced her key ring. She started to hand the whole thing over, then reconsidered and worked just the car key off the ring. Sarah did the same with her key ring, and they each held out their keys. "You promise you'll call?" Rosemary asked, holding on to the key, waiting for the answer.

"I promise," Sarah said. "Deal?"

"Deal."

* * *

Sarah made a "come on" motion to Zach, and he stood up, dropped some bills on the table, and walked over to her. "Let's hurry," she said, and led him through the kitchen to the restaurant's back door. She opened the door, peered out, and not seeing Yurkemi anywhere around, she sprinted to Rosemary's Taurus, unlocked the door, and slid in. "Come on!" she hissed at Zach. He ran around to the passenger side, opened the door, and got in beside her. "Fasten your seatbelt!" she said, and hit the gas.

* * *

She kept looking in the rearview mirror as she drove; she wasn't sure what she expected to see--Yurkemi flying down the highway behind them? She supposed he could steal a car, but could he drive? Or he could kidnap someone and make
them
drive.

"Zach?"

"Hm?" Zach was leaning against the passenger door, looking like he might fall asleep. Sarah didn't think he was going to go to sleep, but she figured he was probably pretty unhappy right about now. Things weren't going too well.

"Would Yurkemi hurt anybody? Like Cate, or Rosemary? Or the Grahams?"

"I don't think so. He might pressure them to tell him what he wants to know, but I don't think he would actually hurt them. Although, who knows? He's certainly not the most stable angel I've ever known. He could, I suppose, although I think the only one he wants to hurt is me. I
hope
he wouldn't hurt anyone else to get to me." He paused, and turned to look at her. "I feel funny running away from him."

"We're not running away! We're just . . . getting some breathing room to figure out what to do."

"So have you figured it out yet?"

"Hey, give me some time. We only stole this car a half hour ago."

She thought that might make him smile, but he just leaned his head against the door again and closed his eyes.

A half hour later, she exclaimed, "Damn!" His eyes flew open and he sat up straight.

"What?!"

"My cell phone." She could visualize it lying in the middle of her desk at the shop. "I forgot it."

"What do you need it for?" he asked.

"I want to call Rosemary, see if everything's okay."

She drove for another fifteen minutes before she saw a rest area with a pay phone. She pulled off the highway and dug in her purse for change. "Just stay here, okay? I'll just be a few minutes." She ran to the phone and dialed the restaurant. "Philippi Creek," the voice on the other end answered. Sarah asked, "May I speak to Rosemary?"

She heard the receiver on the other end clatter onto a hard surface--the bar, she assumed--then the sound of people talking, but she only understood a word here and there. Finally, the phone was picked up, but it wasn't Rosemary. "Who were you waiting for?" the bartender asked. "Rosemary," Sarah said. "Oh yeah. Rosemary!" he shouted, and the receiver clattered again.

Sarah was about to give up when the phone was picked up again. "Hello?" Thank God. Sarah was beginning to fear that something had happened to Rosemary. "Rosemary?" she asked. "This is Sarah, is everything okay?"

"This isn't Rosemary, hon. This is Norma. Rosemary took off awhile ago."

Shit, shit, shit
. "Did she say where she was going?"

"Nope. She just split. All I know is, I have to cover her tables, and now I'm covering her
phone calls
, too."

"I'm sorry, Norma. Thank you," Sarah said, and hung up.

She'd been having a little fantasy of driving Zach to a motel that she knew about, right on the beach, and having a nice, quiet evening, just the two of them. She
knew
it was a fantasy--for one thing, he didn't seem to be in the mood for anything more than pouting, but this development threw that fantasy out the window.

"We have to go back!" she said when she reached the car. She jerked the door open. "Rosemary's gone, Yurkemi must have taken her! I can't believe I put her in danger like that!"

Zach put his hand on her arm and stopped her from starting the car. "Just wait a second. We can't do anything now--how will we find her? I can't believe Yurkemi would hurt her, he's probably just trying to scare us."

"Well, he's scaring
me
! We can't just let it go! I made her give me her car, I can't let anything bad happen to her!" Sarah was getting hysterical.

"Sarah! Listen to me! Calm down."

She took a deep breath.

"We can't do anything right now. I don't know how to find her, I wouldn't know where to start. It's late. I think we need to get some sleep. Couldn't we stop someplace, and then head back early in the morning?"

Huh.
Maybe he'd been having the same fantasies. She thought about a clean, anonymous hotel room, smooth sheets, the windows open to the sound of the ocean, a room service breakfast in the morning . . .

But no. "Zach, we can't. We have to go back. We have to be sure she's okay."

"All right. You're right. I guess we have to try." He tightened his seat belt. "Let's go, then."

20.

The trip back to the city was made in silence, Sarah concentrating on driving and Zach seemingly asleep with his head leaned against the passenger side door. Sarah didn't think he was asleep, though; she thought he was just pretending.

She was
very
worried about Rosemary--what if Yurkemi had kidnapped her, tortured her, and driven off with her somewhere where they'd never find her? Of course, that probably wasn't the case--he didn't want Rosemary, he wanted Zach, and whatever he did to anyone else would only be to serve that end. But he could still hurt her. She was worried, too, about Cate, who lived alone out in the sticks next to an orange grove, and the Grahams--after the bars closed, the area where the shop was was almost completely deserted. No one would hear--

Oh, stop it!
she said to herself.
You're being ridiculous. And even if it's true, it doesn't do any good to worry about it. You'll find out soon enough if there's anything to worry about!

Right now she was also worried about Zach. He had been acting strangely subdued ever since they left the restaurant, and she wasn't sure what to do about it. She was going to need his help--she couldn't take care of Yurkemi herself--but in his present state she wasn't sure whether he would be any help at all.

The turnoff to the Key was coming up, but she drove on past it. "Zach?" she said, "are you asleep?"

He answered her without opening his eyes. "No, I'm awake."

"I'm going to drive out to Cate's and check on her and use her phone to try to find Rosemary. I don't want to go to my house or to the shop until I know everything's okay."

"That makes sense," he said, his eyes still closed.

"I'm going to need your help. Are you okay?"

He finally turned to face her. "I'm okay, Sarah. I'm just feeling really badly about everything that's happened. I seem to have messed things up, gotten people hurt . . . I didn't mean for this to happen. If I had known . . . I never would have come."

Sarah pulled the car over onto the shoulder and put it in Park. She wanted to be able to look at Zach while she talked to him and not risk an accident. "You had the best of intentions. The fact that Yurkemi showed up isn't your fault. Everybody's going to be okay, I'm sure of it. We just need to round everybody up and be sure, and then we can get some sleep. And you
haven't
messed up! Look at me! I feel
so
much better--I almost feel like the person I was before . . . well, before. I feel happy again. And that's
your
doing. So don't tell me that you've bungled it. You haven't. Now let's go and check on Cate, okay?"

She put the car back in gear and pulled back onto the highway, and Zach sat up straight and opened his eyes.

"You're right," he said. "I'm sorry. This is all so new to me. I'm used to just doing my job and not getting involved in anything outside of my own little world. This is all just completely . . ." he paused. "Different, I guess. Just different. Is it always like this down here?"

Sarah laughed. "No, not in the least. Real life is seldom quite this exciting. We mostly just do our jobs and stay in our own little worlds, too. You're the most exciting thing that's happened to me in years." She looked over at him and saw that he was smiling.

"Don't worry about it, okay?" she said. "What we have to do now is figure out how to get Yurkemi off our backs.

"I'll just have to go back," Zach said. "There's really no other choice. Once I go back, he'll have no reason to stay, and you can go back to the way things were."

"But I don't
want
to go back to the way things were! I mean, well, I could do without the kidnapping threats and all that stuff, but Zach! I've been so happy since you came, so . . . free. I've hardly thought about the store--and that's wrong, I know--but I think I needed a break from my real life, and it's been almost like being on vacation. So don't tell me to go back to the way I was before. I don't want to."

"Okay, okay!" He made a short little snort of laughter. "Believe me, I'm not going to try to make you do anything! But I'm going to have to go back. I meant to eventually, of course, but I had hoped to spend a little longer with you."

"Well, let's not be too hasty about anything, okay? Let's just wait and see what happens." She pulled off the highway onto a gravel road and bumped along until they reached Cate's little rental house on the edge of the orange grove. The house was dark, and Sarah looked at the clock on the dashboard. 12:30. Cate would normally be up this late, but there didn't seem to be any lights on in the house at all. Maybe she wasn't home. Or unlikely as it seemed, maybe she’d gone to bed early.

"You stay in the car, I'll go up and see if she's home." Sarah got out of the car and walked up the sidewalk, all her senses on high alert. She started when she heard a car door open, but was reassured to feel Zach walk up behind her. She smiled over her shoulder at him.

She could hear the doorbell ring inside the house, and after a few minutes was about to turn to Zach and say that she must not be home, when the door opened. Cate had obviously just woken up. Her hair, normally tousled, was sticking up in a few new directions, and she was rubbing her eyes. She was wearing a T-shirt that advertised the Ringling Circus, and blue cotton underwear was visible under the hem.

She yawned. "Hi, guys, what's up?" She leaned against the doorframe and pushed a hand through her hair.

Sarah was embarrassed. "Cate, I'm sorry! You're usually up late, I thought you'd still be up . . ."

"It's the new me," Cate said, and laughed. "Not really, don't get worried! I have to get up early to go register at school. I'm going to take some night classes and I want to be sure to get the ones I want, so I have to be there practically at dawn. You want to come in?" She moved out of the doorway and ushered them in, yawning and sweeping her arm as if she was inviting them into her palace.

Not a palace, exactly, but more of a shrine. Sarah had always thought Cate's house looked like the inside of a Christmas ornament, or maybe a snow globe or one of those Easter eggs with the hole in the end that let you peer inside. Something magical.

The walls were covered with Cate's paintings and every flat surface was covered with either art supplies, works in progress, or completed items--small sculptures, painted vases, dolls. Cate was the most prolific artist Sarah knew, and she knew quite a few. Part of the reason for that was that Cate never seemed to sleep--except for now, of course, when they'd walked in on her.

Sarah apologized again. "Cate, I'm really sorry we woke you up."

"No problem," Cate said, as she yawned again. What's going on?"

* * *

Sarah briefly filled her in on what had happened at the restaurant and said that they had, first, wanted to be sure she was okay and second, see if they could use her phone to call Rosemary and be sure
she
was okay.

"Sure," she said, "just let me . . ." She pawed around on one small table after another, finally unearthing a cordless phone, which she handed over to Sarah.

"I don't suppose you have--" Sarah started.

"A phone book?" Cate squinted in thought. "No, I don't think so. Call Information."