Gunning For Angels (Fallen Angels Book 1) (19 page)

Adapt or perish, now or never, is nature’s inexorable imperative.

–
H. G. Wells

Enid swam out of the cold, dark dream that seemed like an evil stepchild to sleep. She lay perfectly still, not daring to blink. 

Where am I?

A scratching sound – what was it?

She struggled to sit up and groaned with the effort. Her eyes darted around and she quickly found the source – a cockroach as big as a man’s thumb scurried along the edge of where the cinder block wall met the dirty concrete floor. 

Enid sat bolt upright, panic rising within her as she realized she was in a cinder block cell. Her first thought was that she was somewhere in the basement of the girls’ home, but somehow she knew she wasn’t. She was on a disgusting mattress in the middle of the floor. She jumped up, her heart hammering in her throat as every horror movie she’d ever seen flashed through her mind. She threw herself at the metal door, screaming and pounding with all her might. After several moments, a thought hit her and she scrabbled down into her sock – desperately feeling around for…

No cell phone!

She collapsed in a heap, sobbing convulsively. The cell phone – that one miraculous line of hope leading to the outside world – to Jack – was ripped from her and she was left with a sensation of overwhelming helplessness.

The thin fabric of her T-shirt was no protection from the cold of the metallic door that she leaned against and she found herself shivering
uncontrollably. Drawing her knees to her chest, she rocked back and forth, forcing herself to think.

She could hear
guttural sounds – some wounded animal…

Me?

For what seemed like an eternity, she rocked back and forth. More than anything, she wanted her mom.
Desperately.
Nothing else mattered – she wanted to be safe at home with mom. Everything she had so flippantly despised about her mom suddenly morphed into the only safe thing in the universe.

A sob caught in her throat and she stared forward, numb with fear.

I’m going to die. 

Or worse…

She shut her eyes, forcing herself to push down the feelings of helpless terror. She tried to think, but her thoughts came out in a jumble. How long had she been here? Twenty minutes? Hours? She wondered if Jack would be waiting for her call. What would he think when she didn’t call? 

Will he look for me?

She felt a twist of regret at being such a jerk and made a silent promise that if she got out alive, she’d make it up to him – and her mom…

A memory itched her mind – a poem…?

What was it?

Ninth-grade English. In her mind’s eye, she saw elephants and Indian princesses. It was coming bac
k to her – something about “if.” A long poem about “if” you could be the one who didn’t freak out when everybody else was freaking out – that would make all the difference. If you could stay calm and be brave and…

What would Jack do?

She forced herself to get up and walk around. She found herself repeating, “If you don’t freak out, you might get out.” She said it over and over as she forced herself to examine the room.

A single light bulb hung from a cord. She bent over the mattress, feeling around for anything that she could use as a weapon. She flipped the mattress over and jumped back as a bug scurried out from under it and disappeared into a crack in the wall. She pried her fingers into the dirty mattress, looking for anything that could work as a weapon, but there was nothing. No metal, no wires – nothing. 

She turned to the door. Whoever was going to come through that door would expect to see a hysterical girl.

I’m probably not the first…

The scum-bucket was probably counting on her being hysterical! Enid clenched her fists and decided she needed to burn her bridges on thinking BIG.

If she wanted to get free, she was going to have to dig deep and turn everything upside-down and force
him
to freak out.

But…

How do you freak out a freak?

There is no truth. There is only perception.

–
Gustave Flaubert

Jack glared in the rearview mirror at Detective Bud Orlean’s shitty house with his shitty wife and his shitty insinuations. He wanted nothing more then to punch the accelerator, so he could drive back and kick the shit out of him.

Jack forced himself to calm down and slow to the speed limit. Bud Orlean was the embodiment of
why
he quit the force.

Arrogant old-school bastards!

Every last one of the old-timers, including Bud, knew his father and repeated the stories from his father’s funeral like they were in some an old ladies gossip club – keeping the story alive so that Jack could never get out from under its shadow.

Jack recalled the last time he had seen his dad…

Dead.

Women in black, the police uniforms, the gold buttons – all those eyes staring at him, whispering.

And then – what happened next…

Jack flinched, forcing his thoughts away from that horrible moment – to happier times. His father’s booming voice and his mother’s golden laughter – she was always happiest when he was there, which wasn’t often. 

The Christmas tree had hovered over the gifts for over a week. To eight-year-old Jack, it seemed like Christmas morning would never arrive. His mother refused to let Jack open any gifts until his father came home from one of his many work trips.

His father did come home – loaded down with sloppily wrapped presents, apologies, and hugs. His mother somehow turned their delayed Christmas into Jack’s favorite childhood memory.

Elvis Christmas songs played on the stereo as Jack tore open his presents. His mom and dad held hands and drank steaming hot chocolate. She had a bag of Hershey Kisses and laughingly told them she’d give them one chocolate Kiss for each kiss they gave her. Much later, when the bag was empty, Jack lay snuggled on the couch in pajamas, holding the air rifle in his arms as he drowsily watched his mom and dad slow dance around the living room. Her bare feet gracefully slid across the floor as he spun her and they came back in a kiss. He remembered his mother sending a glance his way and whispering something to his dad, who grinned and pulled her even tighter. 

That was the happiest day.

Everything after that took them slowly down a road further and further away from that moment when the three of them were a family.

As the years went on, his father traveled more and his mother slipped into an ever-deepening melancholy that left her silently staring out windows.

Waiting. Always waiting.

It wasn’t until sixth grade that disaster struck.

It rained that day. Not enough to cancel the game. The pitcher was a chunky kid with a habit of throwing to bean any batter who crowded the plate. Jack was hungry for a home run that would make Vicki Minor look his way. Her blue eyes, flipped-back blond hair and the way she snapped her bubble-gum made him crazy with admiration.

The pitcher threw the first ball fast and hard, and Jack jerked back, barely avoiding getting hit. He glanced to the bleachers and saw that Vicki wasn’t looking at him.

She and a girlfriend were giggling and pointing to the pitcher. Jack frowned, got back into the batting stance. The second pitch slammed into Jack’s knee. He scowled angrily at the pitcher, who was grinning into the stands. Gripping his knee, Jack followed his gaze and saw Vicki popping her gum and grinning at the pitcher.

A wave of jealousy engulfed Jack, and he stepped up to the plate, determined to smash the ball into the pitcher’s stupid face!

On the next pitch, Jack slugged it with all his might. Jack heard a sickening thud and a cry. A moan went up from the onlookers. The pitcher was sprawled on his back, blood soaking through his hands that were clenched over his face.

Jack’s eyes found Vicki. Hands over her mouth, she was staring in horror at the pitcher.

Jack looked at the pitcher and was startled to see him running toward him with an animal snarl on his face. The pitcher tackled him so that they landed in the dirt, where they pounded each other with wild punches.

It took five adults to pull them off each other and it was another fifteen minutes of a harrowing drive to the local hospital’s emergency department. 

Jack broke the pitcher’s nose with the ball. The pitcher got his revenge by breaking Jack’s hand – with his face.

In the emergency room, the two boys sat glaring at each other from across a fifteen-foot aisle as they waited for their parents to pick them up.

Jack was surprised to hear his father’s booming voice. Jack sat up, a rush of happiness coming over him. Despite the trouble he was in, he felt a thrill of happiness that his dad was back early from his business trip and was going to take him home.

“Well, son, I
hope the other kid looks worse,” his father boomed.

Jack looked up, grinning, but his dad was across the aisle, staring down at the chunky kid.

“Oh, Sam!” A blond woman shook her head disparagingly at the pitcher. “You’re filthy.” 

“Sorry, mom,” the chunky kid said.

“We’ll talk about this when we get home,” Jack’s dad squeezed the boy’s shoulder.

“Dad?” Jack said in a voice that even he didn’t recognize.

They turned to look at Jack.

Without knowing it, Jack had crossed the aisle and stood looking up at his dad.

Harry started like he’d seen a ghost.

The blond woman shot him a questioning look. The chunky kid scowled, looking from Jack to his dad.

“Jack…?” Jack’s mother called from down the hall.

Jack turned and saw his mom heading toward him, her eyes focused on his cast. “Oh, honey…” She knelt in front of him, gathered him in a hug. “Is the other boy all right? You know, you’re going to have to apologize.”

Jack looked up at his dad and his mother’s eyes followed his.

She gasped, her face draining to a sickly white.

“Harry?” The blond woman’s face was hard as flint. She looked from Harry to Jack’s mom. “What’s going on?”

“Come on, Sam.” Jack’s father grabbed the chunky kid and dragged him down the hall and out the swinging doors.

The blond woman followed more slowly, staring at Jack’s mom with cold eyes.

Jack watched his mother shrink before his eyes.

A nurse came forward and helped his mother to her feet. She led her down the hall, murmuring something. Jack watched them, unable to move, unable to speak. The look on his mother’s face struck terror into him.

He’d never seen her look so…

Not there.

The days that followed were filled the horrible realization that he and his mother were – a dirty secret.

His father’s dirty secret.

It was four years after that
– two weeks after Christmas. He’d come home from school and found his mother hanging by her neck, one high-heeled shoe on the floor and the other dangling from her toe.

The police left him with a neighbor whose hands smelled like lemons, but he wrested himself away and ran back in time to see two policemen cut down his mother with a hook. He stared in shock as the policeman replaced the hook onto his thick leather belt. He felt sick that
that hook
was part of the policeman’s belt – just waiting to cut down some other kid’s mother. 

He spent two bleak years living with his grandmother in her tiny home on the reservation. She was a medicine woman, but there was no medicine that could cure him of his hatred for his father.

Jack had come home one day and found his grandmother sitting in her chair with her chin down, like she had fallen asleep. There was no noose – there were no tools hanging off a stranger’s belt, but she was gone as quickly as his mother.

That’s when his father had re-emerged with a grim, guilty look in his eyes that never were quite able to meet Jack’s eyes. Harry Waterstone claimed Jack like he was lost luggage
. Harry took Jack home to live with his wife and their only son, Sam.

The chunky pitcher
, Sam, was his brother from another mother.

For the next year,
Jack had watched his stepmother’s cold eyes follow his every move. Her hatred for him was only eclipsed by Jack’s own hatred for his father.

Looking back, Jack realized that if it wasn’t for the friendship that burgeoned between him and Sam, he didn’t know what would have become of him. Sam was his brother, his friend – his protector.

When Jack lived with his stepmother, she had beaten him so viciously with the plastic stick she had ripped off the blinds, that he couldn’t get off the kitchen floor. He was sure that she would have killed him – except that Sam roared into the kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife out of the block and pushed her into a wall and held it flat-edged to her throat. Not a word was said between Sam and his mother, but she left. She got in the car and came back six hours later loaded down with shopping bags full of clothes and shoes from the mall.

Right after she left, Jack had been so ashamed that he had broken into uncontrolled sobs that made it hard to breathe. Sam
sat next to Jack on the kitchen floor and, after the longest time, Sam helped him upstairs to his bedroom and, from that day on, they shared the same bedroom, and Sam was the brick wall that stood between Jack and his stepmother. 

The blare of a car horn jerked Jack back to the present. He was sitting at a stop sign, one block from Jeni’s apartment.

He pulled forward and parked, wondering if Eve had ever been beaten.

Hasn’t everybody?

He desperately wanted to be Eve’s brick wall – her protector. He cut the engine, thinking about the curve of Eve’s red lips and the way her green eyes shone and he happily imagined himself beating the shit out of anyone who had hurt her.

I’d kill for a woman like that.