Errant Angel Read online

  She sat back in her chair, studying him for a moment.

  “What is it, Jimmy?” she asked gently.

  “Nothin’.”

  She reached out to him. “You’re obviously upset—”

  “I’m not,” he snapped, backing away.

  “All right,” she said after a moment. Then she stood to gather her things. Jimmy lingered, as if uncertain whether or not he was free to leave. Or as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to. As she picked up her jacket, she asked, “Can I give you a ride to the garage? I have to stop at the drugstore on my way home.”

  His eyes lit up at the thought of a ride in her car, but an instant later the sullen expression was back.

  “Nah. I got my bike. Besides, I don’t hang around there anymore. It’s stupid.”

  Stupid. It had been the only bright spot in his young life two days ago, but now it was stupid.

  “Mr. MacKay will miss you, don’t you think?”

  Jimmy swore out a negative answer, a crude oath that she sensed came more from pain than the usual teenage desire to shock. “He’s the one who threw me out.”

  Evangeline blinked. Dalton had thrown the boy out? That didn’t fit at all with what she’d picked up during that brief but unforgettable contact.

  “Jimmy, are you sure?”

  He snorted. “He told me to leave him the hell alone. Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Maybe he just...”

  Her voice trailed away as she realized the boy wasn’t hearing her. She probed gently, and although his protective walls were substantial—not nearly as tough as Dalton’s, however—she finally got it. He’d expected this. To him, everyone in his young life had rejected him sooner or later, his parents by dying, then his grandmother, who had also died shortly after rather dutifully taking him in, and then his other foster homes, by sending him back because he was too much trouble.

  And she also got the memory of last night’s activities, and had the answer to the graffiti that had appeared overnight on the gymnasium wall.

  “I gotta go now, okay?”

  It was a measure of respect, she supposed, that he had asked rather than just gone. She had sensed, too, that she was the one remaining light flickering in a world that was rapidly going dark for Jimmy Sawyer.

  As the boy walked away, swaggering the moment he got through the door and out where others could see him, Evangeline felt an odd tightening in her midsection. It took her a moment to recognize it, it had been so long. Fear. Astonished, she sank back down in her chair. She was afraid. Afraid she wasn’t up to this. Afraid she would let Jimmy down, that she wouldn’t be able to turn his life around.

  She wasn’t supposed to be afraid. Or confused. Or anything else. Even in her disagreements with the bosses she had never been afraid. Nor had she ever been on any of her assignments, even that one with the pilot who had wanted to take himself out and didn’t much care if he took his planeload of passengers with him. This kind of work would be near to impossible without an unshakable confidence and utter lack of anxiety. Purposely put in situations of great stress, operatives would be worn out in weeks if they had to go through the ups and downs of normal human emotions.

  Nor had she ever doubted that she would succeed in her task, only that she would manage to irritate her bosses in the process. She supposed they had given her that, along with everything else. So why had they apparently taken away that insulation now?

  Her hand rose to the pendant at her throat. She hesitated, loathe to subject herself to another lecture on Dalton MacKay. Especially when she’d been behaving herself, staying away from him, and trying very, very hard not to think about him. But how was she supposed to get this job done without thinking about him, when he seemed to be smack in the middle of it? At first she’d thought him an ally, but now that he’d destroyed what little enthusiasm Jimmy had for anything, he was hardly that.

  The more she thought about it, the madder she got. In some distant part of her mind she acknowledged that she wasn’t supposed to be feeling anger, either, except that which the bosses had finally had to concede went hand in hand with the sense of justice. But that expression on Jimmy’s face made her furious at the man who had put it there. Her hand moved away from the pendant and she quickly stood, picked up her books and papers, and strode purposefully out of the classroom.

  * * *

  Dalton heard the rumble of the car long before it pulled into the driveway. He knew who it was; the tap-tap of solid lifters was distinctive. He didn’t look up, didn’t even move when the car door slammed, just continued to fiddle with the butterfly on the old carburetor that sat in the pan on his workbench.

  Swift footsteps approached him. The feminine sound of high heels echoed oddly in the cavernous garage. High heels. He knew he didn’t want to look up now; the memory of her legs, exquisitely long and curved, was emblazoned too vividly in his mind. It’s your imagination, she’s too small to have legs that long, he’d told himself over and over again.

  “Just what the hell is your problem?”

  It wasn’t the opening he’d expected, and his head came up sharply as he looked at her in surprise. And knew immediately he’d been right to be wary; the skirt of her yellow linen suit, which beautifully set off her burnished hair and the golden gleam of that pendant she wore, was shorter than the one she’d worn the other day. Short enough to show shapely knees and tease him with a glimpse of equally shapely thighs.

  She wasn’t too small, after all, he thought wryly. She was perfect.

  Silently he reminded himself of all the time he’d spent trying to chase her out of his mind since her appearance here the other day. Out loud, he asked “Problem?”

  “If you want to shut yourself off from the whole world, to hide from everything and everyone, that’s your business, but—”

  She stopped when he straightened, his face going rigidly still. She’d hit a nerve he’d thought deadened beyond response. He had long ago instinctively sensed that his personal hell took him to the limit of his endurance; the world had to be kept at a distance. He didn’t like the fact that she had somehow guessed that.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice soft, “it is my business.”

  “I said it was,” she went on, her chin coming up as if to show him he couldn’t intimidate her despite the fact that, even with her in heels, he towered over her. “If you want to build walls around yourself as high as these hills, fine. I know you have your reasons—”

  “You don’t know a damn thing about my reasons.”

  She drew herself up even straighter. There was nothing of the fawn in her eyes now; they were dark and fairly glittering with anger.

  “Nor do I care,” she snapped. “If you want to hide here and nurse your guilt for the rest of your life, that’s fine with me.”

  Dalton went very still. He’d met this woman once, for all of five minutes, never mind that she’d haunted him ever since. Where the hell had she gotten this idea? Did she know who he’d been, what he’d done? When he spoke, his voice was even softer than before, with an undertone many had once recognized as the prelude to an eruption. He doubted he was capable of that kind of emotion any longer, but this was as close as he’d come in a long time.

  “Guilt?”

  She looked oddly abashed for an instant, as if caught doing something she shouldn’t have.

  “Or whatever it is that’s eating at you,” she said hastily. “I told you, I don’t care. But I do care about other people getting hurt. You can’t let somebody in, just enough to start to care, then slam the door on them!”

  To start to care? Dalton’s heart slammed in his chest, startling him into wondering if his emotions were as dead as he’d like to believe. Had that five minutes of their first meeting been as indelibly carved into her mind as his? Had she been haunted by it as he had?

  Stop it, he ordered himself. Even if she had, it meant nothing. He wouldn’t allow it to mean anything.

  “He’s just a boy, Mr. MacKay. A very troubled boy.”
r />   Jimmy, he thought. This was about Jimmy. God, MacKay, you’re a fool.

  “The last thing he needs,” she was saying vehemently, “is the one adult he thought was his friend turning his back on him.”

  Dalton fought off the twinge her words caused. “I didn’t turn my back on him. I’m just not used to having a kid around all the time.”

  “So tell him you’re busy, to come back tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s not going to be any better.”

  “Nice philosophy. And now you’ve got Jimmy believing it, too.”

  “I can’t help what he believes.”

  Her eyes widened. “You don’t honestly believe that, do you? He idolizes you! You could make him believe whatever you want.”

  “Idols,” he said flatly, “usually have feet of clay. He might as well learn that early.”

  She studied him for a long moment. “Did yours?” she asked softly.

  Caught off guard by the unexpected question, the answer slipped out before he could stop it, a harsh whisper that was barely audible.

  “No.”

  He backed up a step, unable to bear the gentle understanding in her eyes. That was three times now she’d gotten to him, gotten through to a part of him buried so deep it should have been impossible. It was as if she could read his mind somehow, as if she knew his deepest thoughts, things he rarely dragged out into the light himself.

  “Who was he, Dalton?”

  His entire body tensed. He wasn’t sure if it was because she was treading ground upon which he never let anyone walk, or if it was something much more primitive, much more elemental: the sound of his name in that low, soft voice. The only thing he was certain of was that this had to stop. Now.

  “None of your business,” he said harshly.

  “I see,” she said in that same gentle tone, and he had the oddest feeling that it was literally true, that she saw everything, clear down to the twisted, shriveled darkness of his soul. Pressure built up inside him as the threat closed in. This woman, and the boy she was so valiantly fighting for, could make him lose sight of why he’d come here. He couldn’t let that happen.

  “Look,” he growled, “I don’t have time for this. And I don’t have time for that damn kid hanging around and asking questions all the time, let alone having him drag in everybody else in town.”

  It was a moment before understanding dawned in her eyes.

  “You mean me, don’t you?” Astonishment echoed in her voice. “You’re angry at Jimmy because he brought me here? And you’re making him pay for my intrusion? Of all the misguided— How dare you?”

  He’d known she was angry when she’d first come in, but there was little doubt that now she was furious. He’d never known brown eyes could be icy, but these were.

  “You’re entitled to wallow in your own misery, Dalton MacKay, but how dare you take it out on a boy who has troubles enough of his own?”

  He drew back a little. Not only were those eyes icy, but they had the power to spread that chill; he felt it sweeping over him. And he couldn’t think of a damned thing to say.

  “If you’re mad about my coming here,” she said fiercely, her hands on her slim hips as she glared at him, “then take it out on me, not Jimmy! You know what you are? A coward, that’s what!”

  The chill reached the very core of him then. It numbed all the confused emotions he’d been trying to suppress. He didn’t need to rebuild his walls, she’d done it for him. He met her angry gaze levelly.

  “Yes,” he said emotionlessly. “I am.”

  He turned away from her and went back to his work on the carburetor as if she were no longer there. There was a long moment of silence before she spoke.

  “Dalton,” she began, her voice soft and so incredibly gentle he felt as if she’d touched him. He almost shivered under its impact.

  “Goodbye, Ms. Law,” he snapped.

  “Evangeline,” she said quietly.

  He looked up at that; he couldn’t help it. “What?”

  “My name is Evangeline.”

  “Lord,” he muttered. “It’s bigger than you are.”

  “And I thought you were a bigger man than you are,” she said in that same quiet tone. And without another word, she turned and walked away.

  Dalton watched her go, watched her get into the red and white car, fire up the powerful motor, and leave with a bark of rubber that relayed her anger...or her disappointment. He told himself it didn’t matter what she thought, in fact, that it was best that she dislike him enough to stay away. She stirred up things, made him think about things he didn’t want to think about, saw things she shouldn’t have been able to see. She was dangerous, to him and to the carefully constructed world he’d built here.

  The more distance between them, the better, he thought. He should be glad that he’d obviously disappointed her so much that she’d never set foot in here again. He was, he told himself as he turned his attention back to his work. He was glad.

  And disgusted, he added a moment later as he looked down at fingers that were shaking. He slammed the needle-nose pliers down on the workbench and stood staring at his hands for a long time.

  * * *

  This questioning of the objective is highly irregular, Evangeline.

  But he’s in such misery! You’ve got to let me help him.

  Your job here is—

  Jimmy Sawyer. I know that.

  You’re interrupting again, dear.

  She could tell she was truly testing their patience. She tried to rein in her urgency, but the memory of what she’d felt during that brief but unforgettable contact with Dalton was so strong it was like a spur, prodding her constantly.

  I’m sorry. But, really, I’ve never felt anything like what I get from him.

  Remember the primary rules, Evangeline.

  I know, I know, no interference in anything that doesn’t have a direct bearing on the job I’m here to do. But it does have a bearing on it, really. He and Jimmy—

  Leave well enough alone, Evangeline.

  Her response burst from her incredulously.

  Well enough? He’s in so much anguish, it’s torturing him. It’s eating him alive.

  A sigh, then, sadly, We know.

  What?

  We know, dear. We know all about Dalton MacKay.

  Then you can’t leave him like that! That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? What we do? Straightening things out for people who deserve it?

  Yes, but—

  You’re not saying he doesn’t deserve it? I can’t believe he did anything to earn the kind of hell he’s living in.

  You must stop interrupting, dear. No, he hasn’t, contrary to what he thinks.

  Then I must help him!

  Evangeline.

  It was a voice of authority, deep and commanding. Uh-oh, she thought. The big boss. She’d really done it now.

  Sir?

  She wondered if it sounded as squeaky to them as it did in her mind.

  Let it be, Evangeline. He does not want our help. He does not want anyone’s help. If Dalton MacKay is to survive this abyss he is in, it is up to the man himself.

  But...

  She stopped, startled at her own temerity. No one, not even she, argued with the big boss. Yet when the booming voice came again, it was oddly gentle and understanding.

  Yes, it seems contrary to our purpose. But we have tried and failed. Some things about the human psyche are beyond even our efforts.

  They had tried? And failed? She didn’t think they ever failed. But if Dalton had been too much for them, then he was certainly too much for her. A feeling oddly like depression settled over her.

  Evangeline? It was her contact again. What is that odd sensation?

  I told you, something’s out of whack. I’m feeling things I shouldn’t be. Emotions.

  But that’s—

  Impossible. I know. But there it is.

  They didn’t even comment on her interrupting this time. Oh, dear. Perhaps you need
to come back for an adjustment.

  Not now. Jimmy’s in a bad spot right now, and I need to be here.

  Very well. But if the problem persists, something will have to be done.

  I’ll get back to you.

  She sat in her room for a long time after the connection was broken, trying to accept what they’d told her. She’d never felt so completely helpless, except in the moments before she had agreed to take on this job in the first place. At last, when the walls seemed to be closing in on her, she pulled on her jacket and went outside, hoping a walk in the brisk fall air would clear her head.

  The streets were dark; most of the businesses in the little town closed early. She wandered past the small city hall and the smaller courthouse, noticing the keystones on both that said they’d been built in 1880. A good year, she thought. Helen Keller was born. Thomas Edison and his electric light. And she’d been in Ohio, in time to hear General Sherman’s “War is Hell” speech. She’d thought then that people would remember that phrase, that—

  “Hey, honey, come on over here!”

  “Yeah, baby, we got somethin’ for you!”

  The young male voices and the catcalls echoed off the stone of the courthouse wall. Well, that certainly distracted her from her worries, she thought. She kept walking, wondering how women who didn’t have her options stayed sane.

  “Hey! We’re talking to you, bitch!”

  She stopped, and turned around as the running footsteps approached. Four boys formed a silently threatening semicircle in front of her. These boys would be seeing that courthouse from the inside if they kept this up, she thought.

  She recognized three of them as ones pointed out to her by another teacher; the two who had been expelled last year for setting the fire in the school library, and the third the rowdiest boy in the entire junior class.

  And the fourth boy, she realized with a sinking heart, was Jimmy.