Errant Angel Read online

  The highly uncharacteristic and obvious evasion startled her so much that she couldn’t react, couldn’t protest for a moment. Then, just as she pulled herself together, they gave her a rather hasty goodbye and were gone.

  What on earth, she wondered, is going on up there? Had they lost control, or what? Was that why she was loosing control, because they were? They were as close to infallible as any beings she’d ever known, but even they admitted they weren’t perfect. Of course, that was usually when they were shaking their heads—or whatever their equivalent was—over her and her slightly off-center approach to things.

  Well, they’d known what they were getting from the beginning. They’d done enough checking on her to know she never had quite fit in with anybody’s plan; her parents, her whole family, in fact her entire world had had an idea of her place that always seemed to be quite different from hers.

  But at least she’d had her family for a while, she thought. So had Jimmy, for a few years. Dalton had never had anyone; even the couple who had almost adopted him had tossed him back as if he were nothing more than a bad idea to be given up when things got tough. Jimmy thought he had it rough, and he had, but it could have been worse. And it would get worse, if he kept on the path he’d begun.

  She thought for a moment of those flashes of the past she’d gotten from Dalton. They’d been distressing, even painful, and they were etched in her mind as if truly chiseled in stone.

  And maybe, just maybe, it was time Jimmy realized how much worse things could get.

  She rose and crossed the room to the only window, which fortunately looked out at the Kirkland residence across the street. They had just been pulling in when she had arrived home, but she’d been far too disturbed—even now her fingers stole once more to her mouth, to touch the lips Dalton had kissed, swearing she could still feel the heat of him—to do more than acknowledge them with a wave. That had been hours ago, she realized in surprise as she stared at the bedside clock. It was after midnight.

  She began to probe, to see if Jimmy was home, but stopped when she saw the flamboyant bike propped up near the porch steps; Jimmy was rarely without it. And it was late, and earlier she had picked up the nervousness Jimmy had been feeling when he’d told her about the trip to Bob Kirkland’s mother’s. She hoped he’d been stressed enough to just stay home tonight and not go out on one of the nighttime prowls his foster mother was so worried about, with those kids Angie sensed would be more than willing to trade bikes for an available car, whether they were old enough to drive or not.

  In a few moments she knew she’d been right; Jimmy was there, sleeping restlessly, but sleeping. As she concentrated, setting up the connection, she felt a tug of compassion at the jumbled images, memories of happier times, an older boy and girl grudgingly letting their little brother tag along, mainly because the pretty blonde who had been their mother had ordered them to; of family gatherings and games, and a tall, sandy-haired man tossing his youngest son high in the air with sure hands that would never fumble his precious burden.

  And then the picture shattered with a roar and a deafening boom, fire raining from the sky. Jimmy’s pulse accelerated and a low moan rose from his throat.

  The plane crash, she realized. Swiftly she focused and sent a wave of calmness out to the boy, a vision of serenity, a cool pond in a grassy meadow, shaded by trees and filled with wildflowers and the trill of songbirds. The boy’s pulse eased, and she gave him a few minutes of soothing peace. Then she began to send the images, praying that this idea would work.

  * * *

  “I said hand me the five-eighths wrench,” Dalton said, his patience strained as Jimmy gave him the wrong size for the second time.

  “I did,” Jimmy protested, a trace of a whine underlying his voice.

  “Then why does it say nine-sixteenths?”

  “Well, it looked right.” The whine was more definite now.

  “Try staying home and sleeping at night, and you might be able to read numbers,” Dalton said from beneath the mayor’s big, dull brown sedan. He regretted the words the moment he’d said them; the kid probably got enough of that kind of thing at home. “Turn on the air compressor, will you? I’m going to need it in a few minutes to pull these wheels off.”

  Jimmy looked for a moment as if he were going to argue over the criticism, but when Dalton kept working without saying anything more, the boy went and flipped the switch of the motor that sat atop the drum of the compressor. It came to life with its distinctive chug, and Jimmy walked back and sat on the garage floor next to where Dalton lay on a creeper beneath the raised vehicle, checking the brake lines.

  “I have been home,” Jimmy said after a moment. “At least, last night I was.”

  “Look, Jimmy, it’s none of my business what you do with your time. What is my business is that this place, with all these tools and equipment, is not the place to be if you’re too tired to even read the numbers on a wrench.” Look who’s talking, he added in silent ruefulness.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Jimmy admitted grudgingly. “But I was home last night. Nobody was around to hang out with.”

  “Why? Allen steal his mom’s car and head for the coast again?”

  Dalton sensed rather than saw the boy stiffen. The air compressor chugged steadily in the silence.

  “How’d you know about that?” Jimmy asked at last.

  “I replaced the headlight and the grill he broke, remember?”

  “Oh.”

  The air compressor shut off as it reached the set pressure. Dalton checked the last brake line, then slid out from under the car. He walked over to the air compressor, pulled out the hose, and went to work on the left front wheel. The characteristic high-pitched whir as the air gun loosened the lug nuts made it impossible to talk, and Jimmy watched in silence until Dalton had loosened the last one. Then, as if he couldn’t hold it back any longer, he spoke again.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me Allen’s nothing but trouble and I shouldn’t be hanging out with him?”

  Dalton shrugged. “Nope.”

  Jimmy looked surprised. “Why?”

  Dalton wrested the wheel off and rolled it to one side. “I don’t tell people who their friends should be. That’s your decision. You have to decide when the potential for trouble outweighs whatever you get out of the friendship.” He gave Jimmy a sideways look. “Besides, I’ll bet there’s some people who’d say the same thing to you about me.”

  Jimmy studied his hands. “I...Mrs. Kirkland was a little worried at first. But I think she’s decided you’re okay.”

  Dalton managed a wry smile. “Should I be flattered, or insulted?”

  Jimmy looked up sharply, then saw his expression and seemed to relax. “I’m not sure,” he said with a grin. Then, in rather obviously pointed tones, “I think Ms. Law convinced her.”

  Dalton blinked. Angie? Angie had been talking about him to Mrs. Kirkland? “Convinced her?” he asked carefully.

  “She said that you were all right,” Jimmy explained. “And Mrs. Kirkland believed her.” The boy looked puzzled for a moment. “Everybody believes her, it seems like.”

  “Yes, it does,” Dalton said as he turned back to look at the brakes of the wheel he’d pulled the tire from. He grimaced; this was going to be a bigger job than he’d thought.

  “And she always seems to know how you feel, you know?”

  “I’ve noticed,” Dalton said dryly. Angie Law’s uncanny ability to read his thoughts was not something he wanted to discuss. That she seemed able to do it with everyone didn’t do much to calm his unease; she’d struck far too close to the bone for comfort too often, seeming to know what he was feeling before he even knew it himself. It was disconcerting, to have this woman he’d met just a few days ago see so easily past the walls he’d spent years building.

  “I told her about that meeting tomorrow, you know, with the social worker? She knew right away I was nervous. She made me promise to stay cool. Made me shake hands on it.” Jimmy looked a l
ittle bemused. “The minute we shook, I felt a lot better. It was really strange.”

  He knew exactly what Jimmy meant, Dalton thought. A lot of things were strange around Ms. Evangeline Law.

  “Come on,” Dalton said. “This is going to take a while, so I’ll help you fix that tire on your bike before I pull the rest of the wheels off this crate.”

  “Okay.” Jimmy grimaced. “Don’t know what old man Barton needs brakes for, anyway. He never goes over twenty miles an hour.”

  “The way he drives, would you really want him to?”

  Jimmy grinned suddenly. “Good point.”

  They worked together to get the front tire off Jimmy’s bike, and after filling the inner tube with air from the compressor, Dalton told the boy how to find the leak. As he submerged the tire in the bucket of water Dalton had indicated, and watched for the telltale trail of air bubbles, Jimmy said for a third time, “I really was home last night. But I didn’t sleep much.”

  “I know that feeling,” Dalton said wryly. “Why?”

  “Kept having dreams.”

  Dalton went still. He knew that feeling, too. Knew it all too well. He didn’t want to get into this, it hit too close to home, but the tentative, hesitant tone of Jimmy’s voice, as if he half expected to be laughed at, made it impossible not to respond even though the warning bells in the back of his head were starting to ring.

  “Nightmares?” he asked quietly.

  “Not really. No monsters, or that kind of stuff. Just...weird.” Jimmy moved the tube under the water. “Like I was watchin’ a movie about myself.”

  “Yourself?”

  “Yeah. Like once I was gettin’ arrested. And once I was at a funeral, and nobody else was there. And when I looked in the coffin, it was me. But nobody cared.”

  Dalton shivered involuntarily at the boy’s simple, stark words. He could see why the dream had shaken the boy. It shook him. Would anybody care when his time came? Or would they just be glad he was gone, that at last he’d gotten what he’d deserved? The warning bells got louder, but he spoke anyway.

  “Sounds like you remember them pretty clearly.”

  Jimmy nodded as he moved the submerged tube again. “Yeah. Like I said, it was weird, like watchin’ a movie. The worst one was—”

  Jimmy broke off as a small trail of air bubbles rose through the water from the hole in the inner tube.

  “Okay,” Dalton said, “pull it out, dry it off a little, and we’ll mark the spot. Then you can patch it.”

  Jimmy nodded and lifted the tube. He let it drip over the bucket while Dalton reached for a rag and a piece of chalk. He wiped off the tube around the hole, still hissing through the remaining film of water, then circled it with the chalk.

  As Jimmy went over to the workbench that held the patch kit, Dalton dried his hands and wondered if he should just let the topic of Jimmy’s dreams end here. Actually, he admitted with a grim acknowledgment, he was wondering if he could get away with letting it end here. He didn’t know how to deal with this, didn’t want to deal with it. He was so screwed up himself, he had no business trying to help a screwed-up kid.

  The last thing he needs is the one adult he thought was his friend turning his back on him.

  Angie’s words echoed in his head, and he nearly groaned out loud. Why did she haunt him like this? And why did everything she said have to be right? And seemingly permanently etched into his mind? Damn it, he didn’t want to get involved in this boy’s problems, he didn’t want the distraction. And he sure as hell didn’t want the potent distraction of Angie Law, either. He just wanted to get back to that blessed numbness, that day-in, day-out life of boredom, that mechanical, automatic routine that left him time to think of only one thing, the one thing he’d come here, not to forget, but to remember. To always and forever remember. That, through his own arrogance and conceit, he’d killed the only man who had ever given a damn about him.

  So let it drop, he told himself decisively. The alarms that had been sounding in his head quieted as the air compressor fired back up again to rebuild the pressure.

  He walked over to see if Jimmy was handling the patching all right. He approved the boy’s work, and they put the tire back on the wheel. They tested it, found it held, and put the wheel back on the bike.

  As he stood watching Jimmy put the chain back on the sprocket, the words came out as if he had never engaged in that mental debate.

  “What was the worst dream, Jimmy?”

  The boy hesitated, as if he’d been doing some internal debating himself. Dalton didn’t push, but realized he was unexpectedly hoping the boy would open up.

  “It was... I was in jail. I don’t even know what for. But then I saw my mom. She was crying. And my dad. He was just looking at me, real sad, you know? Like...he was really hurt. He even looked like he was gonna cry. They were there, but not really. Like they were somewhere else, but watching me. What happened to me.” Jimmy took a deep breath, and Dalton found himself holding his. “And when I woke up, I couldn’t stop thinking that...if something like that ever did happen, they’d know. Somehow they’d know. And that’s how they’d feel.”

  For a long moment the steady chug of the compressor was the only sound. Then the motor shut off again. Jimmy shrugged, laughing it off as if it meant nothing, denying the strain that had been in his voice. “Isn’t that stupid?”

  Dalton wished he’d stuck to the decision he thought he’d made. He should have listened to those instinctive alarms that had always warned him when something threatened his sturdy walls.

  He didn’t know what to say. But he knew he had to say something, he couldn’t leave the boy hanging like that, not after he’d trusted him with something that was obviously discomfiting, painful and very private. God, why hadn’t Jimmy told this to Angie? She would know what to say. He wished he had her sensitivity right now, her ability to cut straight to the heart of things.

  “Not stupid,” he managed at last, somewhat lamely. And then, miraculously, the words were there. “Sometimes dreams are trying to tell you something. Something that your gut already knows, but your head isn’t ready to accept yet.”

  Jimmy considered that. “But...these weren’t like regular dreams. They were different. So real.”

  “Maybe because...” His voice trailed off. What could he say to reassure the boy, when the vivid reality of his own haunting dream left him so shaken? But once again, as if Angie were there, whispering them in his ear, the words miraculously came. “Maybe the more important the message is, the more real the dream is.”

  Jimmy seemed to realize then that there was more than just idle speculation to his answer. “Do you...have dreams? Like that?”

  The alarms erupted again. He could feel himself start to shut down, to withdraw, to back away. Don’t, his mind screamed. Don’t open any more doors.

  But Jimmy was looking at him, and for the first time Dalton fully saw the scared, lonely boy who hid behind the rough, sometimes rude exterior. He saw himself, scared and confused, and he knew how much Jimmy was daring, what nerve it had taken for the boy who expected nothing but to be slapped down again to risk opening himself like this.

  He’s more of a man than you are, MacKay.

  And for an instant, oddly, in much the same way Jimmy had described seeing his parents, Dalton saw Angie. Looking at him with those huge, too wise eyes, waiting, as if to see what he would do, if he would turn his back on the boy she thought idolized him. It was too much.

  “Sometimes,” he admitted to Jimmy gruffly.

  “About crashing?”

  Dalton’s gut knotted. God, this was too much, too hard, too painful. He couldn’t do it. But then, as unexpectedly as the words had come, the strength came, as if from somewhere outside him.

  “No. About not crashing.”

  Jimmy’s brows furrowed in puzzlement. “But—”

  Before the boy could get out another word, Dalton felt an odd prickling at the back of his neck. He whirled, and when he saw who was t
here, he wasn’t sure if he was surprised, or if he hadn’t, in some subconscious part of his mind, been expecting her.

  Angie just stood there, smiling at him as if he had done something wonderful.

  Seven

  Angie stared at him, delighted but still not quite able to believe what had happened.

  It wasn’t just the unexpected signal, although that was odd enough, so odd that at first she hadn’t realized what it was. As it strengthened, she had recognized it and gasped in shock. Never before had a connection with someone other than the bosses or the object of her mission been so strong. And never had it gone both ways, never had anyone been able to reach her when she wasn’t consciously holding the connection open. She hadn’t thought it possible.

  But there had been no mistaking this. It was Dalton, and he was desperately calling for her help. Oh, not in so many words, she knew that, but he had wished for her, and it had gotten through.

  But even more than that was the shock of what was happening in the garage. She had been driving home from school when the signal had come, and she had immediately headed this way, trying for a better image of what was happening. When she’d been close enough to probe, she’d had to restrict it to just sound; driving and the visual images did not mix well.

  But even with only sound she’d realized what was happening. Realized, with some joy, that the dreams she’d sent had gotten to Jimmy, rattling him. That he was opening himself up to Dalton. And that, most wonderfully of all, Dalton wasn’t running. Oh, he wanted to, she sensed that instantly, but he wasn’t doing it. He was sticking with Jimmy, as if he knew that if he didn’t, it would be yet another layer added to the boy’s protective shell, this time a layer that might never be broken through.

  She’d sent him the words, praying that the unusual connection was strong enough in both directions. It had worked; she’d felt both Dalton’s relief and Jimmy’s tentative acceptance.

  And then Dalton had shocked the breath from her lungs when, at the moment that Jimmy dug too deep, the moment when he most wanted to shut down, the moment she felt him nearly turn his back on the boy, he had thought of her. And with her image in his mind he had fought his own need and ripped himself open for Jimmy’s sake. She had sent him what she could of strength, but he’d done it on his own.