Jinkies. Talk about most depressing Bible study group participant ever. Sad thing is, her friends have clearly given up on her. They tried in the beginning, but that was many moons ago. Most of them are gone, but the few left don’t bother to respond to her posts anymore, don’t dare to endure a snarling comment war with her.

  “We need to move to someone else on the list,” Rain insists, breaking my concentration again.

  I turn around in the passenger seat of our green Xterra, the car I woke up in yesterday. I meet Rain’s eyes and ignore all that worry. I usually like the kid, but now?

  “I swear to God, I am going to mummy you up in fucking duct tape and throw you in the trunk if you keep whining like a little bitch,” I tell him. “This is the job. We watch. We wait.”

  “And apparently just check our goddamn Facebook page all day long,” he shoots back.

  I honestly wouldn’t mind beating all that dumb, hipster beard scruff right off his face. It’d sure as hell give me something to do.

  Rain crosses his arms and sits back against the seat. “There are other targets we could try,” he mumbles.

  We needed names, needed angels in War’s network to pump for information. I could have scrounged something up, but it would have taken hours we didn’t have. Thanks to his Watcher network, Rain always has names, addresses, profiles at the ready. But Abigail Peterson wasn’t free. Her name and address came with his skinny ass attached, and Rain has been nothing but the world’s worst hangover since he zipped down from Redmond filled with enough energy drinks to put him on the cliff’s edge of cardiac arrest.

  I relax my hands. Somehow they’ve gone into angry fist mode again. A light breeze blows through the open windows, but it hardly touches the swampy heat. We can’t keep the engine running, so air conditioning is out. Warm air pumps through the vents at their highest setting, but it’s still miserable. My clothes are soggy with sweat. I stare at the blue split level again until I feel eyes on me.

  “What?” I demand, turning to Tarren, who sits calmly as ever behind the wheel of the SUV. His hair is dark with sweat, almost black, and his nose is still swollen and puffy. I want to hit him again, find a way to break that calmness. Calm. That’s all he’s ever been since I woke, groggy as hell and missing about half a day of my life. Calm when he explained Maya was gone. Killed or captured. Oh-so-fucking-stone-hearted-calm when he refused to explain how I made it out. Why I’m safe and Maya’s not. Calm, calm, calm as I ranted and raged. Guess I might need some of them anger management classes, or maybe we just need to get Maya back so I can finally get out from underneath this mammoth pile of guilt sitting on my chest.

  Tarren won’t tell me what happened, but if I dig around in my mushy memories, I can remember the tranq dart. I can see Maya’s pale blue eyes, filled with sorrow. She did it. Somehow. She hid me and distracted them, or something. And doesn’t that just feel so absolutely fantastic? Knowing every breath I take has a price. One I would have never agreed to pay if anyone had given me a choice.

  I refocus on Abigail Peterson’s Facebook page. Funny thing is that she never updated her profile when she went evil Bible crazy. Her favorite shows are still The Mindy Project, Modern Family, and Extreme Home Makeover. What a normal person she used to be. Pretty, too. A perfect fit for a normal blue house on a street where the birds chirp in the trees and people bend over to pick up their dog’s poop in blue plastic bags.

  “How long?” Rain asks, his voice sullen like we turned the car around on the way to Disneyland. “How long do we wait?”

  “Long as it takes,” I say. I understand his look, that barely-keeping-my-shit-together expression. The worry seems to be coming off him in waves, slamming into me over and over again.

  “We’re going to get her back,” I say to him.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “We’ll get her back,” I repeat. Simple as that. There is absolutely no other way this can work out. No other way I can live with, but same difference.

  Tarren glances at me again, real quick. He’s been doing that a lot. Waiting for me to break down. Implode. Maybe start double fisting vodka shots until my liver gives up the ghost. I think he was surprised at how quickly I pulled myself together after that initial blow-up where I basically screamed every expletive I’ve ever known and a lot I made up right on the spot. But I don’t have time for any of that. I have to fix this. Save Maya. Get my family back. The rest – all this shit between me and Tarren – can wait.

  I spot movement in the rearview mirror. A white Prius makes slow progress toward us. Tarren tenses beside me, his eyes on the mirror. Rain twists in his seat to look out the back window.

  “Don’t be obvious, igidt!” I growl at him, and Rain quickly turns back around in his seat.

  The Prius passes us, and we wait, breath hitched. I’m ready for another disappointment, almost preparing for it.

  “It was a woman. It could’a been her,” Rain whispers.

  We watch the Prius slow as it approaches the blue split level. Then the garage door cracks open. Rain lets out a breath, but I’m already putting myself through a mental checklist of our next moves. There’s just about every single thing that could go wrong trying to nab a live angel, but it doesn’t matter. We’re getting this done.

  As soon as Abby’s garage door goes down, I open the passenger door and peel myself out of my seat. The other two follow my lead. Rain bitched a storm when we explained his part, but someone needs to be behind the wheel just in case things go south. Tarren and I are already locked and loaded. I have a Beretta on my hip, but I’m not going to use it. Only the tranq gun.

  Abby is going to spill her info no matter what I have to do to make it happen. She’ll talk, and then we’ll find Maya. And then…

  Who the hell cares what comes after that.

  Chapter 24 – Maya

  I watch the pale light from the window move farther and farther away across the floor. The hunger grows inside of me, like the beat of a big drum becoming more insistent. So, I retreat into my mind and carefully unfurl scattered memories like old maps.

  I retreat into my memories of Rain, feeling again the soft caress of his fingers and the crackle of his aura as it slid across my skin. I replay his silly voicemails in my mind. “Beautiful Maya,” he sang in one, “I’m just callin’ to say hiya. Hope it makes you smil-ya. You’re probably on the road. Doing something bold. Hope you don’t mind being told, but on you I’m totally sold. Okay, that last part was lame, but I miss you, you, you!” He’d crooned, his voice cracking as he broke off into laughter. I nestle deeper into that perfect little crack in his voice, ride the waves of his laughter.

  When the memories of Rain make my heart ache too much, I smooth out the old memories of my early training sessions with Tarren. His blue eyes were always so serious as he demonstrated a move. We would pantomime it over and over until it felt infused into my muscles. I’d grown confident and lethal under his tutelage. Cold, too.

  The memory I retreat to, though, as the listless hours pass, is the night in the park. I smell the warm grass, hear the throaty croaks of the frogs, and watch the fireflies flicker above us as Gabe and I stared up at the stars. Thirty-two fireflies danced against an endless canopy of stars while Gabe explained why playgrounds make humanity worth saving. I can still feel the steady hum of Tarren’s sleep-smooth aura just at the edge of my consciousness. I play the memory again and again. We were happy…no, not happy, but we were together. We were whole.

  Footsteps.

  I snap back into the present, to the chains, the slanted ceiling, my throbbing leg. I crawl forward, the wooden floor rough against my kneecaps, and then stand when the chains are taut behind me. The pain in my leg washes up through me. The dull throb of healing is beginning to change into something hotter, sharper. My body needs energy to repair itself, and all I have is a single wedge of light, almost out of reach.

  The door opens, and a man enters. I know the pop of his knees. This is my guard. I recognize his square head. He is the angel Gabe spoke to, and I wonder if anyone remembered the disheveled kid in the gardener’s truck after the chaos I created. Did they look for him? Assume he’d run away at the sound of the gunshots? Or did they suspect our connection?

  Square Head doesn’t look at me when he sets down three water bottles and rolls them across the white line. I shift as one of the bottles rolls past me. Next, he tosses a bucket across the line. It hits the back wall and then lulls on the ground.

  “Hello,” I say to Square Head. He turns and walks toward the door. “Have a nice day,” I call after him, because I don’t know why. Maybe to pretend I actually have a friend.

  The bucket is plastic and red, the kind a little kid would bring to the beach and fill endlessly with sand. The childishness of the object is comically out of place in this gloomy room, with its weathered floorboards and tiny window, but I’m not complaining.

  Carefully, I lay on my stomach and stretch myself out to grab the third water bottle. I handle the bottles with suspicion, wondering if they are poisoned, but War doesn’t strike me as the poisoning type. He’s a man who likes to use his hands, to work up close and personal.

  As I twist off the plastic lid of the first bottle, I can almost hear Tarren in my mind. Slow sips, he would counsel, but I ignore him and gulp down the entire bottle. The water is clean, cool, and rushes like silk down my parched throat.

  I set the remaining two bottles of water in the far back corner where they will be the easiest to defend, and then I focus on the bucket. It’s such a small consolation, but I still feel grateful for it. So grateful. The emotion is confusing, ironic, weirdly painful as it crawls up inside me. I don’t want to feel anything; I shouldn’t feel anything. “You’re dead,” I remind myself out loud. “Dead people don’t feel grateful, or lonely…” I look at the tiny patch of light slip across the white line where I cannot follow. “…or afraid,” I murmur to myself.

  I pull my briefs down to my knees, careful as I move them over the bandages around my right thigh. The bucket is small. The flaring pain in my thigh and the slanted roof makes this procedure more awkward than it already is. I press my hand against the wall to try and support my injured leg as I clumsily squat with the left over the bucket. When I release my bladder full of pee, I almost sigh as the unrelenting internal pressure eases.

  I stare at the door, knowing Square Head’s sensitive hearing can pick up the sounds I make, all of them. What would that be like? Capturing someone and listening to their necessary bodily functions? Listening to their fear? I bet he can even hear me breathing.

  When I’m done, I slide the bucket into the other corner and try to ignore the smell of it. I sit with my back against the wall, my right leg out, my left knee bent to my chest. You’re already dead, you’re already dead, you’re already dead, I think, and then I close my eyes and count the fireflies again.

  ***

  Time passes, and my memories help me forget where I am, though they can’t dampen the hunger. The light is far away from me now, closer to the door. I watch it turn a rusty red and then start to fade as the sun in the faraway outside world begins to set. The waiting is hard; the anticipation of the pain to come. Will Max return to squeeze more memories out of me? What is War cooking up in his cruel little boy’s brain? Will he fry me with a magnifying glass?

  I hear a new set of footsteps down the hallway. Soft heel-toe plants. My body feels heavy and slow as I crawl and then rise so I can stand and face my new visitor. The door opens, and Heather enters the room. The dying sunlight paints shades of copper into her golden hair. I expect her to look evil-beautiful, with maleficence burning in her eyes, but she is merely normal-beautiful. A flattering green blouse tightens around her large breasts, and white linen slacks hug her hips. A golden sideways cross gently sways as she takes slow steps into the room, out of the sunlight and into the shadows.

  I wait for her fury, or at least a smile of triumph. She has every right to claim victory and vengeance. I took something precious from her, and now, finally, she will take her payment in full. It will be painful, I know. She’ll want to stretch it out.

  You’re already dead, I think. My knees feel as strong as plastic straws, and I clench my inner muscles, desperate not to pee myself.

  “War wanted ta torture you,” she says. No matter how well she cleans up, that twangy accent firmly roots her in Appalachia. “But I knew we didn’t have ta do that. Max will get us what we need. God has given him a great gift.”

  Heather walks right up to the white line of tape on the floor and stops. Her eyes rest on me. I still wait for the triumph or the snarl to take command of her features. The Heather I remember would have already choked me out with her psionic powers, probably bashed me against the wall a few times for good measure.

  Instead, she bows her head and clasps her hands in front of her body. “I still feel it,” she says softly, “so much hatred. It is unworthy.”

  This is when I finally realize that the Heather standing before me is not the same Heather I met two years ago in Peoria. That Heather wore crimson polish on her nails and swayed her hips with every step. Her bright blue eyes and swooping necklines invited male attention, not without a little bit of desperation. This new, strangely demure Heather sits on the floor tucking her feet beneath her.

  “I’ve begged God ta give me the grace to forgive you for…for what ya did.” Her voice trembles. “But I can’t find a way. Not yet.” Her lips purse as if she is truly vexed and ashamed.

  I can’t help myself. I almost feel tender toward her. “You should never forgive me for what I did,” I say.

  A small smile plays on her lips. “Jesus forgave the Romans who crucified him. He sees our sins every day and forgives us.”

  I shot Heather’s identical twin sister through the chest, right in front of her.

  “War wanted ta torture you,” Heather says again, “but that is…that is wrong. It isn’t Christ-like.”

  “Murdering people isn’t Christ-like, either,” I tell her. “That’s what your whole movement is about.”

  Again, that small smile. She looks up at me, and even in the shadows, I can see the conviction in her gaze. “I know it looks like that on the outside, but we ain’t killing anyone, not really. The human body is sinful and dirty. We’re releasing souls from their sinful bodies, lettin’ ‘em go up to Heaven where they can be divine.”

  Holy roly polies, she believes it. Really. Truly. And I don’t know what to say. I don’t think there’s anything I can say. All I can do is appreciate the simplicity of the idea, how warm and fuzzy it turns indiscriminate murder.

  “You must still be punished for what you did,” Heather says. “You must be cleansed.”

  Cleansed. I really, really don’t like that word. When she doesn’t clarify right away, I whisper the nightmare answer that immediately jumps into my mind.

  “Fire?”

  Heather stands up and that tiny part of me that is stubbornly alive somehow finds a way to admire her strappy golden wedges.

  “You must be cleansed for all the divine lives you’ve taken. For Rachel.” She smiles, and its genuine warmth scares me more than if she’d pulled pliers and a bone saw out of the pockets of her slacks.

  “Whipping? Drowning?” I ask.

  Heather turns, hands still clasped chastely in front of her, and walks out of the room.

  The last of the light from the window dissipates. The room is dark. Rain patters on the roof like the rapping of celestial fingernails. I retreat into the corner, a thousand new graphic images of how one might be cleansed already dancing across my mind.

  “You are already dead…” The whispered words quiver out of my mouth. “You are…already…dead.” I pull my left leg up to my chest, wrap my arms around my shin, but the claws of terror still find a way through.

  Chapter 25 – Tarren

  The target stands in the kitchen, her finger swiping across a tablet, when Gabe and I come through the back door that he had picked and left unlocked hours earlier. We each fire once. Her eyes widen, big and brown, as both darts hit her neck. The ground trembles beneath our feet. Pictures fall off the wall, chairs topple over. The tablet hits the linoleum with a thunk.

  Sub-harmonic frequencies, I think. At least we know her ability now. I put my hand against the counter to steady myself, and Gabe crouches down. Cabinet doors beat an angry staccato.

  “Just wait it out,” I tell Gabe.

  The angel staggers two steps and then slumps to the ground. The shaking softens. I am tense, waiting to see if she will lash out. Instead, she crawls away from us, groping along the floor. Her fingers clumsily close on a large set of keys. She crawls toward the front door, her socks a pristine white on her feet. I’m already running the time down in my head. Based on her slight body and assuming her metabolism is close to what Lo and I have established in the lab, she should be unconscious right about…

  She slides to the ground. The tremors stop. I hold up my hand and wait another 20 seconds until I give the signal to approach. Abigail Peterson is small and slender. It takes little effort to gather her in my arms and bring her down into the basement. Gabe follows with one of the dining room chairs.

  “Takedown complete,” I say into my earpiece. “Hold position.”

  “Everything’s calm out here,” Rain replies. I notice the grudging tone in his voice and dismiss it. We need someone in the SUV ready to make a fast getaway if something goes wrong. As the one with the least amount of mission experience, he was the natural choice.