17. Daisy
Chapter seventeen
Daisy
“We’re getting rescued!” I shout, grinning and stumbling toward Angel as my legs wobble.
I trip a few times along the way but still manage to find enough energy to jump into Angel’s arms, sort of.
The problem is that Angel does not have the strength to catch me, and we tumble toward the ground.
Despite my fuzzy brain, instinct takes over, and I turn my body so that he’s on top of me while I take the brunt of the fall.
The last thing Angel can afford is to hit his head.
We’re both laughing at first until his arm moves to the side of my head and his fingers graze along my hairline. Angel tucks my dirty, loose strands behind my ear, his smile shifting from playful to something far more serious.
I lick my lips without thinking when his eyes move from mine to my mouth and then back up again.
“This is probably the wrong time to say this, but I don’t care.
You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.
It’s not because of your almond-shaped brown eyes that sparkle with mischief or the softness of your lips.
It’s not even your long, raven-black hair that looks like spun ebony.
Those things may have caught my attention, but they aren’t what holds me captive.
It’s your fortitude, your inner strength, and your unwillingness to give up.
For the record, there’s no one else in the world I would rather be trapped with. ”
“Not even Allison Dawes?” I tease, reminding him of the girl he never got to kiss. “She never shot you in the thigh with a paralyzing agent.”
Angel smiles and leans down, whispering in my ear. “Not even Allison Dawes. I’d rather get shot a thousand times by you and spend my life in a daze than get one kiss from her.”
“That is the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me. I could almost kiss you for it.”
“I’m not stopping you,” Angel says, closing the distance but leaving enough space for me to decide if that’s what I want. I do want to, but not like this.
I kiss his cheek before pushing his face away, laughing again at the situation we find ourselves in.
“No, but not brushing our teeth for however many days we’ve been in here is definitely a roadblock.
” Our need to drink water and not waste it took precedence over spitting it out.
The waterless toothbrushes only do so much.
The sound of rocks shifting draws our attention, as does the flashlight shining through the opening. “Sadie, are you in there?” a woman asks.
Sadie? I haven’t been called that in twenty years. My eyes go wide at the recognition, and I stare at Angel, unsure how to answer. How could this woman know who I am?
Angel answers for me. “My name is Angel Conway, and Daisy Zurkowski is with me.”
“Ah! Yes, Daisy. That’s right,” she says, grunting as she shifts another rock.
“And you are?” I ask.
“Help,” she replies.
Suddenly, another voice says, “Eva, you need to leave. There are people heading this way, and it’s not yet time to reveal yourself. Go! Go now!”
“What about…?”
“I’ll take care of it. I choose who can see me, but you do not have that luxury,” the man says. There aren’t many voices I’d recognize after two decades because voices change over time, but the man on the other side of those rocks? I’d know that voice anywhere.
“Are you sure? You said Sadie was the key to my freedom,” Eva replies.
The sound of Uri’s voice is like a siren’s call, beckoning me closer. Rolling out from underneath Angel, I get to my feet. Unsteadily, I make my way over to the hole. “Uri? Is that you?”
“Your team is on the way,” he says. “Fear not.”
“Who did this to us?” I ask.
“It’s not my place to tell you. All will be revealed in time, Daisy. Be patient.”
I scoff. “You know that’s a virtue I’ve never possessed.”
“And yet, you’ve waited twenty years for this day to come. Now you just need to wait a little longer,” Uri says.
I breathe in the stale air from the hole, but it’s not enough to reinvigorate me. It only clears my head. “A little longer,” I repeat. “I don’t know how much strength I have left to continue this fight.”
Uri’s booming laughter fills the cavern.
It’s loud enough that a few of the smaller rocks shake loose.
Angel’s eyes widen to the size of saucers once he realizes Uri isn’t just a figment of my imagination.
As Angel walks toward me, Uri puts his face to the hole and removes another rock to widen it.
“Goodness, child. Have you not learned by now that the strength you possess doesn’t come from you?
Even when you were young and didn’t have the physical strength to go any further, you asked the Father for help. He sent me.”
To confirm what I’ve always believed to be true, I ask, “You’re really an angel?”
Angel stands next to me and tries to move one of the boulders. It doesn’t budge. He grunts while saying, “You’re not just any angel, are you? You’re Uriel, the Angel of wisdom and guidance.”
“I have been called by many names,” Uri says, not denying Angel’s assessment. “We should finish this conversation once you are free from your….” Uri glances at the pile of stones, some weighing upward of a thousand pounds. “Imprisonment.”
I try to move one of the smaller ones, but even with the cool air coming through the hole, I can’t do it. “They’re too heavy. We need a stick for leverage.”
Once again, Uri laughs. “Oh, ye of little faith. You act as though the Father can’t roll away stones. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.”
When Uri begins praying aloud, Angel grabs my hand and moves us away from the blocked entrance as the earth beneath our feet rumbles and shakes.
We watch as the rocks tumble to the ground, though none rain down overhead or shift in the other tunnels.
It’s as though we’re standing in a bubble of protection, the earthquake isolated to the area in front of us.
When the ground stops shaking, the hole has widened enough for us to walk through. With a sense of humor, Uri stands at the opening and says, “What are you waiting for? Grab your packs and let’s go.”
Shaking his head in disbelief, or maybe awe, Angel does what Uri demands. When we heft our packs onto our backs, Angel whispers to me, “You must be pretty special for God to send in the big guns.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, genuinely confused. “I’m no more special than you.”
“Uriel. As in the archangel Uriel. He’s not just some run-of-the-mill angel, Daisy.
While his name is not mentioned in the canonized Bible, Uriel is depicted in many apocryphal texts.
Some say he rescued John the Baptist as a child from the Massacre of the Innocents when Herod had all males under the age of two killed.
Other texts claim he’s the angel who guarded the gate of Eden with a fiery sword. ”
Uri takes my hand to help me through the gap, then assists Angel. Both of us breathe deeply, our senses returning to us in full force. Uri looks at Angel and smiles. “Some even say I guard the gates of Hell.”
I smile when Angel takes my hand in his, his palm slightly damp. There’s a subtle shake as he grips my fingers tighter and asks Uri with almost childlike wonder, “Do you guard the gates? Can I see your sword?”
Uri chuckles. “I do many things for the Lord, one of which is to ensure that you complete your mission. Both of you. Every road you’ve taken has led you to this point, right where the Father wants you to be.”
“And what about Eva?” I ask. “Can you confirm that the woman who helped rescue us is, in fact, Eva Vidal?”
Uri nods. “Yes, but you cannot, I repeat, cannot speak of her to anyone else until she makes herself known. She has a purpose just as you do, though hers is very different. Her role in all of this will be revealed when the time is right. There are people looking for her, and should they get their hands on Eva, any proof of their evil deeds will be lost.”
If Uri is helping her, I can assume we can trust her. But to what extent? “She sent us the photo of the man entering the mine tunnels. Did she know that it was set to blow, or that we would be trapped?”
“No. That information was kept from her,” Uri says. “The man in the photo set the bombs to trap and kill the person he believes is watching him. By sending you in Eva’s place, his focus will shift away from her and toward you.”
“Lovely,” I murmur.
“It is necessary,” Uri says. “Daisy, your captor knows you’re Sadie, and he has special plans for you. That is all I can tell you for now. The rest is up to you to figure out. It’s all part of your journey.”
Voices of my teammates grow louder as they approach. I expect Uri to fade away, but he doesn’t.
Angel clears his throat and asks, “Can’t you just tell us who we’re after so that we can end this once and for all?”
Uri shakes his head. “Where one journey ends, another begins. Each step you take is necessary for you to head in the right direction, for paths to cross, and to lead you to the proof you’ll need for justice to be served.”
“Cryptic,” I mutter.
“Yes,” Uri says bluntly. “Sacrifices will need to be made in the coming days, and you will need to trust people you don’t believe are trustworthy. Not all is as it seems, for there are more people on your side than you know.”
Light from flashlights slowly illuminates the darkened tunnel, and I hear Owen say, “We have to be getting close. The map sent to my phone showed that this is the tunnel we needed to take.”
“It could be another trap,” Bennett says, now that he’s returned from his trip to Langley. “How do we know it’s safe for us to be here?”
Faith is the next to speak, and bless her heart, she gives Bennett some sass.
“My brother is trapped, and so is my best friend. You can go back to your little B&B and sip on some tea if you want, but the Southern Knights don’t leave our people behind because it might be dangerous.
We didn’t fly out here to sit on the sidelines while our people are in trouble. ”
Uri turns to us with a satisfied look on his face as if everything has gone according to plan. “Your loved ones have arrived, which means it’s time for me to go. For now, I need you to keep what happened here between us and not speak of this encounter to anyone else.”
I snort and then whisper, “No one would believe me if I told them the truth. I’m still having trouble believing it myself. An angel and a person wanted for murder walk into a tunnel…. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.”
“I’ve heard worse,” Uri retorts.
“Then you must have listened to my dad tell one or two,” Angel quips.
“Actually, I have. I can say for the record that your father, Bill, thinks he is funnier than he actually is.”
Angel laughs. “You have a sense of humor. I did not expect that.”
We’re both still looking up toward Uri when Faith comes around the corner and shines her light at us, then toward the gaping hole in the rocks.
She runs over to us and hugs her brother before checking him over for injuries.
The bandage on his head signals that medical attention is required, but that doesn’t stop her from squeezing him so tightly that his face begins to turn purple from lack of circulation.
Then she hugs me with the same ferocity.
With tears streaming down her cheeks, she grips me tightly and says, “I’m so glad you both are alive. We’ve been praying nonstop that we’d find you in time.”
Owen pretty much does the same when he finds us, only hugging me first and then doing his signature bro hug with Angel. “When we lost contact and found the main entrance sealed off, we feared the worst.”
“You feared the worst,” Jaxon says, coming up behind him.
The rest of the team, Jeremy, Jack, Scott, and Roger, hang back to give us space to enjoy the family reunion. Bennett is with them, but he doesn’t stay with the group for long. He walks over to the gap and looks at the rocks. “Some of these have to weigh a ton. How did you move these and escape?”
Faith sneers. “You almost sound disappointed, Bennett.”
“Not disappointed, just perplexed.”
“It was the earthquake that shimmied the rocks loose until they fell away,” I tell him. I glance over at Uri, wondering why no one has even looked at him once. Nearly seven feet of pure brawn and a face that should be etched in marble is hard to miss.
Answering my unasked question, Uri says, “They can’t see or hear me.”
Roger’s eyes briefly move to the spot I’m looking at when a small smile forms on his face.
He might not see or hear Uri, but I get the feeling he knows there’s a divine presence in our midst. To his credit, he says nothing, just walks over to me and pulls me into an embrace. “We prayed for a miracle and got one.”
The moment is shattered when Bennett says, “There hasn’t been any seismic activity in the area.” Shining his light into the cavern and seeing the other entrances blocked, he adds, “Why wouldn’t we have felt it? Why are the other tunnels still blocked as though nothing happened?”
Jeremy shrugs. “Maybe it was a localized event?”
“That’s not how earthquakes work,” Bennett replies. He stands up and shakes the dust off his pants. “No, you two had help. Who was it, and where did they go?”
Scott folds his arms. “I’m more concerned with how it happened in the first place.
Only the cavern caved in. Rather than standing here arguing about it, I suggest we be thankful for the miracle and get out of here before we become the next victims. Half the townsfolk are in the tunnels clearing debris, putting their lives at risk.
We need to let them know that Daisy and Angel are safe. ”
I turn to Uri and whisper, “Thank you. You’ve saved me twice now. I don’t know how I’ll repay you.”
“There’s no debt owed, Daisy. That’s not how God works. It’s not tit-for-tat,” Uri replies.
I dip my chin a fraction to acknowledge his words. “Will I ever see you again?”
Uri shrugs. “That is not up to me. Just know that the Father is always with you, watching over you. He will not forsake you in your darkest hours. And Daisy, there will be dark hours ahead. You’ll want vengeance.
Your head will war with your soul. Don’t let the darkness win.
Trust that Yahweh is in full control, even when things seem dire and hope is but a flicker in your heart. ”
“Uh, Daisy?” Jeremy asks. “Who are you talking to?”
“Would you believe me if I said my guardian angel?” I ask in a playful way.
Jeremy thinks about it for a second with far more seriousness than I intended, glancing back at the rubble that should have taken a dozen men and equipment to move before saying, “Yes. Yes, I would.”
Bennett scoffs as he shakes his head and charges forward. “Angels don’t exist. They’re as mythical as fairies, gnomes, and dragons. Anyone who believes differently should have their head examined.”
“Well, we do need medical attention,” Angel quips, pointing to the dirty bandage on his head.