25. Angel
Chapter twenty-five
Angel
When I walk inside the cabin, I can tell that Owen and Roger have already shared the news of Uri’s arrival. It’s a dead giveaway when Jeremy and Jack lean to the side to peer past me, hoping to catch a glimpse. Even Faith is standing on her tiptoes to check and see if he’s behind me.
“He’s not here, so you can stop craning your necks.”
My sister pouts. “How come you’re lucky enough to see an angel?”
Roger barks a guttural laugh. “It’s more of a silver lining, Faith.
When I saw one, I was buried alive under half a mountainside of earth.
Jerry had an encounter once as well when he, his future wife, and six children were under attack by a cartel.
Daisy? She was abducted and held in a cave; then she and Angel were trapped for days in a mine and on the brink of death from hypoxia. I wouldn’t exactly call that ‘lucky.’”
“Well, when you put it like that….”
I put my arm around my sister’s shoulder and give her a brotherly squeeze with a quick kiss to the top of her head. “One day you’ll see a whole host of angels, but I pray that day doesn’t come anytime soon.”
Scanning the room, I note the worried expressions on everyone’s faces and the tightness in their shoulders as they wait for word from Daisy. So I decide to tell them everything that happened while we were trapped in the mines, from start to finish, without leaving out a single detail.
Hours have passed by the time I’m done; no one interrupts me to ask questions or make a joke. No one asks about Daisy and me officially becoming a couple, almost as if they’re surprised it didn’t happen sooner.
Roger is the first to speak. “If Uri is helping Eva, and she’s working with Kenneth, we can logically assume that they both have the same goal as us: to put an end to the abductions.”
“We wouldn’t have to assume anything if we had been allowed to tranquilize them both and bring them in for questioning,” Owen says, his tone tinged with frustration.
“You heard Kenneth,” I say, reminding him of the conversation we overheard earlier.
“His daughter was taken, and he’s here so he can find the man who can lead him to Brit.
Nothing about what he said sounded like he was involved in her abduction.
And as far as Eva is concerned, she wants to take down Dominion and needs our help to do it.
She trusts us and has been led here by divine providence.
Kenneth is still on the fence about the Southern Knights, but we got the intel we needed.
It confirms Uri’s statement in the mines, where he told us that we have allies we didn’t know about. ”
“It’s Eva who holds the key,” Scott says. “I’m with Owen on this one. We should have brought them in. Sorry, Roger. I don’t agree with your call to pull us back.”
Roger runs a hand through his hair. “I didn’t make the decision lightly.
But let me ask you this: if Eva was tied to a chair in the other room, or even Kenneth for that matter, how would you approach them for questioning without knowing Daisy’s status?
At the time, we didn’t have any information and didn’t know what injuries she sustained or what condition she was in.
I wasn’t about to let anyone interrogate them with a hardened heart.
That’s not how we operate. Even now, can you honestly tell me that you aren’t angry that one of our teammates has been at the center of two life-threatening situations in the span of a week, and Angel was involved in one of them? ”
No one responds because the implication is true. We would all likely want to play “bad cop,” letting our anger rule our actions instead of diplomacy. I know I would.
“We could have waited until we calmed down,” Jeremy says, finally breaking the silence.
I shake my head. “And when would that be? Every time I think about who could have set the bomb in the mines, and in Colorado, I get heated all over again.”
“Kenneth wouldn’t have had time to rig explosives in Colorado, and Brad is still under surveillance,” Jack says.
“Jordan, Benjamin, and Seth haven’t taken their eyes off Brad.
There’s no way either of our initial suspects could have known that Daisy was going to Colorado, nor who she was going to see. That leaves Bennett.”
After taking a moment to contemplate Bennett as a suspect, I can’t come to grips with it. “Bennett hadn’t left Daisy’s side, and he shielded her with his body. Why go through all of that only to risk his life to save hers? It doesn’t jive. How could he have done it? When could he have done it?”
Jaxon huffs. “Are you saying that we have a new player this late in the game?”
“It’s possible,” I tell him with a heavy heart. “We still don’t know anything about Emily’s brother, and I believe that Daisy is on the right track. My best guess is that he’s the culprit; whoever he is.”
“Well, we know that Daisy is okay for now, and the Northwyck Academy for Girls will be arriving tomorrow afternoon to set up camp for the three-day weekend. We need to be well-rested because the next few days are going to be long, and sleep will be a pipe dream.”
“And dark,” I mumble, reiterating Uri’s words. “There will be sacrifices made to see this through to the end. And on that note, Uri wanted me to pass on a message in case any of you are wondering if this is where you belong.”
Once I’m through sharing, I see Jeremy’s shoulders slump while his eyes lift toward the ceiling. While the message was directed at everyone, somehow I feel that it was intended for Jeremy.
I wonder what his story is, but before I can pull him aside and ask, my phone rings with an unknown number flashing across the screen. I put it on speaker before answering. “Hello?”
“Angel,” Daisy says, out of breath. “I’m on my way home.”
Daisy didn’t want anyone to meet her at the airport because we needed everyone available for the arrival of the girls in just a few hours.
She also didn’t feel comfortable conveying what she’d learned over the phone since she had to buy a burner.
Her cell phone had been left on the Blooms’ porch and then incinerated in the bomb blast, so there was no salvaging it.
I’m pacing outside the cabin when an SUV pulls into the lot.
Daisy emerges from the passenger side of the vehicle, says something to the driver, and then slings her backpack over her shoulder and walks in my direction.
It takes a second for Daisy to notice me standing at the top of the hill, but when she does, she smiles at me and picks up her pace.
Meeting her halfway, I don’t bother to greet Daisy with words or ask about her injuries. I should, but the fact that she’s even here is more than enough for me. Instead, I slide my hand around the back of her neck and pull her in for a kiss that is anything but short and sweet.
Taking special care not to cup her cheek, I let my lips linger on hers for longer than our situation warrants.
We still have work to do, but I refuse to let the moment slip away from us, not with the looming threat barreling toward us and knowing that one of us might be the person who has to make the sacrifice.
“Are you done yet?” Owen shouts from the porch.
“Not even close!” Daisy yells back.
She presses her lips to mine before taking a step back and looking at her brother with both affection and annoyance in her gaze. “We should go inside. I have news to share.”
I let Daisy go first so she can hug her brother.
He’s been just as worried as I’ve been, but for entirely different reasons.
And even though he’s known that she’s all right, there’s something comforting about seeing it for yourself.
As I pass by the sibling duo and head into the cabin, I hear Owen say, “I knew you had some cuts and scrapes, but you didn’t say anything about your face looking like it went through a meat grinder. ”
Behind me, I hear the thud of Daisy punching her brother’s arm.
Once Daisy is done getting smothered by the rest of the team, she sits in a chair and her smile dims. “I would have come home as soon as I got out of the hospital, but I had to travel to the site where Emily had been camping with Brad before she died. Her parents, Mason and Gemma Bloom, go there every year on the anniversary of her death.”
Gently rubbing the tension from Daisy’s shoulders as I stand behind her, I ask, “What did they say about their son? Do they have one?”
“Yes, but according to them, he died in a tragic car accident when he drove off a cliff in the Rockies. By the time the firefighters contained the fire that had spread from the vehicle, there wasn’t enough left of it to identify the remains.
The Blooms were told that temperatures reached above 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which destroyed all DNA evidence, including the teeth. ”
“Then he could still be alive,” Roger says. “If he went through all the trouble of setting fires to the records rooms of the school and hospital, plus a cyberattack on the Vital Statistics Office in Denver, then he could easily have faked his own death. But why?”
Daisy reaches for my hand on her shoulder like it’s a lifeline.
“Gemma Bloom said that her son ‘snapped’ the day Emily died. He blamed Brad for not protecting his sister, but he also blamed himself. His guilt ate away at him, and he closed himself off from the rest of the family. His job was secretive, and they often didn’t see him for months at a time.
After the funeral, they only heard from him once, when he called the morning of his death to say goodbye. ”
“Suicide,” Scott says.
“Or made to look like it,” Daisy replies. “If I was kidnapping people for Dominion, I wouldn’t want there to be any trace of my existence, nor would I want it to lead to my family. Add in the ‘goodbye’ call, and there wasn’t any reason to investigate the cause of death.”