Angel Fire

Chapter Fifteen

Tori absently poked the fire with a stick, watching as the embers rose then disappeared. It was a still night and the smoke twirled directly overhead. She was aware of Andrea watching her, but she kept her eyes on the fire. Her dinner—a freeze-dried beef stroganoff that didn’t look half bad—was sitting beside her, largely untouched. The knot in her stomach wouldn’t allow her to eat.

As Cameron had said, the gunshots they’d heard could have been from anyone. But in her gut, she knew that wasn’t true. And by Cameron’s and Andrea’s demeanor, they knew it too. As much as she wanted to stay positive, as much as she wanted to believe that Sam was okay, she had to face the fact that Sam was a hostage, held by a killer. A man who had gone on a killing spree and in one day had murdered at least eleven people, including his own team. That told her he had no loyalty to anyone. And that also told her that Sam was in grave danger. The shots they’d heard today reminded her of that.

She refused to believe that he’d killed Sam. No. She couldn’t even think that. Maybe the shots had been a warning. Maybe Sam had tried to escape.

Andrea stirred and Tori glanced over at her. As expected, Andrea’s eyes were on her. In the firelight, Tori recognized the sympathetic look in them. Andrea surely knew what thoughts were flying around in her mind. But Tori said nothing and neither did Andrea. Cameron too had been quiet. And really, what could they say?

Nothing.

So she sat there alone, silently brooding over the possibility that something might have happened to Sam. If Sam was taken from her, she thought her very soul might likely die right then and there. Would she revert back to the old ways? Would she shut herself off from everyone? Would she go back into the darkness that had swallowed her up after her family’s murder?

She would try, surely. But she knew Casey and Leslie wouldn’t let her. They loved her. They would keep her sane. She would try to hide from them too, but she knew O’Connor would badger her until she let them back in.

She shook her head, hating the direction of her thoughts. Sam was okay. She had to be. She just had to be.

* * *

“Okay, so it does taste a little like chicken,” Sam said as she pulled the meat from the bone. “A little.”

“Beats that beef stew, doesn’t it?” Angel asked as he put another small limb on their fire.

“For sure.” She stopped chewing for a moment, watching him as he sipped from his water bottle. He was staring at her, and she raised her eyebrows questioningly.

“Where did you grow up?”

The question was unexpected. While she’d peppered him with questions during their daily hikes, he rarely asked her anything. Usually only about Tori and their relationship.

“My family is from Denver,” she said. She sighed. “We’re not really that close. My brother…well, he’s all that matters to them. I was pretty much invisible.”

“Why is that?”

“He’s a priest. No matter what I did, I could never measure up to that.”

“A priest, huh?” He smiled. “How did they take you being gay?”

Sam shook her head. “That was pretty much the last straw. Being a cop didn’t go over too well to begin with. But when I brought Tori home to meet them…well, let’s just say there was a lot of praying involved,” she said with a laugh.

“So you don’t see them?”

“No. We talk on the phone a couple of times a year, that’s about it.” She shrugged. “My brother…we don’t really have a relationship at all.” He handed her another part of the squirrel and she took it. “What about you? Where did you grow up?”

He surprised her by answering as easily as he did. “Around here, actually.”

“New Mexico? Or here?”

“Taos.”

“Wow. So you’ve been on these mountains before?”

“I was a kid. We moved to California when I was twelve,” he said. “Everything I know about this mountain is from research only.”

“Like where the streams are?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you move to California?”

He poked the fire with a stick, a thoughtful expression on his face. “My father lost his job here. Again.” He laid the stick on top of the flames. “I told you he drank. He had a hard time keeping jobs. He had an uncle in California. Offered him a job. So we moved.” Angel shrugged. “Not much changed though.”

From what he’d said, this would have been four years before his mother was killed. She was curious about his childhood but decided to keep things more current.

“Are you ever going to tell me what you did?”

“What I did?”

“Yeah, what you did,” she said. “You must have done something. When you killed that family, you said you needed a distraction. Why? And why would you need a hostage?”

He looked away from her, and for the first time, she thought she saw remorse—even shame—in his expression. Like other questions she’d asked him, she didn’t expect to get an answer right away. She normally had to prompt him to get him to talk.

“It was a really long day,” he said, his voice quiet in the muted darkness. “I had everything planned out. Even a couple of contingency plans too.” He looked back at her. “Because something could always go wrong. The more people you have involved, the more chance of a mishap. So I am operating on one of those contingency plans now.”

She waited, hoping he would continue without her having to ask.

“The military trained me for one thing. That was to kill. And I was very good at my job. I also learned that I could make a lot of money doing it for the private sector instead of the military.”

“Like a hit man?”

“Yeah. I worked the Middle East, mostly. Europe. Sometimes Asia. But I’m ready to retire from this line of work. This job gave me the opportunity to do that.”

She was almost afraid to ask. But she did anyway. “What job?”

“My contract was to…eliminate a guy. He happened to work for an armored car company.”

“What did he do? Why did someone want him killed?”

Angel shook his head. “I don’t ask, they don’t tell. I don’t need to know the why of it.”

“So what happened?”

“My plan was to make the hit while he was at work. And then to relieve his company of several million dollars. Which meant I needed a team.”

“You work alone?”

“Always. In my line of work, you can’t afford mistakes.”

Sam nodded. “So I take it, there were mistakes then?”

“My first mistake was hiring two ex-military guys who thought they were smarter than me,” he said. “I had the company staked out. I knew the routine. I’d stashed a car about a mile from the place. I had a man there waiting for us. The guard I had the hit on, his shift started at five in the morning. I knew his routine as well. He always showed up a few minutes after the first guard. We needed both of their codes to access the building.” He glanced over at her. “Without going into all the details, we got away with the armored car full of cash. I’m guessing about three million. We unloaded the cash into our car and headed to Taos. That’s where things broke down.”

“The two guys who thought they were smarter than you?”

“Yeah. They thought they would just take all the money for themselves.”

“So you killed them?”

“Yes. And left the car.”

“And the money?”

He laughed. “Hell, no. There were five of us. Three now. We stole a car, took the money and headed out again. But we were behind schedule and there was nothing discreet about our getaway. There were cops everywhere.”

“So you needed a distraction,” Sam said.

He stared at her. “Yes, I needed a distraction. I needed several distractions. And I needed to hide the money and get rid of my remaining team.”

“Oh.”

“I told you, Sam, I’m a killer.”

“Yes, you did. I haven’t forgotten.”