Page 1 of Angel's Promise
ONE
CALLIE
I’ve lost count of the number of times I checked the rearview mirror. Thankfully I saw nothing but empty highway behind me. I tried not to think about the way my apartment door had looked when I came home. Hanging open, the lock shattered, everything I owned tossed across the floor like it didn't matter. To them, none of it did.
They'd left a knife in my pillow. Blade down, buried to the hilt. The message wasn't subtle.
That was three days ago. I'd slept in my car since then, parked in different lots each night, jacket balled up against the window. I'd gone to the police, sat in a plastic chair and told a detective everything I'd seen. The cop in the alley behind my restaurant. The man on his knees, the gunshot. The way the cop had looked up and seen me standing there with a trash bag in my hands, twenty feet away, and hadn't even flinched. The detective had nodded, written things down, told me someone would be in touch. But no one did. Two days later, two men on Harleys showed up outside my work. Iron Jackals patches on their cuts. They didn't say anything. They didn't have to. They just sat there, engines idling, watching me walk to my car.
That's when I ran.
My brother's voice had been in my head the whole drive.
If anything ever goes wrong, Cal. If you ever need help and I'm not there. Go to Forsaken, Montana. Find a man called Angel. Tell him you're my sister. He'll take care of you.
Ryan had said it the night before his last deployment. We'd been sitting on the tailgate of his truck, drinking cheap beer, watching the sun bleed out over the Bitterroots. He'd been different that night. Quieter. Like he was filing things away in case he didn't get another chance. I'd laughed it off because that was easier than hearing what he was really saying.
He'd been dead for six years. IED in a country I couldn't find on a map. They sent his medals in a box. I put them in a drawer and didn't open it again.
I'd never thought I'd need his advice. I'd been fine. Holding down a job, paying rent, keeping my head above water. Surviving, if nothing else. That had always been enough.
It wasn't enough anymore.
Forsaken, Montana, turned out to be less of a town and more of a suggestion. I almost drove through it before I realized I was in it. One main street, dusty and sun-bleached. A feed store. A diner called Rosie's with a neon sign that buzzed like a dying bee. A small sheriff's office with a patrol car out front that looked like it hadn't moved in a week.
Mountains ringed everything and made you feel like the sky was closer here. Snow still capped the highest ridges even though the valley was warm. The air smelled like pine, dust, something cleaner than anything I'd breathed in weeks.
I found the gas station at the far end of Main Street. The old kind. Two pumps, a hand-painted sign, a building that might have been white once. A bell jangled when I pushed open the door.
The man behind the counter looked like he'd been there since the place was built. Seventies, maybe. Leathered skin, fadedflannel, a hunting cap pushed back on his head. He was reading a newspaper, and he looked up at me over the top of it with eyes that missed nothing.
"Help you?"
I stood there for a second, aware of how I must look. Three days without a proper shower. Yesterday's clothes. Eyes that felt swollen from exhaustion. My hair was pulled back in a knot that was more surrender than style, the grime of the road on my skin like a second layer.
"I know this is going to sound weird," I said. "But do you know where I can find a man called Angel? In this town?"
The newspaper came down. Slowly. He looked at me, really looked, the way people do when they're deciding something. His eyes moved over my face, my clothes, the car keys clutched in my fist.
"Wait here," he said.
He picked up a phone from behind the counter. A landline, mustard yellow with a curly cord. He dialed a number from memory, turned his shoulder slightly like that offered privacy, spoke too quietly for me to hear and then he hung up.
"Be a few minutes," he said. "You want coffee? Pot's fresh as of six this morning."
It was past noon. I almost smiled. "No, thank you."
"Suit yourself."
He went back to his paper. I stood there, too wired to sit, too tired to pace. The store smelled like motor oil and burned coffee. A cat slept on a stack of newspapers by the window, orange, enormous, completely unbothered by my existence.
I waited. The clock on the wall ticked.
Then I heard it.
Low at first, a rumble that I felt more than heard, vibrating up through the floor. Getting louder. The specific, unmistakable,chest-deep thunder of a Harley-Davidson engine. One bike. Coming fast.
The cat didn't move. The old man turned a page.
