Page 3 of Angel’s Doll

Durey stands too close on the ride down. Not touching but still too close.

“Your uncle told me once you keep his whole life running,” he says, watching the floor numbers fall. “Calendar, files, all of it. Good. You’ll be useful as well as decorative.”

I say nothing. Thirty-two floors of nothing.

The doors open on the lobby. Marble, glass, the security desk. The day guard looks up at me and I almost do it. Almost mouth help. But what would I say? My uncle sent me. So far, no crime has been committed.

What the guard sees is a girl in a good coat walking out with one of her uncle’s business associates. Nothing to be alarmed about.

Through the doors, rain that can’t commit, bus brakes, cigarette smoke drifting from the valet stand. Across the street, a big man in a black leather jacket watches the building and frowns. He looks dangerous. Today, everything does.

Durey’s limousine is double-parked in front of the building, hazards blinking. Cars like his never get tickets.

The driver climbs out. Big through the shoulders, jacket loose over a bulge at his hip. He rounds the hood to open the door for us. Durey’s eyes are on the traffic. The driver’s body is half turned. Between them, ten feet of open sidewalk and the door waiting for me.

A week, they said.

No phone. No wallet. No account with my name on it. Nobody besides my uncle who’d notice if I was gone for good. If Durey’s week becomes forever, I won’t exist anywhere except in my uncle’s files.

I run.

2

ANGEL

Iput my gloves on at the corner and roll my shoulders loose. That’s what I do before church, before a fight, before anything worth doing.

Bishop’s exact words were stand down. The war is over. We won. Darling is home, the coastline is protected forever. Victor Hale is a beaten man sitting on land he can’t build on, no matter how much money he has. Let the lawyers dance on the grave.

Bishop is my president and my brother. He’s right about almost everything.

He’s wrong about this.

Darling is home but she still flinches when a door closes too hard. She’s resilient but Bones and I both know what those weeks took out of her. And the bastard who made it happen still breathes easily thirty-two floors above this street. I doubt he has once looked over his shoulder.

So today Victor Hale and I are going to have a constructive talk. I’m wearing the cut on purpose. An anonymous beating is a mugging. This is payback. I want him to know exactly who, and exactly why, and I want him to carry both answers around in his rebuilt jaw for the rest of his life.

The lobby empties out after the lunch time rush. Skeleton security, one guard at the desk, a service elevator with a camera I already know is a decade old. I’ve walked this in my head forty times.

I’m a few feet from the doors when they open.

A girl comes out first, then a suit. A driver peels off toward a black limo double-parked with its hazards on.

I recognize her face before I remember why I know it. It’s in Hale’s file. Sloane Hale. His niece. Victor takes her with him like an accessory that makes him look good. Corporate doll. I wrote it under her picture, and moved on to people who mattered.

The suit next to her is expensive. The man inside it is past fifty, gone thick through the middle. I know the kind … a heavyweight gone soft. Money, but not clean money.

And her. She isn’t walking with them. She’s being walked. Hands empty, no purse, no phone. A woman leaving work at this time of day carries half her life in one hand and her keys in the other. She carries nothing.

I take a photo of the plate on instinct. Old habit. I don’t care what Bishop says, everything Victor Hale touches goes in my folder.

The driver rounds the hood and opens the rear door. I watch her understand it in real time, the geometry of her situation. The fat man on her left with his eyes on traffic, the driver with his body half turned …

She runs.

Smart girl.

She’s fast, too. Flat shoes, no bag, coat snapping behind her like a flag. She takes the corner into the side street at a full sprint without one look over her shoulder. Looking costs a stride.