Angel Face (5 page)

Angela waited for an answer, but nothing came up on the screen. Automatically, she glanced up at the right-hand corner of the girlgone room and saw that runninwyld’s name was no longer on the “who’s chatting” list. She’d left the room.

Angela clicked the mouse and left the room, too, more curious than ever about her on-line friend, if she could call her that. That was the trouble with chat rooms and cyber encounters. You never knew exactly who you were dealing with. Of course, they didn’t either, except in this case, Angela had the feeling runninwyld knew more than she was saying.

J
ORDON
watched the CIA video in total darkness. He’d found an electric generator in the basement that he’d built as a kid and his parents had stored all these years. It provided just enough juice to power the television and VCR, and that was all he needed. Tomorrow he would have the electricity turned back on, but for now the lack of light appealed to him. It brightened the shimmering TV screen and gave the impression that nothing else existed except one solitary man, totally transfixed on a woman—

“A woman whose mission in life is to kill you, Carpenter.”

He reminded himself of that salient fact as he picked up a mug of coffee that was still too hot to drink, thanks to his gas stove. Interesting how he couldn’t seem to hold on to the morbid reality of the situation, even after what he’d just seen. The CIA video had documented in stark detail how Angel Face had killed her own father. Her name wasn’t used in the CIA material because she was too great a security risk, according to the agent, so Jordan had no choice but to accept the label they’d given her:
Angel Face. But he was still struggling with the idea that she was a serial murderer.

He’d watched her kill a man in cold blood, a doctor like himself, and it had shaken him badly. If he’d been in that examining room, he would have done anything to save the dying man’s life, even if he believed him to be evil. There wasn’t time for godlike judgments; there was only time to support and preserve life. Jordan had dedicated himself to that cause. He’d designed and patented medical devices, including modifications to the very heart paddles she’d used.

The coffee was scalding, but he forgot and drank it anyway, barely aware of the burning stream. She’d killed with a device he used routinely to save lives, and yet when she’d whirled toward the hidden surveillance camera afterward, he’d seen her flying tears, her shell-shocked agony, and he’d been shaken again, this time to the core. His impulse had been to comfort her, and the longer he watched, the stronger the feeling grew.

Now he was just angry. His hero complex was already engaged, and that was the last thing he needed. Like he didn’t have enough lives to save. He had to pick a woman who wanted him dead. And yet it was more complicated than that, he knew. Infinitely more complicated. . . because she hadn’t always wanted him dead. According to the agent, she fixated on her targets and became romantically involved with them in her fantasies.

Had she fantasized about him?

Her picture lay on his coffee table, and she gazed up at him in the flickering light. He could never have adequately described what it was about her that caught and held him, but then again, he’d never witnessed this kind of beauty before. When a young boy had dreams of angels, this was the face he saw. But it really wasn’t the beauty, Jordan realized. It was the aura. Her energy
seemed to come directly from some celestial source, like the sun or the stars.

Or was it the killing that energized her?

He rose with his coffee and walked to the generator, plunging the room into darkness with a flick of the power switch. The thought made him sick, but he couldn’t totally dismiss it. She’d been psychologically tortured from earliest childhood, and her adult experiences didn’t sound much better. That kind of abuse twisted your mind into something evil. It ate away your soul.

Her dossier said she’d killed her father when she was seventeen, and that same year she’d been recruited by the CIA, who made her an offer she couldn’t refuse. After all, they had the entire murder on tape. They’d had her foster father under surveillance for years, which was how they knew his methods of abuse. He’d done some questionable experimental work for them, and it was understood that he would treat their referrals, no matter how suspicious the injuries.

Angel Face had been utilized as a courier and an informant on small jobs, allowing her to attend college at the same time. She’d majored in biopsychology, graduated with honors, and gone on to grad school, where she’d excelled. But she’d also excelled at getting the agency the information it wanted, especially from men. Conveniently, most of her sources became romantically obsessed with her.

Eventually, the agency assigned her exclusively to male sources, and she took on whatever guise was necessary to become a part of the man’s life, whether administrative assistant, personal trainer, or nurse. She was never required to have sex with her sources—unless she herself chose to—and it turned out not to be necessary, according to the records. Almost without exception they seemed content to worship her from afar.

At some point, the agency realized they had a secret
weapon in Angel Face, and they asked her to do the impossible. Adam was the code name for a brilliant recluse who was covertly developing biowarfare applications for sale to the highest bidder. No one had been able to get access to him, but they were betting on Angel Face to change all that, and she did them proud.

She was assigned to Adam for several months, and during that time he became as fixated on her as all the others had. But then Adam died mysteriously, and Angel Face disappeared. She went underground at times so deeply even the agency couldn’t find her. It was then that the serial killings started, and since all of the victims were doctors who died of heart failure, a CIA psychologist theorized that something about Adam’s death had triggered her sense of powerlessness. The only way she could regain it was to stalk and kill men who reminded her of her foster father.

According to the dossier, she’d disappeared altogether a year ago, and the killing had stopped. But she’d recently resurfaced, and they had reason to believe she’d added names to her list, that there were new targets, including him. There was other information about her—school and medical records, entries from her teenage diary, but nothing that made Jordan feel any differently.

His coffee was cold. That realization made him wonder how long he’d been staring out the front window. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see the first glimmers of dawn, the pale pink glow that fringed the great oak in his front yard. He loved the neighborhood. He’d lived here almost forty years, and he’d been a doctor close to twenty. But lately he’d begun to think he needed a change. There were too many names on his waiting list, and he was spending too many hours in surgery. He was afraid of burnout, of making a mistake or of starting not to care, and he never wanted that to happen.

There’d been some pressure on him to pick a potential
successor as one way of lightening his load. He’d resisted the idea because there’d been no obvious choice, but it could be that he wasn’t looking hard enough. Certainly Teri Benson showed great promise. Even Jordan couldn’t deny her talent or her zealous passion for surgery. She reminded him of someone else at her age—of himself—and maybe that was the problem.

They’d had an exchange recently that had been revelatory. She’d all but accused him of holding her back. She’d even implied that he was threatened by her and that it might be a male ego problem. Jordan had laughed at the time. He’d thought she was crazy and told her so, but now he wondered.

He took another swig of the bitterly cold coffee and asked himself what he was doing. Suddenly it seemed imperative to pick a successor, even if it was someone he didn’t have total confidence in. What
was
he doing? It couldn’t be because he was already well on his way to being obsessed after looking at little more than a picture of a woman’s face, could it? Now, there was a great reason to alter his surgery schedule, and it was a pathetic comment on Jordan Carpenter’s social life. Maybe it should tell him something that he was starting to feel like one of
them
, all the other suckers who’d come into contact with Angel Face.

It didn’t take him long to get the picture in question back into the bubble envelope it came in—and himself into the kitchen, where he poured the coffee dregs down the sink. He should have had a beer. Even warm, it was better than cold coffee, and he wouldn’t have been up all night.

The CIA agent had left him a phone number and a sophisticated cell phone that was designed for international use, apparently via low-earth orbiting global satellite links, according to the instructions. Jordan had also
been instructed to use the agent’s code name, Firestarter, whenever he called.

It was all very seductive to an overworked, burned-out, egomaniacal male chauvinist pig of a heart surgeon. But Jordan would not be calling.

B
IRDY
was already on the floor, searching for lost sunflower seeds, when the beeping started. This time she knew right where to go. She’d dragged Jordan’s beeper to a bubble at the edge of the nearest rag carpet, where she’d stashed it with several other purloined treasures, including pens, pencils, paper clips, a TV remote, and last month’s light bill.

Mesmerized again by the beeper’s bright green display, she began tapping on the screen as a message appeared.

MEET ME TONIGHT AFTER EVENING ROUNDS AT THE WINE BAR AROUND THE CORNER FROM CALIFORNIA GENERAL. YOU KNOW THE ONE I MEAN. YOU'VE BEEN THERE BEFORE.

The initials that appeared were AF, but Birdy had already lost interest. She’d discovered a twist-off beer bottle cap and was happily making the sounds of a steel drum band with her beak.

“D
OCTOR?
”

“Devil,” Angela responded without hesitation. Her eyes were shut, but she could hear the rustle of paper across the small room, the click of a ballpoint pen.

“Angel?”

“Sad.”

“Sleep?”

“Escape.” A very slight pause. “Yes, escape.”

“Love?”

“Learning . . . I love to learn.”

“Hate?”

“Gifts. I was given gifts when I was good. Dolls mostly. I still
hate
dolls.”

“Angela, if you would respond with just one word please. When I say a word, you say the first thing that comes into your mind, all right?”

Angela nodded. She wasn’t particularly comfortable with this exercise, but despite her qualms, the answers had come easily. Perhaps it would help after all. She hoped so.

“Men?”

“Fear. No, wait—”

“Your
first
response.”

“All right then . . . fear.” But Angela didn’t fear all men. There were a few she’d learned to trust: Sammy, Peter Brandt.

“Adam?”

The word hung in the air.

Angela’s response was hesitation, a palpitation.

“Angela, I said
Adam.
”

“Eve?”

“Was that the first word that came to mind?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Very well then, let’s end there.” The pen clicked again, and a tablet slapped shut.

Angela opened her eyes to the blue and maroon plaid walls of Dr. Mona Fremont’s office. Her psychiatrist of the last year was seated across the room on a blue velvet couch that matched the one Angela was lying on. Her smile was reassuringly familiar, but Angela had sensed the doctor’s agitation when she’d arrived. She’d clicked her pen several times during their free association session and now she was absently flexing the metal stem of the eyeglasses she’d just removed.

For as long as she could remember, Angela had been ultrasensitive to mood shifts in the people around her. Some emotions were so distinct they seemed to carry a faint scent. Sadness had always smelled damp and steamy. It was the fog that rolled in at twilight, or a wool coat, wet from the weather. Sudden anger was the snap of a hot iron. Resentment was dying flowers.

Dr. Fremont was redolent of peppermint, the kind that burned your tongue. Angela had been surprised when the psychiatrist suggested free association exercises. Normally, they stayed with the more traditional talk therapy, and what Angela had wanted to talk about today was the terrifying violent impulses she’d felt in the grocery store. But when she brought it up, Dr. Fremont had quickly reassured her that it was normal for someone with a background like Angela’s to feel sudden and unprovoked episodes of anger or even rage. It wasn’t driven by a desire to hurt anyone so much as a way to let off steam, a release valve, she’d called it. And then she’d suggested they try something different.

Angela hadn’t been sure about the free association. As much as she wanted to be free of the panic that ticked inside her like live ammunition, she also feared allowing the doctor access to the recesses of her mind. Some things were best not remembered, she’d come to believe.