Death Angel

him, if anyone loved him.

Slowly, sitting there in the half-dark, he began to think that maybe he had fallen in love with her. It couldn’t be, but how else could he explain this sense of panic, this confusion, this pain? He hadn’t loved anyone or anything since he’d been a kid, growing up in the toughest barrios of Los Angeles, when he’d learned that valuing someone merely gave your enemies a weapon to use against you. He had to stop this line of thought, shut it down now.

But it was heady, this feeling that made his heart race, and his stomach jump, and for the first time in his life he understood why people did such stupid things when they were in love. This weird mixture of euphoria and dread felt as if he’d mainlined a mysterious drug, so instantly addictive that already he wanted more.

Drea stirred, drawing his attention to the bed. A tender ache settled in his chest as he watched her roll over and once more draw her legs up into a tight curl, as if even in her sleep she tried to protect herself, to make herself small and insignificant. She needed him, he thought, needed him to stand between her and the world, so she could feel safe. Someone like her, dumb and sweet and gullible, would be a sitting duck if she was on her own.

Either she hadn’t been sleeping soundly or the intensity of his gaze awakened her. She opened her eyes, and for a moment she didn’t appear to notice him, sitting there in the shadows. Then she registered the open door, and she blinked a few times, then rubbed her eyes. When she saw him she said “oh” in a small voice that still sounded exhausted and raw from crying.

Rafael wanted to do something he’d never done before, for anyone: he wanted to comfort her. He wanted to take off his clothes and slide under the covers with her, hold her close and whisper reassurances to her-anything to take that empty, broken expression from her eyes. The only thing that stopped him was an uncertainty that she would welcome him, something that would never have occurred to him before. His pride and ego had taken a battering already that day, and he didn’t want to risk being rejected. Tomorrow would be time enough to push his luck a little.

“I was just checking on you,” he said, keeping his voice low and trying to sound matter-of-fact, as if he did that sort of thing all the time.

“I’m okay.”

She didn’t sound okay. She sounded as if there was no spirit left in her, as if she’d never smile again.

There was a squeezing sensation in his chest that made talking difficult. He licked his lips, then swallowed nervously. He’d done this to her, hurt her so deeply that he’d destroyed the almost childlike joy she’d taken in life. He’d make it up to her, he thought fiercely. Somehow, he’d talk her into staying. He could always make it impossible for her to find another place to stay, thereby forcing her to stay here. He didn’t care what means he used, so long as they worked.

Just that morning, less than twelve hours ago, she would have been asking if there was anything he wanted, catering to him, fussing around him to make certain everything was just the way he liked it. Now she simply lay there, making no effort at all to even have a conversation, and the chasm that separated them felt as if it were a thousand miles wide. If only she got mad the way other women did, he thought in frustration, then he could get mad in return, and he wouldn’t be feeling this helpless. But Drea never lost her temper; he didn’t even know if she had a temper.

He’d joked with someone once that she had all the depth of a petri dish, and now he wished that were true.

He’d made fun of her, dissed her to others, and he hadn’t realized or appreciated that all this time she’d been, very simply, devoted to him. If loving someone else was a bitch, being loved was insidiously worse, imposing a subtle burden of care on him. Twelve hours ago he’d been free. Now he’d been ambushed by emotion, and chained as effectively as if feelings were made of steel.

“Do you need anything?” he asked as he made himself get to his feet. He couldn’t just sit by her bedside like some idiot.

She hesitated a few seconds before answering, seconds in which his heart leaped in hope, but then she said, “Just some sleep,” and he realized that her pause had been caused by exhaustion rather than indecision.

“I’ll see you in the morning, then.” He leaned over the bed and kissed her cheek. Once, twelve hours ago, she would have turned her head to meet his mouth with hers, but now she simply lay there. Her eyes were already closing before he turned away.

RAFAEL HAD BARELY shut the door behind him when Drea’s eyes popped open, and she shuddered. She was a good actress, but she knew she wasn’t good enough to hide what she felt if he tried to have sex with her. She couldn’t do that again, not with him; she had to escape before he really pushed the issue, because she didn’t trust herself to maintain control if he did.

At least tomorrow Rafael would be surrounded by his usual retinue, whom he had sent away this morning so he could deal with the assassin without any of them knowing what he was up to. Usually having his inner circle of muscle constantly around got on her nerves, but now she was grateful for their anticipated company. Rafael would take care to treat her normally, so none of them could guess what had happened today; his ego wouldn’t stand letting that become public knowledge. He would have to go about his scheduled business, whatever that was. It would be nice if he had to fly across country, but she’d have known if he had a trip scheduled.

He was acting…weird. She had expected him to be flattered that she was in love with him, but she hadn’t expected him to completely derail. Bringing her water, checking on her…sitting in her bedroom in the dark, for God’s sake! He was acting as if he’d had a character transplant, and it was creeping her out. She would think he’d fallen in love with her if the idea wasn’t so ridiculous. Rafael didn’t love anyone. She doubted he’d loved his own mother.

But if he thought he was in love with her, at least for now, that gave her some leverage. That leverage, of course, came with strings, because he might want to stick close to her, and that was the last thing she wanted. She needed a little alone time, so she could get her plans organized and launched.

From the beginning of her relationship with Rafael, she’d taken steps to secure her future. He’d given her numerous gifts of jewelry, but at no time had she ever assumed he’d let her take the jewelry with her when he dumped her. To circumvent him there, she’d taken photographs of each piece and had them all duplicated in paste- very good fakes that had cost her hundreds of dollars to have made, but the cost was well worth it. Each time she’d worn a piece of the real jewelry, when she gave it back to Rafael for him to lock in the safe, she’d swapped the costume piece for the real thing. Rafael guarded the fakes, and when she could, she slipped away to the bank where she had a safe-deposit box he didn’t know anything about.

She could live for a while, and live well, on the money she could get from selling the jewelry, but that wasn’t enough. Taking the jewelry would make him angry, but it wouldn’t be a slap at him, an insult that would cut him to the quick. Besides, he’d given the jewelry to her, so it was hers anyway. She wanted to do something that would make him a laughingstock, that would eat away at him.

Yeah, it was dangerous. She knew that. But she’d thought things out, and once she was out of the city she had an advantage; Rafael was purely Big City. He’d lived his entire life in either Los Angeles or New York. Rural America was as foreign to him as Timbuktu, but she’d grown up in a small town in the middle of the country, and she knew how to make herself inconspicuous, how to blend in. There were a lot of places where she could reinvent herself. He wouldn’t be expecting that, because he thought she was too dumb to pull it off. On the other hand, he also thought she was too dumb to steal him blind, and pretty soon he’d know better.

She’d have to move fast and keep on moving, and have an alternate plan she could go to each step of the way, in case something went wrong. She should expect things to go wrong, then she wouldn’t panic when they did.

She would have, at most, a few hours’ head start. If she wasn’t out of New York City by then, she was as good as dead.

6

DREA OVERSLEPT, AND FINALLY DRAGGED HERSELF OUT OF bed feeling as if she’d been battered, in both body and mind. Four hours of sex, even really good sex, might sound good in theory, but it wasn’t something she