Death Angel

her throat, then said hesitantly, “That thing you said about better decisions, what did you mean?”

“Little things. Like, maybe, instead of buying a flashy bracelet you like, you put that money in an interest- bearing savings account or a CD.” Cassie liked jewelry. None of it was expensive-probably the most she’d paid for anything was a couple of hundred dollars-but she liked a lot of jewelry.

“I don’t spend that much…” Cassie began.

Andie reached the rig and put the car in park. “It adds up.” She ran an expert eye over what jewelry she could see: earrings, several cocktail rings, four or five bracelets. “What you have on cost you roughly three thousand dollars, total. That’s three thousand dollars that could be in a bank. What you should be doing is saving up enough to invest in a good mutual fund.”

Cassie wrinkled her nose. “God, that sounds so boring.”

“Yeah, it does,” Andie agreed. “Boring and hard are usually good signs that’s what you should be doing.”

“I’ll be okay. I make good money.”

Cassie was shrugging off what Andie had told her. Normally Andie would have done her own shrugging and let it be, but Cassie had gone out of her way tonight to help her so that favor got turned around.

“One wreck will wipe you out,” she said, her voice going kind of distant the way it sometimes did. “You’ll be hurt, out of commission for about six months. You have insurance on your rig, but you won’t be able to work and you’ll lose your house. It’s all downhill after that. I wasn’t kidding about the cat food.”

Cassie froze with her hand on the door handle. In the glow of the dash lights, her face suddenly showed her age, and more; it showed fear. “You see something. You really do see something, don’t you?”

Andie wasn’t about to get into whether or not she “saw” things, so she waved the question away. What she’d just said was common sense. “Another thing: you should start respecting yourself more and stop hooking up with losers. One of them’s going to give you an STD.” She turned to face the woman. “You’re smart, you’re successful. You should act like it, because doing stupid things will stop you from being more successful. Trust me, I’m an expert on doing stupid things.”

“One of them being this guy you’re running from?”

“He’s at the top of the list.” Proof of her stupidity, Andie thought, was that even though he was a hired killer and no doubt would have shot her if she hadn’t saved him the trouble by having a wreck, in unguarded moments she’d have flashbacks to that afternoon with him and the pain would almost bring her to her knees. She was stupid enough that she really would have gone anywhere with him, if he’d only said the word. She was stupid enough that, even now, her terror of him was mixed with a longing that cut at her heart.

What she wasn’t stupid enough for was to believe that, if he’d found her, she’d still be alive right now. She laughed in relief at the realization. “It wasn’t him,” she said. “Watching me, I mean.”

Cassie raised her eyebrows. “Yeah? How do you know?”

“I’m still alive.” She smiled wryly at her own fear. If he had found her, she wouldn’t have survived the walk across the parking lot, whether Cassie was with her or not.

“Holy shit! You mean he’s trying to kill you?” Cassie’s eyes went round, and her voice rose.

“That’s what he does, and he’s very good at it. I pissed off some bad guys,” she said by way of explanation.

“Holy shit!” Cassie said again. “I guess so, if they’re trying to kill you! And you think I make stupid decisions?”

“I told you I’m an expert at it.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, feeling a sudden urge to confide in Cassie, in someone. She’d been alone since she was fifteen, not physically alone but mentally and emotionally isolated, and other than Dr. Meecham no one knew about her death experience. On the other hand, she couldn’t talk openly about it; that would be like stripping naked in public, and she didn’t want what had happened to her to become common knowledge. She settled for something short of full disclosure.

“I had a near-death experience a while back,” she said. “Let’s just say I saw the light, in more ways than one.”

“Near-death? You mean that business with the tunnel, and your dead friends and family greeting you, that kind of near-death?” Cassie’s tone was eager, curious, the way she turned to Andie somehow full of hope.

Most people hungered for that, she realized, the knowledge or proof that they didn’t end with death, that they somehow carried on. They wanted to believe their loved ones were still alive, somewhere, healthy and happy. They might not believe, they might reject anything they couldn’t hear and touch and see, but they would be very happy to be proved wrong. She couldn’t prove anything; she could tell what she’d experienced, what she’d seen, but prove it? Impossible.

“I didn’t see a tunnel.” Cassie’s face fell, and Andie had to smile. “But there was light, the most beautiful light you can imagine. I can’t describe it. And there was…an angel. I think it was an angel. Then I was in the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. The light was clear and soft and sort of glowed, and the colors were so deep and rich they made you want to just lie down in the grass and soak everything in.” Her dreamy voice trailed off as for a moment she drifted, remembering; then she shook herself, both mentally and physically.

“I want to go back there,” she said firmly, “and I realized I had to change if I was going to have a shot at it.”

“But you were already there,” Cassie pointed out, bewildered. “Why would you have to change?”

“Because I wasn’t supposed to be there. It was temporary, so I could have a sort of…review, I guess. Then they voted to let me have another chance, but if I screw this one up, that’s it, no more chances.”

“Wow. Wow. That’s deep shit.” Cassie thought it over for a moment, maybe even thinking about her own life and some changes she could make. She put her hand on the door handle. “I guess that would make you rethink some things, wouldn’t it?” She hesitated another moment, then shook her head and shoved the door open. “I could talk your head off, asking questions, but I need to get home. You be careful. Whether or not this guy I saw is the one after you, you should still be careful, because he was watching you. I know that for a fact. It was kind of creepy.”

“I’ll be extra careful,” Andie promised, and she would. Getting killed, again, wasn’t the only bad thing that could happen to her. She might even have a little bit of a death wish now, if she could be certain she’d changed enough or earned enough points, or whatever. But she didn’t want to get raped, she didn’t want to get mugged, or a whole bunch of other stuff, so she would definitely be careful.

After Cassie got out, Andie waited until she saw her new maybe-friend climb safely into her rig, then she drove home. Hyper-alert, she watched for any car that seemed to be following her, but traffic was light this late on a snowy Friday night and for the most part there was no one behind her.

By the time she got home, the adrenaline rush of fear had faded and she was yawning with exhaustion. The porch light was on, just the way she’d left it, a welcoming pool of yellow light in the icy darkness. There was a streetlight at the corner, but the trees blocked most of the light from her house and she hated coming home in the dark. She always left a small lamp on, too, to make it look as if someone was there.

The duplex didn’t have a garage, or even a carport, so she parked by the porch and pulled her coat and scarf more snugly into place before getting out of the Ford. Snow immediately slipped down inside her shoes; it was deeper here than it had been out by the interstate, undisturbed by hundreds of trucks roaring in and out. Sighing as the icy wetness hit her already cold feet, she unlocked her door and slipped inside the warmth of her shabby sanctuary.

SHE WAS SAFELY home. From his parking spot down the street, Simon watched her go inside. He’d been waiting here since that trucker had spotted him watching her. The trucker couldn’t have gotten a good look at him, not with the hood of his heavy shearling coat pulled up, but he’d moved on anyway.

He’d kept an eye on Drea-she went by Andie now-since she’d left the hospital. He’d done what he could, paying all of her medical bills, and for a while he’d stayed close by in case she needed help with anything, but only dire circumstances would have forced him to step in. She was too scared of him; he couldn’t predict what she’d do if she saw him.

When she left Denver, he’d trailed her. When she made contact with someone to get a new ID, he’d smoothed the way for her-first, because that way he had inside information on her new name and Social Security number, and, second, because he didn’t like the looks of the bastard she’d contacted. He made sure she wasn’t ripped off and that the guy knew she wasn’t without protection.