Authors: Amber Hughey
Gabriel mused about that. It made sense, he thought to himself, that Owen had chosen a human in line with his thinking. He looked at Amalia, a worried look taking over his face. “You all right?”
She shook her head, “No. I mean, I am, but I know Vicki’s not. She’s not happy, I can tell, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
He shook his head. “No, you can’t. She’s made her choice. You’ve made yours.”
She glared at him, “just what do you mean by ‘you’ve made yours’?”
He gave her a sad smile. “You really don’t like Owen. I can see it in your eyes and I guarantee that she can too. If you want to stay friends with Vicki, you’ll be fighting Owen that whole time, minute for minute, second for second. If you really want to spend your time doing that, you’ll be wasting your time,” he concluded.
“How would staying friends with Vicki be a waste of time?” She snapped as he pulled out of the parking space. “And where the hell are we going?”
“Home. To Matt’s place.” He ignored the first question, knowing she’d figure it out herself. Well, hoping she would, he thought darkly. He sincerely hoped that he wouldn’t have to explain why fighting with Vicki and Owen to stay Vicki’s friend would be a waste of time. He’d been there, and it never worked out like he’d anticipated.
A peek out of the corner of his eye saw her huddled in a miserable ball against the door, tears leaking out of her eyes. His heart pained for her, and he vowed to do what he could to preserve her friendship with Vicki. He reached out and gently touched her shoulder, feeling a sense of kinship that he’d lacked for decades.
Amalia slid in the car, two Styrofoam cups clutched in clean hands. A line of dirt separated the unwashed arm from the scrubbed hand. She handed one of the cups to Gabriel who gingerly took the cup.
After mulling over his coffee in relative silence, Gabriel twisted his lips, trying to connect the dots in this case, and coming up with a bunch of missing dots. But if he added a few of his own... He didn’t want to bring up the touchy subject, but he had to ask. “Donovan was changed by Jessamyn, right?”
“Donovan was changed by Jessamyn, his fiancé. His murder –“
“She has everything to do with what happened, and what’s happening,” he replied softly, sure he was right.
She gave him a questioning look but let him explain without interrupting, more interested in his logic than the cars slowly speeding around the parked Aston.
“We’re fairly sure she’s the one kidnapping the male humans. Just like she did your brother,” he stated bluntly.
“She didn’t kidnap – “
“She did,” he said with a bit force, just enough to stop her protestations. “Maybe not forcefully, but
she did. She probably disguised it as a trip or something.”
She drew in a sharp breath as she remembered the ‘fishing trip’ Donovan and Jessamyn had gone to before the wedding. Something to help them ‘unwind’ before the wedding, Jessamyn had said.
“How do you know?”
“Because Aleks found one of them that she’d kidnapped. Like Lindsay, he’d escaped. Through brute force, though, instead of with assistance.”
“How’d she do it?” Amalia asked, voice soft and unsure.
“Like she did your brother,” Gabriel said, grey eyes watching Amalia’s expression turn horrified.
He reached out and grabbed her arm before she could withdraw. “We’re on to her. Aleks is supposed to be going after her today. While we’re out, actually.”
“So that’s part of the puzzle solved,” Amalia whispered, eyes closed as she imagined what she wanted to do to the solan.
“Part of it. We still need to find out where the rest are,” Gabriel said, withdrawing his hand, “and get them all out.”
“Especially Sam,” Amalia said, steel entering her voice. Now, more than ever, she was determined to get Sam out of wherever she was.
Gabriel nodded. “Especially Sam.”
“So how’d they get Sam? And Vince?”
“Vince probably worked for them,” Gabriel said slowly. “That’s probably why they grabbed Sam.”
“She always took little trips, so it wouldn’t be odd if she went on a mini-vacation.”
Gabriel leaned back and studied the cooling, bitter coffee. “Then she’d be perfect.”
“So, we have Aleks and Jessamyn, then,” she said softly, turning her gaze to the trees that whipped with force from the wind.
“No,” he said shortly. “We know Jessamyn is part of it. Aleks isn’t. Aleks can’t be. Aleks wouldn’t be,” he said flatly, turning the car on.
“No,” she repeated softly, “You know he isn’t. I know he is. Why can’t you believe me?”
“Because you have to have more than a feeling.”
“I do – “
“That thing isn’t more than a feeling. She’s probably mistaken, confused or hallucinating. It’s not Aleks,” he said, temper simmering right beneath the surface.
“So you say,” she said, setting her cold coffee in the drink spot on the console, ignoring the hot anger that flashed in his eyes. “I know what I heard, I know what I saw. And I know that he’s responsible.”
“Amalia – “
“Don’t ‘Amalia’ me,” she warned, a frown marring her features. “If we find out that he’s behind this, the blood is on your hands. Not mine.”
His lips tightened but he didn’t respond. It wasn’t on his hands, and it
wouldn’t
be on his hands since it
wasn’t
Aleks. Nothing he could say would convince her, so why try?
The ride back to Matt’s house was silent as Amalia mutely fumed at Gabriel for a multitude of reasons. She couldn’t believe he didn’t think it was important. She couldn’t believe he brushed it off like a piece of trash. No cop she’d ever known would have done what he did.
He didn’t dare look at her. He’d done it once, and she’d started ranting at him about sharing information and not believing her. From there, it had devolved into her fuming at him for not listening.
He didn’t like her ranting at him. Not one bit, he decided as he pulled into the driveway. Pulling up next to the empty spot that usually contained Matt’s SUV, he saw Aleks’s car on the other side of the space. Climbing out, he almost offered a hand to Amalia. Almost, because she’d tore inside the house before he could react. He heard the muffled barks of Lucy coming from upstairs and figured she’d shut herself in her room. With a shrug, he sat down at the table, laptop in front of him.
“Gabriel?”
He turned around to see Aleks coming out of the kitchen. Giving him a half-smile, Gabriel said, “Yeah? Got anything new? Please have something new.”
Aleks answered with an easy smile as he brushed a dark feather off his pant leg. “You’re in luck. I have something new.”
“Good,” Gabriel muttered as he stared at Aleks, hoping that the ‘something new’ was going to take a while. Amalia needed to calm down, and when she did, she’d see that he was right. He was certain of it. “What’s up?”
“There’s another body,” Aleks replied. “In North Shore.”
“Another one?” Gabriel was taken aback. Whoever was doing this was either getting lazy, or wanted to be discovered. Before Vince, the bodies had been strategically spread across lower Michigan, small towns mostly. This was getting odd, he thought with interest. He leaned forward, steepling his fingers.
“Yeah,” Aleks said sourly as he shook his head in frustration. “They’re not telling me anything over the phone. They said to come see the body. Well, come claim the body,” he amended.
“Claim? It’s angelus?”.
Aleks nodded and pushed away from the frame, a few feathers falling from his wings. “That’s what they said. Maybe an escapee?”
“We can only hope,” Gabriel said. “When do they need us?”
“ASAP,” Aleks said with a shrug. “My car’s ready, if you want to go now.”
“Where’s Matt?” Gabriel asked, briefly looking at the stairs to the second story. The only sounds he could hear were from Amalia and Lucy.
There was a quick flash of anger and frustration in Aleks’s eyes that Gabriel didn’t understand. “Someone gave him a tidbit that he thinks will lead him to a live wire.” He shrugged. “It’ll probably keep him busy the rest of the night, so if you want to wait for him, we’ll be heading out in the morning. And I’d rather get it done tonight.”
Gabriel slowly nodded before running a hand through his hair. When it came away grimy and disgusting, he grimaced. “I just need to wash up.”
“Exploring?” Aleks said, a brief flash of interest filling his mocha eyes.
Gabriel sighed, suddenly unwilling to share what Lindsay had said and Jeremy’s fate with Aleks. “Something like that. I’ll explain later,” he said as he stood.
On his way up the stairs, he heard water running. Then the shower hitting the shower curtain. He tapped on the Amalia’s bedroom door, not expecting her to answer.
When the door opened a crack, he quickly said, “Aleks and I have a lead to follow. You’ll be here all right by yourself?”
“Yes,” she said shortly, steam billowing out of the cracked door.
He gave a sigh as she shut the door with a small slam. “Amalia,” he called loud enough for her to hear over the rush of the shower, “I’ll have my phone on me if you need to get ahold of me.”
“Okay,” she yelled back as she stood in the center of the bathroom. The mirror was steamed over, and she drew a smiley face on it, hoping it would cheer her up. She quickly undressed and stood herself in the direct stream of the hot water. Almost scalding, it felt like she was cleansing not only her body but her mind. After a hard day’s investigation, the hot shower was always her reward, whether or not she’d done anything substantial enough to deserve it.
With a sigh, she let the hot water caress her skin. She scrubbed away the dirt and cobwebs the clung to her hair. When the water finally ran clear, she just stood in the spray, letting the steam roil around her. The water was lukewarm when she decided she’d better shut it off, not that it mattered, since everyone else who might shower was gone.
Stepping out of the shower, the water dripping off of her was cold. Shivering, she quickly draped a soft robe around her after drying off. She tossed her hair up into a messy bun, trying to keep it the cold hair off her neck. The sensation of cold water dripping down her neck was one of the worst feelings right after a hot shower, she decided.
She opened the bathroom door, releasing clouds of steam into her bedroom. The air in the bedroom was cool, so she quickly dressed.
Unsure if he’d already left, she called out for Gabriel but couldn’t hear any movement below her. They must have left, she decided. She thought he would’ve taken a shower, but maybe he had and she just hadn’t heard him. Possible, she mused silently.
With Lucy trailing her closely, Amalia strolled downstairs. Pushing a wet strand of hair off her cheek, she wrapped her arms tightly around herself in a tight hug.
In the downstairs bathroom, a wet towel hung off the shower rod. Gabriel’s dirty clothes were strewn about the otherwise clean room. So, he had showered. He’d probably felt as gross as she did. Not that she cared right now.
Walking back into the living room, she glanced around, knowing that something was wrong, but unable to articulate what exactly was wrong.
She wandered around the downstairs for a few minutes before realizing what was wrong. Gabriel had said that Aleks and Matt lived here, but if you looked at the decorations, pictures and knickknacks, nothing said anything other than just Matt. Aleks didn’t have anything personal here, she realized with a frown. Matt had pictures of family, vacations and sports victories around the house. Aleks had nothing.
Strange. Peculiar. Beyond odd, she thought darkly. She glanced upstairs, wavering between checking out his room and leaving his privacy intact.
Amalia sighed and started up the stairs, pausing only to look at a picture on the wall. It was the one picture that she was sure wasn’t Matt’s. It was of a large metal door, in the middle of nowhere. A farmer’s field, maybe? There were trees in the distance. A water tower was seen among the trees. It was done in sepia tones, lending it an air of creepy that most pictures don’t contain.
She stared at the picture. It looked familiar. Really familiar, she decided. The door went down into the field. Maybe a storm cellar? Shaking her head, she started back up the stairs, the picture of the door lodged in her brain.
Amalia knocked on Aleks’s bedroom door out of habit. It would be just my luck, she thought, if I heard something knock back. There was only silence, though. She tried the knob, and as expected, it was locked, not even turning half an inch. Shaking her head, she turned away from the door, still sure that the Gabriel was wrong about Aleks.
To most humans, the angelus wings looked alike. Even different colors on the feathers didn’t always make a difference if they were in a line-up. Lindsay might have been confused by the painful transformation, her mind twisted until she couldn’t tell right from wrong and up from down. But Amalia
wasn’t counting on it. In fact, her gut told her the exact opposite. That somehow, Aleks was at the center of this little operation.