by Gary Sapp
had a date. I believe he is there and is amongst the hundreds of hostages that are being held inside.”
Angel felt her teeth chatter. She suffered through a spell of nausea that fortunately passed as quickly as it came.
She stood again.
“I’ll need to run home. I’m going to grab a hot shower and grab some personal belongings.” Angel looked down at him squarely in his eye. “And I’ll need some time to sober up.”
Agent Sheridan stood next to her. “I’ve anticipated your assistance and have a car waiting outside for you to handle in private business you may have.”
“I’m in,” Angel muttered to herself than to the man standing next to her. “I’m all in.”
“Be careful what you are volunteering for.” Sheridan rubbed the back of his snow white head. “I’m under orders, by Deputy Director Rice, to solicit your services. I follow orders, Doctor Hicks-Dupree. Still, I want you to know that I didn’t ask for you. And my boss has left it to my discretion how long you assist on this case.”
Angel nodded soberly. “I understand, Nicholas.”
Agent Sheridan brushed off his suit and straightened his tie. “No, Doctor, I highly doubt that you. Let me explain myself further. What others in my field of work call taking initiative I call being insubordinate. What another man in my position may proclaim someone as being a free spirit, I would name that same person reckless.” He leaned over her. “You are reckless, Doctor. You’re past ties to Pandora, the way you lead your personal life, everything that encompasses you presents a clear and present danger to the honorable men and women who still serve their country through this bureau. I will not tolerate any screw-ups from you.”
Sheridan reaches into her purse and takes the tin flask of gin out of it. “I hope that I have made myself perfectly clear on my expectations of you during your consultation.”
“Crystal clear, Nicholas.”
“And from this point moving forward you will address me as Agent Sheridan or Sheridan.”
“Yes, Agent Sheridan.”
She had lived a reckless life. And Sheridan was right, for both personal and professional reasons, her presence during this investigation was a clear and present danger to all involved…including Christopher Prince, assuming he still lived.
But as long as Angel Hicks-Dupree loved, her redemption was possibly still at hand.
She was alive.
As she turned towards the exit of the restaurant she gathered that one of Sheridan’s agents hadn’t gotten the message that she had joined their ranks, or that Joseph Champion was nowhere to be found in this vicinity.
“Agent Sheridan, I pointed all of your people out. Why is one of your men still sneaking around outside?”
Agent Sheridan straightened out his tie again and looked as if something on the floor had gained his attention. “He’s not one of my men, Doctor, he’s one of yours.”
Angel glanced in the stranger’s direction…and then took a second, longer look at the man who was standing outside the restaurant. She sighed in disbelief to the fact that what Sheridan said was true.
Doctor Seth Dupree was peeking through an open blind of the Blanche Coffee and Pancake House.
As long as Angel lived, her redemption was possibly still at hand.
She was alive.
She was alive and she had an angry husband to face.
Seth
“We’re not done talking yet,” Seth watched his wife drop to her knees and reach along the side of the bed for her travel bag she’d always kept packed and ready to go on a moment’s notice. “And now where do you think you’re going?”
Angel looked back at him, sighed, and rolled her big brown eyes at him. “Atlanta. I’m needed in Atlanta, Seth.”
Seth pointed at the carpet. “You’re needed here. We’ve got to fix whatever is wrong with our marriage.”
Angel, impervious, went back to the business of what she was doing as if a word hadn’t been exchanged between them. She got to her feet, switched on the widescreen with the remote and pumped up the volume past 40. The sound faintly echoed as their bedroom…and seemingly every other room this Victorian styled house was oversized for two people and even with the expensive furniture loitering throughout, looked as if no one lived there.
There have been too many big fights that have taken place under this roof as well, Angel, too many tears shed. Tonight, if only for one night, he promised those tears would not come from him.
Dr. Seth Dupree:
He was six feet tall and still fit now in his early forties. Friends had started calling him The Gray Man about ten years ago. He had sparkling gray eyes and had more streaks of gray in his hair and whiskers than he liked. He had always possessed the unique ability to look comfortable and relaxed, yet professional, whether the day dictated him wearing a three piece suit or a golf shirt and slacks.
He wasn’t looking comfortable or relaxed right now.
“Make me understand what any of what has gone down in Atlanta has to do with—“
“Quiet.” Angel planted her long, manicured fingernail close enough to his full to his thin lip to touch. “I want to hear this.”
A razor thin blonde stood as close to the barricades of a building…Seth scanned the area immediately behind her, an electronic sign noted the structure as The Historic Fox Theatre. Historic, it just plain looks old, Seth thought. Some of the roof’s paneling had torn from the hinges and looked if it would completely off if a strong gust of wind whipped in right now. Well, knowing how the city’s luck rolls these days, a wild wind event would be the only type of storm they would get. Seth reasoned to himself. Atlanta and most of northern Georgia was suffering through what some meteorologist experts were calling the Drought of the Century. There hadn’t been significant rainfall in metro Atlanta in nearly a year. And wildfires had begun running rampant on the outskirts of town, especially to the North and West of downtown. Some days the city looked more like LA encompassed in thick soup bowl of smoke, instead of the smog America’s second largest city suffered through.
Sections of panels and tile were torn from the right side of the building as the camera scanned the protestors who’d begin camping out of there. Seth rubbed at his day old beard, and shook his head at his own stupidity. Of course there are torn panels and patches of damage in those spots, he thought, how could I have forgotten about the tremor the region suffered about two weeks ago. Seismologist had measured the quake at 3.3 and the center of it near Columbia, South Carolina, the Atlantic fault shifting again after lying nearly dormant for half a century.
And now Atlanta was suffering through this latest challenge.
Heavily armed police units, armed with high powered rifles struggled to keep citizens behind the barriers. Seth’s gray eyes took notice of a group of half dozen young men and women of color who chanted the same theme over and again, especially when the television cameras focused on them. One of them would ask, Brothers and sisters, what do you see when visualize our people’s future? And the others would answer in chorus, we see days filled with misery and pain. Most of the protestors were ordinary, everyday Joes, but the camera seemed to highlight the presence of clans of young men dressed in Khaki suit and sneakers. The Peacekeepers; the media is focusing on them to stir the pot…and yet he endured a chill strong enough to burn at his shoulder blades, or are these vigilante numbers higher than anyone assumes they are.
Seth rushed to widescreen, located where the power button was, and slammed the set off.
Angel swore at him.
“You got in an unmarked car back at that restaurant with federal agents didn’t you, Angel. This,” He pointed his thumb back at the blank television screen. “This is about Christopher Prince isn’t it?”
Angel had folded her arms, which tugged at her blouse, exposing a little cleavage. Knowing his wife as he did, Seth was sure the act was intentional, to throw his concentration off. “The FBI believes that Christopher is one of the hostages being held in that theatre. Agents of Pandor
a are holding them there. Everyone inside that place is in danger. Sheridan got on a plane when we left; he is putting his hostage negotiating team together, right now, as we speak. You know I’ve consulted with the feds before, Seth, you know I’ve worked directly with hostage negotiators. That car, as you spoke of, is outside waiting on me right now.
“This isn’t about those hostages, for you, Angel,” He heard his voice rise, thought about the FBI agents planted 50 feet or so from where he was standing, made him instantly regret doing so. “This is about Christopher Prince. You’ve always loved him.”
“Oh stop being so melodramatic, Seth.” Angel had opened her travel bag, replaced a short sleeved blouse with a longer sleeved one to protect her from the night’s chill up there. “Just stop it already. You know our story, our history together. Our fathers were cops, partners for ten years together. That partnership of theirs evolved into a lifelong friendship, where such relationships between black men and white men were rare and were frowned upon in the Deep South. Chris and I played together as children. My father even trusted him enough to babysit me. In time their partnership ended when my father moved on to the US Marshalls and then eventually to the ATF. And although their friendship fractured somewhat when Isaac Prince founded a House in Chains, their children still kept in touch.
She stopped with her activates for a minute and Seth watched her big browns mist up.