The Soulmate

by Carly Bishop

  She had the vague impression of a statistic flying through her head proving how unlikely she was to get away with her life while resisting a mugger. Too bad. If she died defying this cretin and went to heaven, then, maybe, she could have Keller back again. Part of her wanted that so fiercely that she just didn’t care what happened.

  She tossed her long black French braid over her shoulder and glared up at the would-be mugger. “Get your mitts off my car, you miserable little toad,” she demanded.

  “Yeah?”

  Oh, here was a brilliant one, she thought. “Yeah.” She tried to pull her car door closed, but the wiry body stood rooted to the pavement.

  Though momentarily startled at her resistance, the mean-ass kid regrouped—and he wasn’t joking. He reached down with his overgrown hand, grabbed the shoulder of her silk tank top and twisted until it cut into her armpit. “Maybe you don’t get I’m gonna hurt you, bitch, if you don’ hand over the goods,” he snarled.

  The material bit into her flesh. She stifled her cry and groped automatically for her cane. He dragged her from the car and threw her to the baking-hot pavement.

  Something cracked inside of her. She knew crime and criminals and all about the dark places in twisted human souls. She knew all about their victims, too, their pain, their impotence—and for once in her life, she desperately needed to strike a blow against the lowlifes who preyed on other people…. Against a creep who thought he could take Keller’s ring from her.

  Adrenaline poured through her. Her heart raced, and a voice in her head squeaked hysterically at her foolish bravado, but Robyn tuned it out and lashed out at her attacker with her cane and all the pent-up rage inside her.

  Her blow landed on his shoulder, but it just enraged the mugger. She screamed and clenched her fist so he couldn’t strip Keller’s ring from her finger. No power on earth could have opened her hand. Her attacker backhanded Robyn and the fragile flesh inside her mouth split and bled.

  He might have knocked her senseless and taken Keller’s ring from her, anyway, but a security guard bellowed at the mugger and came running full out. Robyn seized upon the distraction he provided and drew her leg up hard and high in the mugger’s crotch. He lashed out in his pain but missed her face and lit out running from the security guard.

  The guard, a man named Shelton whom she’d spoken with often enough in the past year, offered Robyn his handkerchief while a couple of other security types tackled the kid. She stood up with Shelton’s help, retrieved her cane and, for an instant, indulged the primal satisfaction of having bested a predator. A second or two later, her nerves let her down and Robyn began quaking like an aspen leaf in a very stiff wind.

  Sure, now, chimed that same annoying little voice of caution in her mind. She shook her head and scraped loose tendrils of hair back from her face. “Thanks, Shelton.”

  The security guard, a burly, ruddy-skinned ex-cop, steadied her. “Robyn, what’s wrong with you? Are you nuts? You know better than to take on a mugger!”

  She clasped the guard’s wrist and gulped as her courage dissolved away to nothing. Tears bit at her eyelids. Her elbow was badly scraped and burned by the pavement. Her face hurt like blazes. “I…yes. Maybe I am, but I’m all right. He just ticked me off, you know? I’m in no mood to play a wilting violet.”

  “How about a dead violet?” Shelton jibed, but then relented. “You’re pale as a ghost, Robyn…. Are you sure you’re okay? Maybe you should come back inside.”

  Robyn shook her head. “I’m fine, really. Thanks.” She let go of the security guard’s steadying arm and turned properly in her seat. She didn’t want to worry him, or trigger a call from her well-meaning psychotherapist, so she made all the proper noises to reassure Shelton that she would be okay.

  She didn’t say, at least out loud, that she was still so angry inside at Keller for dying on her she thought her being a ghost would at least be a better alternative to surviving him. Maybe the movies had it right and Keller was now a ghost. Well, she could be one, too, and together they could haunt the Halls of Justice.

  She bid the guard goodbye, whipped on her sunglasses against the fierce glare of sunlight and sped off. Aspen was at least a four-hour drive, maybe more.

  She wheeled onto Colfax and headed to a neighborhood meat market. She hobbled a bit getting inside. The butcher, Cory Janns, a first cousin of Keller’s, nearly came through the refrigerated display case at the sight of her blackened eye and battered face.

  “Holy cow, Robyn!” he exclaimed, wiping his hands on his white apron. “What happened to you?”

  “A mugger happened to me, Cory.” She worked up a nonchalant smile that hurt her face. “You should see the other guy. Do you think you could give me an ice pack or—“

  “A piece of beefsteak,” he said. “Hold on. I’ll fix you right up.” He slid open a door of the refrigerator case and pulled out a hunk of tenderloin, eyeing her eye. “Jeez. The family’s going to come unglued.”

  She could imagine the Trueblood family brouhaha— not to mention the reaction from Keller’s mother, a powerhouse in local charities who no politician ignored. No doubt the steely lady would soon be demanding the entire Denver police department bring Robyn’s attacker to justice. “Cory, please don’t say anything to May about this. I’m going up to Aspen for a few days—I’m on my way now, in fact.”

  She gave him an imploring look. Cory was a soft touch, and the first to say he was not the brightest star in the Trueblood family firmament. He wasn’t likely to guess why she would be returning to Aspen. “Maybe you’ll cover for me if the family notices I’m gone? Just say I decided to get away for a few days?”

  He frowned. “They’ll notice, all right, but I’ll do what I can.” He carved the meat and packaged it, then came around the refrigerator case to show her how she could hold it by the wrapping paper as a poultice to her black eye.

  She exchanged hugs with Keller’s cousin and departed, crawling back into her coupe. Her slacks were badly smudged, her blouse a wreck and her whole body ached, but she wasn’t going to cave in and cry—or change her plans.

  She turned onto York Street northbound and headed for the highway. She intended to be in the resort ski town by eight o’clock, and further up the mountain, to the eleven-thousand-square-foot home of the late and largely unmourned Spyder Nielsen, by nine.

  This, she knew, was almost certainly Frau Kautz’s last vacation day, giving Robyn the last perfect opportunity to confront Candelaria and Willetts without having to do some exotic end-run around the formidable housekeeper.

  Today was the day. Now was the time.

  Holding the small slice of tenderloin to her cheek, she merged into the heavy afternoon traffic on I-70 westbound. The snarled traffic gave her pause and her cheek ached horribly, and at long last, despite her fierce determination, the folly of her actions back in that parking lot hit her squarely. Tears threatened, and a lump clogged her throat.

  “What’s this about, Robyn?” she chided herself, sorting through her feelings.

  It wasn’t about the emptiness of the antique double sleigh bed she and Keller had shared, though there were nights when she ached for his touch. Nights when, for the sound of his voice or scent of his skin or the taste of his lips, she would have traded anything she possessed.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t have enough friends, enough writing buddies, enough family, to make her feel lookedout-for and encouraged that in time, she would be fine.

  It wasn’t even that she still felt responsible. That if it hadn’t been for her wanting to go poking around the old Hallelujah mine shaft in the mountains surrounding Aspen, Keller would be alive and well today.

  What it came down to was perspective. A year had passed. Keller’s own mother had gotten over his loss. Robyn simply had to pull up her socks and get on with living her life. Keller would want that. Do yourself a favor, he would say, a little auto pro bono.

  Get a life, Robyn….

  The only life she wanted was the o
ne she had shared with Keller, but Robyn had tried. God knew she tried. Why else would she have arranged the small get-together last night? She’d been thinking a ritual gathering like that might be cathartic. That she could finally lay him to rest in her heart with a celebration of the life and times of Keller Trueblood.

  It might all have worked that way, too, if one thing hadn’t led to another, leading Mike Massie to suggest Keller had been murdered.

  Driving in what she had lately decided to call an aggressive manner—better than admitting she was reckless—she darted in and out of clogged rush hour traffic through the heart of Denver. She didn’t know why she bothered justifying her driving to herself. Who cared?

  Who? Really? But the same obnoxious little Jiminy Cricket voice—it wasn’t a voice, but how else was she supposed to describe thoughts popping around in her head that were decidedly not her own?—kept insisting her driving made her an uninsurable, undesirable risk at the wheel.

  She moved in and out of traffic lanes, content to be beating the flow, even signaling each time to prove herself a safe driver—right up until all lanes of traffic came to a screeching halt just before the exits to the town of Golden.

  She switched on the radio to listen for what the delay was all about, but after a few minutes, she turned the radio off and shoved a Rachmaninoff CD into the disk player instead.

  Her bags were packed and stashed in the back seat. Her mind was made up. It really didn’t matter what the radio sky-spies had to say about the traffic, or that she was going to have to stop somewhere and change her clothes.

  She was going to Aspen, and she was going now.

  ATTHE LOGAN STREET address where the Denver Branch of Avenging Angels kept an earthly presence in a small brownstone surrounded by high rises, the office receptionist, Grace, sat at her desk. Part of her job was to steer mortals to other resources should they wander in. Part of it involved running interference for Angelo, head angel of the DBAA.

  Clarence, the Guardian Angel of the human Robyn Delaney, required all Grace’s celestial tact to handle. Angelo wasn’t given to granting run-amok Guardian Angels an audience. Yet Clarence wasn’t going away. Feathers, she thought, were going to fly.

  Gray-haired, blue-eyed, dressed in a tailored white dress only because she missed the old days with the flowing white robes, Grace loved her job. The Avengers were the most exciting of all angels to be around, the ones who worked for truth and justice and got to set things aright in the mortal world. To all appearances they were mortal, as opposed to Clarence here, whose visage was only apparent to other angels.

  There was no hierarchy in heaven that put Avenging Angels above Guardians, or even Cherubs for that matter, but human form was one delicious perk. To have a human body minus the aches and pains and infirmities! Because she worked in this office, Grace got human form as well—even if it was rather…matronly.

  Clarence the Guardian was fit to be tied, though tied with what, Grace couldn’t imagine due to his lack of real substance. Her sense of humor grew sorely tried, and she scowled at his lack of decorum. Clarence’s earthly charge, Robyn Delaney, it seemed, was moving into dangerous territory, and Clarence had apparently arrived at the end of his heavenly tether with her reckless antics.

  “Do try to get a hold of yourself, Clarence,” Grace advised, breathing a grateful sigh of relief when Angelo summoned Clarence to his office. In a flash, the pipingmad little Guardian was gone from her reception area.

  Now, Grace thought, if only Ezekiel would respond to his page…. In a moment of thinking about the Avenging Angel who went by Kiel, he popped in, materializing out of thin air.

  “Gracie!” He gave her a dazzling grin. Ordinary daylight sparkled off his thick, wavy golden red hair, and his eyes reminded Grace of the skies over the Aeolian archipelago in the Mediterranean. “You rang?”

  “On his nibs’ orders,” Grace answered, but she stifled her smile. Popping in as he had done reeked of disregard for rules meant to protect stray mortals from witnessing such unearthly events. It set Grace’s teeth to clacking, too. “If you’re going to materialize, you simply must do it elsewhere and use the door! You’re an Avenger, Kiel,” she reminded him sternly.

  And unnecessarily. He knew his job, had taken to it like a duck to water. In an earth year, he’d avenged well over one hundred injustices, but his penchant for popping in and out unnerved her completely.

  Still, she harbored a soft spot in her angel’s heart for Kiel. Time had little meaning to angels over the millenia, but he had only recently made his transition to the celestial. His leftover earthly sensibilities charmed her angelic socks right off.

  He went around calling the other angels “halos.” Thought it was a catchier acronym than the DBAA. Heaven’s Avengers Local One-o-one, for pity’s sake!

  He grinned as shamelessly as any mortal, and slouched like one. He was one in all save a technical sense, but he flirted like the very devil.

  Grace was immune, naturally, having been around long enough to have bounced Methuselah on her knee, but if she’d ever had a son, which she hadn’t, she’d have picked Ezekiel. On the other hand, she wouldn’t have wanted a daughter anywhere near this earth angel.

  Angelo’s voice boomed out. “Now, Ezekiel?”

  “Here I am—to stand and deliver,” Kiel deadpanned for Grace, slouching against her desk. He materialized a bouquet of miniature pink and purple snapdragons for her vase, and despite her eons, Grace blushed with pleasure.

  It wasn’t on the recommended list of celestial powers to convert energy to matter, but Kiel had energy to burn and a very undeveloped sense of angelic restraint. “Have a good one, Gracie.”

  He bounded up the steps to the second-story balcony and sauntered into Angelo’s office. A little guardian angel who reminded Kiel of Elmer Fudd in a temper tantrum, could hardly contain himself to one place, never mind a chair. Angelo took in Kiel’s presence and introduced him to the Guardian.

  “Ezekiel, DBAA, this is Clarence, DBGA— uh…Guardians, that is. Certainly one of the most…proactive Guardians in the history of the cosmos.”

  Clarence fumed, apparently divining proactive wasn’t exactly meant to be a compliment. “One little traffic jam,” he complained. He toted an abacus of some age, and when he manipulated the beads, his pudgy fingers flew. “One hundred-and-three fender benders. Minor ones at that. So what’s the big deal?”

  By way of answering what was the big deal, Angelo glowered, creating a small burst of light energy. Kiel stifled a grin. Clarence was a dead ringer for the literary depictions of a thirteenth-century monk—potbellied and sporting a fringe of scant hair which circled his rounded head.

  The little Guardian tucked the abacus under his arm and drew himself up to his full three-point-five cubits to launch himself into Angelo’s formidable face.

  “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Bigshot Avenging Angelo,” Clarence went on. “Guardians often have the resources to watch over half a dozen mortals. What do I get? One. Easy, you say? Piece of angel food? Bah! My assignment, bless her demented, grieving little heart, is a bona fide fruitcake who requires my complete and unceasing attention.” He sniffed. “Stopping traffic befitted the occasion.”

  Amused, interested, Kiel dropped his human form into the chair beside Clarence’s. “Stopping traffic?”

  Scowling, Angelo explained. “Clarence, here, in order to delay one mortal being, had traffic backed up on I-70 for thirty miles—“

  “Thirty-two-point-six, to be precise,” Clarence interrupted, adding, “there didn’t seem to be any other way of stopping her. I’m telling you I was not acting outside my reasonable and customary powers.”

  Listening to the little Guardian piping up about his powers, Kiel could still think of a lot less drastic solutions—flat tires, overheated radiators, running out of gas—that would have affected a single mortal rather than hundreds of them. But the little Guardian was clearly at his wits’ end. “What’s happening with your mortal?”

  C
larence sighed. “She’s a dear girl—I’ll say that right up front—but her husband died a year ago, and she’s simply inconsolable. Can’t say as I blame her, actually.” He whipped out his abacus again and set the beads to crashing back and forth. “The odds against finding that kind of happiness—“

  “Are astronomical, I’m sure,” Angelo interrupted to forestall the complex calculations.

  “Exactly,” Clarence said, aggrieved to be cut off so summarily from his favorite occupation. “In fact, just this afternoon I popped a warning bubble over Robyn’s head citing the precise odds of getting away with defying muggers, which she completely ignored.”

  Kiel didn’t bother smothering his grin. This mortalGuardian assignment sounded like the mismatch of the ages. One for the millenia.

  “She jaywalks,” Clarence hurried on. “She drives like a bat out of you-know-where. She ignores common sense warnings, fights back when she shouldn’t—she got a terrible shiner this very afternoon…. Terrible, I’m telling you.”

  Kiel’s amusement faded. “You couldn’t have prevented that?”

  Clarence rolled his eyes. “If Guardians could prevent human beings from their folly, we wouldn’t need Avengers, now, would we? Mortals have their free will, you know.”

  Kiel gave a shrug; Clarence was right.

  “Now,” he squeaked, racing on, “she’s got it in her head that her husband was murdered. If I didn’t stop her, in a few hours she’d be in Aspen asking questions.”

  “And the problem with that would be what?” Kiel asked.

  “Serious, that’s what!” Clarence sputtered. “Pretty soon, whoever killed her husband would have to kill her to shut her up. You don’t know Robyn. She won’t quit. She’ll end up getting herself killed, and then I’ll be answering to St. Peter.”