Angel Face

by Suzanne Forster

  “Where will the tunnel take me?”

  Angela hesitated, but there was no answer.

  “Don’t let the flame go out,” was all the whisperer would say.

  A breath of cool air told her the person had risen and gone. She caught a glimpse of robe disappearing through an archway that led to another part of the mission, but that was all she could see.

  Angela didn’t know whether to follow the person or follow the instructions. Mines and tunnels could be death traps, but Silver had sent her here, and Angela couldn’t believe Silver would knowingly put her in danger. They weren’t friends in the usual sense, but their unspoken understanding was as old as the impulse to rescue a family member in peril. Neither could have escaped without the other’s help. They owed each other their lives. And Silver was the only person Angela trusted.

  Those were the thoughts in Angela’s head as she walked up the center aisle. Silver had gone to Córdoba for supplies, but something must have happened to make her think Angela wasn’t safe, and she’d sent word through Pedro. Still, Angela had gnawing doubts. If only she could talk with her friend.

  The candle wick crackled as she lit it. It caught fire immediately, and for a moment, the flame was all she could see. Kneel at the altar as if you were going to pray, the voice had said. The tiny torch flared, and wax melted into a hot pool, giving up a pungent smell. It permeated the air.

  She stared at the fire, trying to quiet her mind.

  Tell me what to do, she thought.

  Silence was her only answer, and the longer she stared, the more impenetrable it became. If there was a response out there, she couldn’t hear it, but her thoughts had begun a drumbeat of their own.

  Go back to the ranch, talk to Silver first, it’s not safe.

  She’d just set the candle back in the tray when a faint noise alerted her. It sounded like shouts in the distance, but they were getting louder. Someone was coming toward the mission—a man, maybe even more than one. She couldn’t understand what they were saying, but their voices were angry, and they were getting closer. They might even be running.

  There was a thud against the mission door, and Angela panicked. The arch was the only other exit, and it was too far away, so she thrust her pack inside the passageway, slipped in behind it, and waited for the panel door to close behind her. When the men were gone, she would let herself back out.

  The candle flickered wildly as the panel slid shut. Angela cupped the flame with her hand, fearing it would go out. She couldn’t hear anything through the door, but perhaps whoever entered had gone silent out of respect—if they had entered. The waiting was terrible. Finally, she began to count in thousands, trying to get some sense of how long she would be there, huddled in the dark. One thousand, two thousand, three . . .

  When she got into the high five figures, she gave up and began rationalizing why the noises had nothing to do with her. It was probably a fight among the villagers or someone who’d come into the church to pray and then left. She’d entombed herself in this dark, dank hole for nothing.

  None of that completely erased her fears, but finally the suspense got the best of her. Preparing herself for what might be waiting on the other side, she pressed the fingertips of her free hand against the rotting wood. With enough pressure she could slide it open. That was what she told herself, but it wouldn’t go. She couldn’t budge it.

  Carefully she set the candle down next to her, freeing up both hands. She pressed left and right, up and down, but the door wouldn’t move. It had closed and sealed behind her. She was trapped. A moan of despair rushed out. As she sat back on her haunches, the guttering candle threw wild shadows.

  “No,” she breathed, “no!” Angela watched in horror as the wavering flame nearly died. She bent and sheltered it with her hands. There was no way to relight it if it went out. Please, don’t let it go out.

  But this time she was on the wrong side of the altar. The fading flame went cold, plunging Angela into the blackest depths she’d ever encountered.

  WASthat light? A pale beam quivered and was gone. It was mist more than light, and Angela thought she was hallucinating. She couldn’t see her own hand as she waved it in front of her. The tunnel had enveloped her in absolute darkness. The air was so gritty and dank she couldn’t breathe, and the passageway wasn’t tall enough for her to stand up. She’d been down on all fours, crawling through dirt and rocks for what felt like miles.

  “. . . hundreds of silver mines in the valley, and the tunnels still exist . . .” That was what the whispering voice had said. Hundreds. She would be lost in this hellhole forever.

  She fell against the wall and sank to a sitting position, resting against the pack she’d strapped on. She was too tired to worry about the filth or any of the other disgusting things that might be crawling around. She needed to think instead of striking out wildly. The darkness wasn’t going to eat her alive if she stopped to catch her balance. But it did feel that way. It felt as if she would die in here. And maybe that’s what they intended.

  A tremor hit her rib cage. It was as sharp and painful as an electrical shock, and it touched every raw nerve ending. But with the pain came some kind of release, and when the shaking had subsided, she was calmer. Even her breathing had slowed, and the sound of it brought a sense of control.

  “Was that light?” she asked the void.

  Her hand moved slowly through space, in search of the shimmer of phosphorescence. The brain had stores of sensory memory and its own kind of tracking radar that came into play when normal vision was blocked. Angela could see nothing, but her concentration was so intense, she nearly missed the faint beam that touched her bare knee. It glimmered and was gone, but she had seen it this time. There was light coming from somewhere farther down the tunnel. She must be nearing the end.

  Maybe this wasn’t a trap. Maybe she wasn’t meant to die in here after all.

  She began to move again, scrambling awkwardly on all fours and wincing as the rocks stabbed her hands and knees. She hit a wall, and the tunnel took a sharp turn. There she saw light pouring through the wooden slats of an opening high above her.

  The climb was steep. The rocks that had cut her were now her only salvation. They served as foot- and handholds, but they were hard to find and so far apart she often couldn’t use them. Mostly there was only crumbling clay. Angela hadn’t realized she’d been that deep underground, and her strength nearly failed her before she got to the top. Her arms and legs ached, trying to hold her, and her chest spasmed, desperate for oxygen.

  She pushed and shoved at the barrier but couldn’t move it, and there was nowhere to get solid footing. Terrified she was going to fall back down the shaft, she heaved up one last time with her head and shoulders, butting the wood.

  The slats flew open before she’d even hit them. A hand caught hers and pulled her up from the shaft. She was dizzy from the light and the blood rushing from her head. When her feet hit the ground, she crumpled in a heap and lay there, gasping, totally unaware of the shadow that had fallen across her body. . . or the robed figure standing above her.

  “WHERE are we going?” Angela asked, shivering under the blanket that had been thrown over her. Why am I cold when it’s so hot and humid outside?

  Her question was drowned out by the rattles and bangs of the old pickup truck that was lurching into the heart of a dense tropical jungle. Not that the driver would have answered her anyway. She’d refused to get in the truck until he explained in broken English that he was taking her to the sea where there would be el barco waiting, which she knew was Spanish for boat. But that was as much as she’d gotten out of him. She still hadn’t caught a glimpse of his face, and all she could imagine was one of Silver’s death masks. His other responses, when he bothered to answer her, had been muffled by the hood of his robe.

  She’d been too exhausted from the tunnel, and too grateful to be out of it, to argue with him. He’d made no attempt to restrain or physically threaten her in any way. He only seem
ed to want to help, but a warning had flashed in Angela’s brain after he’d put her into the truck and started off.

  “Don’t ever let them take you to another location.”

  She didn’t know when or where she’d heard it, but she could almost imagine the voice of the person who warned her. It was someone significant in her life, someone who’d wanted to impress that message on her mind, perhaps above all others. She sensed that much, but the rest of it was as dark and submerged as the mine she’d just escaped. It was too late to heed the warning anyway, but it would keep her alert while she was regaining her strength.

  The side windows of the truck were broken out, and warm, wet air flooded through, pasting ribbons of dark hair against her cheeks. It carried the steamy fragrances of freshly drenched soil and rampant vegetation. Angela peered out at the dark tangle of trees and vines that enclosed the road in another kind of tunnel. The entire world was a deep emerald green, except for the occasional exotic bird or animal that appeared on a low-hanging branch.

  Angela could smell flowers, too, cloyingly sweet. Jasmine or wild orchids, perhaps, but she couldn’t see them. The jungle hid far more than it revealed, she knew, and the thought of what might be lurking in its wild, rank interior made her chilly all over again.

  She pulled the blanket around her, wondering if she was getting sick. She’d given herself a tetanus shot at Silver’s, but had she taken the antibiotic? She couldn’t remember now. Besides that, the tunnel was probably a breeding ground for poisonous insects and snakes. If she was having a reaction to the shot itself, then it was just a question of waiting it out. But if she’d developed an infection at the shot site or was coming down with some tropical disease, she would need medical help.

  The muscles of her arms and legs ached feverishly, and she was too fuzzy-headed to know how long they’d been driving, but it felt like days. The trip from San Luis to the Gulf of Mexico was probably around ten hours by road, and that seemed to be the direction they were heading.

  When she closed her eyes, it was with the solemn promise that it would only be for a moment. A quick nap would restore her strength and her ability to think. She would be able to deal with this once she’d had some rest, but the exhaustion was profound, and darkness was folding over her like a wave.

  THE child tried to hide the doll under her pillow, but her father saw it and ripped the pillow away. “What have we here?” he said. “This is the one you don’t want me to break? This one is special?” She stared at him, terrified and knowing. Eloise was the doll with the crooked smile that she held in her arms at night and told secrets to. It was the only thing in her life that made her feel safe.

  “Do you know what you did wrong?” he asked. She didn’t know. She never knew. He snapped off the doll’s head and dropped it in the child’s lap. Then he broke off the arms and the legs. “You make me do these things,” he said in a tone of cold, crawling disgust. “You make me hurt things. . . .”

  BRAKES locked and shrieked, propelling Angela forward. She fell against the dash and rocked back, tossed by the shuddering pickup truck.

  They’d hit something, she realized groggily, but she couldn’t see what. There weren’t any other vehicles, and it didn’t appear to be an injured animal, so it must have been something on the road. The driver was already out of the truck and walking around the front. He disappeared from sight as he knelt to inspect the damage, but she could hear him muttering.

  “Christ,” he said under his breath, “the tire’s blown.”

  He was up again, striding around to the bed of the truck. Angela closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep, but she was shaking from nerves that had nothing to do with the accident. Apparently there were tools in the back, because he was making a great deal of noise. A metal box scraped across the bed and clanged against the side. A short time later, she felt the pickup rise and tilt, which meant he was occupied with the blowout.

  Fighting dizziness, she let herself out and crept around the back of the truck. There were rusty gardening tools in the bed. She spotted a pick and a large shovel. She chose the shovel, gripping it in both hands as she approached the driver from behind. He shifted his weight, and an impulse came over her that she could hardly control. The dizziness was gone. The lethargy was gone, replaced by a powerful surge of energy. She swung the heavy shovel up and brought it down on his head with a strength she didn’t understand.

  His head snapped back, but his body slumped forward. Other than a faint moan, he fell soundlessly. She tossed away the shovel and stared at his sprawled form for some time, studying his breathing. When she was certain he was really unconscious, she knelt next to him. She checked the pulse in his neck first to make sure he was still alive, and then she pulled down the hood of his robe.

  The steel gray hair and handsome face told her she’d been right. Blown-out tires wouldn’t normally inspire an Hispanic monk to speak in perfect English. Her driver was Dr. Jordan Carpenter.

  CHAPTER 12

  JORDAN’S head felt like a grenade had discharged inside it. There was nothing left but throbbing, smoking nerve endings. As headaches went, this one was a grand mal. A groan forced out of him as he tried to sit up. He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t even move, but it wasn’t because of the headache. His problems were bigger than that, he realized.

  He was tied up, blindfolded, and lying on the floor of what seemed to be a grass hut. He could smell the straw and bamboo. He was practically facedown in it. Someone had trussed him up like a steer in a rodeo event, and the last person he was with was—Christ—Angela Lowe. She couldn’t have done this. Even if she’d knocked him out and tied him up, she wasn’t physically capable of carrying him here by herself. It seemed more likely that she’d been knocked out, too. Maybe they were both being held hostage.

  High levels of stress, the kind that interfered with most people’s thought processes, had always honed Jordan’s. It was a skill he’d discovered in medical school and perfected as a surgical resident. Now he used it to scan his surroundings and detect anything that would help him identify his location. In the past he’d volunteered time to Doctors Without Borders, which had brought him down this way and given him some familiarity with the area. He could hear the rumble of ocean waves and smell the rank, steamy air, which probably meant they were somewhere near the Gulf of Mexico, where he’d been heading with Angela.

  It sounded like they were on the beach, but the constant chatter of birds and monkeys told him they weren’t out of the jungle, either. They could be almost anywhere on the gulf, even the southern border near Belize. The dead air was moist and slightly cooler than the jungle, but still ungodly hot. Jordan’s cargo shorts and cotton T-shirt clung to his body in patches, and the blindfold was making him sweat, but the robe he’d worn to disguise himself was gone, as were his shoes.

  A floral fragrance saturated every breath he took. It was rich and intoxicating, as heavy as a mist. But one marker stood out in Jordan’s mind above all the others—the deep, throaty calls of mourning doves. The man he’d rented the truck from had said they were actually howler monkeys, and at night their forlorn cries could be piercing.

  Jordan moved and felt the iron strength of his bonds. Whoever tied him up knew what they were doing. The ropes were looped repeatedly around his wrists and ankles, and they were tight enough to cut off his circulation. It felt like his shoulders were being reamed with a hot drill bit. He moved again, but there was no give at all.

  He still didn’t think it could be Angela Lowe who’d done this. He didn’t know too many women who were experts at knot-tying, but then he didn’t know any female serial killers.

  “Oh . . . you’re awake.”

  That was a woman’s voice, close to him, whispering in his ear from behind him. He could feel her breath, the softness of her body, the warmth. She exuded incredible warmth.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Nobody’s going to get hurt.” Her whispers lilted almost tauntingly. “I just want to ask you some
questions.”

  The voice was familiar, but it didn’t sound like Angela. Or was it the words that were familiar? Hadn’t he said them once? Still, he sensed it was her, and that she wasn’t bound like he was.

  “Untie me.” His own voice was so raw he had to whisper, too.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “The ropes, they’re too tight.”

  “Turn so I can get at your arms,” she urged softly.

  She nudged him forward, and he tried to do what she wanted. Either he was delirious or she smelled like the lilacs on his porch at home. Wild lilacs. The kind that made him dizzy, and he was dizzy now.

  Jordan waited for her to loosen the ties. If he could get some play in the ropes, he might be able to twist his way out of them, but he couldn’t figure out what she was doing back there. His hands were tied behind him, but it didn’t feel like she was loosening anything.

  The answer arched his body like a bow. She tugged on his bound wrists, pulling them up by the tails of the rope. The pressure was wrenching. It forced a moan out of him and fire burned up and down his arms.

  Next he felt something press against his butt. Her shoe? It had the tread of a boot, and that made for an extraordinary image in his mind—her getting leverage by prop-ping a foot against his backside. But leverage for what? The ropes yanked again, harder this time, harder, harder, lifting his arms in the air.

  He got out a question. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Just making sure you’re comfortable, Doctor.”

  A massive grunt brought Jordan up off the floor. She wasn’t loosening the goddam ropes. She was pulling them tighter.

  TERI Benson was on a roll. Two coronary artery bypass grafts in a row without a hitch. Judy Monahan’s bypass had gone off beautifully. The affected arteries were now clean as a whistle, and Judy had all but danced on her hospital bed in Recovery. Just now Teri and Steve Lloyd had finished a beating heart surgery, a procedure in which the operation is performed directly on a beating heart through a small incision in the chest.