Angel Face

by Suzanne Forster

  It was cutting edge stuff, but Steve Lloyd had relinquished the blade and let her handle most of it, and she’d done them both proud. He was so pleased he’d suggested a celebratory dinner before they were out of the operating room, although she suspected he would have seized on any reason.

  “Who needs Jordan Carpenter,” he said now, winking at her as they discarded their gowns and gloves. “We have the dream team right here.”

  Exactly Teri’s thoughts. She wondered if he had any idea how much she wanted to shout that very sentiment to the heavens. She’d long felt that Carpenter was vastly overrated, but the glare of the spotlight on him seemed to have blinded everyone except her.

  “Only two solo flights,” she said, appropriately modest, “but it’s a start.”

  “Could be the start of something big.”

  He actually winked at her. How corny. Teri smiled at his obvious interest and pretended to be flustered, although if she was glowing from anything, it was from the thrill of victory. Steve was nice enough, but he didn’t compare to the pure adrenaline high of open heart surgery. Nothing could.

  A moment later, they were standing side by side at the SICU sink, washing up. Teri had known for some time that he was attracted to her; however, there was one annoying little complication. He was married. Unhappily, of course, but Teri didn’t think it wise to get involved for many reasons. She’d put him off while being careful not to discourage him too much. It was a delicate balancing act for an ambitious woman in her profession, but she was learning to play that game nearly as adeptly as she was learning to excel at intricate surgical procedures. Soon she might invent a new procedure of her own and become as famous as Carpenter.

  Teri reached for a towel. “I hear Jordan had some kind of emergency,” she said, hoping Steve would fill her in on the details. She’d heard from the charge desk that Jordan would be out for a couple of days on urgent personal business, but no one seemed to know what the urgency was all about. Teri had noticed that he was distracted lately, which wasn’t like Jordan at all, and she’d been doing some investigating on her own. Nothing would have pleased her more than a Jordan Carpenter screwup, the bigger the better.

  “I talked to him briefly.” Steve splashed water on his face, then grabbed a towel and began to dry off. “He was on his way to the airport, and he assured me there was nothing to worry about, but that’s all he would say. Jordan and I don’t discuss personal stuff, so I wasn’t surprised. He asked me to take his calls and the valve repair that’s scheduled this week, and he recommended you highly for any CABGs that couldn’t be rescheduled.”

  The glaring lights gave Steve’s mahogany crew cut a spiky halo and his smile a slightly fiendish cast. “He didn’t limit it to bypass procedures, Teri. He wants you on the valve team as well.”

  “Really?” Teri was pleased, although she didn’t understand Jordan’s recent change of attitude regarding her, nor did she trust it. He’d never had confidence in her abilities, despite her efforts to be at the top of her game at all times. He clearly didn’t see her as fellowship material, and she’d been overlooked at the awards dinner every year, snubs she could never forget.

  It didn’t matter that he hadn’t thrown roadblocks in her way. His humiliating lack of support had been the main obstacle to her ascendance. He didn’t see her as his worthy successor, and for no good reason that she could tell, other than the typical ego problems that too many male doctors still harbored, especially surgeons. Most of them were arrogant bastards who didn’t think women belonged in the OR, except as support staff.

  “So,” Steve said, taking her wet towel and lobbing it along with his into a laundry bin. “How about that dinner?”

  “Tonight?” Why not, she thought. Who knew what could come of an alliance with the second most powerful doctor in the hospital. It wasn’t part of her grand plan, it just made everything so much easier, as did Carpenter’s odd behavior and his disappearance. The key was being ready, and now that opportunities were finally coming her way, she was more than ready.

  This morning, she’d had an early appointment to get her hair cut, but not at just any salon. She’d gone to the one where Jordan’s little sister had her goldilocks shorn. Teri had been doing reconnaissance on Jordan for some time, and as it turned out, his sis was quite a talker. Teri hadn’t learned the details of Jordan’s mystery trip, but she had picked up several bits of information that should come in handy as things unfolded.

  If Jordan Carpenter had finally seen the light with regard to her, he’d seen it too late, she vowed. And he would be sorry. It was cold and dark where he was going. Some people might call it a fall from grace. Others would call it a descent into hell.

  * * *

  PENNY had a key to the place only because she’d refused to give it back to Jordan. A man who couldn’t remember to pay his light bills didn’t deserve privacy, in her opinion. Besides, somebody had to take care of the bird.

  Speaking of which, she gave the cockatiel a stern look.

  “You have had your last sunflower seed, my fine feathered friend.”

  Birdy answered with a sharp little squawk as her favorite treat was whisked out from under her beak.

  “I’ll be right back with some delicious Cockatiel Total Diet Seed,” Penny said in a cajoling tone. She got tail feathers for her trouble. When Birdy was miffed, she scolded. When she was really miffed, she did a one eighty on her perch, and you got the rear view.

  But Penny didn’t relent. She’d been meaning to talk with Jordan about nutrition anyway, his and Birdy’s, so she might as well start with the bird. Jordan fed Birdy nothing but sunflower seeds, arguing that she liked them, which was just wrong. You couldn’t let a kid live on candy because he liked it, although Jordan had made frequent attempts to subsist on malted milk balls when he was in grade school.

  Penny could have the cockatiel clean, sober, and firmly established on a balanced diet before Jordan got back from Mexico City, where he’d dashed off on some urgent business, according to his mysterious phone message. Then she would go to work on Jordan, a much bigger project. But Penny had never lacked for confidence when it came to knowing what was best for people. And it didn’t bother her that she might be interfering, because the interfered-with one was inevitably better off for it. A lost art, interference. She’d often thought there should be some way to make a living at it.

  “I’m going to spank you!”

  “Over my dead body,” Penny informed the bird.

  “Over my dead body, my dead body—”

  She left the cockatiel chattering and headed for the kitchen with the sunflower seeds. On the way, she stopped and scooped up some dirty dishes from the coffee table. He’d also deposited a half-drunk cup of coffee on the corner hutch, and only by the grace of God had it not left a ring on their mother’s prized golden maple furniture. The matching console was decorated with a still-moist banana peel. She made a face as she collected the refuse. At least he was getting some nutrition.

  “This place needs a good spring cleaning,” she announced loudly from the kitchen, putting her absent brother and Birdy on notice that things were going to be different around the old homestead in more ways than one. Maybe she would dig in and surprise Jordan when he got back. She loved doing stuff behind his back for the simple reason that he couldn’t stop her.

  “Revolting,” she murmured, piling the dishes in the overloaded double sink. Their long-suffering mother had used the term to describe the state of her two children’s bedrooms when they were growing up, and it had become Jordan and Penny’s official greeting whenever they saw each other.

  “Revohhhhhhlting!” they would exclaim, competing to express the most horror at the other’s revoltingness.

  Penny’s gag reflex had won her the prize every time. But eventually they’d grown into bigger and better things, and a new adjective had been necessary by their teens: incorrigible. Jordan had reigned supreme with that one. He’d been the king of incorrigible.

 
“Rrrrrrrrrrrruf,” came a bark from the other room. Birdy was doing her dog imitation.

  Penny resisted barking back. The cockatiel didn’t need any encouragement, and besides, Penny was in the mood to let her thoughts drift and go where they would. She loaded the dishwasher with a sense of bemusement as she recalled her brother’s wilder days. It used to annoy the spit out of her when the girls at school fawned over Jordan. Some of them were sneaky enough to befriend her just to get invited to the house, where the silly idiots would simper and giggle whenever Jordan noticed them. And he took full advantage, the fiend.

  Things had come too easily for her big brother, and that had worried Penny, who was closer to him than anyone else. He was smart and quick and square of jaw, with cobalt eyes rumored to induce fainting spells. It was a miracle he finished college the way women threw themselves at him. But Jordan was no saint. He took advantage of his mystique when he saw the riches it could bring him, cutting a swath through the female population with a recklessness that invited disaster. And when it struck, it was far worse than Penny could have imagined.

  Jordan briefly dallied with a neighborhood girl who’d been infatuated with him for years. She was too young and vulnerable, and he knew it, but when he broke it off, she became desperate and depressed. No one, including Jordan, realized how despondent she was until she took her own life. It was a brutal lesson in accountability, and for better or worse, Jordan was never the same. He couldn’t drift anymore. He had to find a way to deal with the tragedy, and medical school became the outlet. He’d been accepted primarily because of his genius for inventing, but he threw himself into his studies, forgoing dating or anything that resembled a romantic relationship with a woman.

  His dedication made him the surgeon he was today, but his quest to save lives had caused Penny to wonder if he was trying to make up for one so needlessly lost. As quests go, it was probably a good one, but she worried that he would never have the love and intimacy in his life that everyone deserved. He seemed unable to resolve his guilt, and he was driven to fix the unfixable.

  “Jordan needs some lovin’,” Penny advised Birdy as she returned to the living room with some Total Diet bird seed. “And you can tell him that for me.”

  Penny considered taking Birdy home with her while Jordan was gone, but there went her excuse to drop in and snoop. No, this was too good an opportunity, and she hadn’t yet given up on her own quest, which was to see that her brother had a fulfilling life, whether he wanted one or not. She was certain there would be no lack of interested women if Jordan would only cooperate . . . and there was that simply lovely dark-haired girl at the salon that other morning.

  “This could be fate,” she mused. “We were next to each other at the shampoo bowls, this adorable young woman and I, and she asked if I was any relation to Dr. Jordan Carpenter. I have no idea how she knew me, but I didn’t see any reason not to tell her that I was Jordan’s sister, and it turned out that she was a doctor, too! A surgeon, I think she said. We didn’t get to talk long, but I had the feeling she was quite interested in Jordan.”

  “Here kitty, kitty, kitty!”

  “Birdy, pay attention. Do you love it? I may have found someone for Jordan. Or she may have found me.”

  Birdy chattered away, amusing herself by alternately calling the kitty and barking like a dog. Penny was about to muzzle the bird when suddenly the cockatiel went quiet.

  “Who’s there?” Birdy said.

  Penny glanced over her shoulder at the front door. She hadn’t heard anyone on the porch, and the steps were known to creak loudly. She would have dismissed it, but Birdy had gone preternaturally still, and her behavior was so odd that Penny turned all the way around and looked at the door. What was wrong with the silly creature? She walked to the door and switched on the porch light before opening it.

  “No one there, see?” She waved her hand toward the empty threshold and gave Birdy a look that said, Happy now? Actually, Penny was relieved. The bird had her going, as did all the serial killer stuff Jordan was involved in. And now he’d run off somewhere. She didn’t know what she was going to tell their parents if they called, but obviously she would cover for him. She always had.

  She was about to shut the door when she saw something in the mirror across the room. It was a reflection from the window behind her, a watery sensation of movement. It could have been nothing, a tree branch, or it could have been someone walking alongside the house. Damn, she hated this sort of thing. It seemed silly to call 911 at this stage. It probably was nothing, but where was Jordan, anyway? And why hadn’t he done anything more than leave her a cryptic message before he took off, asking her to take care of the bird?

  A rustling sound caught her attention, and she was instantly on guard. She really had heard something this time, and it had come from out front. She peered through the open door, and then quietly let herself out onto the porch. It could be anything, a neighbor’s pet. Still, she was uneasy as she searched the darkness.

  “Who’s there?”

  As she started for the steps, a runner darted from the bushes. He was headed for the front gate and obviously male by the way he was built and his spiky crew cut. Penny dashed down the steps to get a better look. Jordan had often accused her of being fearless, and he would have cited this move as proof, she knew.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” she called out.

  Something whipped past her and hit one of the porch columns with a sharp crack. Penny nearly fell over, trying to get out of the missile’s way, and by the time she caught her balance, the runner was gone. He’d banged out the gate and melted into the darkness.

  “Heeeeeeeere’s Johnny,” Birdy called from inside.

  On the way back into the house, Penny saw what the man had thrown at her. There was a large rock near the doorway. She was lucky it hadn’t hit her, although she doubted that was his goal. She would have been an easy enough target with the light from the house behind her. He was probably trying to keep her from seeing him because he didn’t want to be identified for some reason.

  She would love to have known why.

  CHAPTER 13

  IT astounded her that she knew exactly how to interrogate a hostage. The steps were right there in her head: First render him helpless physically. Then work on his mind. Take control of every aspect of his existence. Keep him under surveillance at all times, and make him dependent on you for everything, even his personal hygiene. Feed him, clothe him, groom him and accompany him to the bathroom. The more private his needs, the more vulnerable and exposed he is.

  Insist that he follow your orders to the letter. Mete out punishment when he doesn’t and rewards when he does. For maximum venerability, confiscate all of his property, including his clothing. Restrain him naked and use food and water as a reward. Starvation and thirst are powerful motivators.

  Angela stood above him, staring down at her prisoner and marveling that she could have subdued such a large, powerful man—and now an angry one. Her arms ached from securing the ropes, but keeping him down was imperative if she wanted to stay alive and in control long enough to carry out her plan. She not only knew how to restrain a hostage, she knew the desperate tricks they could pull.

  He wasn’t naked, but he would be if all else failed.

  Getting him to the hut from the truck had been an exercise in willpower, gut strength, and the mechanics of movement. She’d found an old wooden wheelbarrow in the bed, and she’d leveraged her weight against the leg supports to get him into the tray, then she’d alternately pushed and pulled the barrow to the hut. It had seemed the most efficient way to move him, but the effort had exhausted her. She was still feverishly damp and weak.

  Stress, she told herself. Stress, hunger, and the heat. The air was so thick with moisture it clung to her like a veil, and the back of her neck was constantly damp with perspiration. She couldn’t be getting sick, but if she were, she would have to fight her way through it.

  Carpenter thrashed at her feet, straining to
break his bonds. Thank God she’d tightened and reinforced the knots. And known how to tie them in the first place. Not grannies, they would loosen if tugged on. These had to be square knots. Right over left and under, left over right . . .

  “Take off this blindfold,” he snarled. “Get me out of these ropes and deal with me face-to-face.”

  “The way you dealt with me face-to-face? You, the man who sneaks up behind women, forces them into armlocks, and muzzles them?”

  “Not any woman,” he retorted, “just one with an obsession for murdering doctors in cold blood, starting with her own father.”

  Angela froze. He did know about her. But not what he claimed, not everything. That was impossible.

  Something inside her began to burn, an icy sensation just behind her ribs. It was hot enough to sear a hole through bone. And then the shaking began, so abruptly she had to lock her spine to keep the tremors under control. If he hadn’t tipped his hand, she probably couldn’t have done it. He’d done her a favor, she realized, because any sympathy she might have had for his pain was gone. When the shaking was over, there would be nothing left but cold purpose and determination.

  He had come down here to stop her, but he was the one who would be stopped. She would learn every detail of his mission, including whether or not he was associated with SmartTech, and she would settle for nothing less than that. The truth. She wanted the truth about everything, even the terrifying things she’d erased from her own mind.

  He’d said he knew what she couldn’t remember. What else could that mean but that he was associated with the biotechnology community, probably involved in intelligence gathering or medical experimentation, like her foster father?

  He breathed out one last violent word and lay still, but he was not resting. He was thinking, calculating.