by Gary Sapp
Everything that woman had done was manipulated or calculated to serve some preordained goal or goals no matter how randomized it seemed.
So Angel had thanked Sheridan kindly for his gestures but warned him at the same time that he, Christopher and any FBI forces available to them had better exhaust any remaining resources to find Serena before she fulfilled these goals.
She politely asked a staff member about the whereabouts of her husband. The woman shook her head no; she’d never worked with a Dr. Seth Dupree. A second staff member, a stout man, hastily excused himself saying he had no time for this right now. Both looked as if they’d worked for hours on end without relief.
Victims of the previous nights’ events were still being wheeled into the facility at an alarming rate. Whether they were all local or regional Angel could not readily ascertain. All she did know is that she was at least partially responsible for this mess. And Sheridan has every right to want me under heavy surveillance.
The Georgia Dome floor was a bustle of activity. Doctors and nurses ran here and about. Angel’s personal detail struggled to match her pace even with her damned limp growing more and more pronounced as she tired. She thought it might even be fun to try and ditch them, but chose not to—at least for now.
She finally garnered a young woman’s attention who was taking a smoke break in an unauthorized area. One of her escorts flashed his badge at the woman. And Angel vowed not to take no for an answer regardless to the consequences of such a stand.
The woman exhaled smoke through her nose while nodding yes, she knew Dr. Dupree and informed Angel that the surgeon himself had become one of the dome’s patents after passing out and suffering a concussion. She used her cigarette to point Angel in the general direction where he would be recovering and Angel began to limp on with her security detail still in tow right behind her.
As she neared the next door Angel actually started running.
The doctor stopped only when she’d reached the section that housed 20 beds nearly side by die in what the duty nurse termed non-life threating injury status. Angel heard her threesome halting their progress behind her. One of the men was cursing beneath his breath; the female agent got close and reminded the doctor that they were here for her protection. How in the hell could they do their jobs effectively if…
Angel ignored the federal agent. She was doing her usual job of pissing off the FBI and doing it well. She scanned the room and the sick people in those beds as best as she could. Angle didn’t see her husband in one of them—at least at first glance. She took a long second look and wasn’t having any better luck.
What if that nurse had been in error?
What if Seth were on another floor in this facility alone, or hurt, or even dead?
Angel wanted to apologize to him for the way she talked to him before she embarked on this adventure here in Atlanta with the FBI. She figured that he’d come here because of her, he had come to Atlanta to be close to her.
She wanted to tell him that she loved him for it.
Maybe it wasn’t too late for her to be a better wife, a better woman.
Maybe she was saving the best of her for last.
Maybe she could come home again.
“Seth…”
She saw him lying in the fifth bed to the left and wondered how she missed seeing him before. She felt tears dropping down wetting her cheeks with his recognition. She’d cried more in the past 24 hours than the last 24 years of her life, but that was okay. It proved that she was human after all.
And if her husband was following a script, Dr. Seth Dupree opened his gray eyes when he heard her crying. She could see him twisting his head around to locate where in the hell he was.
“Angel,”
She got to her husband’s side as quickly as the obstacles of the other beds and the working medical personnel allowed her to. She reached over and hugged him gently at first…but it was Seth how squeezed her tightly with all of the love and expectation of a man who thought that he’d lost someone that he loved dearly.
But she knew that it was even more than that.
Angel knew that her husband Seth never had seen her cry before.
“My sweet Angel, I never thought that I would see you again. There were so many times that I thought that you’d…so many times that I wondered if you had…
He didn’t finish his thought. Instead he pulled her close to him and they shared a long passionate kiss.
“Are you hurt, Angel?” Seth looked her over, forever the doctor. “Did they hurt you? Did she hurt you?”
Angel wondered if Seth meant the FBI or Pandora when he asked his first question. The second question caused her to arch a brow. He must have been talking about the female agent that Sheridan had assigned to her side right now. There was no possible way that he knew about her issues with Roxanne Sanchez. Anyhow, there was plenty of time to satisfy their curiosity over the others activities since their last meeting later.
“I’m fine, sweetheart.” She brushed the gray in his hair and felt the knot there from his fall. “Trust me, Seth, I’m fine. How are you?”
“I’m good, really. How did you find me?”
“Christopher,” She smiled and pointed at the FBI Agents with her. “He told me that he saw you here earlier.”
Seth looked as if he was searching his memory banks and they were beginning to overflow with recollections that he’d experienced over the past hours.
And then the dark shadow of trepidation looked to consume the Gray Man…but the moment passed as quickly as it came.
My God, Seth, Angel kissed his fingers. My God what have you seen?
“I blacked out.” He said as quickly as he could manage. “I can remember that much. One of the attending physicians recommended that I rest.”
Seth laughed and Angel joined him.
Well, maybe you’ll take the doctor’s advice this time” Angel said as she felt more tears fell. She ran her fingers along his hairy cheeks and jaw. He had purple bruises there. There were bruises over his left eye and on the side of his neck and head. One mere fall hadn’t caused all of this. What have you been through? Who hurt you? Had any of this have to do with his search for her over the past days? The mere thought of the potential truth caused her to ache inside even more.
“I don’t know how to apologize to you enough, Seth. I don’t know how to say I’m sorry enough for the things that I said to you the last time we quarreled.”
Seth shook his head.
“Just know that I love you, Angel.” He said. “That fact has only grown stronger since the last time I saw you.”
“I know.”
Another memory stirred him enough to cause him to sit up. He glanced over her shoulder and saw the FBI Agents and intentionally lowered his tone.
“New friends of yours,”
“More like old ones reincarnated,” Angel matched his tone. “It’s a long story.”
He nodded, said, “My last patient was your friend Christopher Prince’s partner, one of them, Agent Tabitha Blue. Do you think your friends could inquire about an update of one of their own?”
“No change,” Angel confirmed with the female agent after she’d returned ten minutes later. Seth bit back a smile. Her husband was one of the finest surgeons in this region and even working while nearly exhausted she knew he was more than competent in his duties. “The doctor who assisted you during the procedure complimented you on a wondrous job. Christopher talked with the man personally. He said that you more than save Agent Blue’s life, your work guaranteed her a full recovery. That fact was up in the air for much of the procedure.”
Seth’s look turned sour as if he’d bitten into a lemon.
“I hope that I haven’t delayed the inevitable.”
Angel hugged his head again.
“You did your very best, Doctor. That is all that any patient could ask of her physician.”
He nodded in acknowledgement of the reminder of what they both knew well. And yet his frown returned. Seth
was sniffing the room’s air.
“What’s with the burning smell?” He asked. “I know it’s been a faint cloud hanging over the city from the brushfires since I arrived but it’s stronger than ever now. Did something rupture during the quake that caused a new round of fires or something?”
Angel only looked over to where a wall blocked any and all views of the city from the belly of the Georgia Dome. You’ve done it haven’t you, Serena. Goddamn you woman, you’ve gone and done it.
“The city is burning.” Angel told her husband.
“What,” Seth’s gray eyebrows rose as his voice had and betrayed the depths of yet another bruise on his chest that Angel failed to see before. “What in the hell do you mean that the city’s burning?’
Angel stood fully erect and held Seth’s hand using his strength to balance her weight against her own mounting fatigue.
“Only a nuclear blast could truly level a city of this size, Seth,” She said. “But for all intents and purposes the city’s burning. I’ve heard the mention of hundreds of pipe bombs being detonated around the city’s perimeter. We’ve also experienced wind gust equivalent of a category 2 hurricane over the past 4 to 6 hours. When you combine that lethal amount of explosives and the raw power of mother-nature you get…you get a Whirlwind effect.”
“Could it have been more suicide bombers?”
Angel fixed her husband with a hard stare that the female officer standing behind her shared with her. Seth’s last words felt more like a statement than a question. And he sounded as if he’d experienced