Whirlwind: Where are our Children ( A Serial Novel) Episode 9 of 9
Page 6
feeling weaker and more disoriented than before. And his Thanksgiving dinner wasn’t sitting on his stomach right either.
And yet, Thomas Pepper smile was genuine enough to fool the three older women of color he saw when he opened his door. They said their hellos and seemed to notice nothing out of the ordinary immediate than anything that he’d chosen to show them before. Nothing was going to keep the four of them from their appointed rounds today.
Wearing two latex gloves on each hand, Thomas served his first bowl of soup to an older white woman three hours later. The line for the free meal was wrapped around the grounds that had been roped off that the new church would be built on in the spring. Most of downtown Atlanta was in ruins even six months after being declared a federal disaster area. Thomas knew that this large southern city wasn’t alone as many other high profile cities with highly urban populations had suffered similar fates.
Yet, Thomas Pepper knew the smell in those cities couldn’t be what it was here.
The rain totals had returned to normal levels. Thomas thought that perhaps it was God’s tears cleansing metro Atlanta from the hellfire it experienced. He knew for sure that it would be another 100 years before another earthquake with that scope and power tore through the southeast.
Yet, the charred remains of structures and landscapes throughout the city had proven to be its most jarring and unnerving reminder of what happened here. He fought back tears as he greeted each person who had come in search of meal and the fellowship that came as a side item. Both server and those who were being served were grateful for the experience.
The benches they used as tables were gifts from strangers in the city who had a kind a heart and the dime to spend.
The gift of a new church being built for Pastor Joe Washington and those who accepted him in its bosom at his greatest hour of need was from his.
The minister greeted him after he had finished his duties. The two men—one big and the other huge—hugged each other with all the force that their admiration for the other would allow. Pastor Washington whispered in Thomas’ ear that God loved him and that he loved him as well. Thomas said his thanks and slyly whispered back that they would find out soon enough about whether his first statement was true. Washington thanked him again for coming—and thanked him for the thousandth time for financing his church’s rebuild. Thomas shook the sentiments off for a thousandth time. He only harkened back to how afraid he was that night…how very afraid that neither he nor the country he loved would survive the tribulations until he saw the morning light.
He stood arm and arm with Pastor Washington. The smiles on both their faces were worth the new round of discomfort that was thumping him from the inside out. He looked out the area that the church would rise from the ashes and felt a burst of energy and a new resolve to live long enough to see its completion.
Perhaps he would live just long enough to walk the aisles towards the altar himself. Perhaps he would do just that. Perhaps his God could find room through his salvation for an unholy man like Thomas Pepper after all.
He found that despite the cold Atlanta air that he had worked up a good sweat as he had volunteered to sweep around the benches while the others washed the giant pots and pans. He could feel them watching him. Pastor Washington and the others knew his condition and prognosis. They wanted him to be smart and not overextend himself…
Thomas found that he had to stop for the second time in as minutes as he was struggling to catch his breath. He coughed…and then he coughed again into his hands. And when he coughed a third time he found blood on dripping from his fingers.
And then his stomach felt as the walls lining his stomach exploded and all the feeling in his lower extremities failed him all at once.
And Thomas Pepper lay helpless and dying in the exact spot where Pastor Joe Washington promised the church’s new altar would stand.
Angel
After the Dupree’s had made love Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree watched the expression on her husband’s face change.
He had exhausted himself on her and had nothing left so she quickly and skillfully spun their bodies over until Seth was now lying on his back and she was off to his side. She ran her long manicured fingernails through the thick hairs on his chest. His breathing was finally slowing to normal levels. They smiled at each other. He sat up enough to peck at her thick lips with his thin ones. She ran her fingers through his hair then.
Seth told her over and over again that he loved her until his words sounded like lyrics to a lullaby. Angel made jokes about his throaty rendition and then she tickled him in a very tender spot. Finally, she squeezed that very special part of him—until they were at it again.
When both reached their climax again it was Angel’s chest that rose and fell with considerable effort. Ten minutes later she found herself lying back on her pillow when she heard Seth snoring ever lightly next to her.
You are a smart man, my husband. Yet, Angel had continued to fool him over the past six months the same way that she’d fooled him during their entire marriage. She certainly respected him as a man. She felt safe when she was in his arms. She watched him sleep for a minute. A part of her had always adored him. But she had to accept the facts as they were. She owed both of them at least that much.
In her heart Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree had never felt love, not in a romantic way, for her husband Dr. Seth Dupree.
And in all of the hell that the man had gone through during the worst of Scar trying to reach her—in an attempt to save her from Roxanne Sanchez’s ire…hadn’t changed that fact.
The truth is that Angel still didn’t love him in that way. I think I keep you around is to relieve myself of the loneliness that I would feel otherwise. I have my work and I have you, Seth, and nothing else.
And this holiday weekend excursion of sex and slumber in these vacation cabins here in Blairsville, Georgia hadn’t changed that fact one damned bit.
And that made her a little sad—
Angel felt a little paranoid…as if she could feel someone watching them.
It was him.
It was him at long last.
And she wasn’t going to lose him again.
“Just relax in here until I call return for you,” She touched his face with just enough force to wake him without startling her husband. She slid on her panties and wrapped a silk housecoat around her waist. She left it open at the top so that the constant threat of her breast spilling out would distract even the most focused perpetrator’s invasion that she was expecting any moment. “I’m going to fix us some breakfast,”
Angel knew that the FBI was watching of course. And knowing that they were constantly close by provided her an elevated sense of eroticism that she valued so much. Seth wasn’t nearly as comfortable with it. Still, as evidenced by their last session together, he was becoming more accustomed to their intervention in their lives.
Something felt different here tonight.
The mole had finally found her.
Joseph Champion was here in this mountain retreat.
“Breakfast,” Seth glanced up just long enough to look at the alarm clock on his side of the nightstand. “Angel, its 12:15 in the morning, who eats breakfast this time of night?”
She planted on hand on her hip and cocked a brow in mocked effort to show defeat.
“Alright, Seth…well allow me to whip you a midnight snack of eggs and bacon that you will never forget.”
Seth scrubbed at the gray in his hair and shrugged.
“Sure,” And when she turned around to walk towards the kitchen he added: “Angel, make absolutely certain that you turn on all the tracking devices that the FBI provided us. Now is not the time to start taking chances, especially with us being so isolated out here in these woods.”
“Alright,”
“Angel,”
“Yea,”
“I love you.”
And it hurt like hell to hear him say it then after the finalization of her feelings for him manifested itself so
openly a few minutes ago. So she blew him a kiss instead. Seth deserved the truth. Likely he would have to settle for getting in line on that front. A part of her—the decent woman deep inside of her—told her that she would grant him the divorce that he so richly deserved after Champion was caught. But the real Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree, the woman who stood half naked in this doorway, would likely continue with this charade of lies that kept her husband close enough…
…close enough that she wouldn’t be alone.
So she only flashed Seth one of her a wicked smiles, her left breast, the .22 strapped to her thigh and hit the alarm button on wall.
Angel never could cook worth a damn.
She whipped up some eggs but any the bacon seemed to be in short supply. She settled for some frozen pizza she found in the freezer and stuck it in the microwave that this cabin provided. She looked out of the kitchen window at a grand view of mountainside while she waited on the pizza to warm.
There was enough landscape between each cabin here to give each renter a true sense of camping out, but still providing enough restaurants and other conveniences of home to give the appearance of civilization nearby. Angel truly liked this place and the certain level of isolation, to use her husband’s word for it, which its location provided. If she were truly trying to save her marriage and make it work this was exactly the prescription and therapy she would have recommended to her and her husband long ago. The world is so quiet—
Angel