Angel - Part Four
You can find the links to the previous chapters at the bottom of the page
"She used to work for the government. She just killed her husband. She’s in bed with drug dealers—and she may be the only person left who can save the world"…
ANGEL – PART FOUR
Sunday
Angel strolled the beach, heading south from Hallandale Beach, into Miami-Dade County and the row of oceanside mansions that comprises much of the town of Golden Beach. Wearing a Hawaiian-print bikini and carrying a Blackberry with stereo earbuds, she looked to be just another pretty woman strolling along on a Sunday morning. She slowly walked past the Mediterranean Revival house where the Escalade had entered on Friday afternoon. Using the digital recording function of the Blackberry, she noted the pertinent features of the back of the house. “French doors on either end of the pool, a gate in the concrete wall bounding the property and providing access to the beach, video cameras on the north and south corners of the house and, oh wait, another camera on the roof in the middle. Upstairs bay windows provide good visibility along the beach for at least 150 yards both north and south of the house.”
She continued walking casually past the house and walked nearly to Sunny Isles before turning around and walking back. If anyone was watching her, they would swear that she had paid no special attention to any individual house. She was just another person taking a walk along the beach.
As she approached the house again, now from the south, a man who had been lying on a large beach towel near the water, got up and, turning, gave her a long look. “Hello.” he said and smiled.
Angel smiled back at him and thought, though she couldn’t be sure, that this was the man she had seen in her rear view mirror on Friday at the hotel. “Nice day isn’t it?” she asked.
The man responded, “Yes, it is gorgeous—but not as gorgeous as you!”
Angel smiled coyly and said, “Why thank you. What a sweet thing to say.”
The man said, “Nonsense! It’s simply the truth. You are a beautiful woman. Do you live around here? I haven’t seen you before.”
Angel replied, “No. I am staying at the Diplomat and just thought it was too beautiful a day to spend with my husband watching football.” She smirked inside as the mention of her husband caused the man to look disappointed, although he sought to hide it.
“Really? I thought all red-blooded American men loved football, and all red-blooded American women joined them.”
Angel laughed and said, “If that is true, you aren’t a true, red-blooded American man!”
The man smiled and, shaking his head ruefully, held out his hand. “My name is Evan Rodriguez. I live here.” He nodded his head towards the house.
Angel said, “Wow, that’s a nice house. What do you do?”
“Granada Pharmaceuticals,” he answered.
“Interesting,” said Angel, “I don’t know the company. What kind of pharmaceuticals do you make?”
”Oh, I don’t make them. I am just a middle man. I supply American drugs to other countries in South America,” he said.
Angel responded, “That’s great—and it must be a great way to earn a dollar.” She glanced down at her watch and said, “Oh my, I must be going. My husband will be wondering where I am.”
She smiled at him and said, “It’s nice to meet you. Perhaps I’ll see you again.”
Evan Rodriguez smiled in return and said, “I hope so, Ms.?”
“Angel.” She smiled, but thought, “I’ll see you tonight.”
As she walked away, she realized, “This is the way the virus has been spread! The import/export company is a perfect cover for the manufacture and distribution of the virus.”
Angel felt excited now, thinking that another piece of the puzzle was falling into place. She began thinking of the next steps to be taken with Diego. She wanted to talk to him right away but knew that she couldn’t. Just as she had strolled along the beach, Diego had strolled along SR A1A on the front side of the house. Angel waited to call him, wanting to be well out of both the auditory and visual range of any observers.
Once she was halfway back to Hallandale Beach, she called Diego. As he answered the call, she blurted out, “Diego, I spoke to the guy who I saw at the hotel last Friday!”
Diego said, “Si?”
Obviously, Diego was unimpressed.
“I mean the guy spoke to me on the beach and told me that he is in the import/export business and sells American pharmaceuticals in South America.”
Diego now responded more alertly, “Why would an import/export business sell American pharmaceuticals in South America? American drugs are too expensive for most people there. Americans buy the drugs from there to save money. And, if he was working with the PETA group, why wouldn’t he know that George was missing?”
Angel answered, “Well, of course! Obviously, the drug business is a sham set up to help them move the virus around without attracting suspicion. Do you think that they have organized in such a way that they don’t talk directly? That would explain why he doesn’t know that George is missing.”
Diego replied, “Perhaps, or perhaps he was just trying to find out something from you.”
“True,” Angel said. “I suppose that, if he recognized me from the hotel, he thought he might learn something.”
“Did you tell him anything?” Diego asked.
“Just that I had to get back to my husband at the Diplomat.”
“Okay, let’s meet at the Diplomat and talk,” Diego suggested.
Thirty minutes later, Diego and Angel were seated at the Diplomat’s sports bar in a far corner. As the Pro Bowl played on the television overhead, Angel drank a beer and told Diego of the results of her surveillance. Diego had also seen video cameras on the front of the house and, while watching the front, had seen someone enter through the front gate. He told Angel that there was a video camera at the gate and, based on what he saw, there seemed to be a manned alarm system.
“Well, there is something going on there that doesn’t smell right,” said Angel.
“You smelled something bad?” asked Diego.
Angel laughed, “No, I mean they are doing something bad there.”
Diego’s face flushed. “I don’t know that one,” he said. “I think we are going to have to hit them hard. We have to go in fast—and we have to have masks on. It has to look like a random home invasion robbery and we can’t leave evidence behind that tells them, or anybody else, who we are.”
Angel nodded. “Yep, it’s kick in the door time,” she said and thought back to her DEA training. That was part of what she had liked most about joining the DEA. Six months after joining, she was literally kicking in a door as part of a team apprehending and arresting known drug dealers. The whole activity had appealed to her—being part of a team of professionals, the sense of adventure, never knowing what was on the other side of the door, and knowing that she was taking down bad guys. She smiled to herself as she thought of those times.
Diego asked, “Why are you smiling?”
Angel looked at him and said, “I was just thinking how much I liked kicking in doors and arresting drug dealers!”
To her surprise, Diego started laughing. Angel thought his laughter was odd, but funny. She started laughing too.
Diego said, “I’m glad you didn’t kick in my door.”
Angel replied, and surprised herself when she did so, “Me too.”
After comparing notes on their surveillance of the house, they both concluded that at least four people, and possibly six, would be required to storm the house and control the occupants. Diego noted that the feeds from the video cameras on the front of the house all went to a window on the second floor just right of the front door. He said, “I guess that is where the security guard watches the video feeds from the cameras around the house.” Angel felt silly for not observing the video cabling on the beach side of the house.
“Okay, if the security system is run from that room on the front of the house, how do we take it out before being seen?” she asked.
“We don’t,” Diego replied. “We set up a diversion and walk in.”
Angel asked, “What do you have in mind?”
Diego answered, “A car accident at the front gate. Then we cut the cables from the video cameras and leave them blind.”
Angel said, “That sounds good. With a little luck and a heavy foot on the accelerator, we could blow through the gates and be at the front door in no time. What would you say, is it about fifty feet from the wall on the property’s boundary?”
Diego laughed again and said, “Yes, that is right, but I think we will end up on the front steps!” He then suggested two more local “associates” to round out the assault team.
Angel shrugged and said, “I trust your judgment on that.” She picked up the check and her blackberry and prepared to leave.
Diego said, “What’s your hurry?” and took another swig of his beer.
Angel replied, “It’s Sunday and I have to call my Mom.”
Diego looked surprised for a moment but then nodded and said, “That’s a good thing to do. Appreciate your parents while you can.”
Angel didn’t bother to note that her father had died. What did he care? She simply responded, “I’ll see you later.”
With that, she turned, walked towards the bar, dropped the check and a twenty-dollar bill on it and left.
Night
The night was cool, with only a slender crescent moon providing a dim, glowing light. Angel was at the gate on the beach side of the house. Dressed all in black, with her hair pulled up under a knit ski mask, she was a shadow, nothing more, to a casual observer. She checked her watch. It was two o’clock in the morning. That was when she heard the screech of brakes and a crash on the other side of the house. At the sound of the crash, she slung her shotgun over her shoulder, counted to thirty, and pulled herself over the beachside wall. Slipping down the other side, she checked for signs of alarms. Hearing none, she moved towards the French doors on the north end of the house, skirting the pool and avoiding the deck chairs. She thought, “I guess Diego’s guys are as good as he said. I don’t hear any alarms.”
Just as she thought this, a motion-sensitive security light came on, flooding the pool deck with light. Angel whispered, “Crap!” under her breath and ran to the wall next to the French doors. Taking a deep breath, she pulled the shotgun off her shoulder and kicked in the French doors. Looking around, she saw that she was in a dining room. She moved towards the interior door and entered a hallway that appeared to go south towards the rest of the house. Moving along the hallway, she checked the next door on her left, pausing as she heard footsteps and people calling out to one another as they descended the stairway from the second floor of the house.
When their voices and footsteps trailed off towards the front of the house, she tried the doorknob. The room was dark but light was streaming in the windows from the outside floodlight she had set off. Taking a quick look around, she noted that this appeared to be a sitting room. There were newspapers and magazines scattered around on the end tables and soft drink bottles and empty tumblers on the coffee table in the middle of the room. “Nope, not here,” she thought and turned to leave. As she did, she saw a figure move in the hallway. Swinging the shotgun around, she smashed the barrel against the shadowy figure’s head, knocking them into the wall opposite the doorway. As the person fell, she aimed the shotgun at their body. Once she was sure they weren’t moving, she grabbed zip ties from her belt and expertly bound their hands and feet. When they were secured, she looked at her adversary’s face in the light coming through the doorway from the exterior windows. She saw that it was Evan Rodriguez, the man she’d spoken with on the beach that afternoon. “Well, we did meet again, didn’t we?” she thought to herself.
Leaving Evan on the floor, she checked the next door, on her right, it was a coat closet. Moving down the hallway, she opened another door on her left, it was the kitchen and breakfast nook. There was a nightlight on the wall above the tile countertop. She looked for signs of life and, seeing none, moved on. Coming to the end of the hallway, she turned right, towards the front of the house. There was a doorway on her left and right. The right-side door opened to a bathroom. She tried the doorknob on the left and found it was locked. Making note of it, she moved on, checking two other doors before coming to the front foyer. There, at the bottom of the stairs, she saw two bodies laid out on the floor and trussed up in similar fashion as to how she had left Evan Rodriguez. Diego was standing over the two bodies and his two “associates” were peering up the stairs on either side of the open front door.
“Diego!” hissed Angel.
“Si,” replied Diego.
“Have you been upstairs yet?”
“No, we just took out these two. Juan, Nicki, check out the second floor.” barked Diego.
The two men began to ascend the stairs, holding Winchester pump 12-gauge shotguns at the ready.
Angel moved towards Diego. “How did you make out in the front?” she asked.
“Not bad,” said Diego. “We swerved into the gate, crashed the car through and Juan and I pretended to be knocked unconscious while Nicki cut the video lines. When these two came down to see what was happening, we took them down quietly. We should have a couple of minutes before the cops get here.”
Angel glanced down at the two figures on the ground and saw that they didn’t appear to be breathing. “Did you have to kill them?” she asked.
“They are not dead. They are simply drugged. Juan is very good with a hypodermic needle!”
“Oh,” said Angel, turning around. She watched as Juan and Nicki stepped onto the second floor landing and then said to Diego, “There’s a locked door back here that I want to check out, now that I know you’ve got this area secure.” And with that, she headed back down the hallway.
Reaching the locked door, she pulled out her burglar tools from the pocket on the side of her black cargo pants. As she knelt down to try and jimmy the lock, she heard a noise from the other side of the door. Instinctively leaning to the left, away from the door, she heard and felt the blast of the machine gun bullets bursting through the wooden door and hitting the wall behind her. Rolling onto her back at the left side of the door, she aimed the shotgun at the doorknob and blasted it off the door. She kicked the door with her right foot while aiming the shotgun at the doorway. As the door swung into the room, she saw the muzzle flash from the machine gun and fired at it. The machine gun traced an arc of bullets upward as the gunner fell backwards under the impact of the 12-gauge shot at close range. Angel rolled over to her left side, looking into the room. There was no one else there. She noted that there were several computer screens lit and a reading light was illuminating a desk. Standing up, she walked into the room with the shotgun at the ready and checked on the condition of the gunman. She did a double take when she saw that the gunman was actually an Asian woman in her mid twenties. The shotgun round had blown a gaping wound in her chest and her lifeless eyes stared up at Angel.
“Sorry about that, honey.” Angel muttered and moved to the desk. She saw papers with the word “Halpan” on them and scooped them up, stuffing them into another pocket in her pants. Looking around the room, she saw that what she’d first thought were several computer screens were, in fact, a single laptop computer and several monitors for the alarm system. All of the monitors were showing a blank screen. “Nicki did a good job of cutting the alarm system, “she thought as she grabbed the laptop and carried it out of the room, ‘but Diego was wrong about the location of the monitors.” She walked to the front of the house again and found Diego, Juan and Nicki at the end of the hallway with their weapons aimed at her. When they saw her, they lowered the guns. Angel asked, “Did you find anything else?”
Juan answered, “No. The upstairs rooms appear to all be bedrooms and bathrooms.”
Diego said, “It’s time to go.”
Angel replied, “That guy I saw at the hotel is in the back hallway. Why don’t we take him with us?”
“Okay, but let’s move.” said Diego.
Sirens could be heard approaching as they collected Evan Rodriguez and headed out the back door. Nicki, who was a large man, hoisted Evan on his back and they trotted north, up the beach towards the pavilion. There were lights on in some of the other houses now.
“The car crash and gunshots definitely waked the neighbors!” thought Angel.
As they approached the pavilion, they saw the blue lights of a police car go by, heading south, followed by the red lights of a fire truck from the Hallandale Beach fire station on the county line. After they passed, Diego, Juan and Nicki climbed into the Bentley, with Nicki shoving Evan into the backseat next to him. Evan was beginning to come to and was turning his head about with a glassy stare.
Angel said, “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.” and headed for her car.
Diego replied, “Si. Good work, Señorita.”
Angel nodded her thanks and, still carrying the laptop, opened the door to her Mini and clambered in. She put the computer on the passenger seat and set the shotgun on the passenger-side floor. She sat there for a moment as the Bentley’s engine started and the headlights came on. She watched them pull away and stop at the end of the driveway approaching State Road A1A. She watched the brake lights dim as the Bentley drove away and thought about what had just happened. She thought about the young woman she had killed and sighed, “When did I become so cavalier about taking a life?” She started the engine and headed home.
Thomas A. Hall
You can read parts 1,2 & 3, here, by following the links
1. http://www.weeklysouthernarts.com/angel-chapter-1---a-novel-by-thomas-a-hall.html
2. http://www.weeklysouthernarts.com/angel-part-ii.html
3. http://www.weeklysouthernarts.com/angel---pt-3.html
Sunday
Angel strolled the beach, heading south from Hallandale Beach, into Miami-Dade County and the row of oceanside mansions that comprises much of the town of Golden Beach. Wearing a Hawaiian-print bikini and carrying a Blackberry with stereo earbuds, she looked to be just another pretty woman strolling along on a Sunday morning. She slowly walked past the Mediterranean Revival house where the Escalade had entered on Friday afternoon. Using the digital recording function of the Blackberry, she noted the pertinent features of the back of the house. “French doors on either end of the pool, a gate in the concrete wall bounding the property and providing access to the beach, video cameras on the north and south corners of the house and, oh wait, another camera on the roof in the middle. Upstairs bay windows provide good visibility along the beach for at least 150 yards both north and south of the house.”
She continued walking casually past the house and walked nearly to Sunny Isles before turning around and walking back. If anyone was watching her, they would swear that she had paid no special attention to any individual house. She was just another person taking a walk along the beach.
As she approached the house again, now from the south, a man who had been lying on a large beach towel near the water, got up and, turning, gave her a long look. “Hello.” he said and smiled.
Angel smiled back at him and thought, though she couldn’t be sure, that this was the man she had seen in her rear view mirror on Friday at the hotel. “Nice day isn’t it?” she asked.
The man responded, “Yes, it is gorgeous—but not as gorgeous as you!”
Angel smiled coyly and said, “Why thank you. What a sweet thing to say.”
The man said, “Nonsense! It’s simply the truth. You are a beautiful woman. Do you live around here? I haven’t seen you before.”
Angel replied, “No. I am staying at the Diplomat and just thought it was too beautiful a day to spend with my husband watching football.” She smirked inside as the mention of her husband caused the man to look disappointed, although he sought to hide it.
“Really? I thought all red-blooded American men loved football, and all red-blooded American women joined them.”
Angel laughed and said, “If that is true, you aren’t a true, red-blooded American man!”
The man smiled and, shaking his head ruefully, held out his hand. “My name is Evan Rodriguez. I live here.” He nodded his head towards the house.
Angel said, “Wow, that’s a nice house. What do you do?”
“Granada Pharmaceuticals,” he answered.
“Interesting,” said Angel, “I don’t know the company. What kind of pharmaceuticals do you make?”
”Oh, I don’t make them. I am just a middle man. I supply American drugs to other countries in South America,” he said.
Angel responded, “That’s great—and it must be a great way to earn a dollar.” She glanced down at her watch and said, “Oh my, I must be going. My husband will be wondering where I am.”
She smiled at him and said, “It’s nice to meet you. Perhaps I’ll see you again.”
Evan Rodriguez smiled in return and said, “I hope so, Ms.?”
“Angel.” She smiled, but thought, “I’ll see you tonight.”
As she walked away, she realized, “This is the way the virus has been spread! The import/export company is a perfect cover for the manufacture and distribution of the virus.”
Angel felt excited now, thinking that another piece of the puzzle was falling into place. She began thinking of the next steps to be taken with Diego. She wanted to talk to him right away but knew that she couldn’t. Just as she had strolled along the beach, Diego had strolled along SR A1A on the front side of the house. Angel waited to call him, wanting to be well out of both the auditory and visual range of any observers.
Once she was halfway back to Hallandale Beach, she called Diego. As he answered the call, she blurted out, “Diego, I spoke to the guy who I saw at the hotel last Friday!”
Diego said, “Si?”
Obviously, Diego was unimpressed.
“I mean the guy spoke to me on the beach and told me that he is in the import/export business and sells American pharmaceuticals in South America.”
Diego now responded more alertly, “Why would an import/export business sell American pharmaceuticals in South America? American drugs are too expensive for most people there. Americans buy the drugs from there to save money. And, if he was working with the PETA group, why wouldn’t he know that George was missing?”
Angel answered, “Well, of course! Obviously, the drug business is a sham set up to help them move the virus around without attracting suspicion. Do you think that they have organized in such a way that they don’t talk directly? That would explain why he doesn’t know that George is missing.”
Diego replied, “Perhaps, or perhaps he was just trying to find out something from you.”
“True,” Angel said. “I suppose that, if he recognized me from the hotel, he thought he might learn something.”
“Did you tell him anything?” Diego asked.
“Just that I had to get back to my husband at the Diplomat.”
“Okay, let’s meet at the Diplomat and talk,” Diego suggested.
Thirty minutes later, Diego and Angel were seated at the Diplomat’s sports bar in a far corner. As the Pro Bowl played on the television overhead, Angel drank a beer and told Diego of the results of her surveillance. Diego had also seen video cameras on the front of the house and, while watching the front, had seen someone enter through the front gate. He told Angel that there was a video camera at the gate and, based on what he saw, there seemed to be a manned alarm system.
“Well, there is something going on there that doesn’t smell right,” said Angel.
“You smelled something bad?” asked Diego.
Angel laughed, “No, I mean they are doing something bad there.”
Diego’s face flushed. “I don’t know that one,” he said. “I think we are going to have to hit them hard. We have to go in fast—and we have to have masks on. It has to look like a random home invasion robbery and we can’t leave evidence behind that tells them, or anybody else, who we are.”
Angel nodded. “Yep, it’s kick in the door time,” she said and thought back to her DEA training. That was part of what she had liked most about joining the DEA. Six months after joining, she was literally kicking in a door as part of a team apprehending and arresting known drug dealers. The whole activity had appealed to her—being part of a team of professionals, the sense of adventure, never knowing what was on the other side of the door, and knowing that she was taking down bad guys. She smiled to herself as she thought of those times.
Diego asked, “Why are you smiling?”
Angel looked at him and said, “I was just thinking how much I liked kicking in doors and arresting drug dealers!”
To her surprise, Diego started laughing. Angel thought his laughter was odd, but funny. She started laughing too.
Diego said, “I’m glad you didn’t kick in my door.”
Angel replied, and surprised herself when she did so, “Me too.”
After comparing notes on their surveillance of the house, they both concluded that at least four people, and possibly six, would be required to storm the house and control the occupants. Diego noted that the feeds from the video cameras on the front of the house all went to a window on the second floor just right of the front door. He said, “I guess that is where the security guard watches the video feeds from the cameras around the house.” Angel felt silly for not observing the video cabling on the beach side of the house.
“Okay, if the security system is run from that room on the front of the house, how do we take it out before being seen?” she asked.
“We don’t,” Diego replied. “We set up a diversion and walk in.”
Angel asked, “What do you have in mind?”
Diego answered, “A car accident at the front gate. Then we cut the cables from the video cameras and leave them blind.”
Angel said, “That sounds good. With a little luck and a heavy foot on the accelerator, we could blow through the gates and be at the front door in no time. What would you say, is it about fifty feet from the wall on the property’s boundary?”
Diego laughed again and said, “Yes, that is right, but I think we will end up on the front steps!” He then suggested two more local “associates” to round out the assault team.
Angel shrugged and said, “I trust your judgment on that.” She picked up the check and her blackberry and prepared to leave.
Diego said, “What’s your hurry?” and took another swig of his beer.
Angel replied, “It’s Sunday and I have to call my Mom.”
Diego looked surprised for a moment but then nodded and said, “That’s a good thing to do. Appreciate your parents while you can.”
Angel didn’t bother to note that her father had died. What did he care? She simply responded, “I’ll see you later.”
With that, she turned, walked towards the bar, dropped the check and a twenty-dollar bill on it and left.
Night
The night was cool, with only a slender crescent moon providing a dim, glowing light. Angel was at the gate on the beach side of the house. Dressed all in black, with her hair pulled up under a knit ski mask, she was a shadow, nothing more, to a casual observer. She checked her watch. It was two o’clock in the morning. That was when she heard the screech of brakes and a crash on the other side of the house. At the sound of the crash, she slung her shotgun over her shoulder, counted to thirty, and pulled herself over the beachside wall. Slipping down the other side, she checked for signs of alarms. Hearing none, she moved towards the French doors on the north end of the house, skirting the pool and avoiding the deck chairs. She thought, “I guess Diego’s guys are as good as he said. I don’t hear any alarms.”
Just as she thought this, a motion-sensitive security light came on, flooding the pool deck with light. Angel whispered, “Crap!” under her breath and ran to the wall next to the French doors. Taking a deep breath, she pulled the shotgun off her shoulder and kicked in the French doors. Looking around, she saw that she was in a dining room. She moved towards the interior door and entered a hallway that appeared to go south towards the rest of the house. Moving along the hallway, she checked the next door on her left, pausing as she heard footsteps and people calling out to one another as they descended the stairway from the second floor of the house.
When their voices and footsteps trailed off towards the front of the house, she tried the doorknob. The room was dark but light was streaming in the windows from the outside floodlight she had set off. Taking a quick look around, she noted that this appeared to be a sitting room. There were newspapers and magazines scattered around on the end tables and soft drink bottles and empty tumblers on the coffee table in the middle of the room. “Nope, not here,” she thought and turned to leave. As she did, she saw a figure move in the hallway. Swinging the shotgun around, she smashed the barrel against the shadowy figure’s head, knocking them into the wall opposite the doorway. As the person fell, she aimed the shotgun at their body. Once she was sure they weren’t moving, she grabbed zip ties from her belt and expertly bound their hands and feet. When they were secured, she looked at her adversary’s face in the light coming through the doorway from the exterior windows. She saw that it was Evan Rodriguez, the man she’d spoken with on the beach that afternoon. “Well, we did meet again, didn’t we?” she thought to herself.
Leaving Evan on the floor, she checked the next door, on her right, it was a coat closet. Moving down the hallway, she opened another door on her left, it was the kitchen and breakfast nook. There was a nightlight on the wall above the tile countertop. She looked for signs of life and, seeing none, moved on. Coming to the end of the hallway, she turned right, towards the front of the house. There was a doorway on her left and right. The right-side door opened to a bathroom. She tried the doorknob on the left and found it was locked. Making note of it, she moved on, checking two other doors before coming to the front foyer. There, at the bottom of the stairs, she saw two bodies laid out on the floor and trussed up in similar fashion as to how she had left Evan Rodriguez. Diego was standing over the two bodies and his two “associates” were peering up the stairs on either side of the open front door.
“Diego!” hissed Angel.
“Si,” replied Diego.
“Have you been upstairs yet?”
“No, we just took out these two. Juan, Nicki, check out the second floor.” barked Diego.
The two men began to ascend the stairs, holding Winchester pump 12-gauge shotguns at the ready.
Angel moved towards Diego. “How did you make out in the front?” she asked.
“Not bad,” said Diego. “We swerved into the gate, crashed the car through and Juan and I pretended to be knocked unconscious while Nicki cut the video lines. When these two came down to see what was happening, we took them down quietly. We should have a couple of minutes before the cops get here.”
Angel glanced down at the two figures on the ground and saw that they didn’t appear to be breathing. “Did you have to kill them?” she asked.
“They are not dead. They are simply drugged. Juan is very good with a hypodermic needle!”
“Oh,” said Angel, turning around. She watched as Juan and Nicki stepped onto the second floor landing and then said to Diego, “There’s a locked door back here that I want to check out, now that I know you’ve got this area secure.” And with that, she headed back down the hallway.
Reaching the locked door, she pulled out her burglar tools from the pocket on the side of her black cargo pants. As she knelt down to try and jimmy the lock, she heard a noise from the other side of the door. Instinctively leaning to the left, away from the door, she heard and felt the blast of the machine gun bullets bursting through the wooden door and hitting the wall behind her. Rolling onto her back at the left side of the door, she aimed the shotgun at the doorknob and blasted it off the door. She kicked the door with her right foot while aiming the shotgun at the doorway. As the door swung into the room, she saw the muzzle flash from the machine gun and fired at it. The machine gun traced an arc of bullets upward as the gunner fell backwards under the impact of the 12-gauge shot at close range. Angel rolled over to her left side, looking into the room. There was no one else there. She noted that there were several computer screens lit and a reading light was illuminating a desk. Standing up, she walked into the room with the shotgun at the ready and checked on the condition of the gunman. She did a double take when she saw that the gunman was actually an Asian woman in her mid twenties. The shotgun round had blown a gaping wound in her chest and her lifeless eyes stared up at Angel.
“Sorry about that, honey.” Angel muttered and moved to the desk. She saw papers with the word “Halpan” on them and scooped them up, stuffing them into another pocket in her pants. Looking around the room, she saw that what she’d first thought were several computer screens were, in fact, a single laptop computer and several monitors for the alarm system. All of the monitors were showing a blank screen. “Nicki did a good job of cutting the alarm system, “she thought as she grabbed the laptop and carried it out of the room, ‘but Diego was wrong about the location of the monitors.” She walked to the front of the house again and found Diego, Juan and Nicki at the end of the hallway with their weapons aimed at her. When they saw her, they lowered the guns. Angel asked, “Did you find anything else?”
Juan answered, “No. The upstairs rooms appear to all be bedrooms and bathrooms.”
Diego said, “It’s time to go.”
Angel replied, “That guy I saw at the hotel is in the back hallway. Why don’t we take him with us?”
“Okay, but let’s move.” said Diego.
Sirens could be heard approaching as they collected Evan Rodriguez and headed out the back door. Nicki, who was a large man, hoisted Evan on his back and they trotted north, up the beach towards the pavilion. There were lights on in some of the other houses now.
“The car crash and gunshots definitely waked the neighbors!” thought Angel.
As they approached the pavilion, they saw the blue lights of a police car go by, heading south, followed by the red lights of a fire truck from the Hallandale Beach fire station on the county line. After they passed, Diego, Juan and Nicki climbed into the Bentley, with Nicki shoving Evan into the backseat next to him. Evan was beginning to come to and was turning his head about with a glassy stare.
Angel said, “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.” and headed for her car.
Diego replied, “Si. Good work, Señorita.”
Angel nodded her thanks and, still carrying the laptop, opened the door to her Mini and clambered in. She put the computer on the passenger seat and set the shotgun on the passenger-side floor. She sat there for a moment as the Bentley’s engine started and the headlights came on. She watched them pull away and stop at the end of the driveway approaching State Road A1A. She watched the brake lights dim as the Bentley drove away and thought about what had just happened. She thought about the young woman she had killed and sighed, “When did I become so cavalier about taking a life?” She started the engine and headed home.
Thomas A. Hall
You can read parts 1,2 & 3, here, by following the links
1. http://www.weeklysouthernarts.com/angel-chapter-1---a-novel-by-thomas-a-hall.html
2. http://www.weeklysouthernarts.com/angel-part-ii.html
3. http://www.weeklysouthernarts.com/angel---pt-3.html
