Linda Howard - Death Angel

The other women hooted, because in their world things like that just didn’t happen.

“Nope,” said Andie in a matter-of-fact tone. “You won’t ever be rich. But if you don’t start making better decisions, you’re going to end up broke and eating cat food to make ends meet.”

Silence fell on the little group, because Andie’s tone wasn’t joking.

“Better decisions?” Cassie asked after a slight hesitation. “Like what?”

“Andie! Order up!”

“Gotta go,” she said, hurrying to the bar. Her left arm was aching from toting the heavy trays for the past five hours, and she had three more hours to go. She hadn’t had time to grab anything to eat, either, so she wasn’t inclined to waste any of her precious minutes trying to give Cassie life lessons. Hell, how much brains did it take not to screw every guy who came down the highway-in Cassie’s case, almost literally? Besides, it irritated her that Cassie had asked her to “tell her fortune.”

Andie didn’t tell fortunes. She didn’t have a crystal ball, she couldn’t tell where crazy Uncle Harry had buried his coin collection or which horse was going to win at what track. If she could, she’d be playing the ponies herself. Sometimes she got impressions about people, that was all. She might warn somebody to slow down on his run, or tell him to have his cholesterol checked, stuff like that. Working as a waitress meant she saw people doing stupid things that were bound to get them into trouble, and if she warned them and they didn’t listen, why was it so surprising to them when, lo and behold, they got into trouble? Cause and effect: do something stupid, and bad things will happen. Big duh.

But in the few months she’d been working at Glenn’s, she’d gotten sort of a reputation as a psychic, and nothing she said could dissuade anyone from that idea. The only way she could disprove it, she supposed, was to not tell anyone whatever it was she thought they should know, but she couldn’t in good conscience let a driver sit there wolfing down fried food when she was fairly certain he was going to have a heart attack in a couple of weeks.

She’d done some research on the afterlife and near-death experiences, and several times she had come across references that a person who had died and been revived sometimes came back with the gifts of prophecy and vision. The only thing close to a vision that she’d had was when she saw that nurse, Dina, falling on some stairs-and she’d been on painkillers at the time, so that could have had something to do with seeing things. As for prophecy…wasn’t that about big things, such as the end of time, or 9/11, or a president getting shot? She hadn’t experienced anything like that.

But she had definitely come back with a knack for some small stuff-for everyone except herself. When it came to herself, she didn’t have even the smallest inkling of a premonition. She had to flounder along, and it seemed to her that most of the time her choices were all bad, and she had to take the least worst of the lot. She wasn’t racking up many points that way.

Like the two million bucks. For the life of her, she couldn’t decide what to do with it. Sending it back to Rafael was out of the question. Yes, she’d stolen it from him, but he’d gotten it by running drugs and then laundering it through all of his penny-ante businesses. Giving it back to him would just make him that much stronger in the drug world.

On the other hand, she couldn’t just keep it. It wasn’t hers. She’d had to use part of it to live on after she was released from the hospital, because though she’d had a couple of weeks of physical rehab before Dr. Meecham would release her, she hadn’t been in any shape to get a job and work. She’d been able to bathe and dress herself, and take short walks, but that was about it. Getting strong enough to actually get a job had taken weeks more of physically pushing herself, ignoring the protests of her chest muscles, which hadn’t wanted to do anything.

She’d been driven by the need to escape, and not because of any legal issue. Her ability to lie had come through in a pinch, and she’d sailed through her interview with Detective Arrons. Once she settled on a name-Pearson, in honor of the kind-eyed Mrs. Pearson at the bank in Grissom-the rest of it was easy. For the most part, she told the truth. She bought the car in New Jersey and hadn’t bothered to register it there because she’d been leaving that day, moving out here, and figured she’d wait until she got settled and knew what her address would be before applying for a Colorado tag.

Okay, so that wasn’t exactly the truth. He could have pressed the issue, because she didn’t have a driver’s license either; there were a number of factors figuring into his decision to let it drop. First and foremost, the car hadn’t been reported stolen anywhere. Two, while still drugged up she’d asked about her laptop, but no laptop had ever been found, which opened up the possibility that her belongings had been pilfered. A man had made the 911 call, but no one had been there when the emergency crews arrived, so the unknown man could easily have taken her things. She had also been in a horrific car accident and her survival was nothing short of a miracle, so the detective wasn’t inclined to hassle her. Once she came up with a name for him, and a cursory check didn’t turn up any warrants, he considered everything square.

No, what really spooked her was that someone had paid her hospital bill-and Dr. Meecham’s bill. And the anesthesiologist’s, the radiologist’s, and every other ologist involved in her care. When she peppered Dr. Meecham with questions, he’d shrugged. “The payment came in the form of a cashier’s check. I don’t know who sent it. The envelope was tossed in the trash, so I can’t even tell you where it was mailed from.”

Andie supposed someone, out of sheer charity, could have been moved by the brief mention of her accident in the newspaper, but the story had never been given the big human-interest treatment, evidently because she’d lived and wasn’t an amnesiac. There hadn’t been any public fund-raisers, and if anyone had bothered to ask she’d have told them she could pay the bills-using Rafael’s money, of course, but that didn’t bother her at all. It alarmed her that someone had, out of the blue, anonymously shelled out some big bucks.

She had no idea who that someone could be, but she was afraid he, or she, somehow knew who she really was. Her instinct told her to leave Denver as fast as possible, so that’s what she’d done.

She’d bought another secondhand car, headed northeast on the interstate, toward Nebraska, and traded that car in for another as soon as she crossed the state line. Driving long distances had been a challenge, because she tired so easily, but she kept moving steadily eastward until she got to Kansas City. Three interstates came together in the K.C. area, giving her a lot of options if she had to move on. She kind of liked that idea, and somehow she’d ended up getting a job at Glenn’s. She also shelled out the cash needed for a new ID, for Andrea Pearson, so she now had a valid driver’s license in that name-well, as valid as a license could be if the name on it was fake. Her red 2003 Ford Explorer was duly registered to her, and she had insurance on it and everything.

She rented half of a duplex in a run-down neighborhood and actually lived on what she made at Glenn’s. After spending most of her life trying to score all the luxuries she could, she was oddly content with her life, with three smallish rooms in a house with a sagging roof. At least the tenants in the other half of the house weren’t on drugs. Just thinking of her time with Rafael made her feel dirty.

But she still had the two million, or most of it, sitting in the bank. She thought about writing one big check to a charity or something, just to get rid of it, but she couldn’t seem to just do it. What if that was the wrong thing? She wasn’t sure how donating to a charity could be wrong, but what if that wasn’t what she was meant to do with the money? What if there was some other cause she was supposed to give it to, if she could figure out what that cause was? The American Cancer Society, maybe. Or St. Jude’s Hospital. There were a lot of great organizations that could use the money, but she couldn’t work her way past this weird paralysis in decision-making.