Justine Davis - Errant Angel

His eyes lit up at the thought of a ride in her car, but an instant later the sullen expression was back.

“Nah. I got my bike. Besides, I don’t hang around there anymore. It’s stupid.”

Stupid. It had been the only bright spot in his young life two days ago, but now it was stupid.

“Mr. MacKay will miss you, don’t you think?”

Jimmy swore out a negative answer, a crude oath that she sensed came more from pain than the usual teenage desire to shock. “He’s the one who threw me out.”

Evangeline blinked. Dalton had thrown the boy out? That didn’t fit at all with what she’d picked up during that brief but unforgettable contact.

“Jimmy, are you sure?”

He snorted. “He told me to leave him the hell alone. Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Maybe he just...”

Her voice trailed away as she realized the boy wasn’t hearing her. She probed gently, and although his protective walls were substantial—not nearly as tough as Dalton’s, however—she finally got it. He’d expected this. To him, everyone in his young life had rejected him sooner or later, his parents by dying, then his grandmother, who had also died shortly after rather dutifully taking him in, and then his other foster homes, by sending him back because he was too much trouble.

And she also got the memory of last night’s activities, and had the answer to the graffiti that had appeared overnight on the gymnasium wall.

“I gotta go now, okay?”

It was a measure of respect, she supposed, that he had asked rather than just gone. She had sensed, too, that she was the one remaining light flickering in a world that was rapidly going dark for Jimmy Sawyer.

As the boy walked away, swaggering the moment he got through the door and out where others could see him, Evangeline felt an odd tightening in her midsection. It took her a moment to recognize it, it had been so long. Fear. Astonished, she sank back down in her chair. She was afraid. Afraid she wasn’t up to this. Afraid she would let Jimmy down, that she wouldn’t be able to turn his life around.

She wasn’t supposed to be afraid. Or confused. Or anything else. Even in her disagreements with the bosses she had never been afraid. Nor had she ever been on any of her assignments, even that one with the pilot who had wanted to take himself out and didn’t much care if he took his planeload of passengers with him. This kind of work would be near to impossible without an unshakable confidence and utter lack of anxiety. Purposely put in situations of great stress, operatives would be worn out in weeks if they had to go through the ups and downs of normal human emotions.

Nor had she ever doubted that she would succeed in her task, only that she would manage to irritate her bosses in the process. She supposed they had given her that, along with everything else. So why had they apparently taken away that insulation now?

Her hand rose to the pendant at her throat. She hesitated, loathe to subject herself to another lecture on Dalton MacKay. Especially when she’d been behaving herself, staying away from him, and trying very, very hard not to think about him. But how was she supposed to get this job done without thinking about him, when he seemed to be smack in the middle of it? At first she’d thought him an ally, but now that he’d destroyed what little enthusiasm Jimmy had for anything, he was hardly that.

The more she thought about it, the madder she got. In some distant part of her mind she acknowledged that she wasn’t supposed to be feeling anger, either, except that which the bosses had finally had to concede went hand in hand with the sense of justice. But that expression on Jimmy’s face made her furious at the man who had put it there. Her hand moved away from the pendant and she quickly stood, picked up her books and papers, and strode purposefully out of the classroom.

* * *

Dalton heard the rumble of the car long before it pulled into the driveway. He knew who it was; the tap-tap of solid lifters was distinctive. He didn’t look up, didn’t even move when the car door slammed, just continued to fiddle with the butterfly on the old carburetor that sat in the pan on his workbench.

Swift footsteps approached him. The feminine sound of high heels echoed oddly in the cavernous garage. High heels. He knew he didn’t want to look up now; the memory of her legs, exquisitely long and curved, was emblazoned too vividly in his mind. It’s your imagination, she’s too small to have legs that long, he’d told himself over and over again.

“Just what the hell is your problem?”

It wasn’t the opening he’d expected, and his head came up sharply as he looked at her in surprise. And knew immediately he’d been right to be wary; the skirt of her yellow linen suit, which beautifully set off her burnished hair and the golden gleam of that pendant she wore, was shorter than the one she’d worn the other day. Short enough to show shapely knees and tease him with a glimpse of equally shapely thighs.

She wasn’t too small, after all, he thought wryly. She was perfect.

Silently he reminded himself of all the time he’d spent trying to chase her out of his mind since her appearance here the other day. Out loud, he asked “Problem?”

“If you want to shut yourself off from the whole world, to hide from everything and everyone, that’s your business, but—”

She stopped when he straightened, his face going rigidly still. She’d hit a nerve he’d thought deadened beyond response. He had long ago instinctively sensed that his personal hell took him to the limit of his endurance; the world had to be kept at a distance. He didn’t like the fact that she had somehow guessed that.

“Yes,” he said, his voice soft, “it is my business.”

“I said it was,” she went on, her chin coming up as if to show him he couldn’t intimidate her despite the fact that, even with her in heels, he towered over her. “If you want to build walls around yourself as high as these hills, fine. I know you have your reasons—”

“You don’t know a damn thing about my reasons.”

She drew herself up even straighter. There was nothing of the fawn in her eyes now; they were dark and fairly glittering with anger.

“Nor do I care,” she snapped. “If you want to hide here and nurse your guilt for the rest of your life, that’s fine with me.”

Dalton went very still. He’d met this woman once, for all of five minutes, never mind that she’d haunted him ever since. Where the hell had she gotten this idea? Did she know who he’d been, what he’d done? When he spoke, his voice was even softer than before, with an undertone many had once recognized as the prelude to an eruption. He doubted he was capable of that kind of emotion any longer, but this was as close as he’d come in a long time.

“Guilt?”

She looked oddly abashed for an instant, as if caught doing something she shouldn’t have.

“Or whatever it is that’s eating at you,” she said hastily. “I told you, I don’t care. But I do care about other people getting hurt. You can’t let somebody in, just enough to start to care, then slam the door on them!”

To start to care? Dalton’s heart slammed in his chest, startling him into wondering if his emotions were as dead as he’d like to believe. Had that five minutes of their first meeting been as indelibly carved into her mind as his? Had she been haunted by it as he had?

Stop it, he ordered himself. Even if she had, it meant nothing. He wouldn’t allow it to mean anything.

“He’s just a boy, Mr. MacKay. A very troubled boy.”

Jimmy, he thought. This was about Jimmy. God, MacKay, you’re a fool.

“The last thing he needs,” she was saying vehemently, “is the one adult he thought was his friend turning his back on him.”