FORTY-FIVE
Jack parked his rental car in the crowded parking lot of the bar called Barry’s Place, where he knew Angela Constantine worked as a bartender. He didn’t know if she was working that night, but it was the easiest place to start looking for her.
The bar was a squat concrete block building that looked like it hadn’t been painted in several decades. At night, under the light of the single streetlight, it was hard telling what the original color had been. He thought it might be a faded pink, but there was no telling for sure.
A colorful, brightly lit beer sign glowed in the only window. On the gloomy road no one would be able to miss it.
The place gave him the impression of a despairing outpost at the edge of civilization, where the great, trackless forest began, a place where people stopped for good cheer and liquid bravery before facing the dark and dangerous unknown just beyond.
That was an illusion, of course, but Jack had learned over the years to take account of such impressions, along with the vague connections he tracked. They often had meaning and purpose that could only be understood in the context of unfolding events. Those connections helped keep him alive while hunting savages that did not belong among civilized men.
Hung above the window of the bar there was a hand-painted canvas banner that said GET WELL SOON, BARRY! Jack wondered what that was about.
Another hand-painted sign said that ladies would get their first drink for free. It appeared to be working, as Jack saw three women in short dresses going into the place. They looked overdressed for the kind of dive bar it looked to be, but on the other hand dive bars seemed to be coming into vogue.
Some people were drawn to places that were fashionably dangerous. Much like a roller coaster ride, it let them have taste of peril without the high risk that peril usually entailed. Occasionally those flitting moths got burned in the flame they were drawn to.
By the kinds of lowered cars and jacked-up trucks he saw in the lot, he guessed that the free drinks that drew women had in turn drawn a lot of men as well. Which in turn drew more women.
It was a witch’s brew of trouble.
Jack stood outside for a time, leaning against his car, arms folded, watching. Every time the door opened, rock music spilled out into the parking lot, seeming out of place in the surrounding forest setting.
Two men protested loudly as they were escorted out by a bouncer. When the bouncer went back in and the door closed, it muted the music to a muffled bass beat. The drunk pair got in their car and spun their tires all the way out of the parking lot. It was only luck, not skill, that kept them from hitting anything.
Jack continued to wait, watching the activity going in and out. Or maybe he was just hesitating. It was always hard for him to know how to approach someone he suspected of having the rare ability to recognize killers.
Some of those people didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Some, like Kate, had been hard to convince but smart enough to listen. Those who had a trace of the ability occasionally thought of it as normal, something they thought that everyone could do. It was anything but normal, and it grew rarer all the time as super-predators killed off anyone they found with the ability.
The biggest problem was the hostility he sometimes encountered. Some people didn’t like him invading their lives with what they considered crazy notions. Their ability had never manifested itself, so they thought he was a nutcase. He always did his best to convince them to at least listen to him, because the chances were that sooner or later one of those rare super-predators would come along and slaughter them. He tried to help them come to terms with their ability.
Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.
He often wished he could simply leave these people alone to live their lives. Most weren’t aware of their rare vision. Others viewed it as a freak feeling they’d had once without knowing for sure if it was true or not.
Often, because it scared them, they foolishly ignored the feeling. Since it only happened to them once and there was no way to confirm their feeling, it came across to them as merely fearing a dangerous-looking person. Most of the time they wanted nothing more than to deny what they had felt so they could forget the incident.
But all Jack had to do was look into their eyes and he could see it in them. Jack couldn’t see killers for who they were. His singular ability was confined to recognizing these people who had the ability to recognize killers. As far as he knew, he was the only one of his kind. Because of that, he felt an obligation to use his ability to try to save lives.
But he often wished he could just leave these people alone.
The only problem was that there were super-predators who could also recognize them for their ability. That kind liked nothing more than to eliminate those individuals, the way a wolf liked to be rid of the sheepdog.
This rare ability was genetic, so it often passed down in families. Because of that, those super-predators would sometimes kill the entire family to wipe out that trait.
Jack wished he could leave this woman, Angela, alone to live her life in this backwater town. In such a small city he expected she had never actually encountered a killer. But he was also aware that people with this ability somehow drew predators to them. He didn’t know how or why, he only knew that they did.
He also knew that members of Angela Constantine’s family, both in America and in Italy, had already been murdered by a super-predator named Cassiel. Since Cassiel was back in the United States, it was certainly possible that he would come after Angela or her mother. From what Jack had learned about Sally Constantine, he was far more concerned about Angela.
On top of that, there were troubling connections that he had to look into.
Jack sighed as he started across the parking lot, sorry that he was going to have to intrude in this woman’s life and possibly scare the wits out of her with talk of killers. He hated it when that happened.
What weighed him down the most was that it turned out far too often that the people he found ended up murdered. After all, those super-predators were also hunting them. Cassiel already had the scent of blood from this family.
Jack often went to sleep wishing he had never found Uziel and a whole list of others like him who were now dead. He knew that by doing what he did he was able to save lives. But he often went to sleep seeing in his mind’s eye the tragic, bloody end to the lives of people he had found, or found too late.
Jack pulled open the dented metal door to the bar and was immediately hit by a wall of sound from the loud music and the talking and laughter. Once inside, he stood off to the side in the back for a time, taking in the place, letting his eyes adjust to the rather dim light. There was a doorway to the side of the bar, probably going to a stockroom and office in back.
A row of neon signs for different beer brands and various kinds of hard liquor lined the back wall above shelves packed with bottles. In the center of the ceiling a rotating ball sent little spots of light dancing around the room, playing over all the people, making them seem to melt together into a single undulating mass. Christmas lights were strung at the top of the walls all around the room. The dark-painted concrete floor was scuffed and scratched. Framed chalkboards were hung on the wall to the right. Drink specials and menus of a few light appetizers were written in chalk of various colors.
But it was the neon lights behind the bar and others around the room, most of them red, that cast their crimson spell over the place. They made the bar intimate and rather cozy, despite the place being decidedly on the sleazy side.
It was a dive, but a dive with an oddly homey appeal.
Young women in short skirts or cutoff shorts teetered on high heels as they delivered trays of drinks to tables around the room. Jack had one photo of Angela Constantine from her driver’s license and another from the bond for her courier service, so he had a pretty good idea of who he was looking for.
He finally spotted her behind the bar, making drinks for the waitresses circulating around the room as well as tending to the men lined up on barstools. She didn’t have blue hair like on her driver’s license. It was now platinum blond tipped in red. It looked like she had dipped the ends of her hair in blood that had gradually dissipated as it soaked upward into the platinum.
With that hair she stood out from everyone else in the room. She was impossible to miss.
From a distance he couldn’t really get a good look at her eyes, so he wove his way across the room full of people.
He found an empty stool down at the end of the bar, where it turned a corner to close off that end of the bar. It left just enough room for one barstool. Being where it was around the corner at the end, it afforded him a view down the length of the bar, and behind it. The seat would allow him to get a better look so he could assess Angela Constantine.
Even though he had seen a couple of photos of her, she was not at all what he expected. Not in the least. She was altogether more than he had expected.
She had on blue jean shorts with pockets hanging down below the cutoff legs. Her open-front shirt over a tube top showed her navel and a lot of territory below it before reaching the low top of the shorts. Most of all, her shorts showed off her stunning, long legs to full advantage. Her shorts didn’t leave much to the imagination about what little they did cover. She had on suede boots that came up almost to her knees and only served to help draw attention to the length of her bare legs.
When she came closer to serve a guy sitting not too far away, Jack saw that she had several tattoos on her arms, but they were unlike any tattoos he had ever seen before. These were not done as art or decoration. Each was small and they clearly were not intended for others to admire. They obviously had some meaning to her, and that’s all they were there for. They were personal.
On the inside of each wrist was a small tattoo of a delicate feather. Those were the only slightly decorative tattoos of the lot, and yet they were too small to be decoration. It looked more like it was meant to be a reminder to herself. He guessed it was in reference to her name, which meant “angel” in Italian.
Her fingernails weren’t long, but they were painted a deep, blood red. The back of her ear was lined with rings. Above the black mascara and eyeliner was a creamy black eye shadow with little flecks of copper in it. Her lipstick was a moist, rich, luscious red. She could easily be featured in an ad for makeup—especially lipstick. She had that achingly evocative model look.
He would never have expected it from the kinds of elements she had put together, but now that he saw her up closer, he realized that her platinum hair fit perfectly with the rest of her, creating a complete, totally unique look.
She was staggeringly attractive.
But when she turned more in his direction, he almost fell off his stool when he saw her one large tattoo that was clearly meant for people to see.
At first, from the side, he had thought it was a dark-colored choker, or tall neck band of some sort, but it wasn’t—it was a tattoo. Across her throat were the words “DARK ANGEL,” big enough that he could clearly read them even from a distance.
This was not a shy girl. This was an intimidating woman.
When she finally came down to the end of the bar to see what she could get him, her gaze met his.
For a fraction of a second she paused as she saw his eyes.
In that instant he could tell that she recognized in his eyes that he had killed people. In his case they were predators, not innocent people. If she was aware of her ability, she would be able to grasp the distinction by what she saw in his eyes.
As stunningly beautiful as she was, her eyes were possibly the most remarkable feature about her. It was stone-cold obvious to him that she had the ability to recognize killers. But there was so much more.
She leaned over the bar to be heard over the music. “What can I get you?”
He had already decided on the straightforward approach, but he couldn’t help being mesmerized by her eyes, by her very presence. He was used to seeing people who could recognize killers, but her eyes were all of that and a whole world of difference more.
“I need to talk to you about the kind of men you can recognize with those eyes of yours.”
She leaned in closer on one elbow.
“Fuck off.”
That had not been what he expected. “Listen to me, I need—”
“You heard the lady,” a man standing just over his right shoulder said. “You need to leave.”
Jack could tell that the bouncer was not someone to be taken lightly. This was not the time or place to press the issue. Starting something with a bouncer wouldn’t help him talk with her. Besides, his intent was to help people, not hurt them.
He reluctantly slid off the barstool. He turned back to see Angela standing motionless, watching him.
“This is more important than you realize,” he said. “Please think it over.”
Before the bouncer could force him out, Jack left.