Angel almost had her bag packed when the phone rang. She braced herself for the ass-chewing that she knew was coming before hitting answer.

“Hello…”

“That’s all you have to say for yourself? Where are they going, Angel, and why didn’t you tell us?”

Angel had only just found out where they were going, and why, that morning.

She felt Dax slip out of bed around 4 a.m. She’d asked him point-blank where he was going. When he told her Canada, she was surprised. Dax had never mentioned having business in Canada. But then he told her they were going to try to find “and deal with” Hawk. The “deal with” worried her, but she didn’t ask him about that. She doubted that he’d tell her what he meant anyways. Then the most frightening part of the conversation happened when he sat down and looked into her eyes and said:

“Nobody but the club knows about this, Angel…and you.” Then he’d simply kissed her forehead and gotten back up. While he was in the shower she thought a lot about what that meant, and the only conclusion she could come to was that he was telling her that if anyone found out…he’d know it was her that told. While Dax was in the shower, she’d slipped on her clothes and gone out to the kitchen to make coffee and try to decide what to do with this new information. Before she finished putting it on to brew, there was a knock on the door. If she didn’t know better she might think that God…or maybe it was her dad…had sent her an angel in the form of a teenaged girl. It was Symone. Angel barely recognized her without all the make-up and slutty clothes.

“I’m sorry to come by so early. Is Dax here?” she asked, politely.

“He’s in the shower,” Angel told her. “Come on in.”

Symone followed her inside and nervously took the seat Angel offered her. “I was afraid they’d be gone by the time I got a ride out here.”

“Gone?” Angel asked, trying to be subtle. Why would a teenaged girl know where they were going when Angel herself had only just found out?

“Yeah. My grandmother talked to my uncle in New Hampshire. He says I can come and live there. I like his wife…” She trailed off with tears in her eyes. Angel’s heart went out to her, and then suddenly she remembered something she said about her uncle that night at the bar…she called him a pervert. “Symone, you said something about Dax sending you to your aunt and uncle before, and you called your uncle a pervert…”

“Oh, I was just mad.” She looked down the hallway. “You think Dax will be long?”

“No. He should be out any minute.” The girl was a nervous wreck. There seemed to be more to this than her just needing a ride. She couldn’t help but wonder if any of these people thought about the consequences of their choices that their children would have to bear.

“Where in New Hampshire does your uncle live?”

The girl had a paper in her hand. Angel glanced at it. It was a handwritten address and a note. “Um, I don’t remember the name of the town,” the girl said. “Will you tell Dax I’m here?”

“Well, he should be out in a minute. Are you sure you don’t want something? I’m going to fix myself some coffee.”

“No, I’m okay.”

“What about something to eat? Have you had breakfast? I think there are some sweet rolls. I wouldn’t mind heating you one up.”

Symone probably didn’t even realize it, but at the mention of food, she licked her lips. “Okay—you don’t think Dax will mind?”

“Of course not. Come on.” Symone stood up and followed her into the kitchen. Angel put one of the sweet rolls on a plate and held it out to the girl. “Here, put this in the microwave for thirty seconds. I’m going to make some coffee. Would you like some tea or hot chocolate?”

“Hot chocolate sounds good, thank you.” Symone put the note down on the table and went over to the microwave. Angel reached for the coffee canister and “accidentally” brushed the note off into the floor. She bent down and picked it up, quickly scanning what was written on it. It was just the address with one sentence at the bottom that said, “Tell him you’re trading her for what Bobby left in the jacuzzi.”

Trading her? What the hell? She heard Dax approaching, and she put the note face down on the table and moved over to make the coffee. When Dax saw Symone, he gave Angel a questioning look. Angel shrugged and Symone said, “Dax, I can’t stay at Grandma’s anymore. She’s real sick with her ulcers and she’s been throwing up blood. She wants you to take me to my uncle in New Hampshire. I heard you all were going out that way.”

Dax looked at Angel again, raised an eyebrow, and said, “Angel, will you excuse us for a second?”

“Sure.” She finished the coffee and left the kitchen. She thought about trying to eavesdrop but it was too risky. She already had a full day of not getting caught in front of her. Instead, she went to the bedroom and found her phone. She put the New Hampshire address into it, and by the time the motorcycles and the white van they used for transport rolled out…with Symone in the front seat with the prospect who was driving …she had her plan in mind. Now, she was prepared for Kyle’s questions. She knew he’d be calling as soon as they rolled by the embankment where the surveillance van was hidden. It was obvious from the way they were packed that this wasn’t any simple, ordinary run in the hills.

“They’re going to New York,” she answered Kyle on the phone. “Dax said they had some business in Queens. That’s all he would tell me.”

“And why didn’t you tell me before they came racing past the surveillance van?”

“I’m sorry, Kyle, I honestly just found that much out before he left. He’s been acting a little suspicious since the day…” She was about to say, “the day Dad died.” Instead she said, “The day we collared Vince Miller. I didn’t want to push too much.”

Kyle scoffed and then said, “I guess you’re right. Still, it would have been nice to inform Queens they were coming. Chris has contacts there in the gang task force.”

“Well, we still can. It’s going to take them hours to get there.”

“Okay, I’ll call Chris. Maybe we should meet later…”

“Kyle, I’m so tired. I haven’t had any time to myself…not even after Dad died, really. I was hoping I could take a couple of days off and maybe spend the night in Mystic. A walk or two on the beach will renew my strength and energy, I think.”

Her brother hesitated and Angel wondered if he’d heard something false in her voice. Then he said, “Ultimately that’s Chris’s call. But I think it’s a good idea for you to spend some time relaxing. Why don’t you take Micah with you?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, Kyle. Micah and I have a lot to work through. There would be nothing relaxing about taking him with me, trust me. I just need a mental health day, alone.” Kyle wasn’t happy, but he let it go. After she got off the phone with him, she finished packing and called Chris. She told him the same thing she’d told Kyle and he said he’d let his contacts there know. She wasn’t worried, since the route to Vermont wouldn’t take Dax anywhere near Queens. Since the task force couldn’t technically cross state lines, they’d never have to know where the club…and Angel…were really going.

Before starting her car she made sure her passport was hidden in the floorboard compartment that the department had put in for her to carry her weapon. She smiled and waved at the new prospect at the gate. She couldn’t remember his name, but he only looked about eighteen to her, and she wondered what possessed someone that age to choose the life of an outlaw biker over all the other things they could do with their lives. Those were the ones that didn’t think about the future before they were in too deep. It was something Angel had been giving a lot of thought to. When all of this was over, if Dax would have her, this was where she wanted to be. She knew that. What she didn’t know was if she was truly prepared to give up the rest of her life for it.

As she drove her mind went back and forth between that, worrying about what Dax might do if he found Hawk, and feeling guilty about lying to her brother and Chris. She knew that she had to do this alone. If she’d presented it to them, Chris would have had no choice but to notify the FBI and Border Patrol. She might ultimately have to be responsible for arresting Dax, but she’d be damned if getting him shot and maybe killed was going to be on her head.

She drove past where she knew the surveillance van was and waved. She wanted to be sure Kyle saw her going toward Connecticut, because as soon as she got onto the highway she was changing directions and heading toward New Hampshire. She would decide what to tell Kyle and Chris when she got back…if anything came of her trip at all.

The drive to New Hampshire took a couple of hours, but with everything on her mind, it went by quickly. Angel put the address she’d gotten from Symone in her GPS and it took her right to the street she was looking for. She parked at the far end, near a busy intersection, and took the high-powered binoculars she carried out from underneath the seat. She trained them on the house at the end of the road. It was an older home, probably built in the late sixties, with a wrap-around porch. The yard was well-kept and there were colorful flower boxes in the windows. It definitely looked like a more appropriate place for a teenager than the ranch.

Parked all along the street in front of it were the Harleys. The white van was backed up to the fence alongside the house. She could see that the back doors of it were open, but she couldn’t see anything else from where she sat. She put the binoculars down and drove a block up and found an empty lot. Taking the video camera, her gun, and the binoculars, she locked up the car and started walking down a narrow alleyway that she hoped would take her to the back of the house where Dax and the guys were.

She listened to dogs barking and the sounds of people talking as she made her way up the alley. Most of the houses had wooden fences that led to the alley. Some of them were cyclone ones. Angel prayed the white house had gone with wood, and she was relieved when she got there to see that they had. She could hear a lot of talking coming from inside the fence, but it looked solid and she couldn’t see through it. She walked along quietly until she came to a small knothole. She had to sit down in the dirt in order to press her face into the fence and place her eye over the hole. It took a second for her eyesight to adjust and as soon as it did, she knew she had stumbled up on something that the task force would be able to use.

“Are they all going, boss?” Clay was the one talking. He was about six feet from her, standing over what looked like to her, a hand-made wooden jacuzzi. In one hand, he was holding a military assault rifle. Behind him stood Handsome with something in his hands that she didn’t recognize.

“Yeah, load them all,” Dax said. Then with a look at Handsome like the man had lost his mind, Dax took the brick he was holding out of his hands and said, “Except that. I don’t know about you guys but I’m not willing to travel the rest of the way to Canada and home, hauling enough C-4 to blow up Vermont.”

Handsome laughed. “Nah, me neither. I just never touched it before. Wondered what it felt like.”

There was a man in a pair of jeans and a blue denim shirt standing a few feet behind Dax that Angel didn’t recognize. She assumed it was Bobby’s brother because they looked a lot alike. She didn’t see Symone anywhere. She watched as the men began pulling more assault rifles out of the jacuzzi and working an assembly line until the weapons were loaded into the van. She took out her little video camera, made sure the audio was on, and pressed it into the knothole. She began shooting pictures, one after the other, until she heard Clay say, “Okay, that’s the last of them.”

“What am I supposed to do with that C-4?” The uncle asked. Angel put the camera back up to the knothole. She wanted to get the uncle on video too.

She was shocked when she heard Dax say, “I wish we had time to let you blow yourself up with it.” The uncle made a noise…that it is to say, a squeak. Simultaneously Angel heard something like a loud blast of air. Any cop that had paid attention in weapons class would understand that was the sound of a bullet traveling through the barrel of a gun with a silencer on the end of it.

She felt her heart racing as she replaced the camera with her eye at the knothole. What she saw almost made her vomit. The uncle was on his back with a gaping wound to his chest, bleeding out all over the patio as everyone watched. Symone had come out of the house with a middle-aged woman, and the woman had her arm around her. They were staring at the body too. None of that made her feel the nausea that was boiling up from her stomach…what caused her to feel like she might puke right there in the alley was the cold, scary look on Dax’s face as he stood holding a .44 Mag with a silencer on the end, looking down at the man he’d just murdered. If Angel were the good cop she used to be, she’d be celebrating. She had it all on tape. Fuck.