“My family is from Denver,” she said. She sighed. “We’re not really that close. My brother…well, he’s all that matters to them. I was pretty much invisible.”
“Why is that?”
“He’s a priest. No matter what I did, I could never measure up to that.”
“A priest, huh?” He smiled. “How did they take you being gay?”
Sam shook her head. “That was pretty much the last straw. Being a cop didn’t go over too well to begin with. But when I brought Tori home to meet them…well, let’s just say there was a lot of praying involved,” she said with a laugh.
“So you don’t see them?”
“No. We talk on the phone a couple of times a year, that’s about it.” She shrugged. “My brother…we don’t really have a relationship at all.” He handed her another part of the squirrel and she took it. “What about you? Where did you grow up?”
He surprised her by answering as easily as he did. “Around here, actually.”
“New Mexico? Or here?”
“Taos.”
“Wow. So you’ve been on these mountains before?”
“I was a kid. We moved to California when I was twelve,” he said. “Everything I know about this mountain is from research only.”
“Like where the streams are?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you move to California?”
He poked the fire with a stick, a thoughtful expression on his face. “My father lost his job here. Again.” He laid the stick on top of the flames. “I told you he drank. He had a hard time keeping jobs. He had an uncle in California. Offered him a job. So we moved.” Angel shrugged. “Not much changed though.”
From what he’d said, this would have been four years before his mother was killed. She was curious about his childhood but decided to keep things more current.
“Are you ever going to tell me what you did?”
“What I did?”
“Yeah, what you did,” she said. “You must have done something. When you killed that family, you said you needed a distraction. Why? And why would you need a hostage?”
He looked away from her, and for the first time, she thought she saw remorse—even shame—in his expression. Like other questions she’d asked him, she didn’t expect to get an answer right away. She normally had to prompt him to get him to talk.
“It was a really long day,” he said, his voice quiet in the muted darkness. “I had everything planned out. Even a couple of contingency plans too.” He looked back at her. “Because something could always go wrong. The more people you have involved, the more chance of a mishap. So I am operating on one of those contingency plans now.”
She waited, hoping he would continue without her having to ask.
“The military trained me for one thing. That was to kill. And I was very good at my job. I also learned that I could make a lot of money doing it for the private sector instead of the military.”
“Like a hit man?”
“Yeah. I worked the Middle East, mostly. Europe. Sometimes Asia. But I’m ready to retire from this line of work. This job gave me the opportunity to do that.”
She was almost afraid to ask. But she did anyway. “What job?”
“My contract was to…eliminate a guy. He happened to work for an armored car company.”
“What did he do? Why did someone want him killed?”
Angel shook his head. “I don’t ask, they don’t tell. I don’t need to know the why of it.”
“So what happened?”
“My plan was to make the hit while he was at work. And then to relieve his company of several million dollars. Which meant I needed a team.”
“You work alone?”
“Always. In my line of work, you can’t afford mistakes.”
Sam nodded. “So I take it, there were mistakes then?”
“My first mistake was hiring two ex-military guys who thought they were smarter than me,” he said. “I had the company staked out. I knew the routine. I’d stashed a car about a mile from the place. I had a man there waiting for us. The guard I had the hit on, his shift started at five in the morning. I knew his routine as well. He always showed up a few minutes after the first guard. We needed both of their codes to access the building.” He glanced over at her. “Without going into all the details, we got away with the armored car full of cash. I’m guessing about three million. We unloaded the cash into our car and headed to Taos. That’s where things broke down.”
“The two guys who thought they were smarter than you?”
“Yeah. They thought they would just take all the money for themselves.”
“So you killed them?”
“Yes. And left the car.”
“And the money?”
He laughed. “Hell, no. There were five of us. Three now. We stole a car, took the money and headed out again. But we were behind schedule and there was nothing discreet about our getaway. There were cops everywhere.”
“So you needed a distraction,” Sam said.
He stared at her. “Yes, I needed a distraction. I needed several distractions. And I needed to hide the money and get rid of my remaining team.”
“Oh.”
“I told you, Sam, I’m a killer.”
“Yes, you did. I haven’t forgotten.”
Chapter Sixteen
Cameron thought they were gaining ground, but she didn’t know for sure, not until she felt the ashes of their most recent campfire.
“Still warm,” she said. “I’m guessing not much more than an hour, less than two.”
“So we might catch them today?” Tori asked.
“If we don’t have any setbacks, we might,” she said. She pointed to the small stream. “Fill up if you need to.”
“Hey, guys,” Andrea said. “I think I found the reason for the gunshots we heard.”
Cameron and Tori walked over to her, watching as she kicked at a small pile of bones.
“What is it?” Tori asked.
“Squirrel, most likely,” Cameron said.
Andrea nodded. “Looks like they had fresh meat for dinner.”
Tori shook her head. “No way would Sam eat that.”
“Two squirrels. We heard two shots.”
“If you’re hungry, you’ll eat just about anything,” Cameron said. “I speak from experience.” She heard the low rumble of a helicopter and looked at her watch. “Right on time.”
“How close will they get?” Tori asked.
“Not much closer. Just enough to make him think they’re searching for him.”
“You really think he’s heading toward the highway?”
Cameron knelt down near the stream and filled her water bottle. “Eventually. He’s been traveling parallel with it. He could turn north at any time and hit the highway within half a day, I’d think.”
Tori splashed water on her face, then on her hair and slicked it back. “I can’t wait to get a shower,” she said.
“You and me both,” Andrea said. She looked at Cameron. “How did you stand going weeks without a bath?”
“Weeks?” Tori asked. “Really?”
Cameron nodded. “I spent three months in the desert with little provisions. Water was for drinking only.” She stood up. “Ready to head out?”
“Yeah. Let’s catch this bastard,” Tori said.
* * *
“Helicopters again,” Sam said. “They still don’t sound very close though.”
Angel’s gaze went to the sky. “No. They must be checking grid by grid.”
“I must not hold much weight as a hostage,” she said. “I’d like to think there’d be a hundred helicopters out looking for me.”
He gave a quick laugh. “Sorry to bust your bubble, kid, but right now, I’d guess they’re more interested in me than you.”
“Because you have three million dollars?”
“Well, that, and they have a morgue full of bodies.”
Oh, yeah. Sam had to remind herself sometimes what he’d done. Since that first day, he’d treated her more like a hiking companion than a hostage. And she, in turn, had started to think of him as something other than a killer and kidnapper. That was a bit disturbing.