That loosened her jaw. “I what?”
“You can’t fall in love with me.” Taking advantage of Emily’s speechlessness, he got up and walked away, his back to her. “While I was in that waterfall, no, don’t tell me, that shower, I—” Turning, he looked back at her. “You know, it is quite one thing to watch mortals and their toilet habits but quite another to experience them. I find them a great nuisance. In fact, I find most everything about these bodies a nuisance.”
Emily was glaring at him. “So why don’t you just fly off to where you really belong?”
His smile broadened. “I have offended you.”
“How could you?” she asked sweetly. “You have made me into a fugitive wanted by criminals as well as law enforcement agencies, not to mention your wife, but you tell me I’m not to fall in love with you. Tell me, oh please do, how do I refrain myself?”
Michael laughed, then again sat down on the bed beside her. “I’m just telling you in case you feel so inclined. Once my mission here is done, I have to go home.”
“And home is Heaven?” Emily asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Yes, exactly. I’ll go back to keeping you from drowning in ponds and tickling your nose whenever I see trouble ahead.”
At that Emily drew the covers up around her neck. “I would like for you to get out of my life,” she said quietly. “You appear to be in good health now so I’d like for you to—”
“Here, feel my head,” he said, bending toward her, ignoring her words.
Emily wanted to remain aloof but she was curious as to what had happened after last night. She put her hands in the damp curls of his hair and felt all of his scalp. There wasn’t a wound or dent or any sign that last night there had been a fat, round piece of lead sticking out of his scalp.
“And look at these,” he said, sitting up and again roaming his hands over his chest.
She saw what could be healed-over scars from what could have been bullet holes.
“And here,” he said, turning around so she could see his back. “Two of them came out the back.”
She couldn’t help herself as she ran her hands over the scars that did indeed look like bullet holes. Donald had said that the man had been killed in his cell, “his chest full of bullet holes, and one round in his head.”
Turning back around, Michael picked up the piece of lead from the bedside table. “This was causing me horrible pain, but after you took it out I was fine. Did you sleep well?”
As he spoke he handed the bullet to Emily, and for a while she sat there looking at the horrid little thing. Last night she had pulled this from the man’s head with a pair of pliers, and this morning there wasn’t so much as a cut on his scalp to show it had been there.
She looked up at him. “Who are you?” she whispered. “How can you open locked doors? How can you have something like this taken from your head and not bleed? How do you know so much about me?”
“Emily,” he said softly, then reached for her hand.
“Don’t you dare touch me,” she said. “Every time you touch me odd things happen. You…you hypnotized me last night, didn’t you?”
“I had to. Otherwise you were going to call a doctor. But expending the energy to calm your mind was more than I could do last night,” he said. “I became unconscious.”
“You are creating a diversion,” she said, “and you are not answering my question. Who are you?”
“I seem to remember that I told you I would not talk of, well, of angels unless you asked me to.”
“Oh, so now I’m to beg you to tell me….” She looked away and suddenly her eyes filled with tears. These last days had been too much for her.
“Are all mortal women so illogical?”
“Of all the chauvinistic things I have ever had said to me, that is the worst!” she said as she flung back the covers and discovered that she was in her underwear. Her slacks and shirt were laid neatly across the back of a chair at the other end of the room.
“Did you undress me?” she said, seething as she glared at him.
“You seemed to be uncomfortable and I wanted you to sleep well.” He seemed to know that he had done something wrong, but he wasn’t sure what.
When she continued to get out of bed, he caught her hand, and, as always, she calmed. “I will tell you everything I know if you’ll listen. But I warn you that I don’t know much. You must believe me when I tell you that I’m as confused and disoriented as you are. I’d like to go home as much as you do. I don’t want to be chased by people, shot at or have to climb out windows. I have duties and work to do just like anyone else.”
“Just your work happens to be in Heaven,” she said, pulling away from his touch.
“Yes,” he said simply. “My work happens to be elsewhere.”
“What you’re asking me to believe is impossible.”
“Why?” He took a deep breath. “Mortals never believe in what they can’t see. You don’t believe an animal exists until you actually see it. But whether you believe in something or not has no effect on what is or is not. Do you understand me?”
“I understand you; it’s just that I don’t believe you.”
Michael looked at her a moment, then blinked. “Oh, I see. You believe in angels, you just don’t believe I am an angel.”
“Bingo!”
At that Michael laughed. “What can I do to prove it to you? Other than sprout wings, that is?”
She knew he was making fun of her but she wasn’t going to allow herself to get angry. Instead, she just sat there and glared at him.
After a while he got up and walked about the room. “All right, you’ve seen some things but not enough to make you believe that I am what I say I am. What do you think has been the cause of what you have seen?”
“You’re a magician and you have some clairvoyant powers. You’re very good with locks.”
“And bullets,” he said, smiling at her, but she didn’t answer so he sat back down on the bed.
“All right, Emily, I’m asking for your help as one mortal to another. My, uh, clairvoyant powers have told me that there is a situation that needs solving and it involves you. But I have no idea what the problem is so I have to find it before I can solve it.”
“What kind of problem is it?” She could have bitten off her tongue when she said it, but when he presented the situation this way she was intrigued. She loved helping Donald research stories. In fact, she just loved mysteries in general.
“I don’t know, but what would be so big that an angel would need to be sent to earth?”
“Evil,” she said. “True evil.”
At that Michael’s face lit up. “That’s right. That’s what it must be. I haven’t had much time to think since I got here, but evil must be the answer.” He leaned toward her. “So what evil surrounds you?”
“Me? In a small-town library? You must be kidding.” She was back to normal now, and she could keep this good-looking man at a distance. But why did they always seem to end up alone in bedrooms?
Again he stood and began to walk about the room. The towel was slipping lower over his hips and Emily suddenly wished there was a telephone in the room. If there were, she’d call Donald right now.
“That’s just what I thought. That town you live in is quite without interest and, as always, your life is without excitement and—”
“I beg your pardon!” she said. “My life is not without excitement. For your information, I happen to be engaged to a man who plans to be governor of this state and maybe even president.”
“No,” Michael said solemnly. “He always has grand plans when he’s young, then spends his old age telling everyone what he could have been if someone hadn’t hindered him.”
“Of all the—” Emily said, flinging back the covers.
“Ah yes, I forgot that you never could take the truth.”
At that Emily sat back down. “I can take the truth as well as the next man.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “And the last I h
eard, God gave us lowly mortals free will. Even if Donald has been what you say in the past—which, by the way, I don’t believe, since I don’t believe in reincarnation—then he could change in this lifetime. Am I right?”
“Very right,” Michael said with a smile, and Emily gave him one back. “I stand corrected. Now, where was I?”
“Telling me that I am boring, where I live is boring and that the man I love is going to be a failure,” she said sweetly. “If you’re an angel, I’d hate to see Satan’s imps,” she said under her breath.
Michael laughed. “All right, maybe you and your town aren’t exactly boring, but I don’t remember seeing any evil around you.”
“But then, maybe you’d already made up your mind about all of us and weren’t looking. Maybe it says on your Rolodex that Emily is boring and whatever she does is boring and where she lives is boring, so you don’t bother yourself to really look.”
For a moment Michael stood there staring at her, his eyes wide. “I think you may have something there,” he said, astonishment in his voice.
“Me? Boring little me?” she said, for a second hating all men everywhere. First Donald tells her she’s “practical” and now this man tells her she’s too boring to attract evil.
Michael didn’t respond to her sarcasm. “I really do think you have something. Good attracts evil.”
“So now I’m ‘good’ too,” she muttered. “Boring, good, practical.”
“What is wrong with being called good? All of Heaven likes good people and I can tell you that there are few enough of you.”
She wasn’t going to answer him because there wasn’t a real answer. Her mother always told her good was good, but sometimes a woman wanted to be considered a bit wicked. “So how can you solve evil if you can’t even find it?” she asked. “And I don’t think there’s much evil in Greenbriar, North Carolina. As you say, it’s pretty boring.”
Michael sat down on the end of the bed. “I’m trying to remember that town. I have to take care of several towns and cities and cultures are different. What is sinful in Saudi Arabia is not always sinful in Monaco, and what is sinful here in America is not necessarily sinful in Paris. Sometimes I get mixed up.”
“I see. Not that you are one, but isn’t there a guidebook for being an angel?”
“Is there a guidebook for being a mortal?” he shot back.
“The Bible?”
He grinned at her. “I’ve always liked you, Emily,” he said. “And I find you even funnier in a body.”
“My body is funny-looking?”
At that he laughed and bent forward and kissed her cheek, then drew back as though he were startled. “My, but that was pleasurable! Well, shall we get started?”
“At the risk of boring you with my boring question, could you tell me what we are to get started on?”
“Why, we’re going back to your town and searching out the evil, of course.”
“We? As in you and me?”
He just looked at her in answer.
“Did it slip your mind that you are wanted for crimes that you may or may not have committed and that a few hundred people are looking for you? Maybe Greenbriar is a backward place to you, but we do get TV and your picture has been all over it. Someone will see you and turn you in.”
“Mmmmm. Yes, I can see that would be a problem. You’ll have to hide me then.”
“Oh no, you don’t.”
“I don’t do what?” he asked, eyebrows raised in innocence.
“You don’t involve me in this. And I am not going to hide you. In my opinion I have spent much too much time with you already.”
“I can understand that. Or now I think I’m supposed to say that I can respect that. Is that right? Or did they make that rule in Thailand? No, I’m sure it was you American women.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, not sure if he was making fun of her or not. “Why do I always get the impression that you’re not really hearing me?”
He gave her a small smile. “Do you want a shower before we have breakfast?”
“Sure, let’s just go have breakfast and have everyone in the cafe pointing at you and saying they saw you on TV last night.”
“Do they do that to Mickey?”
She glared at him, knowing full well that he was referring to Mickey Mouse.
“Sorry,” he said insincerely. “I have my cartoons mixed up. He’s the other one. But isn’t your Donald on television all the time? Do people stare and point at him?”
“If they do it’s not because he’s a criminal.” With a start, she realized that he had done it again! Once again he had sidetracked her from the issue. “Listen to me and listen well. My involvement with you is at an end. I’m not going to spend another minute of my time leaping out of windows, climbing down drain-pipes or listening to you tell me you’re an angel. You’re the most unangelic person I have ever met. Now, I’m going to get up from here, get dressed and I’m going home. Without you. Understand me?”
“Perfectly,” he said cheerfully. “And I’m glad we have that settled, because I believe some of your federal mafia are pulling into the parking lot.”
It took her a moment to understand what he was saying. Federal mafia? In the next second everything happened quickly. Michael grabbed his clothes from over a chair and disappeared out the door. Seconds later there was a knock, then a man telling her to open up. Emily called for them to wait because she was still in bed in just her underwear, but they didn’t wait.
Three men opened the door that she was sure had been locked, and stood there staring at her for a second before they started to search the room. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Do you have a search warrant?”
“No ma’am,” one of the men said, then flashed a badge for just a second before putting it back into his coat pocket. “We are here to protect you. We had word that you had been taken hostage and were being held against your will.”
Emily pulled the covers up higher about her neck. “If I were I’d be dead now after the way you barged into this room, wouldn’t I?” she said, glaring at the man. Actually, she was shaking under the covers; her bravado was just to cover her fear. How could she be involved with the FBI?
She gave a squeal of protest when one of the men ran his hands over the covers, all along her body, to see if she was hiding a man in bed with her. “Get away from me!” She took a deep breath and looked at the first man. “Would you mind telling me what this is about?”
The man showed her a photo of Michael, the one she had seen on TV. “Have you ever seen this man before?”
Emily didn’t know what these men had been told, so she decided to be as honest as she could. For all she knew, Donald had told them everything she had told him. “Yes, I saw him yesterday in the town where I was staying.”
“Did you spend the day with him?”
“What a ridiculous question. Why would I spend the day with a strange man?”
The three men, all of them standing, looked down at her and waited. “All right, I did. I ran into him with my car on Friday night, took him to the doctor, then the next day we spent some time together. He seemed perfectly harmless and I did feel a sense of obligation to him because I could have killed him.”
“What happened last night?”
“I saw him on TV, then called my fiancé, Donald Stewart.” She looked at the men to see if they knew him but not one flicker of recognition registered on their faces. “Anyway, Donald told me to go to the police and get out of there.”
“And did you go to the police?”
Did they think she was going to believe they hadn’t checked? Emily looked down at her hands on the covers and tried to bring a blush to her face. “Actually, no I didn’t. I, uh, heard a knock on the door, got frightened and climbed out the window.” She held up her hand for them to see the long scratch there. “There’s a thorn bush growing up the side of the building. I, uh, even left my suitcase behind because I couldn’t throw it down. I know it was silly of me, but af
ter what Donald said, I was too frightened to do anything but get out.”
For a moment Emily held her breath, wondering if the men were going to believe her story.
“Your story confirms what we already knew, Miss Todd,” said the first man, the only one of them who seemed to have vocal cords. “We’re sure a man like Michael Chamberlain is long gone but if he should contact you again, show yourself to be as sensible as you have been and call us.” He handed her a business card. “Call this number night or day and someone will help you. Good morning,” he said, and as quickly as they’d arrived, they left.
Once the room was empty again, Emily fell back against the pillows and felt her body shaking all over. The FBI! Asking her questions! Her. Practical, boring, sensible Emily Jane Todd questioned by the FBI. And all because a man who said he was an angel was looking for evil.
Suddenly, Emily sat up straight. “The old Madison place,” she said aloud, and suddenly several things seemed to fall into place. If there was ever an evil place on earth, it was that horrible old house. And of course it had something to do with her, since she’d been researching it for years. She had a file on it that must be a foot thick. No one knew as much about the Madison house and all that had gone on there as she did.
Throwing back the covers, she had one foot on the floor when the door burst open and Michael came running in. “Emily, are you all right? They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
He had his hands on her shoulders and was looking down at her nearly nude body as though she were in mortal danger.
“Why are you still here? Those men could come back at any second. They’re probably watching this room right now.” She was frowning at him.
Michael grinned at her. “You were worried about me, weren’t you? So why didn’t you tell those men I was hiding in the bushes outside and get rid of me forever?”
“Whatever you are, I don’t think you’re a killer. Nor are you an angel,” she said before he could say another word.