The Murder of an Angel Read online

  The plane was sturdy and elegant, and the pilot introduced himself as “Thomas Trotti. Call me Tom.”

  Tom was in uniform; he had longish blond hair under his hat, a dimple in each cheek, and a spray of lines at the outer corners of his eyes.

  The takeoff got my blood motoring and actually lifted my crappy mood. Once we were airborne, Tom said through the mic, “Folks, it’ll be an easy-breezy fifty-five-minute flight, which includes a breathtaking view over the Adirondacks. Because it’s such a short hop, we’ll only be flying at ten thousand feet, cruising at two hundred seventy knots. What a beautiful day to fly.”

  It was a beautiful day: crisp and clear with a lavender-blue-and-white sky. Matty sat at the window to my left, and Hugo and Harry took the two-seater on the other side of the narrow aisle.

  We’d unboxed our snacks and beverages and had been in flight for about forty minutes when something changed—and it felt terribly wrong.

  I grabbed Matty’s arm and said, “Did you feel that?”

  “Yes. The engine cut out,” he said. “Don’t worry. The pilot can bring it back to life.”

  I didn’t believe Matty. I knew he was wrong.

  Up ahead, there was frantic action in the cockpit. Red lights flashed on the control panel, accompanied by a rhythmic beeping alarm. Tom was throwing levers and speaking into his headset.

  I shouted, “Tom, what’s happening?”

  Our pilot said tersely, “Excuse me, but no talking, please.”

  Harry and Hugo were awake and looking petrified as the plane not only decelerated but was now sailing downward at a ten-degree angle. Without an engine, we were a giant glider—without power, and maybe without a prayer.

  I broke out in a sweat over my entire body.

  I thought, Okay, okay, okay, the engine will catch in a moment—but it did not.

  Matty groaned. “This is my fault. Why did I have to book this plane? Oh, God, oh, God. Tandy. Forgive me.”

  “This is not the end,” I told my brothers as we went into an even steeper descent. “We’re going to make it.”

  That was when Hugo screamed.

  “Mommmmmyyyy!” Hugo screamed shrilly. It shattered my heart to hear his fear.

  I turned to see him and Harry, but I couldn’t reach them, touch them, kiss them, do anything to make them less afraid.

  Matty bellowed at the pilot, “Do something, dammit!”

  Captain Tom shouted back, “Assume brace position, sir! And shut the hell up.”

  Matty gripped my hand too hard. It didn’t matter. I was sure that in seconds we were going to crash and burn to death, which was the worst possible way to die.

  The visceral memories of a different fire swamped me now: the darkness, the fight for air, the choking, the burning in my lungs, and the fierce scalding heat on my face as my nerves shrank back from the flames eating through my grandmother’s house in Paris.

  I thought, God, I don’t want to die.

  Please. Not us. Not Hugo.

  While we were still in the grip of the sickening downward pressure, time stretched out to the horizon. I waited for the shattering moment of impact. How long does it take to fall ten thousand feet? Somewhere, in that time between a split second and an eternity, I lost hope.

  There was no way out. No parachute or ejection seat or hand of God to pluck up the plane before it was dashed to the ground.

  Shadows flashed across the windows: white, black, white, black again; a stroboscopic light show of trees and sky and snow. Tom was talking gibberish into his headset, probably Maydays and our coordinates to alert rescuers to the fireball we were about to become.

  I locked eyes for a moment with Harry, my twin. He reached out his hand, and with tremendous effort against physical forces, we touched fingers. And then he bent over his knees and interlaced his hands behind his neck.

  As if that would do any good against what was coming.

  I pulled my hand from Matty’s and braced, too.

  Even though it was hopeless, I prayed. Please, God, forgive me for whatever I’ve done and please don’t let it hurt.

  And then I felt a noticeable change in our angle of descent. I looked up to see Tom hauling back on the yoke. As the plane leveled out a bit, I saw our crash path through the forest in the narrow slice of windscreen. The thick woods were wall-to-wall evergreens coated with yesterday’s snow. But there, between the trees, was a straight patch of snow, like a ski trail.

  The pilot yelled, “BRAAAAAACCCCE!”

  I hugged my knees and closed my eyes and felt the plane smash into the evergreens. Trunks whumped the belly of the plane; then there were more violent bumps and crunches, accompanied by a horrid scraping and ripping sound from my side of the aircraft.

  We rolled violently to the left, and I was slammed against Matty and the armrest. I heard my own scream, as if it was coming out of the top of my head.

  We hit something unyielding. Like stone.

  Matty cried out in agony. How badly was he hurt? I opened my eyes, but then the plane twisted violently around and we were skidding, sliding to the loud, high-pitched screeching of shearing metal.

  I screamed, “Mattyyy!” but all I heard was another ripping noise that lasted longer than the first. Out the window I could see the wing being torn from the right side of the plane.

  The smell of jet fuel permeated the cabin.

  Gasoline.

  It was going to happen now. We were all going to burn.

  This was my last living moment.

  Jacob was sitting in a chair beside the bed when I came out of the dark.

  Was this real? Or had I passed into death, with Jacob the image left in my mind?

  “Uncle Jake?”

  He reached for me, hugging me so gently I wasn’t sure he’d actually touched me, but I was in his arms anyway.

  “Tandy, Tandy, my dear heart. I want to hold you, but I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I’m alive?”

  Our voices sounded very soft and far away.

  Jacob sat back in his chair. He put his hands over his eyes and sobbed. I’d never heard Jacob cry. I wasn’t sure I was hearing it now.

  I made a few false starts before I was able to ask, “How is… everyone? Are they… alive?”

  “Everyone survived. You were lucky, Tandy. All of you.”

  The hospital room was faintly lit by a crack of light under the door and the glow of the vital signs monitor just to my right.

  I smelled antiseptic and had to double-check with my brain that it was not gasoline. And at the same time, I realized that I hurt everywhere. I was a great throbbing mass of pain, but as constant and pervasive as the pain was, it was muted.

  Whatever drugs were coming through my IV, they were definitely working. I had enough doped-up presence of mind to ask Jacob, “How lucky were my brothers?”

  “Matthew’s left femur is broken.”

  I couldn’t hear for a moment, and then I asked, “Will he be able to play ball?”

  “It’s too soon to know.”

  Jacob’s voice was cutting in and going out. I heard, “Hugo and Harry… soft tissue bruising… no head or internal injuries… Thank God.”

  My monitor beeped as my heart rate picked up. Joy that my brothers were alive. Sadness for Matty, who’d already had enough sadness. And something like hope for myself.

  I wiggled my toes. I wasn’t paralyzed. I wasn’t in bandages. I wasn’t burned. I wasn’t burned. But the plane was still tumbling. I could feel it, skidding, slamming into trees, rolling over and over.

  “And Tom?”

  “He’s going to make it. His family is with him now.”

  I lost track of time.

  When I came back to myself, Jake was talking about the crash, saying Tom had found a short, narrow ridge where he took a chance on a belly landing. We were low enough, going slow enough, and he was pilot enough.

  “What guts. What skill,” Jacob said.

  I heard him say that medevac had arrived w
ithin minutes, assessed us, and brought us directly to New York Hospital.

  Jacob said, “I wanted you here.”

  With the pain pulsing softly in the background, my mind set out on several different tracks. I remembered black cars on a beach six months ago. I remembered being kidnapped and locked up and electroshocked until my brain was wiped clean.

  I remembered the scorching house fire and the armed cars that had followed me and the gunfire from men who wanted to kill me. I had gotten warnings and threats from friends and enemies. And I could still hear Katherine pleading with me to lie low because we were all in danger.

  Nausea surged, violently. I leaned over the bed rail, and Jacob had a pail ready. He held my hot forehead with his cool hand and said, “I’ve got you, Tandy.”

  I heaved up nothing and then, panting, I collapsed back into the bed just as nauseated as before.

  A nurse appeared. I’d never seen him before. Who was he?

  “Time to go to sleep, Ms. Angel.”

  “Jacob?”

  “I hear you, Tandy. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

  A needle went into the tube in my arm.

  I said to my commando uncle, “That plane… shouldn’t have gone down. Right, Jacob…?”

  If he answered, I didn’t hear him. I was asleep.

  I woke up to snow sheeting sideways outside my hospital window. It was good to see all that white, my friend. It was like fresh paint covering up the remains of the terror.

  Where was Uncle Jacob?

  I turned from the hypnotic snowfall and punched on the TV. I clicked on six hundred stations up and down the dial, but I found no news about a small-plane crash outside Lake Placid.

  I rang the bell for the nurse, and when he appeared, I said, “I need my laptop. I need my phone. I need to speak with my family.”

  I listed my uncle and my brothers’ names.

  The nurse said, “You came in with the clothes you were wearing, dear. Nothing else.”

  “What’s your name?” I asked him.

  “Frankie. I’m on duty for another three hours.”

  Frankie handed me a glass of water and a paper cup of pills. I shook the little cup.

  “What are these?” I asked.

  “Pain pills, mostly.”

  “And what are the ones that aren’t for pain?”

  “Anti-inflammatory pills. You’re running a little fever. And vitamins, of course. You need to rebuild your immune system…”

  “Who makes these vitamins?” I asked.

  The nurse looked at me blankly. “I get them from the pharmacy, already dispensed.”

  I flung the pills across the floor. I enjoyed the rattle and roll sound as they bounced off walls and chairs.

  “I want to see my uncle Jacob.”

  Frankie scurried out of the room and I lay back, staring at the swirls of plaster in the ceiling. I thought about the plane crash, and snatches of the aftermath came to me.

  I dimly heard the rhythmic whacking rotor blades of the helicopter dropping down on the hospital’s helipad. Next, there were the sounds of wheels rolling under me, amplified voices through a PA system, and then hands lifting me from one bed to another.

  A watery image came to me, the face of someone I’d seen through a gap in the curtain around my emergency room stall. The man had a short nose, honey-colored eyeglass frames, and hard little eyes. Uncle Pig. And I saw that he was talking to—Uncle Jacob.

  Why had Peter been talking with Jacob?

  More questions rose up from the bottom of my conscious mind. Why had our plane gone down? Why hadn’t Jacob been with us? Had Sam’s mother really died? Had there been a conspiracy? Had the whole airplane trip been cooked up so that all the Angels would die?

  The single answer came to me as if I’d known it all along—and the horrible truth stunned me.

  The crash had been no accident.

  We were all supposed to die.

  Friend, I’m not afraid of death.

  I’m not a religious person, and I’ve seen more than my share of dead bodies for a seventeen-year-old, including those of my parents. Thanks to my scientist father, I was raised with a healthy respect for the expiration date that we’re all born with. We all have our moment in the sun, and it’s what we do during our lives—not how or when we die—that makes up the interesting part of our obituaries.

  But I refuse to go before my time.

  I know I’m meant to do extraordinary things. Perhaps my personality has been shaped by the pills I’ve been taking my whole life, but I was never going to be a shrinking violet, drugs or not.

  Here’s a fairy tale for you. Once upon a time, I dreamed of a life where I went to an Ivy League college, then a Top Three business school, and eventually inherited the command of Angel Pharmaceuticals. I’d marry James, have a few kids, and live my life in fabulous luxury. It had all been perfectly mapped out.

  Now I’m facing the very real possibility that I won’t live to see my eighteenth birthday. Before that happens, I’m going to make sure that Angel Pharma—the company my father founded and hoped I’d helm one day—is completely destroyed.

  Isn’t it crazy how things change?

  The light was pale blue in my hospital room. I found the call button, pressed it, and held it down until the door to my room opened and my nurse came in with Jacob behind him.

  “Tandy, I’m here,” my uncle said.

  “Have you learned the cause of the crash?”

  “Tandy, I haven’t been home. I’ve been here with you and your brothers. The authorities will look into it. Everyone lived.”

  “It was a highly suspicious accident, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “You’re understandably upset—”

  “Have you forgotten the fire? Have you forgotten the dead children in France, and that my brothers and I are a threat to Peter as long as we live?”

  A doctor came into the room. He said, “I’m Dr. Reese. What’s wrong here, Ms. Angel? Are you in pain?”

  “I have to leave now.”

  He said, “Do you remember when we discussed taking something to calm you down?”

  I’d never seen Dr. Reese before, ever, but I saw the needle coming toward me, and I began screaming, “No, no, no!” as I thrashed from side to side.

  Alarms shrilled outside the door; the room filled with orderlies and nurses, and a gurney rolled into the room. Two people held me down, and I felt the prick of the needle in my hip.

  I was lifted on the count of one-two-three. Jacob walked alongside me as we rolled down the corridor and into the elevator. I thought about Jacob talking with Peter.

  What the hell was that?

  I flailed and tried to climb off the gurney. I couldn’t move except to open my mouth and howl. I screamed and clawed and twisted, and I cursed the men and women who loaded me into the ambulance.

  I was still screaming when we pulled up to the emergency bay at Waterside.

  The knockout drugs wore off pretty soon, a testament to how mad I was. And I mean mad as in angry, not crazy.

  I was taken to a room that wasn’t as nice as my old one. I didn’t have a view of the highway and the river, but frankly, my friend, I didn’t give a flying F about the view.

  A nurse came in, one I knew quite well. Luann. She helped me into a long white cotton nightgown and snapped a plastic bracelet around my wrist with my name on it in capital letters.

  She said, “Be right back,” and when she returned, she had one little pill for me, not a cup of them.

  “It’s eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen,” she said, handing me a cup of water. “Let’s see you wash that right down.”

  I did it and got into bed.

  I was in the white bed in the white room when Dr. Robosson arrived, wearing royal purple. She shrugged off her coat and sat down next to the bed, where I lay with hardly enough strength to get into a sitting position.

  Without preamble she said, “I heard about the plane crash, Tandy. I think you’ve jus
t overshot the amount of terror allowed by law.”

  “Look,” I said. I pulled my nightgown up to my neck. My body was all bruises, especially vivid on my left side where I’d smashed into the armrest of my seat on the plane, but my neck, shoulders, breasts, both legs, and my left arm down to the wrist matched Dr. Robosson’s coat, like they’d been colored by paint from the same pot.

  “Jesus, Tandy,” she said.

  “Yeah. He was there, all right, or Uncle Peter would have had a very successful day’s work.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dr. Robosson had a very, very, and I mean very concerned look on her face.

  “I can’t prove anything,” I said. “But why, on a sunny day, in a new ten-million-dollar plane with a first-class pilot, did we have engine failure that should have taken out all four Angel kids at the same time?”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  I glared at her, like, Come on. I have to spell this out? Fine.

  I said, “Peter did it, Dr. Robosson. It totally fits him. And he had reason to want to get us out of the way.”

  “Tandy, how? How could Peter know Sam’s mother had died? How could he have known that Matty would book a private plane? Even if he had known all of that, how could he have gotten to a mechanic to tamper with that aircraft in such a short period of time?”

  I shrugged. I had been doped up for God only knows how long. Was I imagining things? Maybe I had never left Waterside. Maybe the last three weeks had been a dream.

  “Let me ask you something,” Dr. Robosson said. “Is it possible that because you had just seen Peter in court, and he won the case against you, your terribly traumatized mind made him the villain in this plane crash?”

  “Let me ask you, Dr. Robosson. Do you think Peter Angel would let me live after I exposed his criminal activities in court, whether I won the case or lost? Do you think sabotaging an engine is impossible for him to do if he was determined to do it? Do you doubt he could tap phones, put fingers in pies or flies in ointments, and throw wrenches in the works if he wanted to?