Read Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon Novel (Anna Pigeon Mysteries) for Free Online Page B

much better. As this self-scrutiny flickered through her thoughts quick as summer lightning, she realized how desperately she wanted to be brave for E, and for Anna, who she prayed was even now pulling a miracle out of thin air to save them.
    “Are you crippled?” he asked again, using the exact same modality he’d used the first time, the way a Chatty Cathy doll would say, “I love you,” each time the ring in the back of its neck was pulled.
    Nothing behind the eye sockets. Nothing behind the voice. No sympathy to play on. No guilt to trip. No heartstrings to pluck.
    “I can’t walk,” Heath said, startled at what sounded like defiant pride in her voice. “I broke my back. My legs are paralyzed.”
    “Hey, Dude,” Reg said, his voice deep and filled with life compared to the dude’s.
    Unexpected, close, the sound shattered Heath’s brittle facade of courage like a stone shattering glass. She jerked and squawked. Elizabeth echoed her.
    Ears full of the noise of her daughter’s heart breaking, Leah’s murmured offers, and the thoughts crackling in her head, Heath hadn’t heard the black man move from the other side of the camp.
    Having circumnavigated the clearing, Reg was standing staring down at the crumpled form of Wily. The pewter-colored gun—the Walther, she remembered—was held loosely in his long-fingered right hand. He tapped the barrel absentmindedly against his thigh in waltz time— one, two, three, one —the way Heath’s aunt Gwen would tap her pen against her teeth when she was thinking. In her late seventies, Gwen predated computers. She’d grown up with a pen in her hand. Reg looked as if he’d grown up with a gun in his.
    “Dude,” Reg said again, louder this time.
    “What?” The dude had lost no composure when she and Elizabeth squeaked, lost none when Reg interrupted him, but Heath thought his virtually affectless voice was flatter than before. Could a man of hollows, holes, and empty places get angry? Heath thought not. He would only become more efficient. Unlike the rattlesnake, or the hissing cat, he would give no warning beforehand.
    “Dog’s not dead, man,” Reg said, squatting and reaching toward Wily.
    Wily’s growl was more beautiful than a choir of angels. Heath started to cry again. She pushed the palms of her hands hard on the ground in the hope that the bites of small stones would distract her from another embarrassing outburst.
    “Wily!” Elizabeth cried.
    “Don’t,” the dude said before she could run to the dog.
    Elizabeth didn’t.
    Good girl, Heath thought. E had always been a quick learner.
    “Maybe you just knocked it out. One back leg’s kinda weird, but it’s not dead. You’re not dead, are ya, boy?” Reg said.
    Again Wily growled. The sound was stronger this time, and it made Heath absurdly happy in an absurdly terrifying world.
    “Shoot it,” the dude said flatly.
    “No!” Elizabeth screamed at the man with the pewter gun. In the same breath, Heath screamed, “No!” at her daughter, trying to abort any impulsive action that could get her killed.
    “Man, I ain’t shootin’ no dog,” Reg said.
    Reg, the black man, born with a silver gun in his mouth, the man Heath had dismissed with the half-formed tag “urban gangbanger,” didn’t want to kill an old dog. A rush of gratitude strong enough to be mistaken for love washed over her. Stockholm syndrome went from theoretical historical to practical possible.
    So the bastard didn’t jump at the chance to shoot a dog, she told herself. That was not enough on which to base a long-term relationship.
    The dude grunted, but not like a pig. It was more like the sound Heath imagined when characters in Dickens’s books said, “Harrumph.”
    A moment passed; the silence stretched thin. Heath imagined that the man called “the dude” was deliberating whether he would kill Reg for insubordination or let him live. The drama of it kept her eyes on the big man’s face. In the life of everyone there