Conspiracy of Angels by Michelle Belanger Page A

didn’t even have a handle on this side. Standing alone in the darkened alley behind the club, I could just make out the chatter of police radios and walkies drifting on the air from the front of the building. Cleveland’s blue brigade had arrived in force. I
definitely
wasn’t going that way.
    Closing my fist around the keys and wad of cash, I stared at the boarded-up windows and graffitied walls of the warehouses across the street, feeling more lost than I had waking up on the edge of Lake Erie.

15
    T aking the long way back to where I’d parked the stolen Harley, I made certain there were several blocks of buildings between the police and me. This part of the Flats was a desolate testament to urban decay. Sagging chain link edged condemned lots filled with rusted husks of metal, and the sidewalk jutted at weird angles, exposing old bricks beneath.
    The scenery matched my mood. I couldn’t stop brooding over all of the dead—Alice, the officers, the naked slave, Vikram the bouncer. There were others gunned down inside the club, and all of it because of me. For a moment, I considered turning myself in to the police, but I had a feeling that wouldn’t be safe.
    For them.
    I passed beneath a derelict bridge crusted almost completely white with pigeon droppings and finally turned toward the street that, with luck, still hosted my ride. I thrust my fists deep into the pockets of my jacket as I went, trying to concentrate on what Remy described as a “cowl.” I wasn’t even certain I believed in the parts the cowl was supposedly masking.
    “Hey, flyboy,” a throaty female voice called from the sidewalk. “Why won’t you return my calls?”
    I was so wound up in my thoughts that I probably would have walked right past her, had she not spoken. As it was, her words stopped me dead. I gawked for several moments, uncertain how to respond.
    She stood next to a teal Sebring convertible with Illinois plates. Despite the chill of the weather, the ragtop was down. She had her arms crossed beneath ample breasts, while one curvaceous hip rested jauntily against the passenger side door. She was perhaps five and a half feet tall with her boots on, wearing a pantsuit of midnight blue. Her dark red hair was long and loose, falling in wild waves around her face to tumble halfway down her back. She wore no jewelry that I could see, and her olive skin was clear and softly tanned.
    Even in the jaundiced light of the streetlamps she was stunningly beautiful, but her storm-gray eyes glittered with fury as she regarded me.
    I glanced nervously around the street. Red and blue police lights stuttered between the empty buildings on the left, flashing against the windows of the parked cars as more cruisers sped toward Club Heaven. The stolen Harley sat half a dozen spaces beyond the Sebring, and for a moment I debated running for it. Not that I could reliably start it.
    “Um… do I know you?” I asked.
    “Dammit, Zack.” She stamped her foot, the heel of her sleek leather boot loud against the pavement. “Don’t play dumb with me. You know I hate your stupid games.”
    “You and everyone else,” I muttered. With her waves of dark red hair and thunderhead gray eyes, she was fiercely beautiful. Glowering at me in that moment, however, she just seemed fierce. I couldn’t tell if she was a good guy, a bad guy, or an angry ex-girlfriend. With my luck, it was the latter. They were usually the worst.
    She shifted her hip on the door of the car, readjusting her arms—and everything above them. From the thin camisole and breezy pantsuit she was wearing, she should have been cold, but she didn’t look it. Not that I was looking.
    Well, I was trying not to look.
    “I drove all the way from Joliet the minute I got your voice mail,” she complained. “Then I spent the rest of the day looking for your sorry ass. The least you could’ve done was answer my calls, Anakim—or did you kill your phone again?”
    Anakim.
So she knew about