Angel Face Read Free

the shadows of the porch, talking as he went. “Her father had medical journals andmagazines around, and she began to fixate on the doctors she read about. But as the abuse worsened and she grew sicker, her fantasies turned into delusions. They became more rigid and extreme. In time, her fantasy figure had to be perfect, flawless, a Christlike figure, and no one could live up to that.”
    He gave the hammock a push and sent it rocking. “When she came across someone like you, a media hero, she saved every scrap of paper she could find. But eventually, no matter who the doctor was, she would discover a flaw, and that’s when her fantasy turned paranoid. Her mind could only encompass extremes, and if her savior wasn’t perfect, then he must be evil like her father. There was nothing in between.”
    “Are you saying that she saw me as a savior, then discovered a flaw and now she wants to kill me?”
    The agent ignored the question. “Angel Face knew everything there was to know about evil doctors. They maimed, tortured, and killed the innocent. So when her saviors suddenly turned into her father, she had to stop them.”
    He turned to Jordan. “You see how it works?”
    Jordan saw more than he wanted to.
    “Now someone has to stop her,” the other man stressed. “You see that , don’t you?”
    “Isn’t that what they pay you to do? They pay me to operate on people. Big difference.”
    “That depends on whose life you want to save, Doctor. Someone else’s or your own.”
    “Maybe that’s your reality. Mine is patients on waiting lists, dying before I can get to them to operate.”
    “What about your colleagues? What about the doctors who’ve died?”
    “What doctors?” Jordan asked. “Who are they?” The agent pushed, and he pushed back. It was becoming a shoving match.
    “I’m not at liberty to say, unfortunately. I came here to talk about you. And about her, Angel Face. She’s an escape artist. She’s eluded everybody we’ve put on her, our best people. We need something she wants, something that will bring her out in the open. That’s where you come into it.”
    The man’s frustration was obvious. Jordan turned and contemplated the sunrise as if he was making a decision, but in fact he already had.
    “I’m sorry,” he told his uninvited guest. “I’ve got a surgery schedule that’s piled high through Christmas. I can’t find time for the mundane things like sleeping and eating, and even if I could, paranoid delusions and death lists are way out of my line.”
    The expanding silence finally brought Jordan around. The other man’s face showed no expression. It was held fast by the scarring, which gave him a creepy, reptilian look. Maybe that was why he exposed only the burned side, Jordan thought. It was his poker face.
    When the agent made no move to leave, Jordan added with faint irony, “It’s too bad you had to come all this way. If you’d called—”
    “I don’t call, Dr. Carpenter. And it was no trouble, believe me.”
    He lifted his head and studied Jordan, his stare unnaturally bright.
    “You’re an interesting man,” he said. “Not too many high school dropouts go on to become world-famous surgeons. Still, you left a few skeletons behind, didn’t you—one by the name of Cathy Crosby?”
    Jordan’s hand came up. He was reaching for the man. His heart rate was thunderous. “What is this? Some kind of cheap attempt at blackmail?”
    The crooked mouth almost smiled. “I thought I’d ask how she’s doing, that’s all.”
    “Cathy Crosby is dead, and you know it.” Jordan came across the porch, his voice a terrible whisper.
    The agent stepped back. “Yes, I do know it, Dr. Carpenter . . . and so does she, Angel Face.”
    “I’m telling you once to get off my property. Once, and then I’m going to throw you from here to the picket fence.”
    The other man shrugged as if to say, No problem . Halfway down the steps, he glanced over his shoulder. “Just a friendly