Azrael Read Free Page B

it, and he shared every bit of that joy with his wife, so much so that when he died, she was able to take over and to build on his plans without missing a beat. Her happiness in the growth of the Hudson Group was doubled by the knowledge that she was carrying on for the man who’d changed her life.
    Had changed her life so profoundly, in fact, that until late February of this year, she had almost managed to put her old life from her memory.
    In February there had been a letter for her that reminded her of what her life had been before. That same day, she had the new security system put in at her home. She began to pressure her daughter subtly, relentlessly, but so far unsuccessfully, to give up her apartment in town and move back home. From the security company, she got the name of a very special employment agency, and they sent Weston Charles.
    Charles was an excellent driver—actually better than excellent, since he was a master of antiattack maneuvers. The employment agency had insisted on bringing her out to some deserted roads and having Charles demonstrate his skills. That, Petra was grateful, had been the only time he’d needed to use those particular skills, or his black-belt karate skills, or his world-class pistol marksmanship.
    With all that it was an undeserved bonus that he was such a nice man. He was polite without being subservient. Both her children liked him, and he them, and the dogs adored him. He was well educated and well spoken, and he had a sense of humor. He could even, in a pinch, cook. She wouldn’t go so far as to say that finding someone like Charles had made facing the threat worthwhile—nothing could do that. But he did make things easier to face.
    Charles blotted out a large percentage of the October sunlight as he got into the car. He was large enough to make the statuesque Petra Hudson seem petite. He had short, wavy blond hair and a florid complexion. He wasn’t handsome, but he had a nice smile. He never talked about himself, which was, of course, the quickest way to get anybody remotely connected with journalism fascinated with you. Aside from his name, age (forty), and previous employer (a European businessman who’d died of natural causes), Petra knew nothing about him. Except she liked him as a person and valued him as an employee.
    “Back to the office, Mrs. Hudson?” Charles asked.
    “Yes, Charles. Regina’s watching the office for me.” She tried to keep her irritation at her daughter’s refusal to come to the funeral from her voice.
    “Very good, Mrs. Hudson.”
    Petra Hudson opened a compartment and brought out a pile of computer printout, circulation reports from around the chain. There was a whole group of papers in eastern Kansas that wasn’t earning as well as it should, and she was going to find out why.
    But not now. She looked at the neat figures on the neat little stripes of pale green and paler green, and all she could see was the senseless death of a little baby. Nothing she told herself about journalistic toughness, or about being a “good soldier” (one of her husband’s favorite phrases), could get her mind off the tears and the sobbing from little Clara Bloyd’s mother and grandmother. Petra Hudson would have cried with them, but no one would allow her to be the kind of woman who wept. No one would believe it.
    Instead, she had to be the kind of woman who patted arms and said calm, soothing words, insisted she be notified if there was anything she could do.
    The kind of woman so smooth and in control that strangers had to wonder what (or who) she spent her passion on.
    “I’m sorry, Charles,” she said.
    “About what, Mrs. Hudson?”
    “You must have heard. As we were leaving.”
    “Oh, that. Don’t concern yourself. At least on my account. There’s always talk like that.”
    “Really?” Petra was interested. This concerned her, and the part of her brain that was always working suggested that there might be a back-of-the-book article for the