The End of Never Read Free Page B

inside her leather handbag. As she plunged her hand inside the morass of notepads, napkins, and empty pens, she hoped that her daughter was calling. She realized suddenly that she had not spoken to her only child since the prior evening, when her daughter had dropped her at the Atlanta airport to travel to Miami. If anything was wrong, Alexandra would call , Angela convinced herself, guilt panging in her chest.
    A text message waited. Angela read the words breathlessly: All okay here. Love ya.
    Angela rang her daughter’s cell phone immediately: five rings, but no answer. Her daughter’s sweet voice echoed through the receiver, asking her to leave a message.
    â€œHey babe,” Angela said, smiling and staring across the street at the ocean. “Got your text. You didn’t call me last night.” She paused and bit her lip. “I didn’t call you either.” Another bite, harder than the first. “You wouldn’t believe what’s going on here. Call me, if I don’t call you again first. Love you.”
    Angela hit the end button on her Blackberry and sank restlessly back against the metal café chair. An ambulance with a wailing siren and flashing red lights sped past her in the direction of the hospital.
    Restless to hear from her daughter, Angela started to dial the cell phone number again but stopped before hitting the send button. She’s seventeen , she told herself, and she can probably take care of herself.
    Shoving the phone back in her leather handbag, she glanced up at the tattoo parlor next to the café. A tall, bald man in faded jeans and a black sleeveless shirt stood at the front with a set of keys in the lock. He nodded at her as he opened the door. She shied her eyes away and read the name above the entrance: Devil’s Tongue Tattoo.
    Burying her face in the newspaper that she had laid out on the table, Angela tried to ignore the man as he emerged from the tattoo parlor and walked confidently toward her. His smile broadened across his tan, chiseled face. His deep-brown eyes twinkled at the woman who was still trying to ignore him.
    Leaning over a low, black iron railing, he handed Angela a black business card. A red eye winked at her from the front of the card as she accepted it—despite an inner voice that told her to ignore the stranger.
    â€œWe’re open all day,” he told her, “and most of the night.” He turned back toward his store. “Beautiful women get a ten percent discount.” He winked at Angela over his broad shoulder.
    A light ocean breeze ruffled the pages of the newspaper as Angela tried to concentrate on the headlines, fighting the urge to wander into the tattoo parlor. “Miami misses strike from Hurricane Emily,” she read aloud from the bottom of the first page. “Storm heads up Atlantic seaboard toward the South Carolina coast.
    â€œPeyton Manor is there,” Angela mumbled to herself. In her mind’s eye, she saw an image of the grand house, nestled in a bay on a barrier island south of Charleston, South Carolina. That is where June, her ex-husband’s mother, lived. She and June did not talk much. Yet her stomach churned to think June was in the path of the storm. Surely June would call if she needed help because of the oncoming storm , she thought to herself and bit her lip again, until this time it bled.
    Sighing deeply, Angela focused her eyes on the story placed next to the weather report. “Mysterious outbreak plagues plastic housewives,” Angela read aloud and scanned down the rest of the story.
    Doctors and scientists gathering on the quarantine ward of a south Miami Beach medical center are shaking their heads at the reason for the outbreak that has brought them to Miami. The patients share a common link: recent plastic surgery. The primary symptoms of the outbreak’s victims is the occurrence of a dark, tattoo-like mark on the victims’ backs that resembles “a