Captive Angel Ch. 06

Angel jerked awake as a loud pounding started on the door. Her heart slammed into her chest and she stared around the room blankly for a moment, not sure of where she was. It all came rushing back quickly, the coffin, Sebastian and his thugs, Hunter.

Then the pounding came again and she quickly searched the room again, searching for Hunter.

His things were gone, his coat gone from the chair he'd hung it to dry on last night.

The bathroom door was open, no lights on. He was nowhere to be seen. Had he left her here, to face the police or worse, Sebastian?

She crept from the bed, pulling his shirt back around her and snapping the snaps quickly before glancing out the small peephole in the door.

"Come on, Angel, open the door. It's cold out here."

Hunter's voice came through the door just as he pounded on it once more, his hands full. She thought she'd faint from relief as she hurried to turn the handle, opening the door to let him in.

He came in, setting the fragrant fare he carried down upon the table, turning just in time to catch her as she threw herself into his arms.

"What...? Angel, are you okay?" he hugged her to him, even though the outside of his jacket had to be cold on her skin.

"I thought you'd left me," she muttered into the fabric, her hands grasping and holding him tightly. "I woke up and someone was pounding on the door and I couldn't find you," she shuddered in the after effects of the fear.

"I just went next door to get us breakfast," he said, his hands stroking down the curve of her back, feeling her still soft and warm from sleep. She shivered, the cold on his jacket finally reaching her skin and he put her away from him for a moment, pulling the zipper down and taking the heavy thing off his bare chest. Then he pulled her back against him, reveling in the way she felt against his naked skin. "It's okay, Angel, I wouldn't leave you. I promise. We are in this thing together, okay?"

She looked up at him, fear making her feel far from her normal confident self. "You promise?"

"I'd cross my heart, but then I'd have to let go of you. How about if I promise on the graves of my parents?" He bent his head, kissing her quickly and feeling her sigh against his lips. "Now, I have eggs and bacon, coffee, toast. Any of this sound good to you?"

Her stomach rumbled and he laughed, kissing her once more.

"You could have told me you were going," she said as she sat down on the chair across from him, digging into a huge mound of fluffy scrambled eggs.

"You were sleeping and you looked so cute," he laughed when she gave him a scowl. "You did, your nose was all scrunched up and you kept mumbling something about a teddy bear."

She blushed. "My one childhood trauma," she said. "We moved and the teddy bear I'd had since I was a baby got left behind somehow. My mom tried to call the people who'd moved in after us and the landlord of the apartment building, but by that time, teddy had been...incinerated."

He opened his mouth to speak but whatever he was about to say was lost in a loud pounding on the door. Angel gasped, her eyes opened wide, the eggs on her fork falling back to her plate.

Hunter held his finger to his lips, silently sliding his own chair back and going to the door, carefully looking out the peephole. "It's the motel lady," he hissed. "You get it, I only want her to see one of us."

"Okay," she said, getting up and wrapping his coat around herself before opening the door. Hunter slid behind it, close enough to help if she needed it but hidden from sight.

"Good morning," the kindly older lady said. "Federal Express just left this at the office. I'm thinking it had to be for you because you're the only Hunter I have registered." She handed Angel a fairly large box, sighing as the weight of it was taken from her frail older bones.

"Oh, you should have called. I could have come down and got this from you," Angel said, taking the heavy box in both hands.

"That's okay dear. I hope your husband's migraine is better. I caught a quick glimpse of him this morning as he was bringing back your breakfast." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Handsome devil, he is, my dear. You are a lucky woman."

Angel felt the blush start in her cheeks and cursed her fair skin. "That he is, Mabel. His migraine is much better, thank you. It was the room, perked him right up." She shivered as cold air shimmied over her bare skin.

"Oh, here I am standing here freezing you out. You stop by with the key when you're ready to leave. Take your time, we don't have much call for use of this room so check out isn't a big deal." She turned to leave, turning back to wink at Angel. "I'm glad it helped. If I were twenty years younger," she sighed, chuckling as she waved and left.

Angel closed the door as Hunter took the weight of the box from her.

"Nice lady," he mused.

"You just think so cuz she thinks you're studly," Angel teased.

"Well, there is that, too," he agreed, turning and grabbing her in his arms, nuzzling his nose into her neck. "But what matters is if you think I'm studly?"

"Well..." she hesitated, squealing when he nipped her neck, his hands sliding down and under her shirt to clamp on the firm globes of her ass. "Yes, you're studly, you are the epitome of stud, okay?"

He kissed her, tasting the coffee she'd drank, backing her up until the back of her knees hit the bed.

She tore her mouth from his. "Breakfast?"

"I thought the way to a man's heart was through his stomach," he grumbled as he let her go, watching as she went back to the table.

"Baby, from what I've seen, it's about a foot south of there," she giggled. She smacked his hand as he walked by, stealing a piece of bacon from her. "So aren't you curious about what's in the box?"

"I know what's in the box. It's the journals from dad and some stuff I had Brandon send me." He sat down across from her and picked up his own fork, looking down at his food. "Turned down for the Denny's breakfast special," he sighed in disgust.

Angel giggled.

"But I think you're right, we should get out of here as quickly as we can, so eat up, buttercup." He grinned at her.

They finished breakfast quickly, cleaning up and trooping out to the stolen SUV. Angel got into the passenger side for the quick ride around the side of the building to the office. She hurried inside and dropped off the key, thanking Mabel for everything and then went back out to the SUV.

* * * *

"I think those two kids are in trouble, Harold," she said softly, her old eyes tracking the beautiful red head as she ran across the parking lot and got into the black vehicle.

"Eh, what was that?" Harold asked, looking up from his paper.

"She seems so nice. You know Momma always said I had a sixth sense about people. That girl there, she's one of the good ones."

"I never liked your Momma's rice, it was always too dry," Harold said, shaking the paper and turning the page.

Mabel turned, giving her husband a look of disgust. "I'm going to go clean up the rooms, listen for the bell."

"Okay, love." He smiled as he watched his wife of almost forty years walk out the door.

* * * *

Hunter stuck to the back roads, going further and further west as the morning progressed. He watched the road but couldn't help but be amused by how she kept looking at the box.

"Go ahead," he said finally, seeing her glance at it for about the fiftieth time.

"What?" she asked, trying to look innocent.

"You are dying to get into that box, go ahead and open it."

She dove for the backseat, grabbing the box and dragging it into the front. She sat it on her lap, using her nails to pry apart the tape. When it finally came loose, she pulled open the flaps. On the very top was a manila envelope with his name on it. Under that was another one. Under that was seven leather bound books.

Angel pulled out the manila envelopes, setting them off to the side. She lifted the first book, opening it carefully. "Wow," she said quietly, staring at the cramped writing that filled up every inch of the page.

"Yeah, now you see why I've never really gone through them. It seemed like an enormous job." He picked up the top manila envelope. It crinkled with the sound of paper in his hands.

"Want me to open that?" she asked, setting the box with the journals at her feet.

"Yeah."

Angel slipped her finger under the flap, running it down the length and tipped the

envelope. A whole sheath of papers came out but she snagged one that was hand written first.

"It's a letter to you," she said, holding it out to him.

"Read it for me? My hands are a little full," he said with a grin.

"Dear Hunt," she read. "Man, you don't know how glad I was to hear the sound of your voice today. I've been going nuts looking for you. We've searched through everything but it was like you just dropped off the face of the earth. Anyway, I did some digging into the stuff you asked for and sent you the information I came up with. You'd better watch yourself, friend, this guy you've gotten yourself mixed up with sounds like bad medicine. I also checked up on that other matter, that information is included too. If you need me, I'm a phone call away. Brandon."

She was about to fold the paper when she glanced down. "Wait, he has a postscript. It says, Hunt, Shanna showed up at my apartment just as I was closing this up to send it. She's a mess. She's left the loser. I've got her until you can get back." She looked up, "I'm sorry, Hunter."

"Don't be. It's about time she left him." But he looked worried even as he said it. "Brandon will take care of her."

She picked up the first of the papers that came in the manila envelope. It was a newspaper clipping. She scanned it quickly, gasping and dropping it into her lap.

"What is it?" he said, reaching out and taking her hand in his.

"M...my apartment building was burned down," she whispered.

"Oh God, Angel, I'm sorry," he squeezed her hand softly.

"No, you don't understand." She turned to look at him. "I was in it."

He dragged his eyes from the road and stared at her for a moment. "What?"

"It," she said, pointing shakily at the clipping in her lap. "Said I was found in the wreckage of the building, my body burned beyond recognition. They identified me using dental records."

"That's not possible," he said. "There has to be a mistake."

She searched through the clippings. "No, here's one that shows a picture of my body being taken from the building. They even have a picture of me. God, I hate that picture, couldn't they have used a different one?"

"Angel, this is crazy. Keep looking there has to be a retraction in there...wait. Sebastian. He has enough pull to do something like this." His fist hit the steering wheel. "Damn that man!"

"He never planned on letting me go. This paper is dated for the day after I was taken. He never called the hospital and told them I needed leave. He planned on killing me all along." She sat back in the seat, her face pale, her hands shaking.

Hunter pulled the truck to the side of the road. He took the papers out of her lap, shoving them back into the envelope and dumping it back into the box. "Come here," he said, hitting the button on her seat belt.

She went to him as he pulled her into his arms, rocking her as well as he could with the steering wheel digging into his hip. "It's okay, you weren't in the fire. We got away. He'll have to go through me to take you, okay?" His hand stroked her hair gently feeling her shivering slow and then stop.

"I'm sorry," she said, pushing away from him and wiping at the tears that were in her eyes. It's just I keep thinking of whoever it was that they put in the fire. She had to have been terrified, and the pain..." she closed her eyes, rubbing her cheek against his arm.

"She was probably already dead, Angel, long before he put her in there. I know that's little consolation." He lifted her chin with his fingers. "You okay to go on? I mean, personally, I could hold you all day long, but I don't like the idea of sitting still.

We still have to dump this tank and get something else."

"Yeah, I'm fine," she said sniffing. She stared at the other manila envelope. "What's in that one?" she asked, looking at it like it was a poisonous snake.

"That one should be fine, honey. Go ahead and open it." He checked his rear view mirror and then pulled back onto the back road they were traveling.

She slit open the back, carefully dumping the contents into her lap. The first thing to drop out was a black leather wallet, expensive and hand tooled.

"Nice." She picked it up. "Yours?"

"Yeah." He took it from her and opened it to rifle though the contents quickly. Then he shoved it into the inside pocket of the coat he was wearing. He looked over when he heard Angel gasp again. Her lap was full of money. Packets of hundred dollar bills, ten thousand dollars to a packet and she held four of them.

"What is this?"

"Money," he said, shrugging his shoulders, uncomfortable with the subject.

"Whose money?" she asked him suspiciously.

"Mine," he said. "Brandon got into my safe for me."

"You keep this much money in a safe in your house?" she asked in shock.

"Good thing, huh?"

"Nice dodge, it ain't working buddy." Her eyes narrowed and the widened as a sudden thought struck her. "Aaron Hunter, Hunter Oil, Hunter Construction, you're that Hunter?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, you still gonna respect me in the morning?"

She snorted, tempted to throw the money at him. Instead she bundled it all nicely back into the manila envelope and slid it back in box before handing him a set of keys.

"What's this?" he asked, looking them over.

This time, she shrugged. "They were in the envelope."

"Ah," he said, reading one of the labels. "The keys for the cabin. Brandon has a cabin up in the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming. I was there once when he wanted to go hunting. We're going there to try to figure this whole thing out."

"The mountains in Wyoming in October? Couldn't we get snowed in?"

"Oh come on, Doc, getting snowed in with me wouldn't be such a hardship now would it?" He gave her that cocky smile.

Angel just snorted.

They stopped just before lunch in a small nowhere town, grabbing a meal at a diner called Alice's Kitchen that claimed to have the best chicken soup in three counties and chicken fried steak better than your momma's. They ate quickly, soup and sandwiches, before heading out, this time to find somewhere to buy a different vehicle.

A small used car place in the next town fit the bill. Angel waited in their stolen SUV while Hunter talked to a man who hurried out to wait on him. The salesman was tawdry looking with a really bad comb over and was wearing an ill fitting suit. They went inside the building and soon Hunter returned. He had a set of keys in his hand as well as a bunch of papers and the man followed him, a license plate in his hands.

Hunter waved at her and as soon as he hit the road, she followed him. He was driving another SUV, this one light blue and a Ford.

They stopped well out of town where Hunter moved all of their belongings into the other SUV. He took the license plate off the stolen one, tucking it under his arm as he hopped in, telling her to stay put. About a half an hour later, he was back, on foot, whistling as he walked.

"Lovely day for a walk in the woods," he said as he opened the door to their new transportation.

Angel looked up from where she was concentrating, trying to read the cramped writing of Hunter's dad. "Your father's writing is worse than any doctor's. You'd think I'd be able to make this out. I swear, we need to go see a pharmacist. They might be able to figure it out."

He laughed, turning on the engine. "You can't figure out any of it?"

"Yeah, some. Like here, I think he's talking about stalactites or mites or whatever they're called. And here," she said, pointing at another passage. "He says that your mother should be earning her Boy Scout badge for knots."

"I don't think any of that is what Sebastian wants," he frowned, putting the truck into drive and pulling back onto the roadway.

She kept studying the first of the journals as he drove, reading him passages that she found of interest. His father might have been a terrible writer, but he had a way with words and descriptions that brought what he wrote to life.

He told of caverns so deep that light wouldn't penetrate the ages of darkness that had kept it covered, and walls of caves that sparkled with different rocks. He wrote about cave bats bigger than his arm and the way they would fill a tunnel with their bodies, shooting with speed that was hard to believe unless seen as they flew into the night air.

He wrote daily in his journal, even on the days when he did nothing but go to work and then come home to his family. On those days, he wrote about his children, Shanna, Aaron, and Dillon and their antics. Some of which had Angel bursting out in laughter.

"Did you really dare your brother to jump from the roof of the garage into a tree?" she asked him, shocked but giggling.

"Yeah," he smiled at the memory. "Is it my fault he missed?"

"Oh, no. How long were you grounded?"

"My father didn't believe in grounding. He felt it was no good for a child to be stuck in a room without anything to do. I got to do a two thousand word paper on the effects of gravity on a body and I had to take care of my brother until his leg healed." He chuckled as she laughed. "He believed in making a learning experience of anything."

"I think I'd have liked him." Angel marked her place in the journal and rested her head back against the leather seat.

"When he was around, he was the best father any kid could want. He just wasn't around all that much. Mom raised us a lot on our own, and then he took her caving with him. She used to go every other weekend when we got old enough to keep an eye on ourselves. Mom knew that Dillon and I would watch over Shanna. Dillon was nineteen, I was eighteen and Shanna was sixteen when they didn't come home one weekend."

"Cave in?" she asked gently, her hand coming out to rest upon his thigh.

"No, I don't believe it was now. I think Dad found something somebody wanted and they were killed because of it. Dad was acting really weird the last month or so, always double-checking that doors were locked, jumping up if a car would slow outside the house. When they left for that weekend, he and mom were both pale, as if something was wrong, but they wouldn't tell us anything." His voice trailed off and he let his hand slip from the wheel, covering hers and squeezing it gently. "I can't help but wonder if Sebastian didn't have a part of that, of killing them."

"But why would he wait so long to come after you again?"

"That's part of the mystery here." He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.

"And you think the answer to all of it is in these books?"

"It has to be, otherwise, why would Sebastian be asking me about them? We'll just have to go through them one by one until we find something." He turned and looked at her. "I'm really sorry that you had to get involved in all of this."

"I'm not," she said quietly. "I mean, the idea of being tortured wasn't much of a turn on, and knowing that everything I owned went up in flames, including, supposedly, me, doesn't do much for me either. But, Hunter, if I hadn't been kidnapped, I wouldn't have ever met you."

"Awww," he said, laughing at her as she slugged him.

They made good time, stopping at a bigger town now that they weren't so worried about their vehicle being noticed and going to a Wal-Mart. Hunter went through the store like he was going on some kind of contest shopping spree to see how much he could fit into one shopping cart. Warm clothes and boots for both of them, jeans, pads of paper and pens, canned food, bottled water, by the time he'd gotten through, he'd loaded down the back end of the SUV and Angel was exhausted.