 
Past Prologue: Where are our Children

(A Serial Novel) Episode 4 0f 9

By Gary Sapp

Copyright 2014 Gary Sapp

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Table of Contents:

Our Story so Far

Thomas

Xavier

Thomas

Chris

Roxanne

Angel

Seth

Chris

Xavier

Seth

Sneak Peak at Zero Hour

Dedication

Nest Egg Publishing Note

Nest Egg Publishing Presents: Where are our Children

Where to find this author online
Our Story so Far:

While incarcerated as an inmate at Calhoun State Prison in southwest Georgia, Xavier Prince, the leader of A House in Chains, confronts Michael Davenport; a man that he believes has knowledge of what turns out to be the 411 attacks upstate in Atlanta. Serena Tennyson and her Pandora associates carry out the highly coordinated, highly lethal attacks weeks later against the Andrew Young Youth Center, The Fox Theatre and the mayor of the city itself, Ernestine Johnson. On her deathbed, rotting away from a yet to be identified poison, Mayor Johnson enlist the aid of Thomas Pepper, a freelance reporter, to find out the answers to the three questions that every Person of Color in America wants to know. The FBI recruits a renowned Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Angel Hicks-Dupree to consult on the crisis in Atlanta—and after a confrontation with her husband, Dr. Seth Dupree, she reluctantly agrees to help. Her childhood friend, Special Agent Christopher Prince, turns out to be one of the hostages being held at the Fox Theatre. Meanwhile, his half-brother, Xavier, is confronted with his own problems as a siege breaks out at Calhoun Prison on the eve of his scheduled release. In the meantime, Christopher Prince escapes the theatre alive, but immediately faces a new predicament when he receives a series of text messages that his 20 year old stepdaughter has come up missing.

Roxanne Sanchez, formerly of the FBI's training program, is now a private detective and has been hired by Chris' ex-wife Denise to find her daughter Erica. Roxanne can tell from her conversations with both parents that they are hiding a deep dark secret from their time together as a family. Serena Tennyson show up at Thomas Pepper's townhouse looking to confess on his blog for her role in the deadly 411 attacks as well as present a new warning to a House in Chains and all People of Color: Xavier Prince and his organization is to stand down or face a new round of attacks centered at Atlanta's children. The FBI, led by Agent Prince, capture her, but not before paying a high price in casualties. Xavier learns of a plot to kill him upon his exit from Calhoun Prison as a volatile siege and riot takes place. Serena sees a series of frightening visions including the much prophesized Whirlwind coming to fruition. Yet, it is in real life where she is traumatized after being nearly raped by an APD police officer. After she and Thomas Pepper give separate but hotly contested interviews with the bureau, she escapes in a series of daring synchronized stages that leaves Christopher Prince and the FBI befuddled. After celebrating her freedom with her closest Pandora agents Serena instructs an increasingly fragile Louis Keaton to begin rapturing Atlanta's children.

Chris and his ex-wife, Denise Prince, meet for lunch to discuss Roxanne's search for Erica. The FBI Agent is promptly refreshed to the fact of how volatile his complicated relationship still is with her. Both parties are also reminded of the hostility that existed in their household that aided in their dissolution...and the catastrophic secret that has yet to be revealed to the general public about an event that occurred many years ago while they were still together. In the meantime, Roxanne Sanchez is far closer to finding their missing daughter than they both realize. The private detective's tenacious search leads her to the Carver Housing Projects...just in time to witness the Peacekeepers launch a major offensive to liberate its citizens from underneath the rule of the Choir Boys. Xavier Prince and his Circle had decided that this community would no longer wilt under the oppression of thugs, drug dealers and gang bangers. Roxanne makes two starling discoveries while barely surviving the incursion at all: She meets a self-proclaimed Pandora mole named Joseph Champion and finds Erica Lovings dead body in a dumpster. At the same time, Chris and Angel began investigating staged crime scenes that they question whether they unlock secrets of the past, or disclose clues to future abductions. Chris learns of his step daughter's death and travels to Denise's apartment to tell her the horrible news in person not knowing that Seth is secretly on the premises as well. Louis names Moses Jackson, the first of his new child captives, his general, and instructs the boy to watch over the other children he plans to rapture from Atlanta's streets. And then, under increased pressure from Serena, Louis reveals a starling revelation of his past that so enrages Pandora's leader, that she takes the time to journey to his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, to avenge a terrible wrong.
Thomas

Bernard Lott.

The Senior Editor of the Times was a Black man who stood as tall as he was wide. He had a newly clean shaven head, sleepy eyes, a wide nose, and spoke with an authorize voice fit for command.

A toothy thin woman who Thomas thought was a one night stand in waiting ushered him into the older man's office and shut the door as she exited. Lotto was on a conference call with what sounded like two of his beat writers, men that Thomas knew from his time here. Lotto acknowledged his presence without looking up, wrapping up his conference with his guys.

The suite was spacious and a splendid piece of architecture. It had a spectacular view of the downtown Atlanta skyline behind Lotto's desk. Across the floor was a loveseat similar to those that Thomas knew were manufactured across the Atlantic, especially in Greece and Italy. Thomas ran his thick fingers across the armrest and his touch confirmed that it was fine Italian engineering after all.

Photos of Lotto's meetings with former presidents, prime ministers, state governors and other heads of state lined the far wall. Thomas even saw one showcasing the two of them standing with Ernestine Johnson at some function or the other during her first term as Atlanta's Mayor.

Thomas glared at the picture for an extra minute. If we only knew what Mayor Johnson was ahead of us then would we have even bothered to smile?

Littered on his desk were pictures of Lotto's grown children when they were much younger. Thomas made a mental note when he noticed that the picture of the man's wife of thirty some odd years was absent from where it stood before. Thomas knew from experience that it probably meant that Lotto's fidelity issues were flaring up once more. The room stank of cigar smoke which meant that Lotto wasn't playing by those rules again either.

Lotto hit the button ending his call. The Editor and Chief approached him. Thomas grinned, extended his hand...but his former boss would have nothing to do with such a bland formality and bear hugged him instead. Lotto held him close until he got an up close and personal look at Thomas shiner.

"What in the hell happened to you, Tommy?" Lotto asked. He offered Thomas the chair nearest his desk and sat back down in his own recliner. Lotto deactivated the alarm for the window from a button underneath his desk and while still seated, manually opened it behind him. Two minutes later he got his cigar going the way he wanted to.

"Nothing," Thomas lied to his friend. "And everything. How are you, Lotto? You called me remember. It was an important enough issue for you not to leave this to one of your assistants but to make the call yourself. Why did you ask for me to come down here?"

"You know it's always good to see you, Tommy." He said, and eased back into the recliner. He took two puffs of his cigar. "Now, which one was it? I just have to know?"

Thomas grinned again.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Ernest."

Lotto pointed the ash end of the cigar at Thomas eye. "Which one of those estranged husband's finally nailed your ass."

Thomas laughed out loud.

Lotto said, "Come one, Tommy. I've got a 100 bucks riding on this."

"You've got it all wrong. It's not like that at all." Thomas replied.

And it wasn't.

Thomas had just exited the city's largest public library after doing some extended research on Microfiche about Pandora's origins dating back to the 1980's. Thomas hadn't trusted using his computer or doing much else in his townhome since Serena's impromptu visit. He had three different highly capable organizations in the FBI, A House in Chains and Pandora who were probably tapping into his private affairs. It was enough to make even him nervous.

And now he had the incident outside the library to add to his paranoia.

Thomas had noticed a white man, who needed a new suit, trailing his footsteps and stopped to confront him on the reason why before he reached the more secluded and dark areas of the parking garage. The man was half way lit up on...something...and told Thomas that he thought it was real fucked up that he'd betray his own people for the likes of them. Thomas calmly explained that he was doing his job. He was going to gather in the facts. And let those facts decide—that's when the man got in his face and looked to dip his hand into his coat pocket to grab something.

Thomas punched him first. His opponent got in a couple of jabs in, but Thomas used his superior size, strength, stamina, and boxing experience to wear the culprit down. The street looked empty afterwards. Thomas was sure that he'd broken the man's nose as he saw there was blood racing from it and his mouth as well.

"Tommy?" Lotto had been trying to extend a cup of coffee to him for how long? "Do you want this or not?"

"Yea," Thomas said, trying to swim up the current back into the present. "And which of these husbands did you bet on finding out about me and his wife?"

Lotto took another long puff off of his cigar and let the thick smoke filter out of his nose. "Telling you would spoil most of the fun. And don't you dare look at me like that. You should know better than to take it personal, Tommy." Lotto said. "You know that I'm all about two things: Business and winning."

"Business, huh, well, it's good to know that no matter how much the Earth may spin off of its axis from time to time that some things don't change, especially here at the Times." Thomas sat up straight and put his shoes flat on the hard wood floor as if he were bracing himself. "What's this about, Ernest?"

Lotto punched the ash end of his cigar out in this ashtray which Thomas always took as a sign that the man was ready for business. "Don't play coy with me, Tommy, You know what I want."

Thomas nodded. "Ok, so let's say that I do. You know that I can't do it even if I wanted to. I can't discuss any of it on any official level."

"Of course you can't, Tommy Boy...but you'll do it anyway. Lotto pulled what looked to be a two page document out of his brief case and slid it over to his side of the desk. Thomas glanced over the letterhead briefly. "After I hung up with you yesterday, I cleared this with the publisher and now know that I can offer you this proposal."

Thomas scanned the finer points of the context including an impressive six figure compensation with his name typed at the bottom. The document only needed his signature next to his printed name for it to be complete. He slid it back to his former employer, never taking his fingers off until it until it reached him.

"Sorry," Thomas said. "That's a no go, Lotto. And before you start...it's not about the money. That's more than a fair offer and I thank you for it. But it's a no go. And I don't want to hear anything else about it."

Ernest Lott got to his feet. "Oh, you'll hear me out, Tommy Boy, and you'll like what I'm telling you."

Thomas rose with his friend and put his hands in his pockets. "Right," He said. "Next, you'll have me believe that Ernest Lott, super editor, will stoop to the level of indignity of what is known as begging me."

"I was hoping you would save me that much trouble, but what the hell?" Lotto planted his elbows on the desk and assumed a praying pose that Thomas would have thought priceless if it were at all genuine. "Alright, Tommy, I am officially begging you."

"Save it, Lotto." Thomas smiled and sat back down and waited on his friend and mentor to do the same. Thomas spread his hands wide. "I am doing an investigation for our former Mayor. A woman that this paper...and you endorsed in her campaign for that office twice; I'm going to present my findings from this investigation soon. You know that I can't ally myself with any media outlet of any type if I'm to retain the slightest chance in hell of neutrality on this one." Thomas stopped for breath and to measure how his friend was taking in all of this. "You are the Senior Editor in Chief of a newspaper that has been traditionally classified as a liberal publication."

Lotto sat up straight and put his own thick finger index finger in front of his lips. "You know using the term liberal is forbidden if not taboo terminology in this building, Tommy Boy." He sat back then, resting his hands behind his bald head. "I thought I taught you better than that. You apparently laminated all those notes about journalistic integrity and that other bullshit, but forgot all about loyalty."

Thomas' gaze turned serious. "I haven't forgotten what you and this paper did for my career."

Lotto snorted. "You could have fooled me. It wasn't easy for a lowly junior editor working in Chicago to convince his bosses to give a snotty nose kid fresh out of a small, irrelevant, area state college a shot at the big time. You began writing for one of the largest distributed daily papers in the country."

Thomas smiled at the memory of days long gone by. "I've told you time and time again, Lotto, that wasn't snot in my nose. I was living on chicken soup back in those days."

"Maybe, but I wasn't finished yet," Lotto snapped his finger, remembering another detail. "And then many years later, I also gave the first rousing review for an unauthorized biography of Cathy Hooks that most papers called slightly bloated, if now well overwritten."

"And may I remind you that the bloated and overwritten biography won a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction that year." Thomas straightened his tie for emphasis. "And its author gave his first interview to the paper you were editing when the book hit number one of the New York Times Bestseller List."

Lotto looked wounded. "I thought our relationship had grown well beyond reciting what we've done for one another, Tommy Boy." And then a grin formed on his face. "You continue to disappoint me, Thomas. I guess I have no one else to blame but myself. I had such high hopes for you."

"Join the crowd. But then good judgment never has been my strong suit has it?"

"That interview Beverly Hooks, Cathy's daughter was one of the few. How is the old girl?"

She wasn't well and Thomas told his friend with a degree of sadness. Beverly's oldest son had put his mother into a nursing home after a year of complications from Alzheimer's made it impossible for him and his wife to care for her any longer. Thomas thought it was remarkable that a woman who had such a remarkably sharp memory could lose it all in such a short span of time. She was Thomas main source for the biography about her mother Cathy—a survivor of the Atlanta riots of 1906. Cathy had disobeyed her father's instructions to stay in the house when an assembly of white men took her father away when they came looking for some Black Man...any Black man to lynch for the rape and murder of a couple of white women in the alley behind an after-hours establishment. Cathy had tracked them down as they readied her father for his lynching and hanging. Beverly had told Thomas that the leader of the mob was a White man that she'd seen hanging around with her dad on numerous occasions as they drink and whored together.

The old White man had told Cathy's father that she had one—and only one chance to leave there before she risked being raped and murdered herself. Tearfully, Cathy's father kissed his devoted daughter on her forehead and pleaded with her to run away. He told her to run away and not look back. Cathy looked into her father's eyes for a few seconds more with a waterfall of tears in her eyes and did as her father beckoned.

She did not look back.

"Thomas," Lotto had said when the old tale had told itself out. It was time to get on with the here and the now "Look, what happened down at your townhouse...and then at the FBI field office, seriously. Are you alright?"

Thomas felt a warmness flow through his shoulder blades. He was reminded why he appreciated this man's friendship. "Yea, thanks. I'm going to get through this someway or the other. If Cathy Hooks can stare down a racist mob and live to see another day then I can see this through to its end without looking back as well."

"I know that you will."

"Well, in case I don't, you can help me help you."

"You're not making any sense, Tommy Boy."

Thomas Pepper gave the Senior Editor's office a hard once over and then lowered his voice. "I told you that I won't share what I know with you in any official capacity. But I will tell you what I know unofficially. These are serious people that I'm dealing with across the aisle...across all these aisles."

"Tommy Boy, you sound a little scared."

"I am scared, Lotto. If I wasn't...then being questioned by the FBI before and after Serena's escape and seeing on television what Xavier Prince and a House in Chains did at Carver instilled a little fear in me."

"Alright, Thomas, if you need me to be confidential, then I will be. What do you have?"

Thomas reached into his jacket and slid his own two page document at the other man. "I'm sorry, Lotto. Even your word is not good enough considering what I know and the ramifications of it being leaked before I'm ready to talk."

Ernest Lott yanked an expensive fountain pen from his shirt pocket, scanned the papers briefly...and scribbled his name next to the printed version at the bottom of the page.

"I'm giving this paper...and you to right disclose this information if I am somehow incapacitated before I'm ready to take this public." Thomas said.

"I'm the Senior Editor here, Thomas." Ernest Lott said with some heat. Thomas knew the man was upset about having to sign a contract. But Thomas needed the extra protection against Lotto running this story in the Times. He knew his old mentor wouldn't like it, but he knew that he would sign the document just as he did. He also knew that he would get over it...in due time. "I can read. Now talk to me."

Thomas had gained an anonymous source. He (or she) had contacted him on his cell shortly before Thomas had his second interview with Special Agents Christopher Prince and Tabitha Blue at the field office just prior to Serena's escape during Deliverance. The voice was disguised electronically. It said: The world wrongly believes that Adolphus Sweet was killed by a sniper's bullet.

Thomas remembered the man had been campaigning for a second term near in Houston when he went down from a sniper's bullet as he left the Toyota Center. The president did not die that day...he was already dead before that bullet struck him. The assignation attempt only expedited the process of the guilty party going through what they had been planning to do all along.

Ernest Lott sat back in his recliner again and let out a low whistle. "Ernestine asked you to find the questions to the three questions that every Man of Color...what most people in this country wants to know: Who killed President Adolphus Sweet, who is the Caretaker, and what is the Whirlwind?

Thomas nodded but looked away.

"So what did the 'source' tell you the real reason behind President Sweet's death?"

"He was poisoned...just like Ernestine Johnson was." The poison sat inactive inside of his system for weeks. The responsible party only activated it after Sweet was shot.

"Do you believe this source, Thomas?"

Thomas shook his head...and then nodded. "I didn't, not at first. But I went back and looked at the footage. You know that the conspiracy theorist were all over this anyway. The official report said the bullet punched in through the president's side, but the conspiracy theories state that he was either hit in the thigh or not at all. Most men don't die from bullet wounds to the hip...especially in the hours afterwards that it took the Vice President to make the public announcement that Sweet had indeed been killed."

"Alright, Thomas, let's say that I'm going to side with you and your informant on that front. What about evidence about the presence of a foreign toxin in Sweet's system?"

"The whole world saw part of the evidence...and saw none of it when his funeral aired on national television days later—"

"We saw none of it because his casket was closed."

Thomas nodded, happy that his friend had caught on to his logic so quickly. "That fact alone had fed the conspiracy theorist that horrible day. They were stating that Adolphus Sweet wasn't even in the casket at all. I believe that he was, but he had suffered through and had been scarred by what I'd watched Mayor Johnson go through at her estate."

"What else?"

"I called the Director of the Center for Disease Control here in Atlanta which you and I both know is the first line of defense for this country in any war against any disease."

"And what did he say?"

"He said," Thomas paused for a very long time and a cold shiver had replaced the earlier warm one that he'd experienced for the man sitting across him. "He said no comment."

Ernest Lott shot out of his seat like a missile. The senior of the two men scratched the back of his shaven head and had to use his desk for support. The old newspaper man suspected what Thomas Pepper had suspected. "You can't make a 'no comment' on something you don't know about. By saying what he did, the man is admitting that President Adolphus Sweet was indeed poisoned by some foreign agent and that his office new about it."

"That means the Vice President knew about it as well. If I've read this correctly in my research then only a handful of people in the entire world would know about this: The Vice President and the Head of the Center for Disease Control in the United States are two, as well as the head of the CIA and the head of the FBI. So far, Deputy Director Rice's people aren't acknowledging my phone calls. It's not about calling back...they aren't acknowledging that I'm calling at all."

Lotto rubbed at his jaw as if he himself had been punched and not Thomas. He got up and closed the blinds of the windows in his office. "I'll get back to Sweet in a moment. Did this source tell you anything else, Thomas? Did you learn who this Caretaker character is or was? What about this so called Whirlwind?"

I will only disclose to you who the Caretaker is only if I feel the Whirlwind is imminent. The first answer leads directly to the latter.

Lotto sat back down and asked," I can only guess that this source is or was a Pandora Agent?"

"That's what he told me."

"Then why come to you—"

"Because he feels betrayed somehow; I don't know how and I don't know by whom." Thomas took a deep breath; the telling of this tale had taken a lot out of him." Thomas cell phone was on mute but the light lit up with a brand new text message.

"Anyone woman I know?" Lotto watched him reach into his pants pocket.

I need to see you, Thomas. The message said but oddly had not provided a sender. Yet, somewhere in his marrow Thomas Pepper knew who had sent him the text. Serena Tennyson. He hoped his intuition was just a theory and told Lotto the same in a voice he had reserved for delivering tales of disbelief.

Lotto laughed heartily enough to move a mountain. "Serena Tennyson texting you on your phone... don't you Goddamn wish?"

A second later Lotto's office buzzer sounded off. He politely, but sternly reminded his receptionist that he'd asked not to be disturbed unless a race war had broken out in the streets of Atlanta. She apologized, but hung on the line. Her lone response to her boss was that he really wanted to take this call.

Thomas asked, "Any woman I know?"

Lotto frowned at his younger friend but did not comment. Thomas could see him working his brain cells for remembrance of any potential appointment that he could have missed. He cursed aloud in recollection, apologized to the receptionist for his language and then instructed her to put the call through.

"It is some woman you know, actually." He made sure the line was clear of his receptionist probing ears. "This is someone that you would know better than anyone who works in this building actually." He said. "I have the best writer of prose that I have ever had the privilege of editing sitting before me. And yet a younger woman that I'm getting to know as well could possibly top your work, if only she would dedicate herself to it. I have little doubt that she could rival your success, Tommy Boy."

"Bernard Lott," Thomas frowned in anticipation of knowing who the other man was speaking of. "Tell me you didn't—"

"Oh, yes, I did." He said with a grin. "I anticipated you turning down my offer and prepared a preemptive strike to counter it. Sorry, Tommy Boy, remember what I said when I told you that I'm all about business and winning." The phone in front of him beeped and Lott picked up and turned the line on its conference setting as it was positioned when Thomas Pepper first walked in this suite. "Hi Lucy," Lotto said with his eyes burning through Thomas as his own comfort level went down a notch or two. "Say hello to Thomas."

"Hello, Ernest how are you," Lucy said in her South African accident and Thomas could imagine her flashing her overbite as she smiled. "Thomas, I didn't expect to talk to you today darling, what a pleasant surprise."

"Lucy,"

She continued. "Alright, Bernard, enough with the messages already, you know that I've been busy. And you should already know that I want this assignment...under certain conditions, of course."

"Conditions," Lotto's bushy brow raised his master plan somewhat in jeopardy. "What conditions are you speaking of?"

"Calm yourself, Bernard, my conditions for taking this assignment are pretty simple and straight forward enough." Lucy replied. The background noise made it sound as if she were driving on the expressway. Thomas hoped she was using her hands free device. "I want total control of the subject matter, darling. We are already in agreement about the material, but I want to drive home some other concepts you may not have considered. What you have pitched is a wonderful idea under normal circumstances, but considering what our story is up against in Thomas' announcement about his findings causes us to have to dig deeper if we are even to compete for page two."

Lotto looked hopeful again. "I'll take all of that to say that you've uncovered something worthwhile?"

Thomas felt the buzz of his cell before Lucy answered Lotto's question.

"Wrap up your conversation with Lott and me at the Children's Healthcare Center of Atlanta. It was a twenty minute walk from the Times, ten minutes if he hurried. And he felt cold again as a second more ominous thought fought past the urgency of the first. She's knows where you are. Pandora is having you followed...or worse you have some type of tracking device on your person or your car. Let's test that theory by walking down there instead of driving the Jaguar.

Lucy was saying, "Sorry, darling, I had to dig in my wallet to get a couple of dollars out to pay the toll. What I was going to say is that I don't have anything concrete enough to go with it yet. I am close however. And you know how I get when I want something bad enough..."

Thomas wasn't sure her reference was for Lotto or his ears. Her boss said, "Double your efforts, Lucy. I've already purchased time with the local superstation. I want your report to air the same day as Thomas airs his. I'll speak to you again later, Lucy. Good hunting."

"You bet your ass you will, Ernest," Lucy said. "Goodbye, Thomas. I'm still waiting on you to consider the offer I made to you back at the Mayor's estate. Remember, together, we will live forever. " She said and hung up before he had a chance to answer.

Thomas beat his former boss to the question line. "What was all that about?"

"Don't look surprised," Lotto said and lit his cigar again. "I won't play second fiddle to anyone in this city, Tommy Boy, not even to the likes of you. After you present your findings on Pandora, Lucy will hold a press conference shedding some light on one of the other key players in this game."

"Bernard Lott, tell me that you wouldn't have this woman fabricate a story to sell newspapers. I hope I know you better than that."

Lotto stood again so he could dramatize holding his hand of his heart all the better. "You wound me, Tommy Boy...you wound me." And then he leaned over his desk so Thomas would not mistake what he heard from an old newspaper editor in chief himself. "Besides, the truth can be far more devastating and more importantly to me...newsworthy than any lie. I'll let you in on something, Thomas, and I won't make you sign anything to hear it." After Thomas exhaled in exasperation, Lotto said, "I've received several tips that someone directly involved has not been forthcoming with his background. I hear that this has something to do with directly why we are all involved in this crisis in the first place. Lucy's tying up some loose ends right now as we speak. I believe this information to be relevant. I believe that it is pertinent. I believe that the public has the right to know. I'm going with it. And you would be too if you were sitting in my chair instead of the one you're perched in."

This time it was the sound of defeat exhaling through Thomas' nostrils. "Who has Lucy been assigned to do this expose on?" Thomas said. "Whose life is she going to destroy for the sake of increased revenue from advertising ads?"

"None of it won't be necessary, Thomas, if you'll tear up this." Lotto pushed the contract that he'd signed a few minutes ago, back towards Thomas. The younger man simply shook his head. The older woman laid his head back in recliner and puffed triumphantly on his cigar. The smoke making rings around his clean shaven head. Lotto was already counting this year's bonus...which wouldn't fall to far underneath the dollar figure he'd offered Thomas twenty minutes ago.

"The expose will feature the life and times of...Special Agent Christopher Prince, "The Senior Editor of the Atlanta Times said. "I think you've already met his acquaintance."

#  Xavier

Two members of the Circle sat in Moses Jackson home.

Xavier Prince heard Warren Washington say, "On behalf of Xavier Prince, myself, and the entire House in Chains extended family, I assure you Ms. Jackson, your son Moses, will be found.

It was a bold proclamation. But it was not unlike any Xavier Prince had taught his people to say. I wonder if Roxanne Sanchez made a similar vow to you, Chris and Denise before she went off and found my niece...very dead. Grace Edwards had told him this as well two days before. And for a minute he wondered if the liberation of Carver had anything to do with Erica's demise. Grace assured him otherwise. The condition the young woman's body had been found it told examiners that it had been in that dumpster for a week or more. And she wasn't on the Peacekeeper's list.

"Uh-huh," Tracy Jackson mumbled more than said something aloud. She had greeted the two men sitting in her living room and a half dozen more Peacekeepers with a cut off shirt barely hiding her breast and tight jeans. "Marlon, Manning, one of you two get your mamma a beer."

The two boys, no older than nine and ten years old, argued about who was going to the refrigerator this time, until Xavier heard the larger pair of dirty sneakers angling towards the kitchen. Tracy fished a broken Newport out of her breast pocket and turned her focus to the two members of the Circle who sat across the coffee table from her.

"Either of you fancy brothers got a light?"

Warren fumbled around in his pockets while Xavier leaned over the table with his lighter, Tracy meaning to greet him half way.

"Tracy," Felicia, Moses maternal grandmother warned her only daughter. Felicia Jackson was trapped inside of a mostly broken down body but her mind was still sharp...and her tongue had proven sharper since they'd all sat down. "You know you don't smoke in this house or any other where your children are present. Mr. Prince please put your lighter away, it won't be needed."

Tracy's quivering hands caused the cigarette to drop to the floor. She got a mix of a sense of urgency and agitation on her dark face. "Wait just a damned minute," She said. "I don't have to remind you again whose house this is now right, Mamma?"

"Of course not, dear," Felicia Jackson smiled in spite of her child's disrespectful tone. "More importantly, I don't have to remind you that these are your children. And you do not smoke around them, especially your youngest who has asthma anyway."

Tracy decided to give up the fight for another day, circled the long way around the coffees table away from where her mother was seated, and snatched the cigarette and Xavier's lighter in one motion.

"I'll bring this back."

Xavier saw a cloud of blue smoke rise above the younger woman's shoulder before the screened door slammed shut. Xavier hoped she would keep her word because he didn't have a spare lighter on him. He stuck a toothpick in his mouth. Warren shifted his gray eyes, focusing his attention on Tracy's mother. He cleared his throat.

"As I was saying, we've set up dozens of search teams filled with volunteers who are casing the surrounding neighborhoods."

Xavier added, "We've also established safe houses in most of these same neighborhoods. These residences have been equipped with flashing yellow rotating lights that will run 24 hours a day until these children are found. They also have loudspeakers that have been programmed to repeat each of the four missing boys names individually with a message telling them that it safe to enter homes. When Moses or any of the missing children show, they'll have a safe haven and a friendly face waiting to either call us or bring them home to you themselves."

"Friendly," She said, her smile never wavering underneath too red of lipstick. "Mr. Prince, how many of your people died at Carver?"

Xavier shook himself out of a stupor and pushed the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other with the sudden change of subject and the venom for which it was directed at him. She sat back on the worn loveseat, crossed her arms, and awaited his response. Warren sat with his mouth parted open and shifted his eyes back and forth between his leader and Felicia Jackson.

"There were 12 confirmed souls lost." He said evenly. "I visited four area hospitals this morning and seven more of our people are listed anywhere from fair condition to still needing intensive care."

She nodded as if Xavier were only confirming what she already knew as fact. "And the Choir Boy dead have risen well over 75 or 80 last I heard. There are four Carver residents among the dead as well, with countless others still admitted to those same local hospitals you speak of."

Xavier didn't break her gaze...or blink.

"That is correct."

"Was it all worth it, Mr. Prince?"

Warren shifted his long frame in his seat. Xavier continued to hold his gaze. Considering the hoops we've had to jump with local and national authorities ever since I would almost say no. But Grace had it handled as she had everything handled. With Admiral Ronald Broward killed in the battle, another man Admiral Ronaldo Darwin, a formal marine in the armed services, fell on his sword for his House. Immediately after Carver had been liberated, he walked into the Atlanta Police Department Headquarters armed only with the black tee shirt, khakis of his Peacekeeper uniform...and an severed Usher's head with him in a plastic bag. The head belonged to a previously 22 year old man—who was the highest ranking Usher and number three man of the Choir Boys as both The Bishop and his Deacon had escaped them. Darwin put the head on the counter and announced to the second officer who he saw what his own name was, his rank, and that he had authorized this rouge operation out of the knowledge of the Circle or Xavier Prince.

The second officer called for plenty of backup and took notes has fast as she could. She noted the tags that were attached to this...head and that the authorities would find on all of the skulls that had to be taken took down from the electric wires. Darwin, given his Miranda rights and in cuffs now, explained it all to her as slowly as he could manage. These are forms of ID. Do you people think we just go around and kill just anybody we saw? We have matched the Id's, social security numbers, and the warrants that were out on each corpse with 100 percent accuracy.

Xavier had been told that the officers then walked Darwin to the processing area after he finished his statement, careful to step around the first officer who had greeted him...and had passed out from seeing the severed head when he sat it on the officer's desk.

"It was," He finally said in response to Felicia Jackson's question to whether it was worth the lives his side had paid to take Carver back from the Choir Boys. He cleared his throat so she would hear him clearly...echoing the words that he had said in a press conference after Darwin's confession. "The Peacekeeper's cut through all of the bureaucracy and red tape. They alone did what local, state and national authorities failed to do: They eliminated a dangerous threat in our community who poisoned our people with despair and illegal drugs. And although their operation was without my blessing or consent, I applaud it all the same."

Felicia nodded, though she never broke eye contact with him.

"I heard the Bishop escaped you. I also heard that he has HIV if not full blown AIDS."

And it had been the curse of them not acting earlier. Of the 22 women and girls who had been a part of the Bishops' harem, 20 had tested positive for HIV already. That number had been confirmed by Grace from a source she had within the Atlanta Center for Disease Control.

"He has escaped for now." Warren squirmed in his seat again. "But his entire support system is gone. Word is that he's been wounded. He got a slash right across the throat. And another rumor has it that the Black Knights and other local gangs are trying to kill him before we find him. They've seen the light of our...the Peacekeeper's commitment to end their illegal activities by whatever hostile actions they deem necessary. The other gangs are putting the blame squarely on his shoulders. No one wants that light to shine on their doings ever again. It's just a matter of time before Bishop's found, just like your Moses."

Xavier heard voices outside. The neighbors had obviously gotten wind of the Circle visiting their community and had gathered around fences and street corners and front yards for a peek at A House of Chains governing body. Percy Harrison had led one of the volunteer groups in a search for the missing boys. Grace Edwards had been outside with the Peacekeepers trying to keep the mob at bay. Xavier was worried about his Third in Command. She seemed really shaken since the news about the women being inflicted by the Bishop's HIV, maybe she knew one of the women personally who had been infected—

"There are so many people out there." Felicia looked past him out of the screened door.

"I apologize for the circus atmosphere, especially now, Ms. Jackson." He looked at Warren. "Why don't you look in on Grace...and perhaps give her a hand."

"I'm sure she's okay."

"Why don't you have a look in on her anyway?"

The two men, who couldn't be more at the end of the height spectrum, engaged in a brief stare down that the younger man with the gray eyes seems all too happy to break. He exited the small house following Tracy's path disgusted...and defeated.

Afterwards Xavier found himself counting to ten before saying, "Have I done or said anything to offend you, Ms. Jackson?"

Felicia smiled through her ruby red lipstick again. "That has yet to be seen, Mr. Prince." With some effort she scooted to the edge of the loveseat avoiding springs that were sticking out along the way. "You know, I didn't vote for Senator Lavelle in the Democratic Primaries."

"Excuse me?"

She said, "You know, when he ran for president two years ago...but you were away in jail at that time, I'm sorry. Anyway, I didn't really like Mr. Lavelle all that much anyway; he's just so full of himself and arrogant. Anyway, I also didn't feel that A House in Chains was ready for the type of responsibility it was casting on itself if Lavelle had won the White House. I don't think you people have enough political experience. A House of Chains has become an organization full of style and preamble, but I think you lack substance...just one old woman's opinion."

Yes, you are an old woman full of passion and grit and intelligence. He could grow to her indeed. "It is unfortunate for my House that Lavelle couldn't garner the support of voters like you, Ms. Jackson. He was narrowly defeated by only a few hundred votes. I respectfully disagree with you on a House in Chains political standing. We were ready to lead. We are leading. A victory for Lavelle would have been victory for all our people, especially in light of the challenges we face now."

She continued to smile but said nothing to that.

This...discussion had been spirited but fruitless, he had thought. It was time to bet back on point for his visit to this woman's home in the first place. "Ms. Jackson, if you have any doubts that your grandson will be found alive—"

"I don't have any doubts whatsoever, Mr. Prince." She scooped up a pocket sized Bible off of the coffee table. She held it firmly in her right hand for Xavier to glimpse in case he had not seen one before. "My faith rest in a much higher power than Xavier Prince or your House; and that faith also confirms that I will see Moses again, if not in this life, I will be with him again in the next."

Xavier took his turn at squirming in his seat. He lowered his eyes to the floor and wished for a cigarette of his own. Politics was one thing, but Xavier Prince would not argue someone's spiritualty, especially in their own home.

"Faith," He found himself saying...it was within his realm to question his own spiritualty however. Why am I admitting any of this you? You are a stranger to me. "Sometimes I find it difficult to believe."

She'd chastised him for everything thing else...but as he braced himself for the stern lecture he got another round of her smiles instead. "Then, Xavier Prince, I will have to believe for the both of us." She said. She saved her chastising for Tracy's younger boys who were running through the small house again. She let the room regain some semblance of quite again before she spoke. "Share something with me?"

"Of course,"

"Is finding these children more important for their families or for the House in Chains?"

Xavier swallowed hard. He'd lied to Ronald Broward's widow when he told her that although her husband and father to her two children had died honorably, but had partaken in a rogue operation that he had not sanctioned. He listened as Warren stated the same fabrication just a few minutes earlier. Thomas Pepper was not the only man in this town who could utter the truth. He would do so right now.

"Both," he admitted to her. "Getting those children back into the loving arms of their families is my first priority of course...but yes, Ms. Jackson, I need them found as well. I haven't spoken to you about victories since I've been in your home. We earned one with the liberation of Carver. A House in Chains needs one over Pandora. After 411 and Deliverance...and now Rapture in its earliest stages, I need our community to see that we can stand toe to toe and blow for blow in this embattled arena with our enemies. I want People of Color to see that we can protect them from all dangers."

Felicia's smile remained...and it seemed to gain a little warmth to it. "You spoke about offending me earlier, Mr. Prince, I want you to know that I never find the truth offensive."

He nodded and pulled the toothpick out of his mouth. "May I ask you a question?"

Felicia spread her arms out as far as they would reach. "The floor, as dirty as it may be, is yours."

Xavier stole a quick gander at the screened door to make sure no one was walking it as he spoke. "Why don't you have custody of your grandchildren? Please forgive me for saying this: Your daughter seems...unstable if not vulnerable in her role as a parent."

"To call my Tracy anything but unstable would be a kindness that she does not deserve, Mr. Prince. She is a crack addict." She said emphatically. "To answer your question: I did take temporary custody of my grandchildren until my health failed me over the past 18 or so months."

"I'm sorry, Ms. Jackson."

"No, it is I who should apologize to you. I am another in the line of mothers who have unleashed an ignorant, irresponsible, baby making fool into a Black Community already over burden with them." She went silent for a moment, gathering herself. Xavier thought he saw tears swell in her eyes. After she collected herself she said: "No mother ever wants to believe that her child is capable of doing wrong. I've learned though continuous trial and error to know better."

Xavier crossed the room to where the older woman was sitting and grabbed her wrinkled hands and gave them a gentle squeeze. If only you could have lived to see this ripe old age, Mother. Oh how I would have treasured our time together. "It pleases me to see how important family is to you, Ms. Jackson. Generations of stronger families would have eliminated the need for a House in Chains. My father believed that."

Felicia nodded in agreement. "He did at that." She said. "Isaac Prince was a truly great man. We all miss him."

Xavier felt an anger rising up in his chest with a suddenness that he couldn't explain. He let go of the old woman's hands. "You didn't know my father."

"No, I didn't know him personally, of course, but I did follow him." Ms. Jackson twisted around in her seat for Xavier to see a chain link tattooed on the nape of her neck. "I believed in him. I believed in his mandates, I still do. And I trust my instincts when I say that your father would have found another deterrent with dealing with Carver. Did the Circle consider using the Peacekeepers to blockade the projects? After a few months the isolation would have isolated The Choir Boys and starved their ability to make money."

"Yes, we considered many options—"

"I just find it hard to believe that your father would have approved of a full scale assault on lowly drug dealers and thugs when you have a probable conflict with Pandora hovering over the horizon."

Xavier rose abruptly, shook Ms. Jackson's hand and thanked her for her hospitality. He turned for the front door needing some air, not waiting on her to respond. He excused himself but not before he heard the final words she said to him before the screen door closed behind him.

These other two boys awaken nearly every night with nightmares about dying in this Whirlwind that Serena Tennyson keeps spewing about. She had said. They love their brother; they miss him...but they are more afraid for themselves than they are for him.

He stood outside and let the brushfire smell fill his lungs. He was about damned tired of people doubting his decisions and doubting his ability to get his people through this. Still, Isaac Prince's voice said to him. Go back in there right now, son...and apologize to that woman. Remember what you told the Circle about Senator Lavelle's brash behavior.

He opened the screened door, calmed his nerves with some considerable effort, and found Ms. Jackson in the same spot where he had found her. "You have been loyal to my father, to me and to our House. I have disrespected your home and I know he wouldn't have approved of that."

30 minutes later the sun had nearly retired in the western sky and had taken both all the warmth and some of Xavier's faith with it. Worse, the stench of the burning wildfires had become almost unbearable as the smoke seemed to sit on top of this specific spot where he was standing. The crowd had dispersed somewhat because of it, but mostly, he knew, in anticipation of another night of sporadic gunfire that plagued neighborhoods like this one all over Atlanta and urban America. There were little Carvers everywhere.

Grace had found her way to the other side of the Jackson's wooden fence.

"Hi," She said.

"Hey."

She updated him on what she knew about Pandora, the missing children, any and everything that he could possibly need to know. Afterwards they both allowed the silence to breath even if they struggled to.

"Thank you for your words back at Morehouse."

Grace shook her braids and smiled. "There is no need for thanks, Xavier. I told you then...I'm telling you again now, I am here for you. I am here for our house."

Xavier nodded. He needed a cigarette but Tracy Jackson still had his lighter. He wouldn't insult this woman who had been so good to him by asking her for something he knew she wouldn't be carrying on her.

Intelligence was Grace Edwards business...it was her life. He was sure that she knew his life story as well, the real reason he was so uncomfortable about building true relationships beyond physicality with women. She had to know that his father had left Chris' mother...abandoned her, even after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, for love and affections of his mom.

And though he had forgiven them both...until both of them were taken from him, he had never allowed himself to become emotionally attached to any woman...ever. "I don't think I ever came to terms with relationships in general after I learned about my parent's affair." He said to Grace Edwards aloud as if his previous thoughts had been aloud as well. "It's torn at everything I've believed in about family. My boys are my family. Chris is my family. I have no one else except this House that my father built. It is like whispers in the dark. God, I can't believe that I still struggle to talk about this after all of these years."

She nearly grabbed his arm, thought the better of it. Xavier lowered his head, his heart aching.

"Perhaps we shouldn't talk about this anymore today." She suggested instead.

"My mother broke up a marriage." There. He had said it aloud for Grace...and the whole damned world to hear if they already didn't know. "I loved my father. I love my brother, Chris. I loved...yes, I still I believed I loved my mother as well. I honored her memory when I took those lashes for each year she lived on this earth when James Carter desecrated my back with his whip back in school. I just don't think I've been completely able to forgive her for her role in what the two of them did to a dying woman. I don't think I'll ever be able to trust a woman...or myself completely to remain monogamous in any relationship."

And if I required further proof, then all I needed was to watch what Denise Prince enabled her daughter Erica Lovings almost to do to Chris when she supported her lies. He needed to see his brother's face again. But how, what circumstance will allow the time or space for us to pull it off; I can only see an act of God allowing us to.

Grace had regained her resolve...her sense of courage. She ran a finger along his sideburns. "Trust me or not...it doesn't really matter." Grace said and entangled herself in his arms. She was soft and hard all at once. "You are loved nonetheless, Xavier Prince." She said. "I love you, Xavier Prince."

The proclamation stung him so intently that he went cold all over. He had suspected the attraction of course, perhaps even with her smaller frame, he had even desired a physical relationship...but love? He wasn't emotionally prepared to deal with that possibility right now.

"Grace," He said slowly. "I don't think I can—"

She smothered him with kisses to his cheeks, jaws, and chin. It was him who drew her in. She even tried to pull back but he only kissed her harder until she had accepted his full kiss.

He'd fathered two boys and had a multitude of sexual conquest over the years, but had never experienced something this powerful...this wonderful in his entire life.

He felt warm inside.

He felt hard outside.

He felt a...buzzing...

"Sorry," Grace said and looked at her smart phone, which had been set to silent and buzzed when they were close. "Pepper's on the move. I have people following him but there is something that I want to see for myself."

In an instant she'd transferred from a vulnerable woman melting in his arms to Grace Edwards, the Number Three member of the Circle who was the Chief Intelligence Officer with duty calling her.

"I'll call you later," She said as a way of departing.

The night turned out clear and the sky was plentiful with stars. For a moment...a small moment maybe, he felt his hope renewing. If Xavier Prince can experience what the earliest feelings of true love is, then all things are truly possible.

He laughed out loud.

Serena Tennyson herself could magically appear inside of this fence and not spoil this moment. He picked out one of his cigarettes and begins his slow, methodical, familiar routine of lighting it when he realizes...that he still doesn't have his lighter.

Someone cast a small shadow behind him. For a minute he had hoped that Grace Edwards had changed her mind, leaving duty to someone else, but he knew that thought was ludicrous as soon as it jumped off a brain stem. Yet, he is far from alarmed not knowing who is there. The Peacekeepers had every corner within a five mile radius covered and no one would approach him without their knowledge or consent.

Even this crack head named Tracy Jackson who now stood in front of him when he turned around.

"Your lighter," She handed it to him.

Xavier decided she was just in time. As he went to light his Newport, the flame gives him a clear look into the woman's eyes across from him. Her pupils have fully diluted. She was perspiring heavily. She was pacing in place. Xavier knew that she was now high as a firecracker. He wanted to chastise her. He wanted to have sympathy for her. How anyone already cursed with her condition could not be more stressed, when one of her children had been kidnapped and the fact existed that he could possibly be dead...

He remembered how his own mother stressed about a child that wasn't biologically hers when Chris disappeared without a trace over those fateful months.

Seeing Tracy Jackson at her worst causes Xavier to lose the taste for his own addiction; He handed her the remainder of his pack and gives the lighter back to her. "Keep these, Tracy." Xavier said. "If there is anything else that I can do to help ease your pain...do you or your family need any money?"

Tracy shook her head, almost uncontrollably. "I'm not a beggar." She said, but when she got a peek at the stash of hundred dollar bills in his possession she switched her head into the nodding mode real fast. "Yea, I could use a few bucks." Xavier handed her two bills...and instantly regretted it. He should have given the cash to Felicia instead. "Yea, I still have two other boys left. I'm just not a beggar."

"I know that," Xavier smiled, but he felt his smile...all of his good feeling evaporating away as Tracy went to her knees and attempted to unzip his slacks. "Stop it, Tracy, What in the hell are you doing?" And when she gave it one more effort he pushed her head away. "I said what in the hell are you doing?"

From her knees, Tracy Jackson stopped long enough to gaze up at Xavier as if he were the one stupefied. "I said I'm not a beggar. I pay my debts. You gave me money and cigarettes and nice lighter. I'm gonna pay my debts by giving you a blow job like you've never had before, a damned good one."

Xavier Prince backed away from her...all the way until he had somehow unlatched the wooden fence. He turned and four Peacekeepers hurried to match his pace getting the hell out of that neighborhood.

His special moment was ruined after all.

#  Thomas

Who in the hell is Helen Shatner? And how is she involved in this.

That was the name that Serena Tennyson had texted to him to ask for when he reached the Children's Healthcare Center of Atlanta. An underling whose breath was of spearmint smiled and paged the woman; Five minutes later Thomas Pepper watched as the Duty Nurse, Helen Sutter greeted him. She was at least 10 years younger than he was. She was wearing her hair in ponytails. She wasn't cute enough to wear her hair in ponytails.

"Good evening, Trisha told me that would be coming, Mr. Donovan. Would you mind following me?"

"Donovan?"

"You are Arnold Donovan, Trisha's friend. She described you to a tee and told me you would be visiting the newborns with her tonight."

"Ah...Trisha did that. Yes, Nurse Sutter, lead me to Trisha. I'm dying to see her again."

One alcohol scented room over Nurse Shutter and Thomas—AKA Arnold Donovan had found himself in the baby wing of the care center.

And Serena Tennyson was standing with her forehead of the glass looking in on the newborns wearing a trench coat.

"Trisha, how have you been girl?" Serena smiled at the other woman, but before she could mouth an answer Helen said: "I found your friend up at the front desk. This is the newspaper writer that you've been telling me about for months aren't it?"

Thomas said: "You two know each other on a personal level? And...Helen, do you know any of my work?"

"Of course Helen and I know each other, honey." Serena squeezed his hand and pulled him next to her. "We know each other as much as my weekly visits to see the newborns right, Helen?"

Helen nodded her ponytails moving. "Right...Mr. Donovan, you don't think we just let anybody back here do you?"

"And not everybody in the world knows who Arnold Donovan the famous beat writer of the Atlanta Falcons football squad is honey, I hope you don't feel insulted?"

"Of course not...sweetheart," Thomas replied, playing her game.

Helen, the Duty Nurse shook Thomas hand and smiled her not so cute smile at him. "It's good to finally have met you, Arnold. Trisha talks about you all the time."

Has she really? "That's so sweet of you, Trisha."

The newborns were kept behind a heavy sheet of glass. The room was lowly lit on their side in heavy contrast to this side of the glass. Two couples were near enough for Thomas to hear their muttered conversations. The room was frigid. He buttoned up his coat and was glad that he'd worn it inside this building.

He caught Serena's reflection in the glass. She wore a shoulder length black wig and blue contact lenses to mask her appearance. Thomas noticed something else: She looked fatigued, especially the dark circles developing under her eyes. Her normally flawless posture was affected as well as she was slumped over just the slightest bit. It was something that his journalistic perceptions had aided in him in seeing.

Duty had called Helen away and she waved her goodbyes at the couple.

Thomas gave 'Trisha' a hard stare. "You're putting these children's lives in danger by being here."

"These children are as safe as you allow them to be, Thomas. Do nothing foolish or hostile and they will be fine."

"Me? What kind of double talk is this, Serena? You asked for me to come here remember?"

"I did, but you are the one who is being followed." Serena stole a quick glance at the couples...and then fixed her gaze on Thomas. "I needed to see you. I wanted to see you, but I could not compromise my safety or my mission."

"You say that I'm being followed. Who am I being followed by...the FBI? Is it a House in Chains?"

"Both." She took a deep breath. Her phony blue eyes did not take away from her normally intense gape. "I know that you won't believe me, but I'm glad to see that you are well."

Thomas frowned. "You can't seriously expect me to believe that can you?" He asked her. "I could have been killed at my townhouse, for God's sake. You used me Serena, Goddamn you. You used me to advance Pandora's cause."

"I did." She nodded. "Using you doesn't automatically mean that I wanted to see you come to harm." Serena glanced away. "Or does it mean that I meant harm to those that you were close to."

"I don't want to hear this."

"The murder of your housekeeper was unfortunate but necessary."

"Unfortunate,"

"Yes, unfortunate," Serena managed her tone. "Thomas, we sit at the doorstep of an extraordinary moment in race relations in the history of this country. Every generation has had their time to step up or be trampled: The abolishment of slavery and the Civil War that came of it; The Civil Rights Movement; The election of the first Black President, Adolphus Sweet."

"I hope that you don't call the 411 attacks and the loss of life that it caused as part of an extraordinary event in history?"

"Much of the advancement of People of Color has come at a high price. Each passing generation has suffered less racial strife as a direct result of what has occurred to their ancestors before them. If Pandora succeeds...If I can fulfill the Caretaker's vision, then future generations will be spared the pain of what the people of this time must see to its end."

Thomas swallowed bile. One couple had moved on, but two others had taken their place. "I've gathered enough evidence to go public with the knowledge that President Sweet was not killed by a sniper's bullet—"

"But that he was poisoned in a similar fashion to Mayor Ernestine Johnson on 411"

Thomas laughed heartily, the couples noticed him...but he knew nothing else to do. "You're still using me, even now, Serena. Why should I believe that any of this information from this so called source of mine is real—"

"Because he is real, Thomas," Serena gave the room a slow once over. "I turned the source on to you. When you hear from him again he will tell you that he works in biogenetics lab in Houston, Texas. He will tell you that Mayor Johnson, not President Sweet was the initial target of this poisoning. But after the president was shot his symptoms were turned on, for the lack of better terminology, to see how effective the virus actually was."

"I don't understand, Serena. What is going on?"

"More than you imagine, Thomas." She said. "You're getting the facts as fast as I can get them to you."

"So what do you want from me now?"

"What I want, and have wanted since before 411 launched are for Xavier Prince and the Circle to surrender. I want to see a House in Chains and Pandora disbanded. I left the door open for these very happenings back at your townhouse remember? I was willing to sacrifice myself when I surrendered to the authorities?"

"Here you go with more double talk, Serena." Thomas said through clenched teeth. He was angry. But he knew that he was putting every life in this building in danger if these strangers were alerted to who he and his blue eyed acquaintance truly were. "You had Deliverance already planned before you surrendered yourself to the FBI."

She nodded. "Of course I did, Thomas. But the operation was not to have taken place until after the FBI took me back to Quantico in Virginia. Pandora had always prepared itself to extract me from either location. Two things happened that changed that location to Atlanta: Xavier Prince and his brood did not surrender themselves as we asked—"

"And you being nearly raped at the holding station by those two men frightened you enough that you couldn't wait any longer."

Serena nodded her brunette head...and looked visibly shaken.

Thomas turned his attention to the babies on the other side of the glass and couldn't help but smile at their innocence. At last the other two couples had trailed off and he and Serena were alone. He wanted some answers. He deserved some answers.

"Are you responsible for the recent kidnappings of Black Children in this city?"

"Yes," She admitted with little hesitation. "And answering your next question before it forms in your mouth is: Yes, we masterminded the majority of the first wave of kidnapping and subsequent killings that occurred during the first half of the 1980's as many historians and people like you in the media have suspected."

He felt his knees knocking...and not from the cold. Thomas Pepper, more than ever, wondered if he would live long enough to tell what he knew to the world. "This Louis Keaton," He said. "He is the one doing these kidnappings."

Serena nodded again. "Special Agent Christopher Prince, Nicholas Sheridan and all the others in this investigation will piece the entire puzzle together sooner or later. Perhaps they know all of the answers right now." She admitted. "But unless they find these missing children, which I assure you they will not, it will eventually force Xavier Prince to engage in a full scale war with Pandora. That would be a move that would be very unwise on his part. This is a war that he cannot win. And I have no wish to see more bloodshed."

Thomas continued to look through the glass. "You said that you needed to see me, Serena." He found her reflection in the glass and confirmed the desire in her eyes. "What has happened to you since we last saw one another? I know about the attempted sexual assault...but something else is troubling you."

"I am not the unfeeling woman you think I am, Thomas."

"I don't know who you are, Serena." He faced her. "Are you the woman who would order innocent people killed and follow that with another order to have children kidnapped in the name of furthering this Caretaker's cause? Or are you the woman who could be heard crying long hours from her cell after being nearly raped by two Black policemen who let their grief of a fallen friend overwhelm them into such a devious undertaking?"

She wrinkled her nose at what he had said.

"Oh yes, Serena, I have my sources as well." He bit back a smile. "But you haven't answered my question, who are you?"

Serena shrugged. "I can justify everything I've done so far. I've seen it all in the—"

"In your flames," He interrupted her. "Everything in your world revolves around this belief system with your Dragon."

"It would be unwise of you to mock my faith, Thomas." Serena's tone warned him that he would be unwise to ignore her words. "I use what I see materialize in the Dragon's flames to guide me in every decision I make. What do you use to guide yours?"

"Truth," He replied just as quickly. "I'm not interested in taking sides here in this cold war between Pandora and a House in Chains. I'm only interested in keeping my word to Mayor Ernestine Johnson and telling the truth about what I discover. And furthermore, I'm going to tell this truth to the world about what I've learned and will learn, Serena, unless you plan to have your people kill me. Or perhaps you will kill me yourself?"

"I guess we'll have to see, Thomas," She said evenly. "We'll both do what we must."

Their conversation had drawn a few curious glances from both staff and parents walking it and out of this area. Thomas took a deep breath and now realized that his voice had must have risen well beyond a conversational tone. Endangering these people's lives was the last thing he had intended to do.

"I guess we need to go. Is there anything else, Serena?" he asked. "You wanted to know what I knew. You wanted to know where I stood with my investigation...but I still feel that you wanted something more. What did you really call me here for?"

She told him that she called him here because she thought he was the lone person outside of her organization that she could talk to. She told him that she could show her real face to him.

"I flew to Memphis yesterday."

Thomas frowned at that proclamation. Pandora must have had its own private jets. It was no way this woman was getting through security checks in any international airports in this country.

"Memphis," He searched his memory banks and found a record. "Memphis, Tennessee is Louis Keaton's hometown."

"Yes," She nodded, impressed that with his knowledge of her operative. "I saw his mother, a woman named Lisa Healy in the flames."

Thomas pulse thickened in his ears. "Did you kill this woman?"

Are those real tears in your phony blue eyes, Serena? "That was my intention, yes, Thomas. After I had questioned her about whether her brother Templeton still lived and his whereabouts I was going to do just that for her crimes of...neglect of her son, Louis Keaton." Serena gave Thomas a brief synopsis of what circumstances led to the continued sexual assaults of the boy Keaton by his uncle. The story twisted knots in Thomas' belly. "I made her strip down after I had the information I wanted. I intended for her to die with as much indignity that her own son had been forced to endure when he was repeatedly raped by the monster that was her brother." Serena folded her arms, fighting against the cold. "And yet, I was shown something that I won't soon forget, so I was compelled to spare her."

Thomas itched under his collar to learn what that information was, but didn't want to bite off more than he could chew. So he asked her this instead: "Lisa Healy's brother wasn't dead was he? He would have been a very old man by now."

Serena shook her head...and then nodded a yes at his second question. "He was very old, very feeble. He gets around in a wheelchair." She said carefully. And then the shadow of the woman who he found sitting in his living room returned in all of her glory. "However, my justice has no statute of limitations."

"He was old and defenseless, Serena." Goddamn you, Thomas, you have to get your tone under control. "Tell me you didn't do this."

Serena pulled her hands out of the trench coats pockets for the first in minutes. Curious; and there, he saw it for the first time since they'd come in this hallway. There was dried, bruised blood underneath her fingernails. There were two scratches on her wrist and that ran half way up her arms. Were these the last ditch efforts of Templeton Healy's attempts at saving himself?

"I did." And Serena looked as if she relived the entire episode of the man's final moment's right here, right now, where all of this new life was as its beginnings. "I looked into his gray, lifeless eyes, ran my fingers through his liver spotted scalp...and avenged Louis Keaton."

Thomas stomach turned. "Why should I believe any of this?"

She leaned forward and dropped something with weight into his coat's pocket and whispered in his ear. "If you doubt my work then you really don't know me at all." She began to back pedal away from him. "I advise you to retreat to the rear of this building. It's the only way that you'll escape both a House in Chains and FBI Agents who are following you. I left another package for you back their on the floor near the exit door that you won't be able to miss."

Serena looked as if her eyes were full of tears, but as she became one with the shadows it became entirely impossible for Thomas Pepper to be absolutely sure. "We'll speak in person again, Thomas."

"Serena...Serena," He called out to her. "Where are you going?"

"We'll speak again...before the end...before the Whirlwind is unleashed upon the world." She promised.

"Serena,"

He had awakened three babies with his yelling. One woman told him to be quiet. But it was too late for all of that now. And he needed to know something from Serena...before she left him behind for good.

"Have you seen me in your flames?"

Serena stopped her retreat only long enough to say: "We are all given to the flames eventually, Thomas, even I will be someday." She said and disappeared out of the side door that led to...he had no idea where the door led.

Several babies were crying in earnest. More than a few onlookers were giving him a wide berth as he followed Serena's advice and angled towards a rear outlet. Nurse Helen had returned to question him. The frown on her face hadn't improved her overall looks any. Whatever Serena had dropped in his pockets was rattling around and was weighing him down some, but he dared not stop and look to see what it was right now. He heard one of Helen's assistants say to her that maybe they should summon security.

He walked...and finally ran out of the first door that he could find. He heard Helen yell at the others to let him go, not to worry about, at least the creep was leaving.

Thomas found a sign above a door that said, "Exit to back entrance and parking area."

There was something wrapped up in a knapsack on the floor next to the door.

Thomas scooped it up, took one last long look behind him and ducked through the door. He found himself standing next to a dumpster once he was outside...but the dumpster wasn't where the worst of the odors was fumigating from.

He walked a little further down the alley to make sure that no one was tracing his steps. When he felt he was clear he sat the package down and reached into his left pocket first. Ouch. Whatever it had been it cut him.

He pulled out a man's seared hand.

He threw it down in disgust. He was breathing hard by then. The man's sharp fingernail is what had cut into his own skin. It took a moment for Thomas to gather himself and reached in his other pocket.

He pulled out a man's burned foot this time.

He bit down into his lip and tossed the foot in the general location of where he had thrown the hand on the ground. He tried to breathe in deeply and control over his emotions. He still had one item left to investigate, and memory served him that it was the heaviest of the items that Serena wanted him to see.

He squatted down and carefully...methodically untied the knapsack.

And Templeton Daley's head darkened head rolled out onto the pavement.

Thomas Pepper lost his dinner of sautéed lamb chops and green beans. He cried tears of desperation and disgust. And just as suddenly...fatigue rushed upon him and pushed down on his big shoulders and sat his big frame and a thousand dollar suit in the muck and the grime in this alley. And he knew that Serena Tennyson had provided him with all of the proof that he needed of her exploits in Memphis.

He looked out at Templeton's severed head...and the head seemed to look up at him and some of his curiosity peeked through the holes where the disgust and desperation in his heart and soul existed only moments before.

You bastard, Templeton...you poor, miserable bastard; he thought, which torture did Serena impose on you first, was it the cutting or the burning? And then his mind questioned: And why did she burn you at all? Somehow I don't believe that given you to her flames is enough of an answer? What else did Keaton tell her that you did to him to deserve to be burned alive?

#  Chris

He had received two phone calls not one minute apart just prior to knocking on Angel's motel room door.

The first came from his ex-wife Denise. He said into his phone's speaker that he understood her need to see him but that would be impossible today. He knocked on Angel's door between bouts of conversation with his ex-wife. Angel unbolted the lock after his third knock and looked as if he'd awaken her from a nap. She had fallen asleep fully dressed in a white blouse and black jeans. She invited him into her room, the hotel rooms just outside of Hancock State Prison in Sparta, Georgia. After he hung up with Denise Angel cocked a brow and asked if he planned to respond more favorably to her request when they drove back to Atlanta tomorrow morning.

He probably surprised her a little by saying that he she sounded so desperate that he'd given her directions down here the last time he talked to her. Denise telling him that she'd get a friend to drive her down if she came at all; Angel had filled her mouth with mints before admitting Christopher to mask the smell of liquor. It wasn't working. She was out of sight of Agent Sheridan at the moment and she must have felt the need to take advantage of that fact while she still could.

In speaking of Sheridan...he had been Chris' second call. He wanted to remind both of them that they needed to track their steps from this point out. Public sentiment was lodging against the bureau, especially from People of Color. Any misstep and this country risked looking at a full scale racial episode of the likes that it had never seen before.

Angel said after he had hung up with his boss: "Well, you shouldn't be surprised, Christopher. Your boss is a bureaucrat. He is a bureaucrat with a nice ass, but one nonetheless." She said. "How we go about solving these disappearances is as important as bringing the children home safely." And he felt another question rising from her out of the room's silence. "But there was more to your conversation than just that wasn't it?"

Chris shifted his weight. "Some of Sheridan's superiors want you off the case, Angel." He said. "He's going to bat for you and so is the deputy director. They've been impressed with your showings especially at those makeshift crime scenes we discovered back home."

"You know me, Christopher," Angel raised her legs and put them on the wall. "I live to impress."

"This is serious, Doc."

She sat up abruptly. "I know that it is, Christopher." She glanced at the clock sitting on her nightstand. "We can talk on the way. We need to get going."

Once they were signed in and admitted to Hancock Prison, a correction's officer who was a dark cloud on a sun shiny day waved them into the social contact area. This wing had ten cafeteria tables lined up in relative close quarters in the room. It reminded him of his grade school days long ago...even before Keaton had taken him and changed his life forever.

Chris counted at least a dozen armed officers ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. A Black officer, whose eyes watered as if he needed to carry a tissue box everywhere he went, mentioned to Chris that they'd added extra security measures after what happened over at Calhoun State Prison last month. He also told Chris that the chief hesitated to hand him a clearance after he learned that he and Xavier were siblings. It had finally took a stern phone call from Sheridan warning that any interruption of a federal investigation could result in an review of this facility from state auditors whose phone number Sheridan had on speed dial.

Muhammad Clark was brought out in wrist and ankle irons a short time later; Chris heard Angel mumble something along the lines of bureau membership having its privileges.

Muhammad Clark:

He was a fair skinned Black man with a fat head, big eyes and a bushel of uncombed gray hair on his head that was going white. He had dozens upon dozens of moles on his face, two dozen rotten teeth in his mouth and one whitish goatee wrapped around his lips.

"Special Agent Christopher Prince...Dr. Angel Hicks-Dupree, now what do I owe the pleasure of your visit this time?" He took a long time to sit down in his irons. "Or should I guess? Well, I'll save you both a little time and tell you that I am clueless to the present or future plans of Pandora or their pet Louis Keaton."

Angel cocked a brow. "And I'm sure that you will continue to deny ever being in collaboration with either one of those parties of course."

Clark poked his lips out from his goatee and shook his fat head, both in an exaggerated manner. "Look, pretty lady, when a man lives long enough to be as old as I am, you learn that consistency of your tongue is sometimes all you have left."

Chris planted his elbows...his flag on the cafeteria table. He was up against a strong wind with so many tempests working against him. "Let's get something straight here from the start, Mr. Clark...we haven't traveled this far to play fucking games with you."

Angel said, "We are interested in any insights you are willing to offer us about Keaton's mindset or his whereabouts."

Clark swallowed half a bottle of the bottled water that had been provided for him and wiped what had spilled with his long blue sleeves. "I've been thinking about just that sort of thing since these fine folks told me you two were coming." He said. "I also thought about what I could gain by aiding you in your precious investigation."

Chris stood up. "Let's go, Doctor. We're finished here."

As he spun to go Angel clasped on to his wrist...and stroked it with part affection, part urgency. When he began to descend back into his seat Angel said to Clark: "We're not in the position to guarantee you anything, Mr. Clark." She said.

"What do either of you chipmunks have the power to request on my behalf in return for my help?"

Angel looked at Chris for guidance. "I'm sure we could find something...right, Christopher?"

Chris didn't look at his friend. He said to Clark: "What could we possibly offer you, Clark?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Your family stopped calling you on any regular basis ten years ago. You can't go out into the yard, especially now, without fear of being attacked by other members of the prison population. Men can tolerate being locked up with other murderers, drug dealers and thieves, but nobody wants to pal around with a child molester."

Angel hesitated, but eventually nodded at Chris reasoning. "Agent Prince is right, Muhammad." She said. "Your isolation is the only thing that has kept you alive in here this long."

Muhammad Clark leaned over the cafeteria table far enough to draw one of the guards attention. "And you would love to see that happen wouldn't you, Agent Prince." Clark wisely sat back and relaxed as much as his restraints would allow him. "I've bet you've had wet dreams of waking up one sun shiny morning, picking up the Constitution or the Times and reading the headline in big bold print saying that I'd been butchered in here."

"Yea," Chris surprised himself by saying. "I sure as hell would. You and every other man like you in this country."

Angel soothed his wrist again. Such a proclamation from someone who valued life as much as Christopher Prince sounded alien, even coming from his own mouth.

"That would be..." Angel searched the ceiling for the word she was looking for. "That would be unfortunate, Muhammad, especially considering your innocence."

"What?" Chris and Clark asked at the same time.

Angel repeated herself since they hadn't heard her clearly the first time around. "Muhammad, you have always declared and maintained your innocence for most of the murders that you were convicted of."

"She's good," Clark pointed a crooked finger in Angel's general direction. "You boys at the bureau should consider employing her services full time."

Angel said: "Shut up, Muhammad." She gave Chris a quick glance as if she were asking for his approval to press forward with whatever she was doing. He had no idea. "I've always theorized that you were responsible for a handful of murders but no more than that. Yet, your profile, your patterns of behavior weren't consistent enough to have been responsible for the dozens of other abductions and killings that you were indicted for."

Clark showed the first signs of discomfort with the conversation. He folded his arms and exhaled out of this nose. "And yet, I was convicted for all of those kidnappings they charged me with anyway."

"Is this supposed to make a hell of a lot of difference to the families of those young men you raped and killed?" Chris asked.

Clark replied by pointing his thumb at his own chest. "It makes a difference to me."

Chris and Muhammad Clark engaged in an intense stare down that was finally broken when both men heard Angel sifting through a handful of photos she'd sat on the cafeteria table.

"Do you recognize either of these locations?" She asked. "And don't blurt out an answer, Muhammad. Think about it a second."

Clark took the doctor's advice. He actually studied the photos for a number of minutes, his bushy gray brows curled in concentration while he searched his memory for answers. "No," He finally said. "After I killed the boys I'm responsible for I did what the papers said that I did. I tossed their remains in the Chattahoochee River where I thought they would go undiscovered. I didn't leave anything behind on land. And I can't recall being at either of these locations."

Chris laughed out loud. "And just like that we're supposed to believe you?"

"You damned well better if you and your people have any shot whatsoever of finding those four boys that have gone missing in the past few days now." Clark leaned over the table again, his chains betraying his movements and garnering the unwanted attention of three corrections officers this time. "I've never lied about this. I've never have lied about the hand full of...young men that I abused and killed. Why should I start now? You said it yourself earlier, Agent Prince, what do I possibly have to gain at this point?"

"Nothing," Chris heard Angel saying to him more than to the man who had uttered the words. "You have nothing at all to gain from lying."

Chris shot her a warning glance: "Doctor..."

"Christopher, for 30 years people in both our professions have either been asking the wrong questions about the Atlanta Child Murders or ignoring the right answers."

"So what is this right answer you are looking for?"

Angel almost seemed to ignore Chris altogether and she focused all of her attention to the other man sitting at this table with her. "Some of us have questioned whether you were working under the guidance of Pandora as we've learned Keaton was. Were you working for them...or a man who called himself the Caretaker? Or did these people draw their inspiration from you?"

"I was sick." Clark said as a response. "I am still sick, Doctor. I have never denied that either. To answer your question, pretty lady, I don't know whether they were inspired by what I did or not. I just know that it pissed me off real good though. Things were going just fine and dandy for me until Chris here and those younger boys went missing. Nobody had given a damn about those retarded older teenagers I was picking off the streets of Atlanta."

Chris watched the older man gather himself.

"I just know that I've never met this Caretaker or anyone else associated with those racist bastards in Pandora. I also never met nor was it my intention to compete with Louis Keaton for victims." Muhammad Clark stood to his full impressive height. "But most importantly, in light of all the evidence that had presented itself over the years, I want a new trial. I refuse to die in this place with the world thinking I killed all 19 children for which I was wrongly and conveniently convicted."

Chris sprung from his seat as well. "Someone had to pay the price, Clark." Chris spat. "You just admitted that you are far from innocent here."

"I didn't molest those little boys; 12 year olds didn't harden the rocks for me." He snatched Chris arm with unbelievable strength and speed and pulled him close enough for the special agent to count the convict's teeth tooth by rotten tooth. "But it's not a day that goes by that I don't envy Louis Keaton. Number one, he is still on the street to this day getting his groove on." The corrections officers rush to untangle Chris from the other man's grip. "Secondly, and most importantly, I wish I had Keaton's taste in boys...because I would have loved to spend some quality time with you, Christopher Prince."

Chris escaped the other man's grip. Half dozen officers have sprinted in their direction, but they won't arrive in time to save Muhammad Clark for what would come next.

Chris hopped across the table and dove on top of the chained prisoner driving him to the concrete floor. He then pounded Clark in his face with all of the strength that he could muster and drives his face first onto that same floor. Chris had his hands on Clark's throat for a count of ten or 12 before the guards tackled him, knocking him off. Even so, Chris managed one kick at Clark and when it connected it drew blood from the other's mouth which had split open.

He could hear Angel...barely hear her over the ruckus of humanity...pleading with the guards to release their hold on him, while several more guards jump on Clark adding new bruises to the ones that Chris had already administered. More legions of guards enter the space and have their weapons drawn, careful not to aim them at other visiting civilians.

In ten more minutes it was all over.

As four men drag Muhammad Clark back to the cage from which he came, Chris could hear him shouting: "This doesn't change how I feel you bastards. I only killed three or four of those boys. I had nothing to do with the rest. I had nothing to do with those other murders I say."

And then he heard the old man laughing...at him a long time after he could no longer see him.

"Oh yes, I envy Keaton though...oh how I know I would have enjoyed quite a time with yooooooooooooo...Chris."

#  Roxanne

Someone was following them on this stretch of highway.

Roxanne Sanchez licked at the lip gloss on her lips, unlatched the safety off of her Nine, adjusted both of her rear view mirrors, and punched her heel onto the gas pedal. She felt the coldest shiver of fear wash over her shoulder blades but dismissed the emotion just as quickly. Fear is irrelevant, Senorita, Victor had whispered in her ear once between kisses. It is how you function despite that fear that matters when it is time to conquer the night. Tonight she decided somewhere outside White Plains, Georgia, was no different than any other night of her life thus far. Either she would succeed or she would not.

Either she would die tonight or she would not.

Roxanne had seen the big black Cadillac swoop out and latch on to their rear like a hungry predator tailing its prey about 45 miles and 30 minutes ago.

State Road 15 was a lonely road, with a minimum amount of traffic, especially this late in the evening. Whoever was driving that car...rather it was a Pandora Operative, a FBI Agent, or even her old lover Victor Castillo, wasn't interested in disguising his intentions. The moonlight, the headlights from the few other vehicles they were passing and the Macon skyline in the distance provided all of the light she was getting. This was an ideal place for an ambush.

She hadn't told her passenger...Joseph Champion much. He was still marinating in his good feelings that he had gotten out of Carver and the city of Atlanta for a while. He'd been an emotional wreck, sliding from one passionate extreme to another, babbling on and on about his dead wife one minute while biting his nails...to counting how many mistakes he'd made during another.

One mistake he hadn't made was when he showed her a picture of Angel's husband, Seth Dupree, a doctor in his own right. He was a renowned surgeon. He was in Atlanta working alongside the medical staff of Atlanta General with their Emergency Triage Unit. I need to test a theory. She threw her Honda onto a side road for two reasons: Roxanne would pull to the side of the road and let Champion have yet another smoke. He had to have a cigarette about every 20 minutes anyway. Men and their vices, she thought. But more importantly, she wanted to see once and for all, if the bid black Caddy would follow where she led. She knew the area. That was a bonus. She pulled into a neighborhood gas station, made a quick circle back and put on the breaks.

After Champion filled his lungs and got back into the car he asked: "Did you hear me, Roxanne?" Champion turned down the radio. Their taste in music differed as well, which was no surprise to her. "Where are we? You said we were getting out of the city for a few hours to let the tension die down. It looks more to me that you know exactly where we're going. Where are you taking me?"

She suppressed a grin. Champion was no fool after all. She might as well let the cat out of the bag and throw it out of the window and see if it landed on its feet. She was tiring of this man's company, his vices and his old cologne that he wore anyhow.

"I spoke to Christopher Prince before sundown. He has business down state not too far from here." She stole a glance out of the side view mirror and saw the Cadillac still there, though it was maintaining a two car length distance for now. It gave her a moment to measure Champion's response to her next bit of news. "Dr. Hicks-Dupree is with him. You two have some unfinished business I believe."

Champion's bushy brows rose and he wiped his goatee with the back of his hand. He squirmed in his seat as if he'd picked up some red ants when he had got out the last time he smoked. "What's the matter, Roxanne? I don't get why you are doing this? I took you to Erica Loving's body like I said that I would." He looked out the passenger side window in concentration, a wrinkle forming in his forehead as he worked out what he would say...or do next. "You don't believe that someone in the Choir Boys killed her do you?"

The Cadillac fell back to three car lengths behind now...teasing her. She didn't have long now before the attack came. "Maybe one of them did kill her, Champion. The murder was an act of rage, an act of contempt." She said and gripped the steering wheel tightly with her left hand placing her free hand on her Nine with the other. She faced danger both in and outside of this Honda. She prepared to defend herself against which ever snake struck first. "What I am saying is that the timing of everything that went down was far too convenient for my taste. I told you this back at Carver. I'm telling you this again tonight."

Champion was distracted by the Honda gaining speed. He bit his fingernails. "And you don't believe in conveniences?"

"No, I don't."

"And I guess you don't believe what I told you about what happened to me or my wife either?"

"I believe what happened to your wife clouds your perception of things, Champion. I don't know Serena Tennyson. I don't want to know her, but I know the type. People in her position like to use human emotions to manipulate the people that work with them into serving whatever desires they want from them."

"No, Shit, Roxanne," Champion slapped himself on the forehead to complete his exaggerated exchange with her. "It's no way that I would have thought of that alone without—hey, we've driven pass this point before."

"We're being followed. We've been followed for about the past hour." She punched the gas and the Honda's engine moaned in complaint. Something inside Champion made him check to see that his seatbelt was secured. He glanced over his left shoulder to verify to himself what Roxanne had disclosed with him.

"You believe that the black Cadillac is following us, Roxanne...you sure about this? That's almost too much of a cliché for me to die of."

Roxanne ignored his jape and concentrated on her steering. "Back at Carver, you were telling me about the last night you spent with Dr. Hicks-Dupree." For all of her concentration, Roxanne nearly took the curve too fast, a car traveling in the opposite direction laid on his horn in a long honk of complaint. "What does she know about what is going on in Atlanta right now that you aren't telling me?"

"I don't know what you mean." Champion clutched the dash for support." Why are you asking me this now?"

Roxanne told him her theories about the three parties that were potentially behind the wheel of the car making up ground behind them. "I've had too many close calls with eternity lately, Champion. If I'm going to die on this lonely road tonight, I expect to hear the truth from you why. I want it all and I want it right now."

"Angel and I spent the night...talking when we weren't having sex and drinking. I hinted to her that I wanted to turn myself into the authorities. But we had another visitor in the middle of the night, a man named Eugene Cover had come from my old stomping grounds in Houston looking for me."

"Cover," Roxanne fired the accelerator up as she sped the Honda around two slow moving cars and slipped back into the correct lane as if she'd never abandoned it in the first place. "You didn't say anything about someone else being in that room with you two."

"Cover worked at a biogenetics lab. He knew some things. He was trying to tell me some of them about what really happened to President Sweet...how it was connected to Mayor Ernestine Johnson. I wasn't trying to hear any of it. I had already had my own dirt from my dealings with Pandora. I wasn't going to die for his sins as well." Champion looked back to see if they had made in progress in losing their tail. "Cover's dead now. I'm sure Serena got wind that three mortal enemies of her organization were together. I got out of Dodge. Angel got recruited by the FBI. And I'm sure Danielle Rohm got to Cover."

"Rohm,"

"Yea, I knew her to be a little woman who dresses all in black and carries big, powerful guns wherever she goes. She's a contract killer. She's Serena's right hand man—woman, I mean. I'm sure she was heavily responsible for helping shoot up the courthouse area when Serena was sprung during Operation Deliverance." Champion shook the cobwebs out of his head. "But I'm getting way ahead of myself. Eugene Cover's remains were found near the hotel where Angel and I shacked up for the night. Rohm's a damned professional alright. I'm sure she made it look like the standard murder-robbery to the boys in the bureau who were casing all the nearby streets thinking that they were going to nab me."

Despite all of her efforts the Cadillac had closed the distance. She had to get out of this main stretch of highway. Champion asked her what in the hell was she thinking. He told her that leaving the main highway was suicidal. I guess that's what I get for thinking aloud. Opinions were like reproductive organs: Everyone had one.

"Alright, Champion, enough about that morning that the FBI recruited Angel. Tell me more about the conversation that you two were having before this Cover fellow showed up."

"I know that it's not what you think it was, Roxanne." He said. "It wasn't this thought out, structured, Power Point presentation you are picturing it as. We talked about everything. I talked about my dear wife. She talked about her husband...her drinking issues. My turning myself over to the authorities was just one of my considerations." He put his head in his hands. "We talked about running away together...we even talked about...suicide."

She said, "Why didn't you?" Champion cursed her and exhaled a deep breath of exasperation. "I meant why didn't you go to the authorities?"

Champion spun around and looked out of the back window shield instead. He told her that maybe they'd lost other car at last. He didn't see anything. Roxanne was doubtful. She eased up off of the gas enough—

As now the Cadillac was driving straight towards them.

"Did you see how Serena escaped a few days ago?" Champion said to her and crossed himself. "Pandora's sphere of influence spreads like an eagle's wings." He seemed to come to decision about something. "No...I think that going to the authorities with what I know and with what I suspect would have been truly suicidal."

The Cadillac flicked its lights on and then off again and was closing on her Honda again after she barely avoided a head on collision with it a second earlier. Roxanne threw the transmission into reverse, altered her course and tossed it back into drive and sped to her left with all due speed. "No more long stories, Champion, what did you suspect?" She said to her passenger who had gone pallid. "Damn you, Champion, I said talk."

"411 wasn't a deep dark secret within the core members of the organization. It had been in the planning stages for years."

"Did you say years?"

"Yea, the 911 attacks and the war on Al-Qaeda actually delayed Pandora's plans and caused them to reevaluate their positon. Remember Pandora is made up of mostly US citizens who have or still work for our government in some shape manner or form. The Caretaker had been believed to say that the manpower and resources would not be reassigned from fighting the war on terror and defending the homeland for Pandora's private issues with a House in Chains. But as that external threat faded, Pandora became more focused on what led to where we are today."

"And what about Angel's role in all of this," The lights of the Cadillac had disappeared again. The world is too quiet, Victor. Victor told her the best time for hearing for strangers screaming in the distance is when your world was at its most still. "Where does Angel fit in this equation?" Roxanne aimed to get the Honda back on the main highway for now. She doused her own lights...learning from her opponent's example of stealth. She had to admit that part of her was enjoying the cat and mouse game with whoever was behind that other wheel. You are professionals. She thought. I am a professional. She knew. And I like cheese.

And she was more than willing to match her skills with theirs.

"Why are you consumed with Angel?" He asked her. "What has she done to you?"

Roxanne Sanchez wrapped her trigger finger around her Nine for the first time this evening. She didn't point it at Champion, but she did put it far enough away from her body so he would see it.

"I'm asking the questions here, Champion."

"Angel knew about Keaton." He lowered his head, following the gun's trail wherever it went. "She knew that man's in's and out's. He's a strange bird but if anyone in that organization could control Keaton, Angel was the one. She's an expert in her field of psychology and better in most in the remaining fields dealing with the human mind."

Roxanne had a thought. "Maybe Keaton killed Erica?"

"Maybe,"

The black Cadillac had reappeared...just to her left. She had seen the silhouette of the car even before he turned his lights back on.

And then Roxanne made up her mind one last time this evening to wrap up this performance since the hour was growing late.

"Roxanne," Champion slid down in his seat. "What in the name of God are you getting ready to do?"

Roxanne floored the accelerator and left Champion to figure out the rest for himself. She did remind herself that she was in all of this for the truth. She had lived for it. She was willing to die for it as well.

"I'm going to live," She announced to Victor Castillo or whoever was driving the Cadillac in question, but felt Joseph Champion nodding from next to her in the passenger seat of the 15 year old Honda. "I'm going to live just long enough to kill Angel Hicks-Dupree."

The other car didn't call her bluff...as she half expected. She swerved at the last half second to avoid a head on collision that would have ended the life of everyone involved. Damn...she didn't clear it enough not to clip the other car. Both passengers in the Honda felt the impact. She closed her eyes for a second...to allow the contact to take her car where it may. When she opened her dark eyes she saw the other car flipping once and again until it finally rested on its top, the tires were spinning aimlessly. Champion looked no worse than he usually did so she left him buckled in the passenger seat gasping for breath.

She had her Nine out and drawn. She approached the Cadillac giving the car and the perimeter around the vehicle a wide berth. She licked the rest of the lip gloss from her lips. She tossed her hair out of her face so it would not cloud her vision of targets. She could smell a gas leak, but from the looks of it, it did not appear to be all that bad. She shouldn't worry about danger from an immediate explosion, at least not right away.

She checked behind her to make sure that no one had miraculously escaped the other car and gotten behind her without her seeing them. She stooped down, maintaining her balance with the strength in her calves.

She saw that no one was home.

Roxanne stood up and made a quick 360 to make a final check of her surroundings. She felt her tension levels decrease from a bloody red to a cautious yellow. She wondered if she would ever enjoy the calmness of a level green again.

In her mind she eliminated the FBI from her equation of potential drivers of this car. There was a less than a pint of blood on the dash and perhaps an ounce or two more on the driver's seat. There was a little less on the passenger side. So there were two of you inside this car. The driver side had taken the brunt of the initial roll over and it also served as the final resting spot for it was well. But the FBI would have been quick to read off list of charges against her and all that.

Whoever it was didn't want to be identified. A part of her—the cheese lover who had enjoyed the thrill of the chase wanted press her advantage knowing that the passengers were at least partly injured. Maybe she could be the hunter...the pussycat for a time.

The reasonable voice won the day a few minutes later. Victor reminded her that she'd triumphed in this battle, but a war...and a potential ambush lie in those woods if she dared chase down whoever was in this car. There could have been more people in the backseat. She had no idea how many...or what kind of weaponry they were armed with either.

Roxanne Sanchez suddenly felt cold and very much alone.

And she was just that...very alone.

When she returned to her Honda, she saw that Joseph Champion had vanished from the scene as well.

She didn't disbelieve the stories he had told her...but she knew men like him. She knew, that even under the bouts of stress that Carver and the car chase tonight had presented, he was still leaving the meat of his story sealed and untold.

The Honda's frame was bent beyond probable repair but she started up just fine on the second try. Roxanne broke out in a...smile...for what felt like the first time in years. She let the windows down on both sides, the night air fresh out here far from the brushfires and tensions of Atlanta.

She put the car's transmission into drive and stepped on the gas at a slightly elevated pace. She was going on to see Christopher Prince who was perhaps another 45 minutes from where she was right now.

Roxanne had lost Joseph Champion.

She still didn't know what parties drove the black Cadillac who tried to kill her.

She should have felt like one for the loss column...didn't really feel that way.

The dark eyed woman had survived another day maybe where she not ought to have.

And yet her mood had darkened just as quickly when she glanced at the empty passenger seat as an old revelation shuttled its way from her brain to her heart.

The more and more she considered it...the more likely that Erica Lovings killer was seated all of this time right next to her.

And Roxanne Sanchez had managed to let him escape her.

#  Angel

Is it possible that Louis could have killed Erica, Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree thought as she gave Christopher's adjoining hotel room a polite knock. She heard him yell for her to hold on; he was grabbing a tee-shirt.

Angel's recollection of her last night with Joseph Champion had come in fits and spells, but was still mostly memory. She'd drunk entirely too much even for her in the few hours the two of them were together. Only since she and Christopher had returned from their ominous visit with Muhammad Clark had she even remembered a couple of the statements Joseph had said. Serena's playing for keeps, Angel. She's taking the gloves off. He told her that is what had heard before he had enough and got out. I believe that she's even going to unleash your boy, Keaton into the field soon.

And so Angel had to reevaluate whether Serena had Louis indeed stage the two 'scenes' knowing that the FBI would seek her services in the 411 and all other investigations since. From the reports that were flowing down the bureau channels through Christopher to her...Roxanne Sanchez had found Erica Lovings in the same positioning as the dolls were at the created murder scenes. Christopher's stepdaughter had been strangled. She had also been shot once in the back of the head. Her hands and feet had also been bound.

So either Louis or someone else close to all of this staged all three scenes, the two manicured ones and the actual one.

And where does the name Roxanne Sanchez ring a bell...Christopher opened the door at last and showed her in. He was wearing a black tee shirt he had just mentioned through the door and black rayon pajama pants that played well off of his opaque skin coloring. He'd gained a little weight across his middle over the years, but he was still more than appealing in her...and Angel was sure, many women's eyes. She could still remember their little romp in the hay that happened two years before she and Seth had married as if it were yesterday. Both Christopher and Seth were equipped and capable enough, but lacked the exotic positioning and experimentation that she so often desired from men. Damn you Doc, she said to herself using his tone, I came to your place upset and vulnerable after Hoshi's accident and you used it to fulfil your lifelong curiosity about bedding me. And she knew that if he truly spoke the statement aloud he would not be lying. She should have saved her curiosity and her seduction for another night...

She wore a housecoat only over her bra and panties and sat on his bed next to him. She did not come to seduce him tonight. But he'd seen her...all of her before, he more than any other man on the planet, knew what kind of creature that sat inches across the bed from him. After they were done with their business, she would retire into her bottles, her nudity and the thrills...of her own fingers if that's what she damned well needed tonight.

"So how are you, Mister Jailbird?"

He tried and failed to suppress a grin. "Don't start with me, Doc."

Angel turned on her serious gage. "I'm serious, Christopher." She sat on her good leg. "I thought that you could use some company. I'm here if you need me...you know, if you want to talk."

"Sure." Christopher pushed himself off of his bed and walked into the kitchenette. "As long as you don't mention anything that has transpired in my life over, let's say, the past thirty years or so."

"You're being too hard on yourself, Christopher." She said. "Today could have ended up a lot worse. And we did learn a lot."

And it could have indeed. The warden was on vacation but his number two gave Christopher hell about his run in with Muhammad Clark. Angel figured the man had nothing in the manner of true charges to level at her friend. Clark did physically attack a FBI Agent and Christopher had reserved the right to defend himself. Angel knew that this sit in warden just wanted to vent and get back at Christopher or any Prince after what occurred at Calhoun during Xavier's final few hours in captivity there.

"You want something to drink?" Christopher showed her one of his cans of ginger ale. "Or is this not strong enough for you?"

Angel cocked a brow and it was her turn to try and fail to hide a smile. "Now don't you start with me." She asked for bottled water instead. It would hold her into she disappeared to the room on the far side of the wall behind her. "I haven't had anything to drink since we left Atlanta. I don't drink while I'm on duty, Christopher. I especially wouldn't with you knowing how much scrutiny your people are under right now."

He tossed her the bottled water and lowered his head. "I'm sorry, Doc. I shouldn't have. Even kidding between old friends should only go so far."

"Don't apologize." She took a swig. Water never quenched her real thirst...nothing did. She decided right then and there to cut through the remaining bullshit and cut straight to her point she theorized about Keaton and Erica and see what her old friend thought about it.

"I thought about the same thing, Doc." He said after she had finished speaking. "I'm with you...and more importantly, and so is the brass back in Atlanta. Someone else put those scenes together. Someone other than Keaton; and that same person probably killed Erica. Serena wants to get into my head, Doc. I hate the idea that Erica probably paid the price for that with her life."

"Yea," Angel said. "In speaking of which, have you spoken to Denise anymore? I didn't hear her drive up or depart."

"She called me back after you and I spoke about it. Something came up. I'm not sure she's coming down here at all. This is a tricky little area of the state to get to without getting lost. Denise doesn't have a strong sense of direction. If she couldn't find someone to drive her down here I wouldn't recommend her trying to find where are alone."

Christopher drank his ginger ale and planted himself back on the bed next to her. He sat the can by three other empties on his nightstand. "Anyway, I told her I would drop by her apartment tomorrow when we get back."

Angel asked him for a second time if he were okay. He shrugged it off, apologized to her for not being more professional today and looked out the window at the full moon.

She sat in behind him and massaged his neck. He was even tenser than she had expected. The stress and strain of everything transpiring around him was taking a toll. "Christopher, you were molested. Louis Keaton molested you. Muhammad Clark was kidnapping and molesting children at the same time. Now, Keaton is likely out doing it again. When you connect all of this, in addition to the war of words between your brother's organization and Pandora...it must be like storm clouds that have opened up on top of you all at once. It's like a tempest rising."

"You just don't know how wrong you are, Doc..."

Angel squeezed the muscles of his biceps, triceps and worked her way along down his lower back. He seemed responsive to her touch. She reminded herself that she did not come to his room to seduce him, but if he allowed her to...

"I wish I were wrong, Christopher." She said. "Remember you and I share that particular bond."

And Angel's subconscious dug up the two terrible episodes of her life with one swing of a majestic shovel. In one pile of dirt there was Tyson Vincent who had found her father's residence after an extensive search for the man that had made his criminal existence miserable. She had been only a bonus find when he showed up at her father's home. Vincent was content to just sit in her father's house, drink all of his beer and wait for him to come home so he could blow his head off with his loaded shotgun while his little girl could only watch. But after a few days in her captivity Angel used a weapon in her and her father's defense that most 12 year olds didn't even know they possessed: She used her maturing body to lure Vincent into a since of drunken comfort, touched him, put her lips on him...and stabbed him through his heart time and again with a butcher knife he never saw coming into he was very dead and she was covered in his blood.

The second 'episode' truly had been a sexual assault; though no one knew that if there had been such a way to label her as a coconspirator in it, then she would have had to live with that title the remainder of her days. She wanted this young man Bradley Marlow. She really wanted him the night they spent together in his dorm room, but after two hours she had grown tired of his fumbling with her blouse, his awkward kisses and his manhood not responding in full. It was only after she cursed him and told him about his putrid efforts did the date really get interesting. He tore her blouse and bra from her body and somehow managed to pull her tight jeans off of her in one swift motion. She fought back...but a well planted back hand had ended her defensive efforts quickly. When he removed his pants his manhood extended a full salute to her.

The sad truth...the absolute saddest truth is that she still had wanted him. Yet, the back hand and subsequent bruise that she would wear on her upper cheek for the next few weeks, was far too high a price to pay for a mere sexual escapade that she could have gotten from a number of eager Bradley Morrows. So she fought him some more...and he stuck her time and again...until she found her hand grasping at the lamp on the nightstand—

"You're wrong, Doc. You and I don't share this bond at all." Christopher was saying, bringing her back to the here and now. She had been cleared of any wrong doing in the death of Bradley Morrow. It still didn't wash the blood that was splattered all of her clothes or wash the memory of how that scene could have and should have played out.

In the distance they both heard a dog howling. A minute later what sounded like a pack of dogs joined the first in the late night serenade. Christopher lifted himself off of the bed and walked back to the refrigerator. When her eyes found his again, he looked like a different man." You see, Angel, I was never molested by Keaton at all. He never touched me."

"What?"

He cracked open another ginger ale and downed most of it in a single gulp. Angel jumped at the sound of the soda can opening. On a more miniature scale it made the same terrible cracking sound that the young Morrow boy's head made when she had bashed his skull with that lamp so long ago.

"I wasn't molested." She patted the warm spot he had vacated beckoning him to return to it. He reluctantly sat next to her. She wrapped her arm around him from behind and held him close. "The truth of what truly happened just sort of disappeared into what everyone else around me thought and believed. I think after a few years I actually began to believe it myself."

Your tale sounds terribly similar to mine, Christopher. Angel had treated patients who had used imaginary abuses for whatever monetary gains that came of them. She had begun to call them Beautiful Liars. Stop it, she told herself. Christopher isn't my patient. He's not a liar. He's my friend. He's the only friend I have in this world, listen to him. "I don't understand. Talk to me, Christopher."

He looked to ceiling for guidance. "Where do I start, Angel? How do I begin to tell you this story?"

She kissed him on his cheek. It marked him...and they both laughed at that. "I know that the 'beginning' is almost clichéd it's so overused in my profession, but it is and has always been a good start. Why don't you start there?"

"I guess that truly is where it begins." Christopher nodded. "And the start is probably the most painful part of this tale for me." He exhaled and the pain of what was to come played at the corners of his mouth as his lips trembled. "I can still smell the peanuts roasting. I can still smell the old stench of draft beer. My dad had taken be to my first baseball game."

Angel smiled. She had heard most of this tale before. She had also known men who loved their fathers though she had wondered if she ever truly loved hers. Christopher had adored and honored his father for his entire life even though the man had abandoned his dying mother for Xavier's mom. It still made her curious why he and not Xavier had followed his footsteps as A House in Chains Number One. "It was a ball game that the Braves actually won if I remember."

"Yea, that was a rarity in those days. It turned out to be a nearly perfect night in a young man's life." Christopher's look turned dark and edgy again. And Angel wasn't considering the context of his skin color as she thought it. "And yet he ruined it for me. And Louis Keaton has kept on ruining every night in my life since."

"Louis Keaton," Angel's mouth went dry, but not for the remainder of her bottled water. "He was lurking in the background, in the shadows inside the stadium. He timed his move on you. No one saw him when he...took you."

Christopher nodded. "I convinced my dad to let me go to the john alone. Keaton had a short, blunt knife at my throat before I could snatch my next breath. He made me put on this tee shirt that said camp just like the one he wore. When we walked back towards and pass the food court I saw dozens of young boys and adults wearing the same shirts. We just blended in. Eventually he pushed our way through the sparse crowd without anyone noticing anything was wrong.

Keep him focused and move the story forward without making him feel that you are rushing through parts that you already know. "You told me that once you became a captive that he would threaten your family as well."

"I have to give it to him. It was a simple but effective strategy. 12 year old boys can't understand everything, but I understood that much very quickly. But it was what happened next that's more important to this conversation we are having."

"I know that you told me that you and the other half dozen boys were being held in a house not too far from where you and your family were living at the time."

"We were. And every day and every night I had to listen while he would take one of the boys and...do what he would do to them."

"Go on, Christopher," Angel squeezed him around his waist. Her housecoat had fallen open and her bra pushed against his back. It was of no consequence. She would do nothing that would endanger any chance of Christopher not revealing this horrible truth to her. She did not know if the opportunity...if his courage would ever rise to the surface for them to travel down this road again. "Don't stop now, Christopher. I'm here."

"Keaton proclaimed me his general. My duties included watching over the other children, especially when he would leave us for an hour here, a few hours there. I was responsible for keeping them in line. I was told to keep them quiet." Her childhood friend blinked back tears for the first time. Angel's followed soon after. "I can still hear them call out for their mothers. They were so scared. But there were times when they would douse that fear long enough to plan an escape, or they would plot to attack Keaton. But he had made a deal with me. He offered me something I dared not refuse. As long as I kept the other boys in line...he promised never to touch me. I would have to remain his captive. But he would never do to me what he was doing to them."

Angel spun herself around until the two friends faced one another. She could smell the ginger ale on his breath. It was not unpleasant. She stroked his shaven head with her hands. He was also exposed to her nearly naked body but she didn't care and he didn't seem to mind the free second look he was getting.

"Christ," Was all that she could think to say. "You do understand that the physiological trauma that you experienced...that you are still experiencing is far worse that the physical invasion that your body could have ever withstood."

"Yea, I guess so. That's what the shrinks that I saw in the months after told me." Christopher searched the ceiling for answers again, but found none. "God, I can still hear them screaming, Doc. Every time he took one them I could hear it. As crazy as it sounds, Angel, I sometimes wished it was me. Those other boys hated me. They hated my guts. I was the teacher's pet. I was molester's puppet. I was the only one of them not being abused and they hated me for it."

Angel knew that her friend was close to cracking. She had the terrible truth. She had all of it. But he needed to finish this once and for all. "And he promised to never molest you and to never harm those other children unless you tried to escape."

Christopher's laugh held no humor; in fact it may have been the bitterest sound that she'd ever heard. "Keaton soon trusted me enough to have me run the errands for him. Can you believe that, Doc?" Chris said as the tears flowed freely. "I actually passed my own home almost every single day when I went out to buy food and drinks for the other boys. Keaton knew I wouldn't dare run away. He'd told me about the Caretaker. He warned me what would happen to those other boys if I did not return to him as he asked."

"I'm so sorry, Christopher."

"I tried to choose times when I knew that knew one would be home as I passed."

"The temptation must have been overwhelming."

"It was," Christopher nodded. "I was told time and again that the Caretaker and his agents in Pandora were watching my every step. He told me he would have both parties...those helpless boys killed as well as my father, step mother and Xavier as well. Worse of all he promised me that I would be recaptured and that I would no longer be spared...his pleasures if anything went wrong."

Angel allowed the conversation a breath...she let their tears dry themselves before she pushed on to the climax of this terrible episode of her friend's life. "So that is why you reacted so...violently...when Xavier found you."

"I tried to run as fast as I could when he spotted me. Goddamn him, he had cut school that day. He wasn't supposed to be at home. He was. He recognized me, called my name, and ran me down. He had to tackle and pin me down to keep me from escaping."

"You poor soul,"

Christopher hopped up and a vein in his temple flared. "To hell with me, Doc," He yelled. "This Caretaker fella must have been enraged. I had single handily endangered his entire operation. I knew Louis Keaton. I knew where he was. I could identify the man abducting Atlanta's children...or at least one of the men that were. So instead of risking Keaton's discovery and the exposure of Pandora to the world, the Caretaker killed them all. I killed them all. The APD found all six boys in six different areas with their throats slit and their bodies burned."

The childhood friends held each other and cried for a long time afterwards.

Angel asked him in the minutes following that, "Who else knows about this? Who else knows what you have told me tonight?"

Chris expressed to her what she may have guessed on her own: The doctors who were appointed to his case must have examined him and realized the lack of physical abuse to his private area. He told a shrink or two that treated him afterwards. Yet, these men were under the scrutiny of doctor-patient privilege. They would never divulge to anyone other than his father and step mother what really happened...and what didn't happen to him."

"What about your brother?" Angel and Christopher's younger half-brother Xavier had never been terribly close. She always felt that he tolerated her existence because of what her friendship meant to his older sibling.

"We had a heart to heart after what Carter and his goons did to him up at Princeton. And I told Hoshi on the night that I asked for her hand in marriage."

"You never told Denise did you?"

"No," Christopher said without malice. "Xavier and now you are the only living people who know the entire truth. Back to Denise though, we were married for 12 years and yet I never felt close enough to her in all of that time to mention this part of my past. I guess, in part, the truth about what happened to me is part of the reason why what Erica did to cut so deeply."

"Erica," Angel felt another heartfelt story coming. As badly as she wanted to get out of the rest of these clothes and get into her booze, if her friend needed her a while longer—

And then there was a knock on Christopher's door.

The two of them glared at one another.

No one knew that they were here except...

There was another knock, this time the thumping was more urgent than the first round. Angel tightened her housecoat without looking at it as Christopher stepped towards the door with his pistol in his hand.

Denise Prince said: "Hi, Chris. Look, I changed my mind. I needed to...we need to talk. Will you let me in?"

"Denise...hey," He holstered his gun and unlocked the door. "You can come in but I do have company."

When the door opened Denise did not break the threshold. Instead she said: "Oh, my God. I should have known you would be here with her."

Angel ignored what she said and offered the other woman her hand in greeting. "Hi, Denise...it has been a long time."

Denise didn't feel like shaking hands tonight so Angel guessed that a little small talk was probably out as well.

Chris' cheeks flushed as much as his skin color allowed. You would have thought that he had been caught in an affair. "Denise, this isn't what it looks like. We were down here interviewing an important—"

Denise stepped past her ex-husband and gave her full measure of furor to Angel. "If I truly had been honest with myself I shouldn't really be surprised to see you here."

Angel felt herself frown. "Wait a minute, Denise." She said cautiously. "Just like Christopher said: We were just talking—"

"Yea, I see how much talking you two were doing." Denise swiped at Christopher's face where Angel's lipstick had made its mark. The other woman then took three giant footsteps, planted her hands on her hips and got into Angel's face. "Just look at you...you're dressed only in a bathrobe and only God knows what else in the middle of the night in my husband's hotel room."

"I'm your ex-husband," Christopher reminding her. "Denise, we're divorced. We have been for a long time now. Let's all calm down—"

"Damn you and your calm, Sir," Denise shouted at him. "I know that Erica hurt you baby. I know that I've hurt you as well in the past. My little girl is dead now. How much longer are you going to hold a grudge against us, your family?"

"I'm not, Denise," But Christopher made the mistake of looking away when he said it. "I swear it's not the truth."

"Well then, Sir, I guess you'll have the chance to finally prove it." Denise smiled for the first time since Christopher had opened the door for her and she directed it at Angel. "I can't think of a better time...or better person for you to make this proclamation in front of, Chris. Your lifelong friend can bear witness to our announcement."

"What are you talking about, Denise?" Agent Christopher Prince wanted to know.

Angel did know. But it didn't make hearing the insanity travel from Denise's lips to both of their sets of ears any easier whatsoever.

"My little girl is dead. I need you back in my life more than ever before. Almost a decade and a half ago you asked for my hand in marriage, baby." Denise got on one knee. It was the sweetest thing...it was the most pathetic display Angel had ever watched another woman do. "I'm asking for you to marry me again. I'm asking you to take me back at your wife."

Angel looked to her friend—to witness as Denise had said—what would come next.

Christopher said quietly: "Denise...you know I can't do that."

Denise screamed at him in an extraterrestrial voice of grief and insanity that Angel had only mouthed from a handful of patients in her long career. She had to summon security to keep them at bay until they could be subdued and eventually taken away in restraints. There was no security and no restraints to aid them here in this off the map hotel room. Angel had decided not to wait around to see how this one turned out. "I should leave you two alone." Angel limped past the couple.

"No, Angel," Denise spat her name out. She brushed past Angel on her way out the door from which she came. Once she was out in the courtyard she spun around long enough to say: "You should stay. Whatever happens next is on your head, Doctor. As for you, Sir, there are only two women in this world that you have ever loved, and you've proven to me for the very last fucking time that I am not sure as hell one of them."

#  Seth

MOMENTS BEFORE:

"Erica lied."

Dr. Seth Dupree frowned at the woman sitting on the passenger side of his rental car. "Excuse me?"

Denise fumbled with her purse and used the time to gather her thoughts. She actually took a moment to smile at him, but it was a humorless one that Seth thought was more than a little sad. There was a full moon out tonight here in the middle of nowhere in central Georgia. Seth checked the electronic map on his phone one last time to see if they had landed in the right parking lot of the right hotel where Denise's ex-husband, Special Agent Chris Prince was staying. In the distance they both heard a dog howling. A minute later what sounded like a pack of dogs joined the first in the late night serenade.

"When Erica was 15 years old she accused Chris of molesting her. My little girl fabricated the entire thing."

"What do you mean?" Seth asked "Why would she do such a thing?"

Denise's nostrils flared as she exhaled audibly. "I'll answer your first question first, Seth. Chris was serving warrants for the bureau when he fell ill and went home early one Wednesday afternoon. Chris never missed work. There were many days I tried to talk him out of leaving the house when he was sick as a dog. So when he called me and told me he was headed home I knew that he was feeling rotten."

"Erica didn't count on him returning there did she?" Seth could figure early on where this story was leading. "What did your ex-husband find her doing when he got home?"

"He heard someone screaming from one of the bedrooms upstairs soon after he walked in. He told me later that he pulled out his gun and sprinted upstairs. He could only guess at that point what was going on? Had someone broken in? Was someone possibly hurting or even raping Erica? The cries were definitely coming from her room, so he broke the door down and entered."

"Denise, are you sure you want to tell me this—

"He found Erica home alright. She had some naked younger girl, perhaps 12 or 13 years old, strapped with rope to the four bed post by her wrist and ankles. My husband told me that my little girl was shoving a broom stick handle up the younger girl's vagina...and she didn't stop, even after Chris had broken her door down."

"Did you know that Erica was bisexual?"

"You are asking the right person the wrong question, Seth. The real question is how long I knew Erica was a bull dyke. She'd always showed an attraction to other girls for as long as I could remember."

Seth squeezed Denise's hand. "I know that you just said that this younger girl was screaming. But was it in, I don't know, pleasure or pain? How did Erica defend what she was doing? Did it start as a consensual thing—"

"Chris told me that he believed it might have begun that way and I can't disagree with his assessment. The other girl begged Chris to untie her. When he did, he turned his back on her for just a second, and she hit him across his head, snatched her clothes off of a neighboring chair and ran away. None of us ever saw her again."

Seth frowned again. "So this girl never filed a complaint? And I don't really understand how this tie in with these allegations you speak of that Erica filed against Agent Prince?"

"Erica threatened to file her own attempted molestation charge against Chris if he dared tell anyone about what he saw going on in her bedroom. She knew about his abduction by Louis Keaton. She knew he had been molested himself. She understood how Science claims these things worked in cycles."

"And what happened then, Denise?"

"Like I said before, Chris and Erica were never close. Erica's teenaged years only made the animosity between them grow. She had been caught shoplifting a handful of times, cutting class, involved in fights...if it were a sin then Erica was likely to involve herself in it. Six months after this particular incident though Chris had enough of her antics. He exploded after Erica put another young girl in the hospital during an altercation outside a movie theatre. He read her the riot act right then and there after the police arrived to arrest her."

"And what did she do, Denise?"

"She went off. She summoned up her best crocodile tears. She screamed to anyone who would listen that Chris was sexually abusing her and had been doing so for years. How could anyone not see that his abuse was the real reason behind her poor behavior? She was a victim of this abuse. She needed help."

"And your daughter knew that Chris past abduction and abuse by Louis Keaton would work against him in any court of law or public opinion."

Denise nodded. "Chris was fortunate that the allegations didn't become more widespread than they actually were. The FBI, especially Agent Sheridan, kept as much internal as they could manage. They were receiving daily reports from the APD. Even the local media never got wind of it." She said. "To be perfectly honest, I thought the situation would turn out far worse for him than it actually had."

"How do you mean?"

Tears ran down Denise's cheeks. Seth took his handkerchief out of his shirt pocket and wiped them away...although more followed in their wake. He had agreed to drive her down here against his better judgment. Yet, a part of him hoped that Angel would be with Prince when they found them. He had an urging to see his wife so badly again. Perhaps they could still work things out. Hold on, Seth, The Gray Man told himself, here comes the worse part of this story yet.

"I lost all objectivity. I screamed rape even when Erica would stop long enough to catch her breath. I knew about Erica's sexual preferences. I was aware of her tendencies towards anger and aggression. Most of all, I believed Chris when he told me what he had walked in on at our home." Denise turned to look at Seth at last. "I guess mother and daughter were more alike than I ever wanted to admit. I had committed myself to destroying the man I loved...a good man...to protect my lying daughter."

Seth swallowed hard. "Chris...all of you somehow finally got past all of this. You were married for at least a year longer. And the FBI reinstated Chris back to full duty. And like you said, the media never learned of anything that was going on?"

"The FBI suspended Chris with pay for thirty days while they conducted their own internal investigation. They guarded the reasoning for his suspension so that none of the other agents in his field office would find out. There were rumors, of course, but nothing that anyone could substantiate. Eventually, as you said, he was reinstated after they deducted that he was innocent of all the charges that he had been wrongfully brought against him. My God, Seth...if the accusations had spread on his job or out in the general public...especially now, with this entire thing between Xavier's A House in Chains and Pandora, I could only guess the damage that would be done to his reputation and career."

Your daughter's death hopefully sealed that door forever, Denise. Seth hated himself for thinking that way. "Nevertheless, what happened ruined any chance for reconciliation between your daughter and her stepfather." Seth said as a matter of fact. "I'm sure it severed most of the bonds between the two of you as well?"

Denise answered his last question only with more tears. A part of him wanted to comfort this woman. Yet, a more rational portion remembered what he had witnessed of Denise's transformations from rational to irrational from her in her apartment. Denise could be vicious. She could be vindictive. If Chris Prince had to deal with two women like this in one household for years he had been a lucky man to have survived it at all.

"I was so spiteful." Denise shook her head almost violently back and forth. "I was a fool who clung on to her daughter's lies and ignored the facts. And now with Erica gone...I've lost them both."

Seth lifted her chin up. "You can still make this right with Chris. Have you ever formally apologized, Denise?" She shook her head once this time. "You might be amazed how saying the right thing can cure a lot of ills, even if it is well after the fact. I think that he would appreciate hearing that from you. It's never too late to make amends." He hit the button that unlocked the doors and flashed a much needed smile of understanding if not forgiveness her way. "Go...he's twenty feet away...go on, Denise, make this right as best as you can at this point."

"You're right," After she opened the passenger door, she scooted her body back far enough to clutch his cheek and kiss him on the lips. "Thank you for being here for me, Seth. I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I am glad that we didn't...you know...before. You've been such a good friend when I so desperately needed one."

Seth smiled at her. "Go," He said again. "It's never too late. Take your leap of faith."

She started out...and then stopped again. "It's not my business, Doctor, but I can't shake the feeling that Angel has been as foolish as I have." Denise lowered her voice. "You should give her one more chance as well. You're a good man and I can tell that your marriage means everything to you. If she really loves you...give her one last chance to prove it to you." She stopped long enough to stare out into the full moonlight with a hardened gaze that he could only guess what it meant. "I know that this is my last chance to prove mine."

"Go,"

Seth's head collapsed on the headrest, fatigue overcoming him. So much had happened in such a short period of time. All of those endless hours they had worked at the triage center...and now this long drive down here into the middle of nowhere.

He hoped Denise had taken his words to heart because he had taken hers. Seth knows that his wife likely was shacked up in one of these hotel rooms, asleep (hopefully alone) with a nearly empty liquor bottle on the dresser nearby. Tomorrow, the Gray Man told himself, tomorrow I will call you again, Angel. Or better yet he will attempt to see her. Whatever happens from there he feels that he accomplished what he came to Atlanta for in the first place.

But this night belonged to Chris and Denise Prince—

Denise had returned.

Too soon;

Too damned soon;

"Go," She said. And when he failed to immediately turn the key in the ignition, "No questions...just go."

Denise had been crying again since she left the car. What was more frightening is that she was wearing that same hard look that he couldn't name before. What was even more worrisome is that the look has become more pronounced and has now covered her entire face. Seth tried to touch her cheek again but she backed away from his touch. A fresh round of tears ran down her face instead. He obeyed her request and mutely spun the rental around out of the parking lot not looking at the hotel room where Denise had come back from.

He does notice a Latino woman with dark eyes sitting in a wreck of a car that never took her eyes off of him as he drove away.

Two hours later Denise slammed her bathroom door in Seth's face. He called her name once...twice...and yet even after the fifth time she refused to answer him. He walked back to her front door and carefully closes it after she nearly tore it from its frame. When he finally arrived back at the locked bathroom door he can still hear her sobbing from the other side.

"It's over, Denise said. "It's over. It's all really over. I have nothing left."

"Denise, sometimes we have to let go of our fear...all of it. We have to stick it in our rearview mirror and treat it like any other shadow that cast itself in our path at midnight." Seth sat on the floor and caressed the door as if it were a lover's face. He could hear Denise wailing now, letting all of her emotion pour out of her. "The dawn is approaching, Denise. Soon, so very soon, all that you will see is that shadow of doubt fading. All of your fear will have dissipated." Denise's crying slowed some, but he could still hear her heavy breathing. The emotion had come to her in a tsunami wave...but the tide was lowering. These are all good signs. "Just remember when the dawn breaks you have to be prepared...to take your leap of faith. The fears of the night never go away, not completely. But each day you have to wash all the horrors of our mind away. You must have faith." Seth said. "I have had my dark nights as well, Denise. Let me tell you a story."

And he voiced to her of his four friends from school and how he had helped cause the death of Antoinette Burner who drowned when she went overboard off of the boat.

And then he told her that the survivors of that storm had not fared well since that fateful night either.

Clinton Sessions, the young man who first spotted Antoinette after she went overboard died when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 911. And Seth often wondered did his dear friend see that plane just before it finished its climatic approach.

Sam Casey did not die so heroically. His partying and drinking ways only increased after Antoinette's death. He was one of around 50 people dancing on a deck who died at an apartment complex outside of Chicago...when the deck collapsed with the partyers falling to their fate below.

Pam Toliver, the woman who saw Antoinette fall overboard, the woman who Seth Dupree called but did not speak to the other day may have suffered worse than any of the others. At least they died in one tragic moment. I'll bet a piece of you dies every day, my dearest Pam.

Seth knew from his wife's work that many uniformed people call the victims of domestic abuse impotent and weak. Many of those same people would say that all these so called victims have to do is get up and leave their abuser. And that the bumps on Pam's chin and the purple bruises underneath her eyes... and the cuts on her breast and the burns that reach from the inside her thighs to her womanhood are her own fault. They would say that no man...not a husband, boyfriend, father, uncle, distant cousin, best friend could continually inflict these types of wounds on a woman who fought back.

But Pam did fight back once didn't she?

And the Gray Man knew that the fight caused her then 16 year old son to rupture her spleen when he nearly killed her.

"Are you ready, Denise," He asked her at last from the floor outside her bathroom door. "Are you ready to take your final leap of faith?"

Denise said this instead: "Seth tell me if you have you ever heard what the worst part of going to Hell is?"

Her question stunned him. He'd never given the manner much thought. "If the scriptures could be believed what could possibly be worse than the eternal burning, Denise?"

"I once read somewhere that while we suffer that eternal burning of our souls that our minds are still active, Seth," Denise said with a quivering voice. "And that our minds still desire all of the sin that caused us to go to Hell in the first place. So I now know that I'm going to spend an eternity angry...hateful...but mostly I'm going to spend that eternity desiring Chris Prince."

After another round of tears she said in a far steadier voice: "I'm coming out, Seth. I'm ready to take my leap."

Seth heard the lock unlatch.

The door opened.

And a nude Denise Prince ran past him leaving an unsuspecting Seth Dupree grasping at the air around her ankles as she angled to jump out of the living room window.

He got to his feet...and gave chase...the entire scene playing out so very fast...yet, so very deliberately...almost motionless.

When the glass shattered when her body thumped it...he knew that he was already too late, but he completed his dash to the window sill anyway.

Denise had taken her leap of faith...

...and landed nearly head first into the pavement ten stories below. Her nude body lay broken and bloody on the sidewalk as bystanders began to scream in acknowledgement of what he had already had knowledge of.

Dr. Seth Dupree collapsed himself. He found himself seated on the carpet just underneath the window sill this time. He cried out loud. He cried where only he could hear it. He cried.

For all of his life, Dr. Seth Dupree felt he was holding his breath...waiting; he hoped to still mend his broken heart.

And although he could only watch as poor Denise had chosen to take her ominous leap of faith to her death.

He hoped to still breathe again.

He hoped.

#  Chris

Denise's people started arriving in mass soon after 10:00 am.

Special Agent Christopher Prince's house had started smelling of fried chicken, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, black eyed peas and sweet potato pies hours since the crack of dawn. There were four of Denise's female family members cooking in his kitchen, the food to be served in traditional family after her homecoming service scheduled for 1:00 pm. Yet, it didn't take a half an hour of her people's arrival at his home before things went to hell from there. Denise's fraternal grandfather, who looked as if his suit had been tailored for someone else, knocked a decently expensive vase to the tile floor ten minutes ago. Two of her cousins learned upon their arrival here that they were sharing the same boyfriend. His ex-wife's beached whale of a nephew abruptly left the premises, with a chicken leg in his hand, after he learned it was his other Aunt Denise that died.

A half of dozen of her former co-workers spoke to him with tears in their eyes. Her oldest living uncle blew his nose into a handkerchief, patted Chris twice on the gut, commented on what a fine young lady his niece was and asked Chris if he had any liquor in the house. Her toothpick of a brother, who had just been paroled for whatever his latest arrest was, hugged Chris around his neck and apologized to him for all the drama his older sister put him through. And then he asked him if he thought she or Erica would have any money left off of the insurance policies after the funeral expenses to pay his bail bondsman. Finally, her cleavage revealing cousin Bonnie whispered in his ear that she fucking knew in her spirit that he had thrown Denise out of that window. She was still praying about it. And if the spirit would allow her to prove such a thing she'd fucking spit on him right now. But she knew he was in bed with them Roosters and they would protect his ass.

Hope and memory wasn't on his side. He knew he was a dolphin swimming in an ocean full of sharks.

Maybe now he understood why he never got a long with these people.

A trusted high school buddy of his, who still wore his hair in a ponytail like a girl, was greeting his guest as they walked through the door. Chris saw him point in his general direction in the living room when Tabitha Blue, his partner showed up.

"Hey partner," Blue said, not quite knowing to do with her hands. She was dressed in a black blouse and matching trousers. She had her hair untied and it hung down to her shoulders. She wore a touch of blush on her cheeks and less lipstick than that on her mouth. This was her equivalent of being dressed up. Chris couldn't ever remember seeing her so...pretty before.

"Tabitha," he kissed some of the blush on her cheek. "Hey, thanks for coming."

Chris noticed how uncomfortable his partner looked. She shifted in her stance and buried her hands deeper in her pants pockets. Social calls weren't his partner's calling. And although Chris knew there wasn't a racist bone in her body, he was sure that Blue had never been around these many Black folks without having her gun drawn.

"Uh..." She started to say something. "Agent Sheridan's been trying to reach you."

Chris nodded and checked his private cell phone for messages. "Sheridan should have known to call me on my business cell." He spoke up to be heard over a room full of Denise's friends and family. He also saw that he missed yet another call from his doctor. The man must think that I am purposely ducking him. "I've been trying to tie up a million loose ends over here. You know, statements to the police, dealing with the insurance companies, and calling Denise's family."

"I understand." She patted his hand and that drew a sneer from Bonnie. I told you that you were in bed with them Roosters...he could almost hear her thinking aloud. "I'm sure that our boss understands too. He apologizes for missing this. He's trying to tie up some loose ends of his own as well. He told me to take all of the time that you need."

Chris knew that his superior would have meant just that under normal operations and caseloads. The last 19 days hadn't qualified for anything near normal however. "I appreciate the sentiment." He smiled because he thought that his partner needed to see him smile. "I'm okay, Tabitha, really. Denise had been my ex-wife for a couple of years now. We weren't in love anymore. That part of our relationship had deteriorated a long time ago. I'm okay." He lowered his voice and beckoned Blue closer. "Talk to me about our cases."

She relaxed a bit...well, at least as much as Tabitha Blue ever relaxed. Chris knew that he was retreating into a far more familiar territory with this line of questioning. "A fifth and sixth child had been reported missing in the past 24 hours."

"Damn."

"We found another staged scene. You're doctor friend helped me investigate it and pick it apart."

Chris lowered his voice any further as he saw that Bonnie was still looking on. "Tell me about it."

Special Agent Tabitha Blue told him that Keaton or whoever had placed another action figure, or doll if you may, in a tightly fitted area about 20 blocks from where we found the first one. Most of what Angel said sounded like the psycho gibberish that she shared with them all at the other crime scenes: The action figure was Black, was supposed to represent a minor in his pre-teens and definitely male. He had slash marks around his throat and a real bullet lodged in his head as well.

"What is different from the other four previous scenes," Blue added smoothly, "Is that this doll was turned on his hands and knees."

"In a sexual sense I know that could be looked at two ways."

"That's what Doctor Hicks-Dupree said as well. She also said that it could be looked at from a non-sexual context as a missionary stance. Anyway, I was there when she told Sheridan, Deputy Director Rice and some other higher ups that these boys were only days from being molested."

Chris watched his partner hesitate...her monologue paused while she figured something else out. He asked her: "Is there something else, Tabitha?"

"This doll had black marker marks all over his naked torso, and the theory made the rounds that the markings represented these children being burned."

"Angel concluded this as well?"

Blue glanced away. "Actually, I did, Chris. But the doctor seconded my opinion and presented it as such to our superiors." She shifted her weight, just as uncomfortable talking about her person as she was about her manner of appearance today. "Angel's conclusion is that this phase of abductions and kidnappings is drawing to a close and like we said...a more physical element is coming."

"I believe I guess the rest," Chris added. "The flame markings on this last doll's torso are a representation of these children being offered to Serena Tennyson's Dragon...them dying in a fiery manner if Keaton is disturbed in any way.

Blue nodded and had to push her thin hair out of her eyes. Chris could see a clear image of children screaming...and...dying, but he did not know whether the image was from days past or night still to come.

I abandoned the first captives...but I swear that I won't rest until these little boys are found.

Blue looked as if there were still more for her to reveal. He patted her on one of her skinny shoulders and urged her to continue.

"The doctor believes that something has changed."

"How so?"

"This last scene looked sloppy and lacked the care and attention to detail this time around. She hypothesized that either this was an entirely different person who put this together or this time the person from the other scenes was extremely rushed or stressed."

Before Chris could respond intelligently, he saw another woman greet his high school chum and walk through his front door. He was slightly embarrassed because he couldn't shut his mouth. He wasn't the only one who watched the woman make her way towards where he was standing. She was wearing a short but tastefully cut black dress with pearls around her neck. She wore her hair long and straight. She donned enough eye shadow to highlight the darkness in her brown eyes. There were a pair of diamond stud earrings in each ear and her watch gleamed in the morning sunlight shining through Chris' windows.

Roxanne Sanchez hugged Chris tightly before she said her hello.

He gathered himself the best he could...and introduced this splendid looking woman to his partner. They greeted one another with a professional handshake.

Blue must have felt the heat between his partner and the latest entry in an overly crowded room. "I should go. I'll see you later, Chris. Turn you phone on."

"I will." He said to Blue yet never took his eyes off of Roxanne. At this moment no one else existed in this room. Only one other woman had ever garnered his undivided attention like this before. And it wasn't his ex-wife who they were going to bury a short time from now. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"If I'm making you uncomfortable—"

"No, of course not, Roxanne," Chris grabbed her hand almost as a reflex. He then gave it a squeezed. "I want you to stay. I need you to stay; I just thought after we'd said our goodbyes on the phone the other night after you informed me of Erica's discovery that I might not see you again."

"Why would you think such a thing?"

"You had concluded your investigation." He lowered his voice again. "You found Erica."

Roxanne looked at her shoes. "I felt the need to pay my respects to Denise. "She lifted her chin. Her eyes were so dark yet so amazing. It was like he was seeing them...seeing her for the very first time. "I knew your ex-wife only for a short time, but I respected her...liked her even. Will you be burying both of them today?"

"Yea," Chris gave his rapidly filling up house a once over. "I tried to think of her family, you know, having to take off from work twice in a very short time frame. Denise was born and spent all of her youth in Tennessee. Most of these folks had to make anywhere from a four to six hour drive here into Atlanta to attend their funerals."

"Sure, that was very thoughtful of you."

"Look, Roxanne," Chris finally realized he was still holding on to her hand. He let it go, but she only smiled and held his instead. "I never fully thanked you for finding Erica for us. You honored Denise."

"No...don't thank me, Chris." Roxanne's eyes lost some of its brilliance. She was a professional investigator again...hard...and unrelenting. "I did my job. I gave my word to the two of you to bring Erica home again." She took a full step towards him and whispered in his ear so that no one else would hear her words. "I am still doing my job, Chris. Erica's killer has yet to be apprehended. And have the APD said anything to you about whether Denise was alone when she jumped out of her window?"

It was a curious question...but one that he had asked himself actually. He passed on what the APD told him: They were investigating any and all angles of what surrounded the final hours and minutes before Denise Prince's death. They were certain that it was a suicide. But someone had to drive Denise downstate when she found Chris and Angel alone in that hotel room. Chris was still trying to recover from her latest verbal assault and emotional outbreak when he finally peered out of his door—to see only the taillights of the car she'd ridden in speeding off in a pile of dust and burned rubber.

Chris thanked Roxanne again and they finally let go of each other's hand. He also thanked her a second time for coming to his home and paying her respects.

"You don't get it do you?" She folded her arms. "I had to come here today. I had to see for myself if you were okay." She turned her head ever slightly to the left away from most of the crowd...Chris following her gaze to the corner of his dining room that approached his bedroom. He had a sketch of Hoshi Givens sitting at nearly an impossible angle for anyone standing where Roxanne stood to see it. "What a lovely portrait," She said and he had to follow her over to where it was. Roxanne ran her manicured fingernail underneath Hoshi's even darker eyes and around the curve of her thin lips. "There is no doubt she was a beautiful woman...she's an American but of what descent?"

"Hoshi's father was from Singapore and her mother was from Malaysia."

"The texture of the canvas is very smooth. The background colors the artist chose blend in especially well with her skin tone." She took her eye off of the drawing long enough to look into his eyes. "You're the artist aren't you, Chris?"

Chris shifted his weight. He was as uncomfortable with this area of conversation as Tabitha Blue had been on social levels minutes ago. "She was..." He tried and failed to keep emotion out of his response. Damn, does the pain of losing you ever go away, Hoshi? Roxanne, you should meet Hoshi Givens. She died in an accident many years ago soon after the two of us became engaged."

Accident was a slight proclamation of what truly happened to his first true love.

Hoshi had wrapped her Audi around a poll 30 minutes after a heated parent teacher conference at the elementary school where she taught third grade. The parent had cursed her and threatened bodily harm to her if his son's grades didn't magically rise over the remainder of the semester. Special Agent Christopher Prince would have called himself a bold faced liar if he claimed there wasn't times during his career that he wanted to use his badge and his resources...to engage in behavior that ventured outside the law.

The man who helped aid in the death of his beloved came closest to witnessing that...behavior first hand.

He never liked to talk about how Hoshi had died...or that his father was taken from him in an automotive incident as well...killed by a drunk driver while he was returning home from duty.

Besides...I know there is enough death here today without me digging up graves from the past.

"You must have loved her deeply."

"I did." And Chris unclutched his fist as he admitted as much to Roxanne.

"I can tell." Roxanne said. "I see how much attention to detail you paid when you drew her. The texture of the canvas as I mentioned before, the hues and colors that you chose. No matter how still she may have sat, the areas around her mouth and eyes wouldn't have been the same each day you went back to work on her portrait. Some of your strokes were generated from memory." And then she faced him down. "And I know love in a man's eyes when I see it."

"Do you?"

Now it was Roxanne's turn to whither under the fire of his gaze. Two more guests walked up to Chris and greeted him warmly. He acknowledged them one at a time and returned his attention to Roxanne after they moved on to other family members.

After some of people in his house had begun to file out Roxanne said: "I also came today to speak with you about another matter. It's important."

"I'm listening."

"It's about your friend. There is something that you should know about Dr. Hicks Dupree—"

"Angel?" Chris asked. "How do you know her?"

Before Roxanne could answer his question Chris noticed a hush over the remaining crowd as his high school bud ushers someone of his own race into Chris' home.

Angel had arrived.

The crowd parted like the red sea in that old Bible story as she limped past them in route to reaching him. Chris could hear all of the hateful mutterings and comments and sure that his childhood friend could hear them loud and clear.

Rumors could be a vicious thing. Lies were worse still. Chris had seen his name attached to both before. Now he knew that despite all of the help she'd been giving the bureau, that Angel was being persecuted in the court of public opinion for her brief involvement in Pandora.

And now Roxanne Sanchez, a woman who otherwise fascinated him like know woman had since Hoshi Givens, was going to join in with the persecutors for one reason or another. And that angered him some.

"Christopher," Angel hugged him fiercely. She was wearing a cream button up blouse with a knee length black skirt and flats. Heels only tired her leg out faster. She reeked of a beer keg. She was off duty, he told himself, and she had been there for me when I told her the entire truth about Keaton's kidnapping of me all those years ago. She turned to Roxanne and the younger woman's gaze would have charred though Angel if only Roxanne had an igniter.

Angel must have noticed the bad vibes reverberating off of Roxanne. "Have we met?"

"My name is Roxanne Sanchez."

Angel nodded. "The Private Investigator," Angel reached out her hand but Roxanne folded one arm across the other and stood on her heels. "And yes...I think we have met before actually. Your name rang a bell with me when Christopher mentioned you before." Angel folded her own arms and stood her ground preparing for whatever sparring came next. "Once again, Roxanne, I'm very sorry that your sister's...case ended the way that it did."

Roxanne said: "And once again you refuse to take any responsibility for your part in her demise." She exhaled audibly through her nostrils. "Listen, I don't want to discuss my sister with you, not here."

"Sister," Chris asked. "What are you two talking about?"

Roxanne glared at Angel a moment longer. "Why don't you answer your friend's question, Doctor?" She made the last word as if she had cursed her. "Why don't you answer all of his questions, even the ones he doesn't know he has for you yet. In speaking of questions, Doctor, how is your husband?"

"My husband is my business and none of yours."

Angel and Roxanne engaged in an endless game of stare down until Roxanne seemed to have enough, said her goodbye to Chris and turned to leave them where they stood.

"What in the hell was all of that about?" He asked Angel after Roxanne showed herself out.

Angel frowned. "It's complicated."

"Try me, Doc, you and I have done complicated before."

"You're new friend is the younger sister of Maria Sanchez."

Chris searched his professional memory banks for the file with that name located inside of it. Shit. "Sanchez." He felt his hairless brow rising on his forehead. "The female serial killer you aided the bureau in capturing a few years back?"

"One and the same," Angel replied. "And 'bringing her in' might be the greatest understatement you make this year, Christopher. You don't know how I damned wish that the case would have ended far simpler...and less messy than it actually did."

"Alright," Chris said after he thought about it at a deeper level. "Maria Sanchez did die under controversial circumstances while in the bureau's custody."

"She did," Angel told him. And Angel made a point to stare long and hard at his front door where Roxanne Sanchez had showed herself out. "And I'm sure that she blames most of it on me because ultimately, I was the one who talked Maria into surrendering herself over to the FBI."

#  Xavier

Too much ginger ale has that effect on you Bro.

Xavier Prince followed his older brother into the cafeteria's bathroom and locked the door behind him. There were two 'out of order' signs and a plain clothed Peacekeeper between the two brothers and Denise's family and friends who were dining on the far side of the building. A House in Chains Number One couldn't help but grin knowing that his disguise had gotten him this far undetected by either friend or foe. He wore clothes two sizes too big, his hair was a chariot of fire and his teeth were on golden pond.

Chris, on the other hand looked good, in fact he was looking more like their father every day. He had gained some weight around his middle, but he was far from unhealthy looking. Xavier was thankful for the extra layer of skin attached to his own nose because this bathroom stank as if hadn't been cleaned in months. He guessed that the cleanliness is close to Godliness didn't apply to a church's bathroom. He kept his distance while Chris handled his business, using the extra time to remove his brim, shades and false facial hair. Hopefully his pimp manner of walking hadn't given him away. A man couldn't change his DNA, his fingerprints or his walk no matter how much he had practiced the night before.

"Xavier?"

"Hello, big brother."

Chris turned his clean shaven head ever so slightly to be sure he wasn't seeing ghosts. "Is that really you? What are you doing here?" Chris scanned the dirty bathroom. "How did you get in here?"

Xavier turned on his shame face. There had been no other way of guaranteeing he'd get to see his brother; even wearing the disguise. "I've been riding with you all along."

"There was a bit of delay when the cars lined up to drive to the church. I don't remember seeing you get in either family car."

"You're hearing me, Chris, but you're not listening." Xavier said slowly, letting the other man catch up to his meaning. "Like I said before, I rode in the hertz with you all along."

"Don't tell me you were in the goddamn casket, Xavier," Chris paced within a small area of space. And then he let out a burst of uncontrollable laughter. "You know shit like that lowers our chance of getting into heaven."

Xavier laughed with his brother...stopping long enough to put his ear to the door, unnecessarily listening for anyone coming. The Circle had worked out an arrangement with the funeral home and had securely...and respectfully buried Denise in the plot that she and Chris had picked out when they were still married. The face and the upper torso that his brother and everyone else saw earlier inside the church was a finely detailed mannequin. Grace Edwards had contracted the work out to several individuals who specialized in that kind of thing and the three men had worked on the model from the time the news had broken of Denise's unfortunate demise.

Xavier then told Chris that he had been smuggled into the casket when Denise's actual body had been removed. Chris frowned at that. The younger brother reminded him that desperate times dictated just as desperate measures.

"I had to see you, Chris."

The older brother's facial expression bounced from anger to disbelief to hardened resolve then back again.

"All of this trouble that you went through," Chris said. "I appreciate you coming here."

"It was a beautiful ceremony. Denise and Erica would have been pleased with how you have honored their memories." He feigned a punch to his brother's gut. "Look at you, Bro; you've put on a few pounds."

As soon as he said it, Xavier wished he could have taken his sentiment back. I see that you've become sensitive about the weight thing. "It's been a long time."

"It has been too long, Xavier."

They finally embrace for long time, tears stinging at the corners of Xavier's eyes. When they release one another the younger brother can tell that his older sibling shares his sentiment.

"Xavier, you know what all this reminds me of?"

Xavier didn't and told his brother so as he pulled a toothpick from his plastic bag and stuck it in his mouth.

"I should have attended your mother's funeral. The woman took me in...she accepted me when she didn't have to. In the little time that the four of us lived under her roof she always treated me as if I were her biological child." It was Chris' turn to look shamefaced. "Yet, I wouldn't attend her funeral. I came to all the other outside stuff but—"

"My mother loved you, Chris." Xavier said. "She told me that on her deathbed. But you were only 14 years old man...and you'd lost your own mom four years earlier. And then we both knew you had to deal with our dad's situation between our mothers. And finally you were abducted by Louis Keaton. She understood all of your anger and frustration...and confusion. She understood, Chris and so did I."

They let the past; the silence and the stench of the bathroom have their own separate and collective moments.

Chris broke the hush by saying: "After all we've been through together; it hurts me to know that we are on the opposite sides of the fence on this one."

Xavier pushed the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other with his tongue. "Are you absolutely sure about that?" Xavier raised his brows and scratched his sideburns. "I think we are a lot closer on the issues at hand than you think, Bro. I know first and foremost that we both want the safe return of Keaton's kidnapping victims. Look Chris, is there anything you can tell me on that front without you compromising yourself or your people within the FBI?"

Chris shook his shaven head. "No, not really; and if Grace Edwards is still a House in Chains Intelligence Coordinator or whatever title you've given her, then you already know what I know...maybe more."

"Alright then, let's say for arguments sake that both of our organizations share some of the same theories."

"About what,"

"Your people believe that Louis Keaton is the answer to today's glaring question."

"We both know that he is."

"Well then the next obvious question is this," Xavier said. "Is how long do we have to find him before he begins to molest these children?"

"I would say that day soon approaches." Chris shared Angel's running theories about where she thought Keaton was from various aspects of his thought processes without mentioning her specifically by name.

"I'm inclined to be more concerned with Serena Tennyson's influence over him. We both know that that woman is more than capable and willing to pull strings to get what she wants."

"Yea, I know that. I also know that if history is to repeat itself, she will order these children killed...the same exact way that the Caretaker had those poor boys who had been abducted along with me killed if she feels Keaton's position and his mission is compromised in any way."

"Yea," Xavier couldn't mask his discomfort with the direction this conversation had drifted towards. "Yea, I guess you would know a little something about that, Chris."

"I would." Chris shook his head while he said it though. You're stronger than you give yourself credit for, Bro. You may not have been molested by Keaton, but no child was more abused during your time with him. "Xavier, look, tell me that you're not going to do anything stupid are you?"

Xavier stood flatfooted and pulled the toothpick out of his mouth. "I hope that you don't believe that using the Peacekeepers to defend a community of people from of our race against an extreme criminal element or preparing ourselves to engage Pandora if and when the time calls us to bear arms as stupid then I guess so."

"And what if Thomas Pepper produces evidence and tells our people a part or all of the three things that they want to know the most."

"Pepper is acting on the request of our former mayor, a woman who you should now know was my Number Two in the Circle, and a respected member of our House. The reporter's findings are sure to weigh heavily on my decisions moving forward."

"What are you hoping to accomplish, Xavier?"

"You know, Chris, I understand better than most what has transpired in your personal life over the past few days and weeks." Xavier said in a matter of fact tone. "I just hope that you haven't forgotten the 411 attacks. You were there from what I'm told. You and I both were targeted. Pandora massacred our people. Now Serena has unleashed an unstable man to once again to kidnap our children. Her actions cannot go unanswered." Xavier lowered his voice to barely above a hiss. "I may not be the leader that our father was...I may not even be the leader that you would have been, but Serena's crimes will not go unpunished. I can promise you that."

"You're bluffing, Xavier, I know you." Chris said carefully. "You won't order any type of true offensive against Pandora." Instead of allowing himself to waste precious time and energy getting angry, Xavier told his older brother: "I hope my enemies mistake my finesse as weakness as well, Big Brother. I guess you slept through of capture of those twins who were terrorizing some of the neighborhood stores, or our victory at Calhoun Prison and maybe...just maybe you've already forgotten the Peacekeeper's incursion and liberation of Carver."

"Don't talk to me about beating up damned thugs, drug dealers and gang bangers."

Xavier raised his voice a tone. "I didn't see you sacrificing people to better the situations in any of those places."

"Xavier, when you are talking about taking on Pandora head on you are speaking about unleashing collateral effects that are potentially beyond anything that we have ever seen before."

"And by saying that, I assume that you believe that all of the losses, all of the casualties will belong to a House in Chains. Do you believe that only People of Color will die in any conflict?"

"Serena has nearly unlimited resources." Chris planted his fist on his hips in exasperation. "Hell, I belong to a licensed government agency and we're struggling to match her blow for blow."

Xavier cracked a disingenuous smile. "I'd be inclined to believe that none of your concern about all of this is about my strategy, resources or manpower. You're not concerned about a House in Chains...it's all about me. My big brother doesn't think I'm up for the challenge."

"Xavier—"

"Do you,"

Chris said, "My overriding concern is that you have failed to see a no-win scenario when it is flashing all of the warning signs in front of your face."

Xavier snorted. "Then you might want to tell your bureau friends to do their damned jobs, my man. Perhaps we will all be spared knowing whether I am over my head or not."

After a tense silence Chris said: "And I want you to know something, Xavier,"

"What's that?"

"We are on the same side."

"Just like always," Xavier replied in a more relaxed tone. "And sometimes I feel as if it seems as if it is never at all."

"I guess it's another day in the life and times of the Prince Brothers."

They embrace again. Xavier can't kill the thought that it will be a great deal longer before they see one another again. For the first time since he entered this bathroom, Xavier felt the urge to smoke a cigarette.

"Watch your back, Little Brother." Chris' warm breath filled Xavier's ear. "I especially want you to be careful around Quincy Morgan. You must never trust him."

"I don't." Xavier responded. "And Chris, I know how you feel about Angel. I know how much her friendship has meant to you over the years. I've always liked her...more than she thinks I do. I certainly respect her work from one professional to another, but I'm hearing troublesome things on my end—"

"I gotcha; I'll handle Angel."

Xavier excuses himself as he walked past Chris to the mirror. He methodically reattaches all of his makeup and attachments, unlocks the door and turns back to his brother before he opens it. "I've always wanted to ask you something I just never could figure out whether I should?"

"Shoot,"

"It's not my business."

"But you should ask it anyway, Xavier? We are each other's keeper."

A beautiful instrumental piece begins to pipe in the room through the speakers that Xavier can't see. It sounded faintly familiar. "Yes, I guess we are each other's keeper at that." He said, his voice sounded muffled underneath the skin of the fake nose. "I know very few things in my time in this world, but I do know that you loved Hoshi Givens with all of your heart and soul. I also know for a fact that she's the only woman that you've truly ever loved...including the poor troubled soul we just buried." Xavier rubbed his lower lip in a faint attempt to mask that it was trembling as he spoke. "Was how you felt about her then, the memory of your love; was it enough to overcome losing her in all of the years that have passed since?"

"It was." Chris Prince did not hesitate. "It is."

Xavier stood in his stance long enough to listen to the melody in its entirety. After a time he opened his eyes and realized he had tears in them and he felt the biggest smile of satisfaction lighting up his dark face. Chris mirrored his look as well. "That was a wonderful composition wasn't it, Bro?" I'm sure somebody out in that cafeteria has that track or the CD it came from on hand, how about doing me a big favor and getting me the name of the artist." Xavier said, punched a cigarette out the pack, and thought the better of it for a dozens of good reasons. "I've been dreaming about Dad every night since I was released from Calhoun. Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat. I never remember what the dreams are about but I know that he's always in them and he's... alive, Chris. He's always alive and he's trying to tell me something." He lowered his eyes. "I have to admit the whole thing scares the hell out of me. I don't know what it all means. I do know that if I die before you do I want to go listening to something as beautiful as what we just heard."

"Of course I would, Xavier, I just wonder what ways we'll be listening to music on all those decades from now." Chris said in a suggestive tone that Xavier caught immediately. "And I guess it's comforting for me to know that some things don't change with you like your love of instrumental music and your craving for the smokes."

"I know...they'll kill me yet...the smokes I mean."

"Did I ever tell you thank you for saving my life all of those years ago when you saw me walking past our house?"

"You tell me every chance you get, Chris." Xavier matched his brother's serious tone. "Perhaps you'll get to return the favor someday...don't be late." Xavier began to slip out of the bathroom door into the hall that led the activity of the cafeteria. "I'll see you around."

Xavier's people get him out through a secret, looping, preordained matrix of a route. It is troubling, tiring, it is time consuming and by an hour's end, completely successful.

Another hour later he is standing at a location not of his choosing on the other side of town and finds himself lighting his third cigarette in the past 20 minutes. He exhales...and coughs. My God, these things will kill eventually kill me won't they?

Xavier Prince hoped to sleep dreamlessly tonight and die of lung cancer one day many years from now.

Just let it be cancer, he thought, Chris will play that beautiful song for me at my funeral 30 years from now when I die of cancer.

#  Seth

Why won't you answer my phone calls, Angel?

Dr. Seth Dupree clicked his cell phone off, rubbed the fingers of his left hand over the tombstone of Denise Prince and searched the heavens above for answers. So far the power's at be had refused to answer him at all.

He'd waited patiently for Erica's funeral procession to disband before he'd paid his own private respects to both women. He couldn't run the risk of one of the triage center's staff spotting him here and asking questions that he dared not respond to: When was the last time he had seen Denise alive? When was the last time he'd spoken to her? Besides he knew her ex-husband made his living off of being a professional investigator. He had attended both burials of course. So far the local papers were calling Denise's death for what it really was—a suicide. But Seth knew that most figured that she was not alone when she threw herself out of that window. There was no need for him to chance any legal involvement in this.

The Gray man exhaled a long breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He was thankful for that blessing at least. The prevailing winds had carried the brushfire odors well away from the city this afternoon.

"Your wife is responsible for all of this...and so much more, Doctor."

Seth darted around to put a face to the voice of the stranger who had walked up on him so mutely. "What was that? Do I know you, Miss?"

Seth found himself quickly over being startled...and struggling not to stare at this stunningly beautiful woman. She was a darker skinned, curvy Latino who was wearing a short but tastefully cut black dress, stud earrings, pearl necklace, and a watch on her wrist. She wore her hair long and straight and Seth couldn't shake the feeling that he'd met her somewhere before.

"I know you," She said, her accent only betraying the slightest hint of a Puerto Rican or Dominican ancestry. "Your name is Dr. Seth Dupree. You are one this region's most renowned surgeons. You are very well respected by your professional colleagues and those who know you through your community. From time to time your friends have referred to you as 'The Gray Man' for your eye color, strands of gray in your hair and the attire you've worn over the years. I'm interesting in you for the reason your life is not so perfect—your marriage to another doctor, Angel Hicks-Dupree."

"What could you possibly want with me or my wife? Are you some kind of investigator? "

"Yea, some kind...that describes me quite well actually." She said and peered past a group of trees to their left. "I know that two funerals are taking place at this very moment over there for two separate teen aged boys who perished earlier this week from the injuries they suffered during the 411 attacks."

Seth shifted his weight and didn't understand why. He and Angel were still in Macon when Pandora launched its offensive against targets here in the city. Seth was finding himself, despite this woman's beauty, quickly tiring of her company and her monologue. "Sorry. I hadn't scanned the local headlines this morning."

"No problem, Doctor, I thought that I would make you aware of the facts." She looked downwards at Denise's headstone. She kneeled long enough to mutter a prayer and crossed herself. When she opened her eyes again they appeared darker and more focused than they were even before she had closed them. "You've been preoccupied with other things—today it was the burial of Denise Prince and her daughter Erica Lovings."

"How do you know all of this?" Seth heard his own voice raising. Whether it was from anger or fear he could not say.

"Are you absolutely sure you don't know who I am, Doctor? Why don't you take another look?"

Seth does just that. And he takes a second...and third a look as well, until...

"I do know you. You were sitting in a wrecked car downstate. You were parked near where Denise and I were outside of this hotel where Angel and Chris Prince were." And then he remembered what the dead woman had told him before their next to last night together inside her apartment went to hell. The divorced couple had hired a private investigator—A Roxanne Sanchez to find Denise's missing daughter.

Seth told the woman standing next to Denise Prince's grave his hypothesis.

She said: "You are correct, Doctor. Now let me let you in on some things that you may not be aware of."

Roxanne Sanchez gave him the short version of her dealings with a fugitive from both Pandora and the FBI named Joseph Champion. She told him that this Champion fellow and Seth's wife, Angel, were sleeping together the night before the FBI recruited her to join them here in Atlanta. She spoke as if every sentence was being recorded during a deposition. She had dismissed emotion from the equation and just presented the facts—at least as she saw them, to Seth. This mole—as Champion had referred to himself, possibly...quite possibly was involved in the murder of Erica Lovings. Roxanne Sanchez couldn't answer why he would murder her but went on to say that Champion was far more mixed up in the overall scope of what was going on within the sphere of influence of Pandora as well.

She then reminded him of Angel's previous dealings and supposed therapy sessions with Louis Keaton. And if the Gray man wasn't totally caught up with current events, Keaton was the monster that everyone in the free world believed was recently responsible for kidnappings of at least six Black children here in the city.

As painfully as it was for Seth to admit, this woman knew far too many facts to making all of this up. "So are you going to base your next move simply on the word of a fugitive? I don't quite understand all of this."

"It's no mere coincidence that the FBI snagged you're wife as soon as all of this went down. Whether you see it or not—whether she sees it or not, they suspect her too to some degree or another. They were smart to keep her close. She's involved at some level. I would bet my life on it."

"Why do you care so much?" He ran his hand along the gravel of Denise's tombstone again. It was a fine piece of structural design. "You found Erica in Carver. You did as you promised Denise you would do. Your job is done here."

Roxanne got in his face. "Your wife is responsible for the death of my sister. She's at least partly responsible for those two funerals over there that I pointed out to you a few minutes ago. Two more funerals for women who died during the Siege of the Fox Theatre will be held later on today as well."

"I'm no lawyer, Roxanne," Seth offered cautiously. "But I see you basing a lot of what you think you know on a ton of circumstantial evidence at best."

"Call it what you will, Doctor." Roxanne backed off just a little. "I do know for a fact that everything that your wife touches ends up in disaster. Lie to me and tell me that you haven't thought once about what Angel said to Denise in that hotel room that finally pushed an already unstable woman over the edge." Roxanne took her turn at caressing Denise's tombstone. "Now I won't lie. I didn't know Denise very well or very long. I know enough to speculate that she was mentally and emotionally vulnerable to say the least. So I'm not the only one who saw Denise's outbursts. But your wife deals with these types of personality's everyday of her life. She should have known what not to say or do to set this woman off on her final path of self-destruction."

The Gray man had indeed wondered what was said or done when Denise had walked into Chris' hotel room. Denise had never said. He even thought about the worst case scenario: That somehow Denise had walked in on his wife and her ex-husband in bed together. Angel had told him about her single sexual escapade with Chris before they were married. She had told Seth that it was a half product of a lifetime of curiosity, while the rest was the result of carry over emotion of the sudden death of Chris' then fiancé.

There is a ton of emotion, most of it negative, in Chris' life right now. Could history have repeated itself? What if Angel had 'comforted' him some more just as he and Denise had arrived? Seth felt his jaws reddening. Perhaps they would christen him the Red Man soon.

"So what are you going to do now, Roxanne? Are you on some type of vindication mission? Are you going to right all of my wife's wrongs?"

Roxanne would not look him in his gray eyes for the first time. "I didn't come here to seek your permission, Doctor. You should consider this short conversation between us as a courtesy call only."

"What does that supposed to mean, Roxanne?"

"Your wife is killing people, Doctor. Maybe she isn't doing it by any of the traditional means, but she is causing their deaths all the same."

"What are you going to do?" Seth felt himself biting his bottom lip.

"Finding a missing person is the absolute worse job that any investigator can be tasked with doing. Too often in the past, I've been asked to inform a parent, or a child, a sibling, or a lover that I couldn't find the one in their life who had gone missing, or if I did...that I found this person of their profound interest dead. I don't think that there is anything more difficult than telling someone that their beloved is never coming home again."

Seth nodded in understanding for two reasons. The first obvious one is he'd been present when the news broke that his older brother and Erica Lovings were both were found dead...and the anguish thereafter that occurred for all involved.

And then the second reason caused him to say to Roxanne: "I understand that responsibility as well, Roxanne." He said calmly. "I've often had to reveal a terrible diagnosis to a patient's family after surgery had been completed. I've had patients die on my table under my care."

Roxanne looked away, frowned and then found his gray eyes again with her dark ones. "Then you should know that coming to my decision about Angel wasn't an easy one."

"What—"

"I'm informing you here and now that you're loved one is never coming home again, Doctor. And I do mean never. Dr. Angel Hicks-Dupree deserves to die for all of the pain and misery and death that she's caused. And I mean to kill her as soon as I find her again before she can inflict more."

"I can't let you do that...I'll warn her. I'll get the authorities involved." Seth plucked his cell phone out of his pocket but seemed to go all thumbs while trying to dial up the combination to 911. And then he fumbled it, the phone landing in a bed of yellow roses near his shoes. Damn you man, you're a surgeon for Christ sakes. He had saved lives with these hands. Why couldn't he grasp this damned phone...and possibly save the most precious life of all that personally mattered to him.

"I don't think that you mean that at all, Doctor. I don't you will call the police. You can't go to Chris Prince because you're very presence here opens you up to questions that you are not prepared to answer." Roxanne said. "And honestly, Doctor, I think that deep down in your soul you know that I'm right about this. You may even want to help me find her. Angel needs to be put out of all of our miseries."

He neither says anything nor makes a movement to retrieve his phone. Roxanne must have taken this as a sign that it was time for her to move on alone. She turned away from him without looking back. The Gray man doesn't move to stop her.

The wind has shifted and the burning smell had returned almost instantaneously. It nearly engulfs his senses. Is this what Hell smells like? Maybe I'm the one who died the other night? Maybe I've already died and went to Hell already for daring to consider this stranger's offer as a viable solution to anything.

He looked around him. He was the only one alive in this dreaded place. At least these dead had some semblance of peace that he did not. He ran his fingernails across Denise's tombstone again...and again...until his nails had broken and bled from the pressure he'd put on them. The gravel had cut into the sensitive skin at the tips of his fingers. I couldn't save you, Denise. And then his memory cut into his soul, injuring it far worse than the gravel had hurt his fingers. I couldn't save you Antoinette...or Clinton...or Sam. And it doesn't look as if I'm going to save you from your life either Pam.

And Seth then decided that perhaps 'saving others' wasn't his true calling.

Maybe doing quite the opposite...was where his destiny lay from this point moving forward.

Angel had denied him a simple courtesy by refusing to answer or return his phone calls.

Angel had dishonored her wedding vows time and again by sleeping with other men.

Angel had cast him aside for her one true love: Her adoration for her drinking.

Roxanne Sanchez had walked nearly out of site to where her wrecked car was double parked when she finally heard him calling out to her.

"Wait, Roxanne," Seth yelled so she would not leave. And after he had recovered from his sprint and was standing behind her next to her Honda. "I'm going to spend the rest of my life regretting my decision right now. I know that a higher power will make sure I spend an eternity regretting it as well." Dr. Seth Dupree told the dark eyed woman standing next to her car. "But if you are going to truly kill my wife...then I should be there at the end. Let me come with you."

End of Episode 4

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#  Sneak peak at Zero Hour

Coming soon from Nest Egg Publishing

Many say that we are living in the last days. What if I told you that your last day was today?

You are living here, now, in your final hour.

Welcome to the Zero Hour.

Thomas Pepper finally reveals what he knows to an anxious country teetering on the edge of the abyss. Yet, he learns the hard way that he is not the lone truth teller in this game. Other realities...other truths can have just as far reaching implications. The Prince Brothers and Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree are going to pay a high price when they witness this costly lesson firsthand.

In fact for one of the three, the Zero Hour is their final hour.

One will pay the highest price of all.

#  Dedication

As I've said before, this one is for...well, for me. This tale has been in my pipeline for a long time.
Nest Egg Publishing Note:

This was a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are use factiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

#  Nest Egg Presents: Where are our Children:

Episode 1: 411 (Available Now!!!)

Episode 2: Deliverance (Available Now!!!)

Episode 3: Rapture (Available Now!!!)

Episode 5: Zero Hour

Episode 6: Betrayals

Episode 7: Scar

Episode 8: Tempest Rising

Episode 9: Whirlwind

Available in Trade Paperback

Episode 1: 411 (Available Now!!!)

Episode 2: Deliverance (Available Now!!!)

Episode 3: Rapture (Available Now!!!)

Episode 4: Past Prologue (Coming Soon)
Where to find this author online:

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