Bishop,_Carly_-_The_Soul_Mate.txt Read online

  catchers, not the advocates of creating your own reality, not Richard

  Bach and Jonathan Livingston Seagull, or even. Aspen's most famous

  resident, John Denver. All of which put her at odds with half of the

  bestsellers of the decade and a lot of what Aspen in the 1990s was all

  about.

  Robyn Delaney believed in what she could see, hear and touch, and not

  much of anything else with one exception. That she belonged, body,

  mind, heart and soul, to Keller Trueblood. She felt churlish and

  ungrateful with her friends, hateful and disconnected from her family,

  because all she wanted was the one thing she couldn't have. She

  couldn't have Keller back in her life.

  She felt cut off, adrift in a sea of strangers, who even if they were

  dear and caring friends, would never understand her as Keller had.

  Now, after Massie had trotted out the possibility last night that the

  collapse of the old Hallelujah silver mine had been a deliberate

  attempt on Keller's life, her despair had shifted shape on her. She

  made her living drawing such inferences, pulling together threads of

  motive and secret agendas and the deadly passions of real people.

  Her head throbbed. She still had waking flashes of rotted timbers

  collapsing with a horrible cracking noise. Her leg had been crushed.

  Keller had died.

  The thought that his death was murder and not an accident seemed

  paranoid but way too coincidental as Robyn's beloved Austrian grand

  mama Marie would have said long ago, crazy-making.

  Robyn had to find out if there was any substance to her suspicions. To

  do that she had to return to Aspen.

  The heat of the late afternoon sun at Denver's mile-high altitude

  sapped even the marigolds and mums, which were wilting on their stems.

  The cottonwoods seemed to gasp and shed leaves in small clumps. Fire

  bushes glowed red.

  Robyn left the shade of the striped awning and waved with her brass:

  handled cane to the evening therapy staff and nurses just arriving.

  The parking lot had cleared out with the departure of the day crew.

  She made a beeline for her midnight blue coupe and unlocked the door.

  Heat rolled out in waves, but she sank gratefully down into the

  leather-covered bucket seat. Her therapy session had left her muscles

  behaving like overdone spaghetti. The steering wheel blazed from the

  sun beating down inside the windshield.

  "Holy hot," she muttered. Switching on the engine and then the

  air-conditioning, she left her door wide open to blow out the hot and

  bring in the cold. She turned to put her shoulder bag in the passenger

  seat when a wiry, wild-eyed teenager darted up to her car.

  His head was shaved and a ring pierced his eyebrow. He planted his

  huge, gangly hands on the doorsill above her and demanded she hand over

  her purse. "An' while you're at it, the rock on your finger."

  Keller's wedding ring? Her temper snapped. "Not a chance." Not

  Keller's ring, not anything else that remained of her shattered life.

  Not if the hounds of hell were after her. After the year she had just

  put in, three long operations and countless hours of grueling physical

  therapy, Robyn Delaney was not only tough as nails, she spit in the eye

  of death.

  She had the vague impression of a statistic flying through her head

  proving how unlikely she was to get away with her life while resisting

  a mugger. Too bad. If she died defying this cretin and went to

  heaven, then, maybe, she could have Keller back again. Part of her

  wanted that so fiercely that she just didn't care what happened.

  She tossed her long black French braid over her shoulder and glared up

  at the would-be mugger. "Get your mitts off my ear, you miserable

  little toad," she de-mande

  "Yeah?"

  Oh, here was a brilliant one, she thought. "Yeah." She tried to pull

  her car door closed, but the wiry body stood rooted to the pavement.

  Though momentarily startled at her resistance, the mean-ass kid

  regrouped and he wasn't joking. He reached down with his overgrown

  hand, grabbed the shoulder of her silk tank top and twisted until it

  cut into her armpit. "Maybe you don't get I'm gonna hurt you, bitch,

  if. you don' hand over the goods," he snarled.

  The material bit into her flesh. She stifled her cry and groped

  automatically for her cane. He dragged her from the car and threw her

  to the baking-hot pavement.

  Something cracked inside of her. She knew crime and criminals and all

  about the dark places in twisted human souls. She knew all about their

  victims, too, their pain,

  their impotence and for once in her life, she desperately needed to

  strike a blow against the lowlifes who preyed on other people ....

  Against a creep who thought he could take Keller's ring from her.

  Adrenaline poured through her. Her heart raced, and a voice in her

  head squeaked hysterically at her foolish bravado, but Robyn tuned it

  out and lashed out at her attacker with her cane and all the pent-up

  rage inside her.

  Her blow landed on his shoulder, but it just enraged the mugger. She

  screamed and clenched her fist so he couldn't strip Keller's ring from

  her finger. No power on earth could have opened her hand. Her

  attacker backhanded Robyn and the fragile flesh inside her mouth split

  and bled.

  He might have knocked her senseless and taken Keller's ring from her,

  anyway, but a security guard bellowed at the mugger and came running

  full out. Robyn seized upon the distraction he provided and drew her

  leg up hard and high in the mugger's crotch. He lashed out in his pain

  but missed her face and lit out running from the security guard.

  The guard, a man named Shelton whom she'd spoken with often enough in

  the past year, offered Robyn his handkerchief while a couple of other

  security types tackled the kid. She stood up with Shelton's help,

  retrieved her cane and, for an instant, indulged the primal

  satisfaction of having bested a predator. A second or two later, her

  nerves let her down and Robyn began quaking like an aspen leaf in a

  very stiff wind.

  Sure, now, chimed that same annoying little voice of caution in her

  mind. She shook her head and scraped loose tendrils of hair back from

  her face. "Thanks, Shelton."

  The security guard, a burly, ruddy-skinned ex-cop, steadied her.

  "Robyn, what's wrong with you? Are you nuts? You know better than to

  take on a mugger!"

  She clasped the guard's wrist and gulped as her courage dissolved away

  to nothing. Tears bit at her eyelids. Her elbow was badly scraped and

  burned by the pavement. Her face hurt like blazes. "I... yes. Maybe

  I am, but I'm all right. He just ticked me off, you know? I'm in no

  mood to play a wilting violet."

  "How about a dead violet?" Shelton jibed, but then relented. "You're

  pale as a ghost, Robyn,... Are you sure you're okay? Maybe you should

  come back inside."

  Robyn shook her head. "I'm fine, really. Thanks." She let go of the

  security guard's steadying arm and turned properly in her seat. She

  didn't wa
nt to worry him, or trigger a call from her well-meaning

  psychotherapist, so she made all the proper noises to reassure Shelton

  that she would be okay.

  She didn't say, at least out loud, that she was still so angry inside

  at Keller for dying on her she thought her being a ghost would at least

  be a better alternative to surviving him. Maybe the movies had it

  right and Keller was now a ghost. Well, she could be one, too, and

  together they could haunt the Halls of Justice.

  She bid the guard goodbye, whipped on her sunglasses against the fierce

  glare of sunlight and sped off. Aspen was at least a four-hour drive,

  maybe more.

  She wheeled onto Colfax and headed to a neighborhood meat market. She

  hobbled a bit getting inside. The butcher, Cory Janns, a first cousin

  of Keller's, nearly came through the refrigerated display case at the

  sight of her blackened eye and battered face. "Holy cow, Robyn!" he

  exclaimed, wiping his hands on his white apron. "What happened to

  you?"

  "A mugger happened to me, Cory." She worked up a nonchalant smile that

  hurt her face. "You should see the other guy. Do you think you could

  give me an ice pack or "

  "A piece of beefsteak," he said. "Hold on. I'll fix you right up." He

  slid open a door of the refrigerator case and pulled out a hunk of

  tenderloin, eyeing her eye. "Jeez. The family's going to come

  unglued."

  She could imagine the Trueblood family brouhaha not to mention the

  reaction from Keller's mother, a powerhouse in local charities who no

  politician ignored. No doubt the steely lady would soon be demanding

  the entire Denver police department bring Robyn's attacker to justice.

  "Cory, please don't say anything to May about this. I'm going up to

  Aspen for a few days I'm on my way now, in fact."

  She gave him an imploring look. Cory was a soft touch, and the first

  to say he was not the brightest star in the Trueblood family firmament.

  He wasn't likely to guess why she would be returning to Aspen. "Maybe

  you'll cover for me if the family notices I'm gone? Just say I decided

  to get away for a few days?"

  He frowned. "They'll notice, all right, but I'll do what I can." He

  carved the meat and packaged it, then came around the refrigerator case

  to show her how she could hold it by the wrapping paper as a poultice

  to her black eye.

  She exchanged hugs with Keller's cousin and departed, crawling back

  into her coupe. Her slacks were badly smudged, her blouse a wreck and

  her whole body ached, but she wasn't going to cave in and cry or change

  her plans,

  She turned onto York Street northbound and headed for the highway. She

  intended to be in the resort ski town by eight o'clock, and further up

  the mountain, to the eleven-thousand-square-foot home of the late and

  largely unmourned Spyder Nielsen, by nine.

  This, she knew, was almost certainly Frau Kautz's last vacation day,

  giving Robyn the last perfect opportunity to confront Candelaria and

  Willetts without having to do some exotic end-run around the formidable

  housekeeper.

  Today was the day. Now was the time.

  Holding the small slice of tenderloin to her cheek, she merged into the

  heavy afternoon traffic on 1-70 westbound. The snarled traffic gave

  her pause and her cheek ached horribly, and at long last, despite her

  fierce determination, the folly of her actions back in that parking lot

  hit her squarely. Tears threatened, and a lump clogged her throat.

  "What's this about, Robyn?" she chided herself, sorting through her

  feelings.

  It wasn't about the emptiness of the antique double sleigh bed she and

  Keller had shared, though there were nights when she ached for his

  touch. Nights when, for the sound of his voice or scent of his skin or

  the taste of his lips, she would have traded anything she possessed.

  It wasn't that she didn't have enough friends, enough writing buddies,

  enough family, to make her feel looked-out-for and encouraged that in

  time, she would be fine.

  It wasn't even that she still felt responsible. That if it hadn't been

  for her wanting to go poking around the old Hallelujah mine shaft in

  the mountains surrounding Aspen, Keller would be alive and well

  today.

  What it came down to was perspective. A year had passed. Keller's own

  mother had gotten over his loss. Robyn simply had to pull up her socks

  and get on with living her life. Keller would want that. Do yourself

  a favor, he would say, a little auto pro bono.

  Get a life, Robyn .... The. only life she wanted was the one she had

  shared with Keller, but Robyn had tried. God knew she tried. Why else

  would she have arranged the small get-together last nigh? She'd been

  thinking a ritual gathering like that might be cathartic. That she

  could finally lay him to rest in her heart with a celebration of the

  life and times of Keller Trueblood.

  It might all have worked that way, too, if one thing hadn't led to

  another, leading Mike Massie to suggest Keller had been murdered.

  Driving in what she had lately decided to call an aggressive manner

  better than admitting she was reckless she darted in and out of clogged

  rush hour traffic through the heart of Denver. She didn't know why she

  bothered justifying her driving to herself. Who cared?

  Who? Really? But the same obnoxious little Jiminy Cricket voice it

  wasn't a voice, but how else was she supposed to describe thoughts

  popping around in her head that were decidedly not her own? - kept

  insisting her driving made her an uninsurable, undesirable risk at the

  wheel.

  She moved in and out of traffic lanes, content to be beating the flow,

  even signaling each time to prove herself a safe-driver, right up until

  all lanes of traffic came to a screeching halt just before the exits to

  the town of Golden.

  She switched on the radio to listen for what the delay was all about,

  but after a few minutes, she turned the radio off and shoved a

  Rachmaninoff CD into the disk player instead.

  Her bags were packed and stashed in the back seat. Her mind was made

  up. It really didn't matter what the radio sky-spies had to say about

  the traffic, or that she was going to have to stop somewhere and change

  her clothes.

  She was going to Aspen, and she was going now.

  AT THE LOGAN STREET address where the Denver Branch of Avenging Angels

  kept an earthly presence in a small brownstone surrounded by high

  rises, the office receptionist, Grace, sat at her desk. Part of her

  job was to steer mortals to other resources should they wander in. Part

  of it involved running interference for Angelo, head angel of the

  DBAA.

  Clarence, the Guardian Angel of the human Robyn Delaney, required all

  GraCe's celestial tact to handle. Angelo wasn't given to granting

  run-amok Guardian Angels an audience. Yet Clarence wasn't going away.

  Feathers, she thought, were going to fly.

  Gray-haired, blue-eyed, dressed in a tailored white dress only because

  she missed the old days with the flowing white robes, Grace l
oved her

  job. The Avengers were the most exciting of all angels to be around,

  the ones who worked for truth and justice and got to set things aright

  in the mortal world. To all appearances they were mortal, as opposed

  to Clarence here, whose visage was only apparent to other angels.

  There was no hierarchy in heaven that put Avenging Angels above

  Guardians, or even Cherubs for that matter, but human form was one

  delicious perk. To have a human body minus the aches and pains and

  infirmities! Because she worked in this office, Grace got human form

  as well even if it was rather... matronly.

  Clarence the Guardian was fit to be tied, though tied with what, Grace

  couldn't imagine due to his lack of real substance. Her sense of humor

  grew sorely tried, and she scowled at his lack of decorum. Clarence's

  earthly charge, Robyn Delaney, it seemed, was moving into dangerous

  territory, and Clarence had apparently arrived at the end of his

  heavenly tether with her reckless antics.

  "Do try to get a hold of yourself, Clarence," Grace advised, breathing

  a grateful sigh of relief when Angelo summoned Clarence to his office.

  In a flash, the piping-mad little Guardian was gone from her reception

  area.

  Now, Grace thought, if only Ezekiel would respond to his page .... In a

  moment of thinking about the Avenging Angel who went by Kiel, he popped

  in, materializing out of thin air.

  "Gracie!" He gave her a dazzling grin. Ordinary daylight sparkled off

  his thick, wavy golden red hair, and his eyes reminded Grace of the