Angelique Rising (29 page)

             
And all those consent documents and videos would be for nothing. The victims would have the corroboration of a girl who hadn't signed anything, she'd just been
taken
. Cochran would go down.

             
Anthony hated bullies and their sense of inevitable entitlement. A gay kid in high school, he knew all about bullies. And he'd learned how to deal with them. And their minions. Not by force, no, but by brains and patience. He smiled with a curious sentiment of detachment and serenity. It was almost ironic that the person who would bring the great Malcolm Cochran down, along with his sleazebag accomplices Donald and Margret, was going to be a gay costume designer employed at Cochran's very own brilliantly crafted twisted little bugaboo, the Performance Center. Larry the Lawyer would take some more thinking but Anthony would find a way to make that scum pay pretty hard too.

             
Their undoing.

             
Anthony got up. He wanted to go check on Lexa again. Of course Anthony did not know that the next occupant of the peach bedroom, repainted lavender, would be Angelique, and none of the old capture patterns would hold.

             
A few days later Lexa phoned Angelique to tell her she was back and Angelique asked her how things had gone.

             
"Okay," Lexa said though Angelique got the feeling she'd been about to say something else.

*****

              "So that's her up there?" Maureen asked the next week, squinting into the sky, shielding her eyes from the morning sun's glare bouncing off the ocean below.

             
"Yes, the one with the white kite," Tinka answered tasting the billowing tang of the sea salt spray as each wave below them dashed against the cliff.

             
"Well I think she could get herself killed, I don't understand why Wyatt allows it. One wrong gust of wind and
poof,
she could go down there." Maureen gestured down the cliffside and out toward the open ocean.

             
"I think it looks like fun, I'm going to ask Angelique to teach me how to do it. I mean look at them all," Tinka waved upwards to the sky at the hang gliders about, "they look like butterflies."

             
"Butterflies that could go
splat,"
Maureen responded tartly.

             
Tinka wrinkled her nose. "I know why
I'm
here, Angelique invited me, but why are
you
here?"

             
Maureen sighed in exasperation.

             
"Malcolm," she said huffily. "He wants me to bring you home. I don't think he's thrilled, you hanging out with Angelique here. Maybe it was that car chase, that really pissed him off."

             
"Daddy does
not
control my life. And I don't get to hang out with Angelique much. Daddy just has some kind of thing against her lately, he gets
bellicose
whenever I mention her."

             
Maureen knew that was true, something about Angelique after the movie premier was particularly bothering Malcolm, he was so tense now whenever the subject of Angelique and Wyatt came up.

             
"He wants you back at the mansion and if you're not coming, I'm calling him right now and telling him.
You
deal with it."

             
Maureen pulled out her cell phone.

             
"What's that guy doing?" a nearby man asked another, both of them staring up into the sky at the hang gliders. "Isn't that May-May up there, with the white kite?"

             
"Yeah," the man answered, his tone worried, "she's lining up for the stovepipe. Oh shoot, you know who that red kite behind her is? That's
Idiot Ira
, he's been harassing her, giving her shit for weeks."

             
Tinka turned to the men.

             
"What are you talking about?"

             
"That girl with the white kite, she's about to make a run down the stovepipe. That's the flyway route down there," the man pointed below to the water, "she'll fly about a hundred feet over the waves the whole length of the beach, then turn it left," he gestured at the beach below them in the distance, "and land it over there. No other kite's supposed to be in the stovepipe when someone's in it, and that idiot Silverberg is lining up behind her for it. Whatta jerk."

             
"Why?" Tinka asked, "what's wrong with that?"

             
"Look at all those rocks down there," the other man said edging gingerly out closer to the cliff's brink pointing out at the ocean but keeping his eyes on Angelique flying far away down the beach heading towards them. "If one kite collides with another and they go in, they'd be ground up by those rocks. Only one kite at a time is supposed to be in the stovepipe run, so nobody bashes into anybody. Everyone knows that. That creepazoid Silverberg thinks he's so rich, such a hotshot, he doesn't have to wait his turn."

             
"I don't think so," the other spectator said, his face looking like a worried shih tzu, "look at the way he's lining up."

             
"Oh crap no, even Idiot Ira wouldn't do
that
. Not in the stovepipe!"

             
"What?" Tinka asked again. "He's just flying behind her. What's wrong?"

             
"He's not just flying behind her. He's
chasing
her. Oh damn, he's gonna do it. I swear he's gonna do it. That
asshole
.
"

             
"Do
what?"

             
"He's gonna buzz her. Come up over her from behind, scare the patootie out of her. What is the guy's
problem
. That jerkoff's got it in for her, he's always--"

             
He didn't finish his sentence. Both men stared as the two kites shot closer.

             
"No
,
"
one of the men whispered.
"No, no, no!"

             
"WHAT?" Tinka shouted.

             
"He's not gonna buzz her
he's gonna strafe her!"

             
Both men started violently waving their arms up at Angelique and hollering. Suspended by the rushing wind she could not hear them but as she neared she could see them. Madly they threw their arms gesticulating toward the beach, clearly wanting her to cut left and land
now,
not further down the beach at the proper landing site. It didn't make sense. She looked about her. She saw nothing amiss. Her kite was flying fine, the wind was perfect, she was alone in the stovepipe, what was wrong?

             
Behind her, above her, Ira Silverberg targeted her. He was going to scare the shit out of her, streak right over her, just a few feet above her, strafe her. It would be easy, his kite was bigger and faster, a racer, hers was an acrobatic, he'd catch her easily. She wanted to keep flying out here? Then she'd have to
talk
to him. Fuck Wyatt.
He'd
found her,
he'd
laid claim to her.

             
Ira Silverberg had the biggest deal of his life coming up, a lifeline, he
needed
it, she could help him like before damn it. Wyatt would never even have to know if she didn't want him to, he didn't care. But first she had to
talk
to him, something she'd been pretty good at not doing either here or on the phone or by email or any of the other (admittedly increasingly desperate) messages he'd been sending at her. Well he was done fooling around, she'd played on his nerves long enough, now he was going to get her
attention,
that's what he was here for.
He lowered his kite, he was going to make this
close.
After they landed and she came at him crying her head off, he'd tell her what he wanted and this time she'd damn well listen.

             
The men below on the cliff were insistent and agitated. And Angelique could tell now that Tinka was with them too, she'd obviously climbed the cliff to get a better view. Was that Maureen with her? What on earth? What would
Maureen
be doing out here? Something to do with Wyatt?
Ohmygod, something's happened to Wyatt?

             
Angelique dipped her left wing down sharply to cut off her run in the stovepipe and make an emergency landing on the beach near her. Unfortunately she did this just as Ira Silverberg flashed past overhead and when her left wing dipped down of course her right wing rose
up.

             
Directly into Ira Silverberg.

             
Silverberg was jolted mightily, but he was going fast enough and his kite was big and powerful enough that he was able to recover in a maneuver that scared the patootie out of
him
. Angelique was not so lucky. Her kite was knocked down, out of control, plummeting down to the ocean as Angelique was whipped along cartwheel fashion, head over heals again and again and again at horrific speed. Finally one wing was snagged on a jutting rock and Angelique was wrenched down, sucked into the water head first upside down still harnessed to her kite that landed on top of her in the four foot swells.

             
Damn,
Ira Silverberg blustered as he soared away,
it was an accident.
Why'd she turn her kite like that, the stupid bitch knew the landing site wasn't
here,
it was down
there.
It was
her
fault he told himself as below, the waves and submerged rocks began to gobble the drowning Angelique and her still attached disintegrating kite.

             
Up on the cliff the two men who had signaled Angelique to land cursed, storming down the cliff clambering toward a boat. Tinka stood rock-still, her mouth open in grisly horror, a scream stuck in her throat as she saw bit by bit, more of Angelique's kite disappear into the water with each passing wave, finally disappearing altogether. And as Tinka continued to watch immobilized, Maureen continued to film the whole thing on her phone. Finally Maureen spoke.

             
"I
told
you," Bitch Central gloated smugly.
"Splat
.
"

             
Angelique didn't know what had knocked her out of the sky and wasn't thinking about it. What Angelique was hysterically thinking about was staying alive and
air
. And she knew that the only way she was going to get any was to get out from under the kite that with each wave was pulling her down deeper.
She had to get released.

             
What's the first thing?
she heard Johnson's voice blaze across her mind.
Don't panic
she heard her own voice answer.

             
Screw that I'm drowning!

             
In the pounding opaque gray water she didn't know which way was up, which way was down; she couldn't see anything as she was tossed about like a cork in a blender, smashing against rocks
and she couldn't get the harness unclasped.
She groped frenziedly trying to unhook herself but it just wouldn't give, wouldn't unhook, and she couldn't in the roaring tumult even
find
the emergency release.

             
Not like this, I don't wanna die like this! Please! Please!

             
The harness would not unbuckle. She was out of air.

             
And she was out of tries. She had only one last try in her when her hand, scrabbling over the release, felt a puzzling tinge of warmth. It was incredibly slight, it was a miracle she even noticed it but she did, and for one moment the dim familiarity of it completely distracted her. And that allowed her to detect a touch, so light, so ethereal, it wasn't even there, it surely was her imagination, as it almost imperceptibly guided her fingers and she thought
what the heh?

             
She went with it.

             
The clasp unhooked when she realized in her upside down state she'd been yanking it in the wrong direction. She was free and with one monumental kick she jackknifed up, under some shards of her demolished kite's wing true, but there was air for one precious breath before something, the kite or the harness probably, grabbed her and pulled her floundering back down. But she didn't care.