Angelique Rising (33 page)

             
She stood and tipped in the direction of the closet once again because she found herself naked and wanting clothes. She didn't turn on any light so it was difficult but she did it, dressed herself, discovering her shoes on the carpet when she tripped over them. She put them on, they were soggy.

             
His favorite show is Phantom of the Opera. Sometimes I think he pretends he's the Phantom.

             
She went to the fireplace.

             
I should have thought of it myself
she admonished herself.
I read the original novel, I knew.

             
In her fear and desperation she just hadn't thought of it. And then again, on her own she probably never would have found it.

             
Holy cow, I almost didn't even ask,
she shook her head but stopped immediately because it hurt.

             
And what she'd asked, the information she'd collected, had
been
Was there any way out?

             
Yes, there was. Because Malcolm Cochran
pretends he's the Phantom
.

             
In the novel,
Phantom of the Opera,
the Phantom designed and built a torture chamber for his enemies. The chamber was a room of mirrors. The room heated up, his enemies were baked alive. But anyone who built a torture chamber always built it with the same thing --the fear that one day
they'd
be the one trapped in it. And so they built a way out, a secret way. In the Phantom's torture chamber it had been a miniscule lever alongside one of the mirrors. In Malcolm Cochran's torture chamber it was a larger lever up the flue of the fireplace. If the power went out, if his electronic door malfunctioned, he would not be trapped inside, he had an out, an out even Donald and Margret didn't know about just in case
they
got any bright ideas.

             
But now Angelique knew about it too, she'd collected that information. And a whole lot more. It took her a few minutes of groping around, but she found it and pulled. Immediately the door ground open. She stopped to pull the pillowcase off of one of the pillows on the bed and then she walked through. Silently she padded down the hallways and staircases, her will and anger dominating her fear. As she got to the ground floor she didn't just fling open the door and run. No, in quiet devious contemplation Angelique turned off all the security systems. Then she walked into Malcolm Cochran's study and closed the door. She turned on his computer and typed in his password.

             
It took her almost three hours to do it, but she transferred every holding he had into accounts she set up in the Caribbean, using his knowledge of how to do it which she had collected from him too. She couldn't take his properties, but, relatively speaking, they were a small percentage of his wealth. He'd
hurt
when he discovered what she'd done.

             
And then she pulled the hidden switch under his desk and his bookcase swung open. She tapped the code on his safe and the door unclicked. Everything in the safe she scooped into the pillow sack, she already knew what it was. Malcolm was going to
bleed.
She dropped his laptop and net book resting on his desk into the pillowcase too. The last thing she did was return to his computer and type in the emergency sequence, the sequence Malcolm had set up so that if everything ever hit the fan he could fry his entire network, all of it, every piece of information about himself, his life, anything and everything, in one unrestorable cataclysmic debacle that wouldn't be disastrous for
him
because he had it all stored on simple flash drives in his hidden safe that Angelique had just looted.

             
And then she knew she should skedaddle. Dawn was approaching and she didn't know when his staff got up, best to go now. Angelique reached one last time into his desk and took out
her
cell phone, the lowlife had stolen it, he liked to read her messages in the comfort of his own study. She let herself out of the mansion, noiselessly shutting the door behind her and slung the pillowcase over her back yelping at the protest of her electrocuted muscles. She forced herself to trot down the driveway in the rain freshened air, up the road, and just as dawn began to peep over the treetops, she hit the first number programmed into her phone and put it up to her ear.

             
And miles away, Wyatt Cochran sat up eagerly in bed answering the phone recognizing Angelique's ringtone, gleeful and immensely relieved she'd kept her promise.

             
"Baby," he said in the magical looking early morning light, "you okay?"

             
"I will be," she sang through tears to him," I will be."

*****

              Tracking Angelique's cell phone signal, Johnson roared the car up to Angelique by the side of the road slamming down the brakes in a spray of gravel. Both Wyatt and Johnson leapt out of the car to her before it finished moving.

             
"Tell me," Wyatt said vehemently,
"tell me
.
"

             
"We have to get out of here," she pleaded, "please!"

             
Not taking his arms from her, Wyatt pulled her to the car pushing her inside and sliding her over the seat, the contents of her pillowcase clattering to the floor. Johnson looked around furiously, got back into the driver's seat, and did an accelerated teeth clenching U-turn in the middle of the empty road.

             
"Now," Wyatt commanded.

             
"It was Malcolm," she said meekly. "And his driver, Donald. And his housekeeper, Margret, she was in on it too. Oh Wyatt, it's horrible. They got Lexa! He showed me the videos. What he did to her! He's... he's a
monstrosity
, Wyatt."

             
Wyatt's face had gone chalk white. Johnson was gripping the steering wheel hard enough to almost break it.

             
"WHAT DID HE DO TO YOU?"

             
"They kidnapped me out of the houseboat yesterday, Wyatt. They brought me to his mansion, locked me in a bedroom on the third floor. They left me there for a while, but I knew what Malcolm was --you'd told me.
A sexual sadist
. I knew what he would do to me. I was so terrified. And he came in. He put dinner on a table and wanted me to eat it with him watching videos of him torturing Lexa! She wasn't in Paris, Wyatt!
He had her
. All that time. Oh Wyatt, the things he did to her, you just don't know."

             
The problem was Wyatt
did
know. His uncle had tried to interest him in those activities.
And that abomination from hell had had Angelique!
His stomach turned over, a sickening fear swept through him right down to his testicles.

             
"I broke the TV screen and he punched me."

             
Johnson squelched a wail from the front seat and accidentally swerved the car into the oncoming lane for a moment.

             
"He beat me, Wyatt... I'm a mess. And... and... he..."

             
"Dead
,
"
Wyatt hissed, as Johnson thought
not if I get there first
.

             
"...he ripped my clothes off," Angelique finally managed to get out. "He threw me on the bed and he jumped on top of me but he wanted me to consent!
To consent!
But I wouldn't."

             
"He's
mine,
Johnson," Wyatt screamed aloud,
"you don't take him he's
MINE."

             
"NO SIR!"
Johnson shook his head spoiling for the slaughter. "You take care of
her
,
I
take care of
him
.
"

             
"He told me he was going to come back in the evening and
make
me consent
. Then he left. I didn't have any choice, Wyatt, I had to--"

             
Her voice choked off and Wyatt died for an instant desperately trying to hide his agony for her.

             
"You didn't do anything wrong, baby, it wasn't your fault. It was
him
. Not you."

             
"N... no... not that. I couldn't face that, Wyatt. I couldn't. So I... filled the bathtub... there was a hairdryer... and I... I didn't want to... l had no... leave you...." she was crying in great constricted incoherent sobs, unable to continue speaking. He clutched her tighter and with all his might fought for the self-control he knew he had to have right now, while he was with her,
'till he got to Malcolm
.

             
"But he... he pulled me out of the tub after. He did that CPR stuff. I woke up and he told me if I ever tried it again he'd kill
you.
I passed out and woke up last night alone in the room."

             
"Oh my God, you tried to
kill
yourself? He's gonna suffer, he's gonna
SUFFER
--
"
It was like a machete, in his gut, twisting.

             
Angelique realized she'd skipped over the part about becoming spirit again and collecting the information of how to escape the room and all about Malcolm's security systems, financial holdings, safe, and computer. With a huge effort she gathered herself, she had to tread lightly here, carefully. She knew she was a terrible outright liar but if she stuck to the truth, omitting what she needed to, she might pull it off.

             
"I remembered what you said, Wyatt. About how Malcolm's favorite show is
Phantom of The Opera,
how he likes to pretend he's the Phantom. I read the novel. Do you know in the novel the Phantom builds a torture chamber? I'm thinking that's probably where Malcolm got the idea. But in the novel the Phantom puts a small escape lever in his torture chamber just in case
he
ever got trapped in it. I figured... Malcolm... you know, the same--"

             
"You found an escape lever?" Johnson exploded.

             
"It was up the chimney flue. And I got out, last night, everyone was asleep and I--"

             
"Last night? Last night?
" Wyatt shouted, the battle to keep his self-control lost.

             
"I... I didn't leave right away. I went into his study and cleaned him out! I transferred his money into the Caribbean, I wrote down the account numbers, you'll have to do something about it. And I robbed everything out of his safe, it was where he kept the videos of the women he tortured. It wasn't just Lexa, Wyatt, he's been kidnapping people out of the Performance Center for years! That's the real reason he runs the place! And I stole his laptop and wrecked his computer system and I--"

             
"HOW DID YOU DO ALL THAT?"

             
There was dead silence in the car for several moments as Angelique scrabbled about in her brain for a believable explanation (i.e. a credible lie) and came up empty.

             
"After I electrocuted myself I was a spirit again for a moment and I collected the information from him," she babbled.

             
Wyatt and Johnson held their collective breaths. It wasn't possible. It was possible. It
was.
Wyatt squeezed his eyes closed for a moment. Johnson started silently crying, something he hadn't done in a decade, great tears cascading down his cheeks as he drove.

             
Angelique
was
an angel. An angel on Earth.
Their
angel.

             
Ours
the thing above in the heavens whispered.
Ours.

             
Wyatt and Johnson finally got Angelique home and the argument began. It wasn't a fair fight, neither Wyatt nor Johnson could stand up to her because she was so hurt. Bruised, burned,
damaged
. And she refused to go to a doctor until she had their promise.

             
"Wyatt," she said yet again, "I don't
want
him killed. You do that and I'm pretty sure you and I won't be going to the same place for eternity and Malcolm Cochran is not worth that. And I don't want you killing him either Johnson."

             
"We are not going to let this go, Ange," Wyatt said. "Even if it wasn't about
you
--
"