Not Quite an Angel (18 page)

Sameh stared at the still figure on the bed. Delilah would die before help arrived if she didn't do something. Only once, long ago, Kendra had told her the techniques for spirit recall.

You can't, Sameh Smith. You've never even mastered the basic disciplines. You're far from being an Adept. Who do you think you are to even contemplate…

There was no one else. She had to try.

She drew in a deep breath and used every ounce of energy in her own body to strengthen Delilah's aura and with her will sustain the almost invisible life force that might still linger in the older woman. She put her mouth on Delilah's and she breathed…in…out…in…out. With her mind she searched for the tenuous threads of individuality that hovered over the still form and called them back. And in another corner of her mind, she prayed hard, and at last the emergency team responded to Stella's frantic call.

The ambulance attendants allowed her to ride with Delilah on the way to Emergency, but after they'd rushed the older woman away and banished Sameh to a waiting room, she was less certain than ever that Delilah would live. Fighting back the fear and hopelessness that weighed her down, Sameh tried to figure out a course of action.

Closing her eyes, she resorted to meditation, and by the
time a haggard young doctor touched her shoulder an interminable amount of time later and told her that he thought Delilah would survive, she had the beginnings of an answer. The time had come to take positive steps. She was going to use the contingency techniques she'd been taught before she left home in an all-out effort to contact her tutors. When—she didn't allow herself to think if—when she managed that, she'd ask them for advice and practical suggestions about what should be done.

The effort it was going to take to explain the all-too-human problems Delilah was experiencing to tutors who'd grown beyond sexual desire and emotions like jealousy, fear, anger and betrayal was daunting, but she really had no choice. The fact that she was enduring every single one of those primitive emotions herself over Adam wasn't exactly helpful, either. It certainly wasn't professional. It wouldn't even be private once she made contact. Whoever received her telepathic message would know all her innermost feelings, because communicating mind to mind allowed for no secrets.

It was going to be hard, having to expose her soul. But there wasn't a thing she could do about it if she wanted to help Delilah.

 

W
HEN
S
AMEH'S TELEPATHIC
message reached the year 2500, Gamma was the one who received it, and he immediately called an emergency meeting with Alpha and Beta. Over tea, he outlined the situation, feeling a little bit smug about being the one in touch with Sameh. The females usually outmaneuvered as well as outnumbered him, so this was no small coup.

“She's done well on this trip,” he told them, his pride in Sameh obvious. “Delilah McDonell is going to survive that disturbing suicide attempt that succeeded in the alter
nate reality the computers found when I was studying the era, but she wouldn't have if Sameh hadn't been there.”

They all nodded and sipped their tea.

“The girl actually used techniques she'd only heard about in her rescue attempt. And I gather she's made gigantic strides in most of the disciplines. She's much more confident than she was when she left.” He was beaming with pride, a golden light shimmering around him. “Her natural abilities seem to have blossomed on this trip.”

Beta knew him well. “However?” she prompted. “I clearly see a however in all this, so get on with it, Gamma, or we'll be here into the next century.”

“However,” he continued, grinning at Beta's good-natured impudence, “we have a slight problem. Sameh's convinced that Delilah might try suicide again. She's very much at the mercy of her emotions just now. It has to do with the collapse of an unfortunate liaison that was barely mentioned on the history roms.” He shook his head at the slipshod reporting. “It goes to show how much of what really occurs becomes lost when historians make judgment calls on what or what not to include. This Wallace person, although important to Delilah, seems to be an unevolved soul. In fact, in his nineties incarnation, he sounds like a total jerk.” This term hadn't been in use for centuries. Sameh had used it to describe Wallace, and Gamma found it very satisfying. Sameh would be a mindmine of information about slang usage when she returned.

“Total jerk?” Alpha looked puzzled and Beta shook her head and rolled her eyes. Gamma cleared his throat and continued.

“Our problem is that Sameh's due to come back soon, and Delilah isn't in a good mental state at all. Even the use of psychic surgery for emotional upheaval wasn't discovered until the early two thousands, you remember, and aura
manipulation came even later than that, so Delilah will have to rely on their primitive psychiatry to help her over this trauma.” Gamma frowned at the thought and the other two shook their heads.

“The two people she was closest to have betrayed her, and she's lost sight of her true purpose in her present lifetime, which, as we know, was to stimulate the world into full acceptance of the New Age.” It was a daunting problem, and they were all silent. Blue mist filled the room as they considered it from all angles.

“Sounds as if the poor woman needs a holiday,” Alpha finally remarked.

Beta snapped her fingers. A rainbow of sparks shot from her aura. “That's it,” she crowed. “Brilliant, dear Alpha. We'll bring Delilah here for a holiday. Sameh can travel with her, to ease the shock. Don't you think that's a splendid idea, Gamma?”

Gamma thought it over. It wasn't a bad concept at all. Many of the nineties populace would be far too unevolved to accept a holiday like this one, but Delilah was an exception. Once she snapped out of her depression—and a few good shots of positive energy from the tutors would probably take care of that—she would begin to appreciate the value of the work she was doing back there, because she'd be able to see the end result.

“Well, Gamma?” The other two were giving him the amused looks they always did when he wandered off this way.

“I agree,” he said emphatically. “And we ought to do it quickly, before Delilah gets a chance to try any more destructive behavior. What do you think, Alpha?”

Alpha thought it was the perfect solution—after all, it had almost been her idea in the first place. “Can the techies
manage to transport two instead of one, though? You know how clumsy they can be.”

“They're constantly looking for new challenges,” Beta remarked. “This should occupy them at least for an afternoon. I'll get a probable schedule from them, and then you'll contact Sameh and have her standing by for immediate conveyance, right, Gamma?”

Right. It was good. It was all but done. He couldn't wait to meet the McDonell woman in person. What a stroke of luck for a researcher.

As for Sameh, he'd get in touch with Kendra, and together they'd figure out how best to help her with this Adam Hawkins complication. The fact that the child was so much in love and lust with an old comrade of his, an early and therefore rather savage incarnation of a dear friend he'd shared many lifetimes with, was private and privileged information, and there was no real need to go into details about it with the other tutors. He and Kendra would have to do some deep meditating on how best to solve the problem of Adam Hawkins.

He was inordinately fond of Sameh. He'd been delighted that his former self, in the body of one Bernie Methot, had been around to extend a protective and friendly hand to her back there in the nineties. He felt grateful to old Bernie for his help, and of course he and Kendra would somehow try to repay the favor.

 

W
HEN THE TIME CAME
to leave, Sameh found she couldn't go without saying goodbye to Adam.

The message from Gamma had arrived late in the evening. She and Delilah would be leaving at dawn the next morning; it was the time of day when the barriers were the least formidable. Delilah was asleep in her room, heavily
sedated. The private night nurse was with her, and would stay until dawn.

Sameh had finished writing her difficult goodbye letters, to Frances and Bernie, to Corey and Kate, even though they wouldn't understand, to Troy and Cougar, even though they might not ever receive them, and to Janice.

She tore up three to Adam before she made up her mind. Her heart beating as though it might explode, Sameh phoned for a cab and was soon on her way to the beach house.

On the route to the freeway, the taxi wound through the streets of the city she'd explored with him, the city he loved. All the way out to the beach, she kept wondering if she was making a terrible mistake by going to him. What if he had a woman with him? The idea made her both nauseous and infuriated, but it was certainly possible. She tried, with her inner eye, to see if he was alone, but as so often happened with Adam, her psychic abilities had deserted her.

What if he was alone and still didn't want anything to do with her? She'd zapped him pretty good the last time she was with him. She planned a formal little goodbye speech that wouldn't require much of an answer. She wouldn't go into the house; she just wanted to see him for a moment, she told herself, to carry one last memory of him back to where she was going. Where he wouldn't be.

What if he wasn't even home? What if… The cab pulled up outside Adam's house. A light was on inside. Apprehension made her drop the driver's fare three times before it finally landed in his outstretched hand. Jupiter, she was nervous. “Would you wait, please?” Her legs trembled so much that she could hardly climb the few steps up to the door. She stumbled at the top and barely regained her balance by grabbing at the doorknob.

She wasn't sure if Adam heard the noise she made or if he simply opened the door to go out, but suddenly his tall
frame filled the opening, the light behind him blinding her to the expression on his face. “Sameh?” His tone resounded with disbelief. “Sameh, what the hell are you doing here?”

“I came to—” She was going to tell him she was leaving in the morning, and say a formal goodbye, but the words wouldn't come. Instead she looked up at him, and the truth slipped out. “I came to tell you that I love you, Adam Hawkins,” she said, and the words filled her with the most intense pleasure.

“Sameh.” A low groan escaped from his throat, and then his arms were around her and he was lifting her off her feet. She started to say more, to explain why she'd come, but he bent his head and his lips covered hers, smothering her words with a frantic kiss that went on and on, until finally a horn honked behind them. The cabdriver stuck his head out and hollered, “Hey, lady, I hate to interrupt, but are you sure you still want me to wait?” Sameh looked at him, dazed and disoriented. Adam gave him an impatient, dismissive wave and then drew her into the house and shut the door.

“Adam, I—”

“Don't talk. For God's sake, don't talk.” He held her tightly against him and put two fingers across her lips. She could smell his skin, taste its slight saltiness on her lips. She could feel his strong arms trembling as they enfolded her. “Don't say a single word, Sameh. It's only when we talk that things get out of whack.” His head dipped, and he claimed her lips again, his kiss hungry and intense.

“Sameh. My darling, beautiful Sameh.” His lips were pressed against her ear. “I love you, you know that. I'm an idiot for hurting you. I'm sorry.”

She nodded against his jaw. She knew. She knew too that she should tell him right now that she was leaving, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. “Adam?”

He was nuzzling her neck, pressing kisses against the hollow of her throat, whispering his love in broken phrases, holding her as if he never intended to let her out of his embrace again. It broke her heart. Time was slipping away; all the precious moments she had left with him were speeding past.

“Adam, take me to your bed. Please.” With her body, with her soul, with the complex language of physical love that they'd taught each other so well, she would say goodbye.

A
DAM STIRRED
just before dawn, still drugged by the warm and delicious aftermath of passion, and in his sleep he reached out to hold Sameh, the way he'd been holding her all night.

She was gone. The pillow beside him was cold. Alarmed, he came fully awake and staggered out of bed to see if she was in the bathroom or the kitchen. The light over the stove was on. A note stood propped against the toaster, and the moment he saw it, he knew.

The paper was tearstained.

She'd tried to make him some coffee before she left. The machine was still making gurgling sounds. Grounds were spilled in the sink and the filter wasn't in properly. Water was dripping out the bottom and trickling slowly down to form a growing puddle on the tile at his feet.

He picked up the note and crumpled it savagely in his fist and threw it hard against the wall, wanting to smash something, to destroy something, because the unbearable pain inside felt as if it was about to destroy
him.

 

T
WO MONTHS PASSED
. Adam went to work because he couldn't figure out what else to do to fill the daylight hours, or how to vent the confused mixture of anger and loneliness churning inside him.

Janice and Bernie at first tried to sympathize with him about Sameh, but when he consistently met their stumbling efforts with stony silence, they finally gave up.

Bernie and Frances invited him over repeatedly. He refused, polite and remote. He couldn't bear to see Corey and Kate, and remember a lovely, clumsy woman singing them lullabies.

Janice asked him for advice on the courses she was taking in criminology. He answered only her direct questions and volunteered nothing more.

The first couple of weeks, he'd gone home and methodically drunk his way into oblivion, but the next morning's hangover, combined with overwhelming feelings of hopelessness and loss, became more than he could bear, and finally he gave up on liquor.

He tried women next. He phoned a redhead he knew, an obliging, lush widow who liked to cook candlelight dinners and serve sex for dessert. He drank her expensive Scotch and ate his way through beef Wellington and Caesar salad. Sipping cognac as she led the way to her bedroom, he did his best not to think of Sameh. The redhead was naked except for a triangle of thong panty and a filmy bra when he realized he didn't have an erection, and he wasn't going to have one anytime soon. He felt as if he was betraying Sameh and everything she'd taught him by even being there,
and shame scorched him. He mumbled a string of feeble excuses, pulled on his pants and hurried away.

He didn't try women again. Instead he joined a gym. He drove to it after work and spent two solid hours training with mindless determination. He drove home, still in his gym gear, and ran along the beach until he was finally exhausted enough to stop, grab a bite and then sleep a few hours.

He'd just arrived back from one of those marathon runs on a stormy Wednesday evening a few weeks before Christmas when the phone rang. He avoided calls now, allowing his machine to pick up and ignoring requests to call back. He listened dispassionately, toweling off sweat as the machine recorded yet another message.

“Adam Hawkins, this is Detective Mike Lopez, San Diego Police Department, Juvenile Division. We have two boys in detention here who insist they know you. Their names are Troy Cavanaugh and Victor Gascon, better known as Cougar. Call me at 555-4600. I'll be here till ten tonight.”

Troy and Cougar, obviously in trouble. Well, they were on their own. He had no intention of ever getting mixed up with those two delinquents again. He'd taken them in because of Sameh, he reminded himself. He and Bernie had both gone out on a limb to get them into a decent place, and they'd done their vanishing act, leaving him with a whole lot of explaining to do. To hell with them.

Adam went into the bathroom, pulled off his shorts and shirt and stood under the shower spray a long time. He fought against memories, but they flickered through his mind unbidden.

Myles, driving all night to pick him up the third time he'd run away from the academy.

Sameh, exhausted and sweaty, asking him to try just one
more street, one more hangout, one more alley, in case the boys were there.

Myles, standing beside Adam's wheelchair at the veterans' hospital, telling him he was taking him home.

A letter in Sameh's handwriting, sent to the office and addressed to Troy and Cougar.

Cursing, Adam roughly dried himself, pulled on sweat-pants, picked up the phone and stabbed in the numbers. “Detective Lopez, this is Adam Hawkins.”

 

I
T TOOK AN HOUR
and a half to reach downtown San Diego, another twenty minutes to locate the juvenile detention center where the boys were being held.

“They were picked up for shoplifting, boosting candy bars and bread out of a convenience store,” Lopez told Adam. “If you pay the fine and take responsibility for them, I think the owner'll waive charges. They didn't have any weapons or drugs on them, and they're not members of any gang that we know of. Not yet, anyway,” he added with a tired sigh. “It's only a matter of time before they get recruited, though, and then they're headed for big trouble.”

Adam had to visit a bank machine, hand over a substantial amount of cash, and slash his signature across innumerable forms promising God alone knew what before Troy and Cougar were at last released into his custody. They were filthy, their clothing ragged, and they were trying to hide how really frightened they were behind a thin veneer of bravado, but the look in their eyes and their trembling gave them away.

The first thing Troy said after Adam loaded them into the car was “So, man, where's Sameh? Why didn't she come with you?”

The blatant need in the boy's voice struck a raw nerve. Adam didn't answer. He couldn't bring himself to talk about
Sameh to anyone. He rolled the windows down—the two of them smelled disgusting—and he turned on the car radio and let music fill the silence, all the while telling himself how furious he was at them for putting him through this, how furious he was at himself for letting them do it.

“Are you gonna take us home, Adam? To your house again, I mean.” Cougar's voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “I mean, like, your portable stereo and all the CDs got stolen, man, and we sold all that booze we took. I lost that knife of yours—we were getting chased by the cops one night and we jumped a fence and it fell outa my pocket. Man, you gotta be nuts to take us home with you again, right?”

“You got it, in spades,” Adam snarled. He deftly negotiated the late-night traffic and took the most likely route to the freeway. “I'm a goddamn certifiable lunatic to have anything to do with you two again. There's just one thing I want to know, and after that the both of you shut up and stay shut up till we get back.” He spaced the words out. “Why—did—you—run—away? What the hell were you running away from, for God's sake? You had jobs, a place to stay, the chance at some training. Why did you run?”

Neither boy seemed to have an answer. After a long, charged silence, Troy sighed and leaned forward from the back seat, resting his arms near Adam's shoulder. “Like, it was just too good, man. We just got scared, 'cause it was way too good.”

Adam thought of Sameh, of the night he'd been so afraid of her leaving him he'd said things he knew would drive her away, and he knew what Troy was talking about. He had to force himself not to think of her. The boys' presence made it marginally easier. “You guys hungry?”

“We're starving.”

He pulled off at the next exit and headed for a fast-food outlet.

 

M
ORE MONTHS PASSED
. Cougar and Troy stayed with Adam during the long interval it took to get them reaccepted at Phoenix Ranch, and during the time they were with him, he found he was finally able to talk about Sameh.

The letter she'd written them had promised he'd explain all about her, and in a halting monologue, waiting for their hoots of derision, he related exactly what she'd told him about herself, where she'd come from and returned to, and why. He found they accepted what he said without a second of doubt.

They asked a lot of questions, intelligent questions that he sometimes had trouble answering, and in their way, they mourned her leaving just as he did, but they didn't disbelieve any part of her story. Adam remembered his own disbelief and was ashamed.

“You loved her, huh?”

Adam nodded. “I still do. I always will.”

“Well, maybe she'll come back,” Troy said.

Adam shook his head, but Cougar nodded. “Sure she will. She done it once, she can do it again,” he stated with the perfect faith of the young.

After that, they came to trust him enough to talk about what their lives had been like on the street.

With a casualness that sickened him, they discussed the incest and physical abuse they'd endured before they finally ran from the parents who were supposed to love and protect them. They told stories of their friends on the street, children who chose street prostitution over sexual abuse at home, who became involved with drugs and pimps and murder. They talked about young people who banded together in street families. It was clear to Adam that these “families”
of abused, lost children were trying to care for one another with far too few resources to help them.

He thought of his own mother often, and, not for the first time, wondered what influences had made her choose a life of prostitution. He searched his early memories for any mention Gina might have made of her family, of a mother or a father. As far as he could remember, she'd never once mentioned any relative, and he wondered why. What nightmares had she concealed behind the beautiful face, the loving smile she'd always had for him? He wished that she'd lived, because now he knew that they could have been friends as well as mother and son.

And always, day and night, Sameh's memory stayed with him. Her face was stamped on his inner eye with indelible detail, her voice echoed in his ears, and the remembered sound of her irrepressible giggle brought a sad smile to his lips.

“The hope for the future lies with the children,” she'd repeated so often.

After Troy and Cougar had been safely settled at Phoenix Ranch, Adam found himself cruising the streets of downtown L.A., watching the street kids and wondering what future there could possibly be for them. A few more months passed before he took action.

Celebrity security had made him familiar with many of Hollywood's influential people. Wrestling with his own distaste for publicity, he began to use his contacts in efforts to raise money for shelters, counselors and training programs that would get more kids like Troy and Cougar off the street. Janice soon became involved; she was the one who named the organization the Samaritan Foundation.

 

W
ITHOUT ANY CONSCIOUS
effort, an internal clock in Adam's head kept track of how many days, how many
months, and finally, as the seasons came and went and came again, how many years had passed since Sameh had gone away. It was October, and the total was two years, three weeks, four days.

It was Saturday, and he had a benefit to attend that evening. Blue Knights was doing security for a fund-raising dinner. Some of Hollywood's most famous stars would be there, and a healthy portion of the money raised would go to the Samaritan Foundation. Adam planned to make a short speech on behalf of the foundation, outlining what they'd accomplished in the past few months. Bernie had begun kidding him about needing Blue Knights bodyguards himself, he was becoming so well-known. Adam still hated doing anything of a public nature, but he'd gradually become more at ease in his role as spokesperson for the organization.

He'd shopped for groceries that morning, changed the sheets, washed a couple of loads of clothes, picked up his tux from the cleaners and bought a birthday present for Troy's sixteenth birthday. He got him a mountain bike, something that Troy had been hinting at for weeks. Adam had promised him a car at the end of the semester if his marks stayed as high as they'd been all year. Both boys already knew how to drive; Adam had taught them himself, getting his first gray hairs in the process.

He liked to get the chores out of the way so that Sunday was clear to spend with Cougar and Troy. He'd bought a sailboat a few months ago, and the three of them were learning how to sail. The boys had filled a huge, empty space in his life, all too often with hair-raising emergencies, but also with laughter and energy and youthful exuberance.

And love. How the hell had he come to love a couple of gawky teens so much, anyhow?

At noon, he made himself a thick ham and cheese sandwich, generously smearing on mayo and mustard, the way
he liked it. He took it and a beer out to the deck, looking through the haze to watch the waves licking the shore. A man and woman stood locked together at the edge of the water, his arms crossed on her back, hers twined around his neck. They weren't kissing, but they looked as if they either just had been or would begin at any moment.

Adam watched for a moment, a nostalgic ache in his throat as he remembered how it had felt to hold Sameh that way. Would it ever go away, this soul-deep, endless longing for her?

He bit into his sandwich and took a slug of beer. It amazed him sometimes to realize he'd been as celibate as a monk since she'd left. It was getting tougher as the months passed, though. He was, after all, not a monk, and he supposed that as time went by, sooner or later he'd find some pretty lady or other who made interesting conversation and make an effort to get to know her. So far, it hadn't happened.