Free Angel Face by Stephen Solomita

children.’
    â€˜Say again?’
    â€˜We were both in Ricky Ditto’s house because his family was somewhere else. We were there to take advantage of that fact in order to advance our individual interests. Myself, I’d never kill a man in front of his family, and I assume you apply the same principle to your own work.’
    â€˜Actually, one guy snuck me down in the basement while his wife was upstairs. He had this fantasy about a sex slave . . .’ Angel stops when Carter begins to laugh. So far, so good. ‘You said something about more coffee.’
    â€˜Sure, you want another Danish?’
    â€˜No, too sweet for me. Just the coffee. I have the feeling it’s gonna be a long night.’ Angel’s further encouraged when Carter’s eyes narrow just the tiniest bit. As men go, he’s a difficult read, but lust is lust and men have a hard time concealing their desire. He wants her. She can work with that.
    Angel leans back and stares down at the table. There’s an imprint on the tabletop of the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock in a rowboat. The man stepping on to the shore has blond hair and a pointy little beard. He carries a staff in his hand, a staff topped with a Christian cross. Just in case any lurking savages should misunderstand his intentions.
    â€˜You have to protect me.’ Angel runs a finger over the cross as she remembers one of the maxims placed before her at a seminar entitled ‘Reach Out: Life Is For The Taking.’ The race, Dr Maureen Lippcott had insisted, does not go to the swift or the strong. The race goes to the nimble. Conditions change. Adjust or die.
    OK, so the dying part was a bit overdramatic. But you can’t control everything. That was the lesson. Just a few weeks ago, she’d read a story in the paper about a man – she can’t remember his name – who’d once been in the mortgage writing business. His company went bankrupt after the market crashed, but he’d read the cards before they hit the table. Within a few months, he opened a company that negotiates with banks on behalf of mortgage holders in default.
    â€˜You can’t leave me to wander the streets,’ she says.
    â€˜Don’t you have any friends?’
    Actually, Angel isn’t that close to anyone, which is another part of being nimble. You have to be prepared to move on, at least until you reach your final goal. ‘First of all, the girls I know are in the same business I am. Second, what’s-his-face, that gangster, has Pierre’s hard drive. So what I should really do is warn my friends, not visit them. Hey, weren’t you listening the first time? Those gangsters came to get me and ran into you. That means we’re joined together in their minds. That means they’ll be looking for me harder than ever.’
    Angel’s encouraged by Carter’s nod. He’s not disputing the facts. But there’s something she’s not telling him. Almost from the time she became a woman, Angel’s been attracted to bad boys. Her first lover, the last time she heard, was doing fifteen years in a federal pen for bank robbery and kidnapping. Angel’s always considered this attraction to be a character flaw, one certain, if indulged, to negatively impact her life plan. But now she’s sitting across from the baddest bad boy in New York and she’s got nowhere to go.
    â€˜You have to protect me,’ she declares. ‘You can’t wash your hands and walk away.’
    Carter stares down at his sticky fingers, then wets his napkin and wipes them off. ‘You want me to take you home?’
    â€˜I . . .’ Angel shrugs, then says, ‘Yes, you have to. Otherwise, I have no chance.’
    â€˜Sure you have a chance. You can go to your apartment right now, pack a few bags and take off.’
    â€˜What if they’re waiting for me?’
    â€˜If a chance was certainty, they