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“The water, J.T.,” Mara demanded. “And I need you over here. She’s in bad shape.”
He hadn’t completed his medical degree, but his education still served him, even fifteen years after dropping out of college.
“Did she say anything?” his wife demanded as J.T. placed the metal pan of steaming water next to her.
“‘I want my momma,’” he answered her. “That was all she said.”
“Poor little angel,” she whispered, brushing the bloody, tangled hair back from the child’s face as J.T. did a quick examination.
Her arm was definitely broken, but her leg was likely fractured, too. How the child had actually walked was beyond him.
The damage to her tiny body was horrifying.
“We can’t leave her here.” The distress in Mara’s voice was more a demand. A statement of intent.
“We’re not leaving her,” he promised. “We’ll take her out with us. I have enough contacts here. I’ll hear if anyone’s searching for a missing American girl.”
That didn’t mean he’d tell Mara if he learned one was actually missing.
“Wake Tracker and Chance and finish packing,” he told her as he quickly began placing a splint on the kid’s arm. “I’ll make sure she can make the flight, then we’ll pull out. I don’t want anyone to see her when we leave. We’ll figure out who she is later.”
Mara didn’t question him, didn’t object. She jumped to her feet instead and rushed to get the boys ready to leave. The girl would have to be ready to travel, J.T. decided. They couldn’t stay here any longer; their mission was over. And if he wanted to keep the child Brutus had found wandering in the streets, then no one could know she’d ever been there.
Whoever had so carelessly lost her would just have to do without her, because she was his and Mara’s now.
She was their Angel.
ONE
Somerset, Kentucky
Twenty years later
“Angel. Angel, you’re here!” Bliss Mackay jumped up from the large towel she was lying on and ran to the young woman making her way along the grassy bank from the marina store.
She carried a pizza box and a cooler full of drinks toward Bliss and the teenagers. Beyond Angel, through the large glass window of the store, Bliss could see her parents, Chaya and Natches, watching. And Bliss could see the frown on her mother’s face and the confusion on her father’s.
Behind her, her cousins Annie, Laken, and Erin stood up from their own towels, all of them hurrying to meet the young woman at the wooden picnic table beneath the shade of a large dogwood tree.
“I have arrived,” Angel agreed, the smile that lit up her face much different than the one she always gave the adults.
It wasn’t the pizza that caused Bliss and her cousins to greet Angel so enthusiastically, though. It was Angel herself. She liked to talk about girly stuff, even though she wasn’t the least bit girly. But she could talk about fixing cars and motorcycles and show the girls how to protect themselves and fend off the sometimes too-excited boys that decided they wanted more than just a kiss.
She knew cool stuff. Like what a desert wind felt like, or the scent of a jungle and how the smell of the different blooms would only tease and make a person want to smell it more. She had been places and seen things Bliss only dreamed of going and seeing.
As Angel placed the food and drinks on the table and turned to them, Bliss threw her arms around her in a tight hug, knowing the pizza must mean Angel would be leaving, if not today then the next morning. And she couldn’t help but hold on tighter for a moment as she made herself hold back all the things she wanted to say.
“I’m going to miss you so much,” Angel whispered a second before she pulled back. She hugged the other girls and said the same thing.
Even though she said the same thing to her cousins, Bliss knew Angel meant the words more for her than the others. She knew it and couldn’t say anything because she was never certain why. It was just a truth that was there, like she and Angel were best friends all their lives, despite their eight-year age difference.
“I’m starting to hate pizza,” the youngest girl, Erin, sighed as they all sat at the table. “It always means you’re going to leave.”
“Yeah, we hate it when you leave, Angel,” Annie, older than Bliss by a few weeks, agreed as she glanced away for a moment.
“It won’t be for long,” Angel promised, but Bliss saw the sadness in her eyes. “I’ll be back.”
That didn’t mean they’d get to see her. Bliss had overheard her mother telling her father how she didn’t trust Angel. She thought Angel was hiding too many secrets.
