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“Oh, right,” Brad said, embarrassed. He fumbled for his wallet in his pants pocket. “Sorry, this is my first time, you know,” he mumbled as he flipped the wallet open and struggled to pull a Platinum American Express card from its sleeve. His fingers were already numb from the cold.
“There’s no need,” the Angel said, dismissing the effort with a wave of his hand. “The funds have already been transferred out of your account.”
“Oh,” Brad said. He returned the billfold to his pants pocket. “How much . . . was this?”
“One hundred thousand dollars, in addition to your monthly rate.”
Brad’s gaze drifted to where the cars had landed in the water. His M5 was already submerged, but the back end of the pickup still protruded from the surf, bobbing in the swells like a corpse.
“What about him?” Brad asked.
“Him?” the Angel asked.
“Yeah,” Brad said, and pointed to the tailgate as it slipped under the waves. “Him.”
The Angel looked at the sinking pickup as if seeing it for the first time.
“He didn’t have coverage,” he said.
Brad nodded numbly.
The headlights of an approaching ambulance swept over the scene.
“Good night, Brad,” the Angel said, and smiled.
“Good—” Brad began to reply, but trailed off as he realized the Guardian was already gone. Alone now, standing in the cold, Brad began to shake uncontrollably. The realization had only just hit him. The realization that he should be dead.
CHAPTER TWO
Maddy woke up to the drone of her alarm clock. It was early, the dawn dim and gray outside her window. She had been dreaming she was lounging on the shores of some faraway tropical beach, the ocean glittering, diamond-like, as it reached to the horizon. Maddy wanted to stay in the dream, still feel the warm sand under her feet, nothing to do but simply enjoy the sun on her face, no one to be but herself. But the sound of the alarm was unrelenting, and her eyes began to open, unwillingly.
Lifting her head, she looked out the window. There it was, like a ghost in the misty half-light—the Angel City sign. It loomed huge and silent on the hill, perfectly framed by Maddy’s bedroom window. She sighed. The final remnants of the dream faded to nothing, replaced by the reality that she was still living in Los Angeles. Still stuck in the Immortal City.
She swung her legs out of bed and tried to shake the remainder of the sleep away. Kids at school complained about first period starting at 8 a.m., but for Maddy, the day started at five. Every day. She groped for a pair of jeans off the floor and pulled a striped long-sleeved tee from her closet and changed into them. Nothing fancy, and that’s the way Maddy liked it—simple and comfortable. She didn’t have the time—or the money, for that matter—for much else. She grabbed her favorite gray lightweight hoodie before leaving the room. Then she brushed her teeth and ran a comb through her hair before heading quickly down the stairs.
The light outside was fuller now, and she could tell by the way it illuminated the haze that her uncle, Kevin, would already be plating the first orders. This was their routine and had been since Maddy’s freshman year. He would wake before Maddy and open the restaurant, taking the first orders so she could get a few more precious minutes of sleep. Then he would put on his apron and take up his position in the back as cook. It was Maddy’s responsibility to bring the orders out and work the rest of the morning shift until she had to leave for school. Like most mornings, she would be the only waitress on duty. Maddy was used to it, though. And even though it could get annoying to spend most mornings working after late nights up doing schoolwork—especially in the winter, when it was totally dark through a lot of her shift—it still made her feel good to help Kevin, to be the one he really counted on. She knew he appreciated it.
Maddy grabbed her backpack off the living room couch, which was covered in laundry, and quickly scanned the room to see if she was forgetting anything. Knickknacks and pictures lined the walls, hanging over the worn furniture and haphazard laundry-folding job Kevin had apparently started the night before and then stopped halfway through. The home was modest and could’ve stood a remodel in 1987, but it was all she had ever known—and, to be honest, all she’d ever really needed. Satisfied she wasn’t leaving anything behind, Maddy dashed out the door and down a narrow path that led from the front door through the sloping yard to the back door of Kevin’s Diner.
When she was eleven, she had tried to get her uncle to change the restaurant’s name to something more original, but Kevin was a bit of a traditionalist, and Kevin’s Diner it remained. She went in through the back door, slipped into the tiny office, and changed into her waitress uniform, which she kept in the office so she could head straight to school at the end of the shift. The uniform couldn’t be more traditional either: a simple pin-striped dress and white apron. The waitresses were theoretically supposed to wear pumps with the outfit, but most of the time Maddy managed to sneak her black Chucks past her uncle, who always seemed to look the other way.
Maddy could already smell the sharp aroma of fresh brewed coffee, sizzling bacon, and freshly poured pancakes as she emerged from the back and walked down the narrow hallway toward the kitchen. Just as she expected, Kevin was already hard at work behind the counter, plating the first three orders of the day. Maddy shoved a notepad and pen into the pocket of her dress and pulled her hair into a ponytail.
“Morning, Mads,” Kevin said, slapping butter on some whole-grain toast. “These go out to four and seven.” He indicated the plates. He was an average-looking man, if a little more weathered than most, but the lines of worry that crisscrossed his face were offset by a smile that always crackled with resilience and optimism.
“Cool,” Maddy said, yawning and deftly stacking the plates up her outstretched arm—a seasoned pro at seventeen.
“And Mads?” Kevin added. “Get yourself some coffee. On the house.” He winked. Maddy laughed sleepily, then, balancing the plates on her arms, swung out of the kitchen and into the dining room.
The dining room was like the rest of the restaurant—old and unremarkable, with fluorescent lights flickering over a scuffed black-and-white linoleum floor. The diner was laid out like an L on its side. The long part was bordered by a counter and stools on one side and cracked beige vinyl booths on the other. The booths ran along the windows that looked out to the street. The short part of the L faced back toward the house and the hill, giving those booths, like Maddy’s room, a near-perfect view of the famous Angel City sign. Maddy dropped off the orders to tables four and seven, then turned to head back for the water pitcher and coffee carafe to refill drinks.
“Excuse me, miss?” an overweight woman in one of the booths asked as Maddy passed. “Can you fix the TV?”
Maddy looked up at the ancient Magnavox propped in the corner. On the screen was nothing but rolling static, which tended to happen a lot. The woman’s cheeks were flushed, and her face wore the expectant expression of a child. “Didn’t you hear? There was a save last night in Malibu.” She emphasized the word save as if it was the most exciting, most important thing in the world.
“Oh, really?” Maddy murmured noncommittally. She placed one knee on the woman’s table and reached up, banging on the side of the set. After a moment the signal came in, and the diner filled with the sound of ANN—the Angel News Network. If it were up to Maddy, she’d rather watch anything else, but the customers always insisted on hearing the latest news about the Angels, and so ANN it was.
“A terrible accident but a dramatic save in a two-car collision in Malibu last night—and the Guardian had one of the NAS’s trial Angelcams!” announced the news anchor, her face obscured by smears of dust on the Magnavox. “We’ll have first-person, thrilling f
