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Noel Aquino sipped his coffee, anxious for the caffeine to kick in and beat back the urge to sleep as he waited for Captain Ramirez. The utter exhaustion of working long hours and shadowing Angela Barrett with every spare moment was apparently enough to overcome the nervousness he should be feeling at what he was to face in less than four hours. He didn't know if he'd ever be ready to be on a radio talk show, though Ramirez had promised to prepare him beforehand. He still couldn't believe the chief had agreed to this stunt -- apparently councilman Trimble and the QuickMart robbers' lawyer were stirring up a lot of trouble for the department. Ramirez had said something about the budget coming up for discussion next month, and rumors of severe cutbacks under the guise of a new council-mandated efficiency program...
Noel turned on the radio while waiting for the coffee to take effect.
"...and later this morning on the Raymond Rocket show, Ray will have Detective Noel Aquino and Captain Robert Ramirez from the Oak Valley Police Department here to talk about crime prevention and the challenges facing today's law enforcement including the recent rise in vigilanteism. As you know, Detective Aquino heroically stopped an armed robbery of a QuickMart early yesterday morning, while off-duty picking up donuts for the office -- the same QuickMart where a few weeks ago another robbery was stopped by a vigilante some have called 'the avenging angel.' The alleged holdup duo from the first attempted robbery made the fantastic claim of having been attacked by an angel from heaven as the holdup was in progress, an unbelieveable story nonetheless corroborated by the cashier of the ill-fated convenience store and a nearby witness. As a result of that attack, councilman Mike Trimble has called for an investigation of the Police Department, accusing them of Selective Justice and tacit encouragement of vigilanteism through inadequate law enforcement. We're told Captain Ramirez has a statement answering councilman Trimble's allegations, and that Detective Aquino has just been assigned to investigate this and several other recent incidents of vigilante attacks which the Police have attributed to the same young woman. You'll want to be listening to hear the Detective's thoughts on what it's like to be chasing an angel, and on whether it could be the fresh donuts at this particular QuickMart that are attracting so much attention in this usually-quiet neighborhood. That's this morning at 8, on the Raymond Rocket show here on The Blast, KBST, 98.3, San Pedrona, Oak Valley, Irving. Stay tuned for your valleywide weather forecast after the break."
Noel wondered if his son knew what was happening. He hadn't really spoken to Ricky since The Incident, and that was... two days? three days? more? It was hard to keep track of the days when you didn't sleep... couldn't sleep, lest the dark and seductive images play over in his mind... Angela, the tease; Angela, the seductress; Angela, the slut; Angela, the demon of his desire... The only way to protect his son was to sacrifice himself, surrender to temptation, to take her before she could take his son. To kiss those supple lips, to entangle her tongue with his, to wrap up her dangerous curves in his strong arms, to shield those perfect breasts with his chest, to grip the firm globes of her ass in his experienced hands, to feel her slender legs snaked around his waist, to enter her in one savage thrust...
A sharp rapping on the window. Aquino awoke with a start, spilling a few drops of hot coffee in his lap. It was Ramirez. "Open up, we gotta get going."
"No! Don't go!" Angela awoke with a start. A nightmare. Ricky had been driving away in a car... No wait, there was really a car outside; that was odd. It was... 4:30 in the morning. The guy who delivered newspapers didn't make his round for another hour. She got up and went to the kitchen, her satin babydoll nightie swishing across her smooth skin. Looking out the window she saw a car stopped in front of her driveway. Angela tiptoed quickly to the front door, peering through the peephole just as a shadowy figure was retreating from the porch. Her heart skipped a beat as a name she hadn't thought about in a week leapt into her conciousness -- had Scott found her? Or the people he'd warned her about? Thoughts she'd dismissed as paranoid suddenly regained frightening possibility; Angela recoiled from the door. What to do? Get her sapphires! Defend herself!
The panicked teen rushed back to her room, diving over the bed to retrieve her Sapphire bag from under the far side of the bed. No time to change into uniform now, just get the gems on! Her trembling fingers struggled with the clasps on her bracelets as her feet searched on the floor and toes worked under the mesh straps of her stiletto slippers. The tiara jammed into the tousled locks atop her head; she nodded once to make sure it was secure. Angela pulled her drapes open a crack, holding her breath as she peered out into the dim orange glow of the streetlights. No motion that she could see; her ears strained to hear anything outside, but only the hum of her old clock radio greeted them.
Angela crept back down the hall to the front door, her sapphires casting a faint blue glow around her. Her senses tingled, her heart pounded. Were they already in the house? A soft creak was heard behind her; she spun around, knees bent and arms cocked in a defensive position, her satin babydoll briefly taking wing before settling down around her waist again. Her limbs quivered with frightened excitement; she'd never considered the possibility that she might face hostiles in her own house! Her mind raced through the possibilities. There wasn't much room to maneuver; she had to make sure they didn't get too close. After a moment spent staring into the darkness in the direction of her mom's room where she heard only gentle breathing, she turned back toward the front of the house.
Her body was hyper-sensitive; every sound amplified, every shadow suspicious, every movement dizzying. It wasn't until she again reached the front door, her stilettos tick-tacking on the linoleum, that she realized she was panting. She struggled to calm herself down as she peered out the peephole. No one. Just something on the porch. What could it be? Some kind of boobytrap? Well, she couldn't just go out the front door -- too many places for people to hide. Her mom had been meaning to get rid of those shrubs, but she never got around to it... No, she'd have to check things out from a safe vantage point first. The safest way out of the house would be the sliding glass door out back -- the way she always left as Sapphire.
Angela turned to retreat back down the hall; the click of her heels against the tile entry sounded like blasting caps to the adrenaline-charged girl. She froze after two steps; she didn't want to give away her movements. Taking two deliberate steps back to the door onto the doormat to announce herself at the door, she quickly reached down and removed her jeweled slippers; holding them in one hand she tiptoed down the hallway toward the living room.
The cold tile on her bare feet gave rise to a feeling of helplessness; she felt naked without her sapphire shoes. (Had she noticed her reflection in the hall mirror, she would have seen the feeling wasn't far from the truth. The satin babydoll showed a lot of cleavage and barely reached her hips; the matching panties rode up, exposing much of her firm backside as it flexed with each step.) By the time she reached the carpeted living room panic had taken over; she was in such a hurry to get the shoes back on her feet that she nearly fell over, plopping down ungracefully on the arm of the couch. Her hand found the back of the couch, keeping her from sliding over the couch arm and landing face-first on the seat cushions. Angela felt her breasts strain against the cups of the babydoll; the side seams split more than an inch down from the top. She rolled off the couch back onto her feet, ironically feeling more secure perched atop the awkwardly-high heels.
A careful peek past the window curtain revealed an empty back yard; if anyone was lying in wait, they would be too far away to grab her. Angela took a moment to get ready, then snicked the lock, slid the door, pushed past the curtain and stepped outside. Her legs flexed, her sapphires answered the call with a brief flicker, and an instant later she was perched on the roof.
With her ascent to the roof, panic subsided, replaced by controlled excitement. Now Sapphire had the advantage. She scanned the featureless back yard for signs of odd shapes or movement; nothing. Good. She was about to hop up over the house to the front when she remembered the open glass door. Shoot, if I leave it open someone might sneak inside. Well, I better check to make sure nobody's sneaking around...
Sapphire rose up in the air fifteen feet -- high enough that prowlers close to the back or side of the house wouldn't notice her, but low enough that anyone out front couldn't see her above the house -- and floated toward the back fence, turning 180 to face the house. She stood perched like a bird on one foot on the top of the wooden fence. No one crawling about under the eaves in back... (she hopped/floated to the left) No one on this side... (she floated to the right) No one on this side either. Good. Sapphire arced back to the peak of the roof, landing in a crouch. A hard look up and down the street revealed no activity. The only sound was the spray of automatic sprinklers from the Johnsons' across the street and the hum of the sodium streetlamp.
She tiptoed down the slope of the roof carefully, her sapphires making the impossible simple. No sign of activity in the front yard, either. Maybe she *was* being paranoid. Maybe Scott hadn't found her after all. Still, better safe than sorry. There was still the mysterious object someone had left on the porch. Nobody ordinary delivered at this hour.
Legs flexed and kicked; Sapphire launched herself into a high arc toward the sidewalk; arms held out wide for balance, she slowed her descent and touched down ever so softly on the edge of the front lawn, just at the edge of the streetlamp's glow, facing the front of the house.
There was no one here.
Quick but cautious steps took Sapphire up to her porch, her gaze all the while shifting back and forth among the shrubs and shadows in the yard.
The object on the porch was a rolled-up paper grocery sack. She knelt down and unrolled the top, reaching a hand inside. Clothes. Cotton, denim. And paper beneath them. Angela peered inside the bag, the soft blue glow of her wrist sapphire providing just enough light to identify the familiar contents. The clothes she'd worn to Ricky's. Why was he dropping them off in the middle of the night? Her heart leapt to her throat. It didn't mean... The paper underneath her clothes had markings on it; her fingers frantically grabbed at it, practically ripping it out of the bag, straightening it out and holding it with two hands to see it by the light of her sapphires.
It was a sketch of someone's face. Her face. And yet not her face. It was more beautiful and happier than she now felt. The image looked pure and chaste, an impossible contrast to the way she'd behaved...
She flipped the paper over. On the other side, just three words:
I'm so sorry
Angela felt as if her heart had fallen right out of her. Ricky!
She grabbed the bag and ran down to the sidewalk. She looked pleadingly up and down the street, hoping against hope that somehow his car would be there, that she could run to him, apologize, somehow take back the bad things she'd done, somehow make him see that she wasn't like that...
...and yet she was standing in the street wearing almost nothing. She *was* like that. The only friend she'd had left, and the first person she might have had feelings for... and she'd scared him off, made him think she was some kind of nympho, a cheap tart who was only interested in sex... she had no idea how much he meant to her until now. Now that he was gone. He'd seen who she really was, who the sapphires had made her become, and... and... *this*...
Tears flowed freely down Angela's face. Ricky had been the one boy... man who always treated her with respect. The man who saw her as she wanted to be. And she took his faith in her and threw it in his face. Flaunted her true self in front of him. Shattered his image of her.
There we no illusions now. Angela had only Sapphire.
The bag fell to the sidewalk as a lost lonely little girl floated gently away.
"...and later this morning on the Raymond Rocket show, Ray will have Detective Noel Aquino and Captain Robert Ramirez from the Oak Valley Police Department here to talk about crime prevention and the challenges facing today's law enforcement including the recent rise in vigilanteism. As you know, Detective Aquino heroically stopped an armed robbery of a QuickMart early yesterday morning, while off-duty picking up donuts for the office -- "
Ricky snapped off the car's radio.
If Ricky were speaking to his father he might have congratulated him. As it was he was having difficulty balancing the hero image of the QuickMart story with the indignant, judgemental, puritain tyrant who'd chased Angela out of his life. It wasn't right. He was just starting to really get to know her... or so he'd thought until she'd done... *that*... on his bed. He dreamed about it at night, even as he questioned his own motivations for wanting to be with her.
But no matter how much he questioned his father's reaction, he wasn't about to defy him. Not just to see a girl he didn't even know anymore. Maybe what his father had said was right -- the fantasy was better than the reality. "Girls like that will get you in trouble, Rick."
Yeah, the fantasy was probably better than reality. In his fantasy, Angela was his sweetheart. Shy and innocent, unaware of her own beauty, she was attentive, caring, supporting of his work, and loved to spend time with him.
And by night, she became Sapphire, Guardian Angel of the Greater Oak Valley Area. Superheroine extraordinare. Sexy, Strong, Smart... but still emotionally vulnerable, and not invincible. She would need someone to watch out for her, help her, support her. And he could chronicle her adventures in his comic books...
In reality, Angela's display scared him -- maybe she was a party girl, always getting in trouble; maybe she used drugs? Or maybe she was a dominatrix or some kind of sexual freak, a predator ready to drag him into a world of deviant and dangerous behavior...
Yeah, the fantasy was definitely better than the reality. Angela his girlfriend, Angela as Sapphire, Sapphire a superheroine! Even if it was ridiculous.
Then again, in reality he'd had a beautiful almost-naked girl doing unspeakable things to herself while he watched. As dirty as it made him feel, or as low as he might now regard Angela, or as scary as it seemed in its now-defunct implications, a part of him couldn't help but find it very appealing.
Ricky gathered his resolve. Maybe his father was right. Angela wasn't the right girl for him. As hard as it was (in more ways than one), he had to break off the relationship. He couldn't see her or talk to her anymore. He had to forget her, or he might even get obsessed.
Ricky pulled up to the house, stomping down the emergency brake and putting the transmission in park. The motor kept running as the young man grabbed a paper grocery bag on the seat next to him and got out. Quiet footsteps made their way to the doorstep. The bag dropped. And a young man hurried back to his car even as a rush of regret leadened his heart.
The soft beep of the motion sensor woke him from his nap. He looked out the van's back window, through the peeled-up corner of the dark tinting.
There it was again; the kid in the Mercury. Probably her boyfriend. He suppressed a jealous thought. He had no right to be jealous; after all, he'd turned her life upside-down and abandoned her.
What was her boyfriend doing here at 4:30 in the morning? He didn't think she was the type for a booty call. Maybe it was the boy's father; he'd been past here in the same car twice yesterday. Was Dear Old Dad the suspicious type?
The headlights switched off as the car turned the corner. He struggled to focus the binoculars on the driver but couldn't focus quickly enough. He moved to the side window.
The car stopped halfway in the driveway. The driver got out; it was the kid. He left the car running. Was he picking her up?
The kid was carrying a bag. Paper grocery sack with the top rolled closed. The kid headed up to the porch; a moment later he came hustling back to the car without the bag. The car lurched back out of the driveway, then briefly squealed a back tire as it hurried off.
Binoculars focused on the house. He could see her bedroom window to the right, but the front porch was blocked by the garage. No lights, no activity. Apparently she hadn't heard the car.
He picked up his digital camera and switched it to infrared, zooming in on the house. He couldn't zoom as close as the binoculars, but the infrared mode picked out things beyond the glare of the streetlamp and the neighbors' security light better than his own eyes did. He stared for several minutes; might as well, now that he was up. The camera panned up and down the block, checking the neighbors' houses. Nobody else was up either. Oh well. Might as well catch a few winks...
Waitaminute, what was that? The camera caught movement next to her house. No, not next to, on top of! It's a person... no, a woman... no, it's her! What's she doing on the roof? He snapped off a few shots as he watched her tiptoe down the pitch of the roof to the front of the house...
He grabbed the binoculars. Where'd she go? He scanned the rooftop; she was gone. Wait, there, in the front yard, visible at the edge of the streetlamp's sodium glow. What's she wearing? Looks like some kind of frilly camisole. Babydoll, his mental lingerie catalog corrected. And high-heeled slippers. So much for being shy... She looked stunning. Sexy. How'd she get down on the lawn so fast? She was looking around nervously, like she was trying to spot a burglar hiding behind the shrubs in her yard. Now she was walking up to the porch. She disappeared from view.
Moments later she came running as best she could manage in the little skyscraper slippers down to the sidewalk, looking up the street one way, then the other.
Oh shit, she was looking right at him! No, wait, she was just looking for her boyfriend's car.
He took the opportunity to get a good look as she stood there motionless for a long time. Through the binoculars he recognized the shoes -- the sapphires were on them. Oh, if she had any idea how much trouble those stones were she wouldn't be wearing them out on the street like that! His gaze crept up the girl's curves -- if she had any idea how brief that negligee was she wouldn't be standing under the streetlight like that... God, she was beautiful, even in the harsh orange overhead glow of a sodium streetlamp. The binoculars continued their rise up her form. She clutched the paper bag in both hands, holding it close to her body, just under her breasts, which threatened to fall out of the low-cut garment; she seemed to be shaking, bobbing slowly up and down. Finally he saw her face.
She was crying.
Tears streamed down her face; her mouth creased into an open frown, her lips quivering. She sobbed uncontrollably, her body pitching in emotional agony.
It hurt for him to see her like this.
He put the binoculars down, drawing away from the side window.
His hand found the handle to the back door. Fingers gripped it tightly before he even realized what he was doing. He stopped himself. He wanted to throw open the door, run to her. Take her up in his arms and hold her. Soothe away her pain. Despite his years he remembered all too well the crushing weight of young heartbreak. He wanted to protect her.
But I can't.
Isn't that why you're here? a voice within him asked. To protect her?
Yes, but now is not the time. I can't come charging up to her like some stalker. She'll scream, she'll run, the neighbors will see, I'll never get a chance to explain myself.
If only things hadn't gone so bad... he'd thought he had everything under control. Thought he'd get away with it. Or something. Now he didn't know what he'd been thinking. Or what he was going to do now that he was here, exactly.
He looked out the side window again, but she was gone. The paper bag lay on its side, haloed by the glow of the streetlamp, a lonely prop marking the end of a heartbreaking scene.