Turning Angel by Greg Iles

Author:Greg Iles [Iles, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Suspense, cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9781416535560
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2005-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

24

“Dad, it’s Penn. You awake?”

“You know me,” my father says in his deep voice. “I’m dictating and smoking a cigar.”

Dad was doing exactly the same thing thirty years ago, while I tried to stay awake to watch the late movie, back in the dark ages before HBO. Eternally behind with his hospital charts, he would dictate late into the night and then reward himself with three hours of reading on the Civil War or the history of the Crusades.

“I heard the ER’s been pretty busy tonight,” he says with understated curiosity.

“Yeah.”

“What do you need, son?”

“A gun.”

“What kind?”

Not a moment’s hesitation. My father has collected guns for most of his life. The bulk of his collection consists of Civil War muskets, with a few pieces dating back to the Revolutionary War. But he also has a nice collection of modern pistols.

“I need an automatic with a big magazine.”

“I’ve got a nice Browning you can use. You on your way over?”

“Yep.”

“You in a hurry?”

“I need to get some sleep.”

“I’ll meet you outside.”

Five years ago, my parents’ house—my childhood home—was burned to the ground by a man trying to stop me from working on a thirty-year-old race murder. Five years, yet I still find myself turning into our old neighborhood, as though the house I grew up in is still standing. It’s not. My father had the wreckage cleared but built a new house elsewhere. Now our old lot holds only flowers and a small granite monument to Ruby Flowers, the black maid who raised me and my older sister. Ruby died as a result of the fire that took the house, and part of me died with her. The new house is south of town, where most new construction in Natchez goes up.

True to his word, Dad is standing in his carport when I arrive. In the glow of my headlights, I see the Browning automatic hanging from his right hand. I leave my engine running and walk up to him. Seventy-two years old, half crippled by diabetes, arthritis, and coronary artery disease, he still manages to practice medicine more hours per week than most internists fresh out of medical school.

“Thanks,” I say, taking the gun.

“Is Annie in danger?” he asks.

This is no idle question. The man who burned our house five years ago also targeted my daughter for kidnapping and death. “Not yet. But I try to learn from past mistakes.”

Dad nods. “By the time most people realize they’re in danger, it’s too late to do anything about it.”

“I may give Daniel Kelly a call.”

“Sounds like a good idea. I thought he was working in Afghanistan.”

Daniel Kelly is a former Delta Force operator who worked with me during the Del Payton case. Now an operative for a prestigious corporate security firm based in Houston, Kelly has truly frightening skills, but more important, he knows and loves my family.

Dad probes my eyes with a gaze that has searched out illness and deception for more than forty years. “What happened tonight? You look shell-shocked.

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