Field of Blood by Wilson, Eric (pdf e book reader .TXT) 📕

Nikki pursed her lips and shook her head.

Gina returned to the living room, where she feathered fingertips over warriors on her black walnut chess set. She still played, when she had the chance.

“So the good ones, the good angels . . . are they the Nistarim?”

“Darling,” said Nikki, “the Nistarim are as human as you or I. According to Talmudic tradition, they’re the Lamed Vov. Literally, the Thirty-Six. They walk in anonymity and humility, and it’s their presence that holds back Final Vengeance. If even one of them perishes without another rising to fill his place, we all suffer.”

“Yikes. Sounds bad.” Gina’s sarcasm was meant to disguise her inter-est. “And what’s that whole deal about the signs on their foreheads?”

“Where’d you hear of such a thing?”

Gina could still recall Cal’s interest as he’d studied her, and his vow to return: I’ll find you. Somehow. Someway.

“Is it true?” she persisted.

Nikki rolled her eyes. “Something similar to Harry Potter’s lightning bolt, is that what you mean? Or perhaps the mark of the beast?”

“Oh, here we go. Roll out the holy chitchat.”

“One day you’ll better understand these things you take so lightly.”

“Explain this, Nikki.” Gina shoved back a wave of hair to expose the symbol on her forehead. “Does this make me a devil child?”

“I don’t see anything.”

“I bet it’s why you were always cutting into me, huh?”

“Introspection is for the weak, Regina.” Her mother spoke the words in Romanian for emphasis. “A luxury we can’t afford. You’re a Lazarescu, born to work your fingers to the bone. Just as I teach in my seminars, you can only exorcise the darkness through the light of your own labors.”

“Even if I’m carrying the big, bad, nasty mark?”

“You’re speaking nonsense, I tell you. There’s nothing there.”

Irritated, Gina dropped her gaze to the chessboard. Was she losing touch with reality? She’d lived for years with the mark, even expended energy trying to conceal it, yet her boyfriend Jed had told her the very same thing: Sweetheart, there’s nothing there.

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

A Truck Stop Off I-75, Georgia

Nikki Lazarescu sat in her Acura NSX, beneath signage that flickered neon through the pelting rain. She was en route to Atlanta, on a preparatory trip for some upcoming seminars, but her reasons for stopping at this diner were more personal.

Should she go in?

Behind large windows, rough-and-tumble men forked hash browns and scrambled eggs into mouths stained by Tabasco sauce. She knew they would turn to stare. Like leeches, their eyes would wriggle toward her and sniff out the wounds she had worked so hard to conceal.

She needed details, though, about what had happened. Who had smashed into her daughter outside of Rembrandt’s Coffee House? How had Gina walked away with only minor injuries?

After earlier inquiries at the espresso shop, Nikki had called in a favor with a local policewoman, who’d pointed her to a specific freight company and the driver who might have some answers for her. His delivery van was now parked here in this lot.

Nikki had rolled past a few minutes ago, confirming the registration and the name painted on the door: Zach Larkins. The sight of the dented front grille and bent hood ornament had sickened her.

Her poor, precious girl.

Setting her jaw, she stepped from the Acura, gathered her jacket around her neck with one hand, and jogged through the downpour toward the diner. She wiped her feet on the doormat inside.

And here came the stares.

Wherever she went, these leeches managed to find her, attracted to her shame. She’d been shaped—or misshapen—by her encounters with guilt. Not only had she bedded down with it, she had borne its terrible offspring and then done all she could to sever herself from its clutches.

Could any good come from airing her wrongs?

No, not that she could see. Instead, she strode through each day with shoulders pulled back and chin jutted forward, attempting to hide all that was evil within by bettering herself and those around her.

Releasing. Cleansing. Renewal . . .

Her seminars gave her financial wings, while also providing the means to buy back that purity she had discarded. She reasoned that if she had the power to destroy, then she also had the power to heal. This was irrefutable in her mind, and she’d built the last few decades upon that precept.

“How you doin’ today?” asked a man with an assistant manager tag.

“Good. How’re you?”

“If it’s breakfast you’re lookin’ for, you’ve come to the right place.”

“I’m looking for a driver, actually.” She tilted her head and met his eye. “If you don’t mind, perhaps you’d do me the favor of pointing him out to me.”

“Don’t know that I can do that. We got lotsa people that pass through.”

“His name’s Zach. Zach Larkins.”

“He in some sorta scrape with the law? I don’t want any trouble.”

“Has he been in trouble before?”

“Who? Zach?” The assistant manager’s gaze scooted toward a corner booth, where a black man with curls of grey above his ears was cutting into a stack of pancakes. “Nah, he’s a straight arrow. Keeps to himself most of the time, just eats his food and leaves. Always tips good, though—which my waitresses, they appreciate.”

“So that’s him?”

A slight nod.

“Thanks for your help, sir.” Nikki threaded between the tables.

As she neared the corner, she found herself under scrutiny. The driver’s gaze was steady beneath a weathered brow, and his broad cheekbones were dotted with freckles. He placed both hands on the table, perhaps a subconscious gesture from his past to prove that he was unarmed.

“Zach Larkins? My name is Nikki.”

“How you do?”

“I don’t mean to disturb you, but I have a few questions if you don’t mind.”

“I’m in no hurry to go back out in that rain. How can I help, ma’am?”

“I’m the mother of the girl you hit a few days ago, in Chattanooga.”

“Ma’am?” He put down his fork and knife. “You mind repeating that?”

“My daughter’s the one who put the dent in your grille. She was walking across the street from