Chapter 222

There was a loud scraping sound as Angel put all her strength into sliding the dresser back, then another sound as she jerked the chair from under the knob. The door swung wide and she stood staring at her parents, well as much of a stare as she was capable of with one eye swelled closed.

"Shit!" Fred said under his breath.

"Dad? Mom?" Angel said, hesitantly. "You look..."

"It's us, Baby," Brenda said, her voice shaking with emotion.

"Mom! Dad!" she sobbed out as she slammed into her father's chest to be encircled in a crushing hug by both her parents, all three of them shedding tears.

After a time, Fred pushed his daughter back a little in order to better see her face. "He did this to you?" he grated out.

"Uh, yeah, but..."

"No damn buts. That son-of-a-bitch is going to die. I told him what would happen to him if he ever hurt you. He should have listened."

"Daddy, please just let it go. I don't want you going to jail."

"How long has this been going on?" Brenda very intensely asked, ignoring her daughter's plea.

But by then, Angel had a chance to really look at her parents. "You both look... way too young. I know you told me what ... but how ... And you look a lot like my mom, but ... way too young, and even then..." she stammered out, finally winding down.

"We can't talk about our apparent youth right now," Brenda interrupted. "And we talked on the phone and discussed how I wound up in another body, but for the moment, please just accept us until we can get you out of this ... situation. We have a lot to talk about, but I'm your mother. Never doubt that."

Angel turned questioning eyes on her father. "It's her, Baby. She's just in a new body, like we told you on the phone, and yeah, we're both a lot younger, but like your mother said, we'll talk about that later. We need to get your things and get you out of here."

"What's happened?" Brenda asked as she stared into the bedroom. "Looks like a bomb went off in here. And where is that no good husband of yours?"

"He kicked the door in and we fought," Angel sniffed, "but thanks to you, Daddy, I was able to hold my own with the clothes rod there on the bed." she said, pointing. "It's too light to make a decent staff, but when I rammed it into his solar plexus, and threatened to crack his head open, he backed off. After that, and with me being so tired from working extra shifts at the convenience store, I just passed out on the bed. I did manage to get the door back up and the room as secure as I could make it before I had to sleep, but I was afraid he would get a ladder and climb in the window, so I tried to sleep as lightly as I could, waking up every few minutes to check." Turning to her father, "If you hadn't taught me the basics of staff fighting when I was a girl, he would have killed me. I've seen him mad before – many, many times, but nothing like this. He just went crazy. And... " she almost screamed, "the bastard stole my payday, yet again. I've managed to keep the power on, but I haven't paid the rent in two months, because he keeps using my money to buy drugs."

"Your poor face," Brenda said as she gently touched a fingertip to Angel's swollen and discolored jaw. Angel tried to smile at them, but the lopsided face made smiling almost impossible. Fred's eyes hardened as he stared at her ruined face.

"It's not as bad as it looks," the young woman tried to offer.

"The hell it isn't," the big man declared. "That son-of-a-bitch is a walking dead man. I should have stomped the bastard's ass back home when he stood behind you and smirked at us. Brenda and I both knew that nothing good would come out of your marriage to him. He was a sexual predator from the very beginning, but I guess the newness of the sex with you wore off after a while, huh? His days on Earth are numbered, though. Where is the bastard, anyway?" Fred snarled.

Angel shook her head, but as a pain lanced through her neck, she quickly realized that wasn't the thing to do. When she put a hand on her neck and frowned, Brenda shot her a questioning look.

"I think I must have strained my neck muscles when he hit me. I didn't notice right away, but my neck is stiff now."

"Dead man," Fred said under his breath, then repeated his question. "Where is he?"

"I don't know," Angel sighed. "He didn't come back after we fought. He's probably passed out in a dope house around here somewhere. I just want to go, assuming that you two will let me come live with you. I'll get a job and pay my way."

"Bullshit," Fred and Brenda said as one. Then Fred continued, "You're our daughter. Our home is your home. If you want to work, there will be plenty of that for all of us on our farm once Carla restocks her herd. But that's something for the future. We need to get your things packed up and get you on the plane."

But Angel was shaking her head. "Can't we just go by car? I don't want to get on a plane and be around a bunch of people with my face looking like this. It's embarrassing enough with you two seeing me, and besides, I'm afraid someone will..."

"No one will see you except the people who brought us here. There's a private jet waiting for us in Cincinnati."

"How can you afford a private jet? A private plane and pilots cost an enormous amount of money. Surely you didn't rent one just to come get me."

"It belongs to Frank Wainwright, and he isn't charging us anything."

"Wainwright? The billionaire? I saw him on TV at my job. Something about a town he's rebuilding. I can't watch TV here anymore since my wonderful husband hocked it to a drug dealer, the same thing with my car yesterday. I don't even have a decent way to get to work anymore."

"What's he on?" Brenda wondered aloud.

"Anything that's out there," Angel supplied. "But it's mostly crack, meth and marijuana. I've been scared to death that the police would raid our house. I know he sells from time to time. At least he used to, but I think he smoked up some of the product a few months back. Anyway, somebody beat the crap out of him, and I haven't seen him selling since then, just spending my paydays," she finished, dejectedly.

Brenda took her daughter's hand. "Let's go to the kitchen and get some food into you. When did you eat last?"

Angel let out a sick chuckle. "A few bites of egg, bacon and toast yesterday morning, before he knocked my plate onto the floor and started beating on me. But I doubt if I can eat much solid food. Not with my lip split and my jaw so sore. There is a half gallon of milk in the refrigerator, and I think there are straws in the pantry. Milk will hold me until the swelling goes down enough to eat." All of Angel's speech had been somewhat slurred with her lip swollen and broken open.

Brenda hugged her daughter again, the mother fighting back tears. "Your lip needs a stitch or two, but we'll get that and the rest taken care of when we get back to the Retreat," Brenda said as she ushered her daughter toward the kitchen.

They got some milk down Angel and the three of them had gathered up her clothes, putting them in two kitchen-size garbage bags that they put in the living room. (Justin had long since hocked their meager luggage.) Angel had just finished with a few makeup items and they had walked back to the living room expecting to move her things to the car, when Justin came through the front door. Fred started for Justin, but Brenda was much closer.

"Who the fuck are you?" Justin yelled out, "I didn't say that you could come in my house. Me and the bitch here have some unfinished business. And what's with the garbage bags, huh, Bitch? Looks like clothes in them. You think you're going somewhere?"

"Those are my daughter's clothes," Brenda said, walking up to Justin and getting in Fred's way. Then the irate mother snarled, "what little there is of them. And in case you don't recognize me, I'm Angel's mother."

"You don't look like her mother," he muttered. "But, no fucking way is the bitch leaving this house, whoever you are," he yelled, working himself up, spraying spittle in Brenda's face.

"Oh, she's going with us, all right," Fred declared, his voice harsh. "You can fucking bank on it."

"Fuck the both of you," Justin snarled as he reached behind himself and pulled a Taurus nine millimeter from his belt, sticking the gun in Brenda's face. "I'll fucking blow your brains out," he started.

Justin didn't hear Fred's quiet, "Oh, shit." Now directly behind Angel, Fred reached around her head to clamp a big hand over her eyes, and at the same time, he spun her around, then shoved her toward the kitchen, keeping his body between her and the living room.

"Daddy," she squeaked, "he has a gun," she protested. "He'll kill..."

"He's too busy dying to hurt anyone, Baby," he said as he heard the faint, but familiar sounds behind him. "I just didn't want you to see it," he said, continuing to push Angel ahead of him and on into the kitchen.

In the living room, Justin, in his arrogance, had shoved the gun in Brenda's face as she was standing with her hands just above shoulder level, looking frightened. Brenda wasn't scared in the least, but was, instead, a very irate and capable mother. Before Justin had time to even think about pulling the trigger, her right hand smashed into the inside of his wrist, while at the same time her left hand slapped the barrel of the weapon away from her face, folding his wrist inward, then in a smooth movement, her fingers closed around the weapon and her other hand closed on the grip. In less than a half second, the weapon was in her hand. But in the same movement ... she carried through with the killing stroke, the strength of her shoulder behind the thrust, as she jammed the gun forward, hard, into Justin's larynx, totally crushing it in an instant.

He stood stunned for a second as the pain flashed through his throat, before it dawned on him that he couldn't breathe. Brenda casually wiped the bloody gun barrel on Justin's shirt just before he collapsed. The fight was all over in little more than a second. A moment later, Justin lay on the floor, eyes staring, his left foot occasionally twitching as the last vestiges of life left his oxygen starved body.

Brenda stepped into the kitchen, her face devoid of all emotion. "We need to call the cleanup crew," she calmly said to her husband as she shoved the Taurus under the belt of her jeans.

"But what about..." Angel started.

"He's dead," Fred said without even bothering to look. "We need to get your stuff into the car."

Angel took a step toward the living room, but Fred's hand shot out to grab her arm. "Nothing for you to see in there," the big man said. "You don't need to have that scene embedded in your mind."

"But..."

"There's a lot about us you don't know, or ever will know, although, when we get home, we'll tell you enough so you will understand. Suffice it to say that Brenda and I have practiced what she did hundreds of times, and there have been a few times, that it wasn't practice. When he stuck the gun in her face, the outcome was a forgone conclusion."

Brenda was already on the SAT phone. "We need a cleanup," she quietly said. "I suggest you back up to the rear entrance."

"Understood," was the only response.

A couple minutes later, a moving van backed against the porch. The driver and passenger got out, the passenger raising the rear door. Four more men got out of the back, all six wearing a moving company's blue pants and matching shirts, with the company's (fictitious) name emblazoned on the back of the shirts.

As one of the men rolled in an object that looked a lot like a large foot tub, Fred matter-of-factly said as he motioned, "Living room."

"I have a weapon that needs to disappear," Brenda said to the apparent supervisor.

He held out his hand for it. "Done deal," was his only comment as he shoved the weapon behind his belt.

In the living room, a moment later, one of the men motioned to Justin's throat. "Professional," he quietly said to his partner.

"Must have been the woman. She had the gun." As they bent to move the body, he continued, "This guy must have really pissed her off. She used way more force than was necessary."

"Let's get it done," the supervisor broke in.

They hoisted Justin's body into the tub, curling him around to fit, then snapped on the lid. Seconds later, two of them rolled the tub back through the kitchen and onto the back porch, then straight into the van.

"Anything else you need?" Fred asked his daughter.

"He's..." Angel said, still not quite believing.