Her mother had been insane, of course, probably even before she’d met the college boy who’d seduced her, gotten her pregnant, and abandoned her. The Angel had forgiven her now long-dead mother, but it had been only the luck of the wild card that had turned her ace and saved her life that day.

Her life with her mother had always been hard. As a toddler and into her teens she’d been dragged from place to place and from church to church, her mother searching for the peace she’d never found. But her mother’s terrible deed had made the Angel what she was and eventually had given her Billy Ray, which had completed her in ways she had never even imagined and had made all her prior suffering and misery worthwhile.

God, she reflected for not the first time, worked in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.

She snagged a towel from the small bathroom and rubbed herself down until she was totally dry, then went to the bed and sat upon it cross-legged. She took Norwood’s computer and said to herself, “Now, let’s see what you’ve been up to, Jamal.”

She turned it on. It didn’t take any magic to access it. As Jamal’s team leader she was privy to his password for both safety and security reasons. She scanned the files that popped up in the directory, and was pleased to see, superficially at least, that he’d followed rules and hadn’t put personal info or data on the computer, just docs relating to business. Of course, he could be hiding things under innocuous file names, but she’d check that later.

She called up the most recently opened file and read for a good ten minutes, a sudden frown deepening as she scanned the doc.

“Oh my God,” she said, and the way she said it was a prayer not a curse. She read for a few more moments and stopped. She went to the soggy jumpsuit that she’d hung over the chair before the deskette, extracted her cell phone from a zipped pocket, and speed-dialed the first number on her list. He answered after the second ring.

“Hello?” His voice was guardedly gruff. It felt so good to hear it again, although she’d already called him earlier that very morning.

“Hello, Billy.”

“Angel!” Billy Ray was the baddest dude she knew in or out of government service and over the last decade or so she’d met a lot of bad dudes. He was the greatest martial artist she’d ever seen in action and over the years she’d seen a crap-ton of that kind of guy and gal. He was probably the only man or woman she herself would be afraid to take on because he was absolutely relentless and fearless and nothing but the hand of God, himself, would ever stop him if he was on your case. And, frankly, she was actually a bit unsure about that. She smiled as she heard the gladness in his voice when he realized it was her on the phone.