Angel of the Dark

“You still don’t want to see him, huh?”

Sofia shook her head. “I’m tired. I need to sleep.”

The male nurse left her, watching through the glass door panel as she lay down on her bunk and closed her eyes. Could it really be possible for a woman to grow more beautiful with each day?

The nurse’s name was Carlos Hernandez, and he was one of only a handful of males on the psychiatric staff at ASH. His buddies in Fresno had teased Carlos about landing his “dream job.” “Welcome to Altacito,” they mocked, “population two thousand. One thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine crazy bitches…and you!” But the truth was that Carlos was lonelier in this job than he had ever been in his life. Yes, he was surrounded by women, but there wasn’t a single one with whom he could strike up an acquaintance, still less a friendship or relationship. The patients were obviously off-limits, and the average age of his female colleagues on the nursing staff was forty-two, with the average weight probably around 180 pounds. Not exactly rich pickings. For an institution that housed over two thousand women, it was astonishing how few of them were attractive.

Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink.

Sofia Basta, on the other hand…she was the exception that proved the rule. An anomaly. A freak occurrence. She was older too, in her early forties, according to her birth certificate, but she looked at least a decade younger, and infinitely more desirable than any woman Carlos Hernandez had ever met, let alone dated. Her smooth skin, perfect features and lithe, slender body would have been more than enough to fuel the young nurse’s fantasies. But Sofia had something beyond that, an inner calm

, a sort of goodness that shone out of her like a light. Of course, Carlos Hernandez knew about her mental illness. Take her off her meds and she could snap at any moment, change back into a confused and highly dangerous psychopath, capable of murder. But to talk to her, it was so hard to believe. Sofia seemed like the sanest, loveliest, most gentle creature on earth.

Through the glass he saw her shoulders shaking. It was against the rules, but he couldn’t help himself. Slipping back into the room, he sat down on her bed.

“Don’t cry,” he said kindly. “You don’t have to see anyone you don’t want to see. A lot of patients here find outside contact hard.”

Sofia turned over and looked at him with those delicious liquid-chocolate eyes. Carlos’s stomach flipped like a pancake.

“Does it get easier? As time goes on?”

It didn’t get easier. It got more oppressive and stifling by the day, the hour, the minute. Carlos Hernandez had seen the toll that a life in an institution took on a human being. The hopelessness, the despair, knowing you would never get out, that this was your world till you drew your last breath. It was bleak. But he couldn’t bring himself to say as much to Sofia Basta.

“Sure it does.”

“I would see him,” Sofia blurted out, “if I were ever going to get out of here. If I had any future, anything to offer him. But since I don’t, it seems cruel. He has to forget me.”

“Try to get some rest,” said Carlos, pulling the blanket up around her and gently stroking her hair before leaving the room. He glanced up and down the corridor, checking if anyone had seen him, but he was safe. D wing was deserted, as it always was on visiting days.

Carlos Hernandez had never met Matt Daley. But he knew one thing about him already: he would never “forget” Sofia.

Sofia was unforgettable.

MATT DALEY DROVE TOWARD THE INTERSTATE, his new customized Range Rover the only car on the road. Barren desert stretched around him in all directions, an ocean of emptiness and dust. Like my life. Desolate.

The world thought that Matt Daley had turned his life around. And on the surface, he had. After years of grueling physical therapy, he’d learned to walk again, against all the odds, and now only used a cane for support. Rarely was his name mentioned in public these days without the epithet survivor thrown in somewhere. His documentary on the Azrael case, produced lovingly on a shoestring budget because Matt had refused to cede editorial control, had received wide critical attention, if not exactly acclaim. Matt made no secret of the fact that he was an apologist for Sofia Basta, pinning the blame for the Azrael killings firmly and exclusively on Frankie Mancini’s shoulders. Despite the fact that the jurors at the trial had effectively done the same, this stuck in many people’s craw, including HLN’s Nancy Grace. Grace had wanted Sofia’s head on a platter from the day of her arrest. Ironically, it was the Fox anchor’s vitriolic condemnation of Azrael: Truth and Lies that had ensured it a far wider audience than Matt could otherwise have hoped for. Distributed throughout Asia and the Indian subcontinent, as well as in Europe and the United States, the film was a resounding commercial hit. Matt Daley was more than a survivor. He was a rich man, a winner, a success.

None of it mattered.

He hadn’t expected Lisa to see him today. After four years he was resigned to her rejection. But he’d hoped.

Hope would be the death of him.

He pulled onto the freeway. Now that he was alone, tears coursed freely down his cheeks as he once again gave way to the pain. Sometimes he fought it. Told himself sternly that he had to do something, to take his depression by the horns and wrestle it down and defeat it. But most of the time he knew.

One day it would get to be too much. One day he would drive toward the edge of a cliff and simply keep on driving. Lay down his burden. Be free.

One day…

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CLAIRE MICHAELS SIPPED HER COFFEE AT a corner table of a Le Pain Quotidien in Brentwood feeling totally content. It was a glorious June day, nine months since her brother Matt’s last abortive Altacito visit, and at long last things seemed to have turned a corner in all of their lives. Claire had driven up San Vicente in the new Mercedes convertible Matt had bought her for her birthday last month, drinking in the blue skies and sunshine and feasting her eyes on the blossoming acacia trees that lined the wide, sweeping road. Even nature seemed to be celebrating today, erupting in a riot of color and scent and joyfulness in honor of her brother’s big news.

It was all such a far cry from that awful day last October. She remembered it like it was yesterday. Matt calling her from a rest stop on the I-5 sobbing uncontrollably, barely able to speak, to tell her where he was. His breakdown had been total and catastrophic. Claire had driven him straight to Wildwood, a rehabilitation center in Toluca Lake, and signed the papers as his next of kin. By the time she drove away, Matt no longer remembered his own name.

But miraculously the breakdown had been the making, or rather the remaking, of Matt Daley. After only ten days at Wildwood, he was well enough to receive visitors. Within eight weeks, the depression that had dogged him for more than five years now—since the day Sofia Basta, posing as Lisa Baring, drugged and left him in a Hong Kong hotel room—at last seemed to have lifted. Claire cried the first time she saw him laugh again, and not just laugh with his mouth but with his eyes, his whole being, like he did in the old days. He gained twenty much-needed pounds, began to work out regularly and started to talk about the future. Most importantly of all, he stopped talking about Lisa, or Sofia, or Andrew Jakes, or anything to do with the Azrael murders. It was a miracle.

There were more miracles to come.