An Angel for Emily Read online

  “Untie her,” Michael said softly as he got off the big motorcycle.

  Charles gave an ugly laugh as he pointed a gun at Michael’s head. “Don’t make me laugh. Get over here with her.”

  “Gladly,” Michael said as he sauntered toward Emily, then took her from Charles’ grip. Michael put his hand on the tape on Emily’s mouth and she prepared herself for the pain of its removal, but the tape came off and she felt no pain.

  “You can’t kill them both,” David said, his voice high pitched with nervousness.

  “Of course we can,” the woman said. “In fact, this is perfect. He kills her then shoots himself. Perfect. It happens all the time.”

  “I have told the police where you are,” Michael said softly as he untied Emily’s hands and feet. At least she knew they came untied but Michael didn’t seem to move.

  “You think we don’t pay off the police?” Statler said. “And besides, Donald the idiot has blackened this woman’s name enough that everyone will think that she got what she deserved.”

  The woman gave a cold smile to Emily. “Honey, it’s a little late to learn this now, but never trust a man. It was Donald on the phone. He sold you out for a promise of being in the running for governor next primary.”

  At that Emily gasped and Michael’s warm hand slipped into hers, and as always, she calmed. And as she did, she sent thoughts of love to him. He must have read her mind because he squeezed her hand and she felt much better. But then Michael always made her feel safe.

  “You can’t kill me,” Michael said softly, standing just to the side of Emily. “No matter what you do to me you can’t kill me until Heaven is ready for me to leave this earth.”

  Michael was looking at David and his sister so he couldn’t see Charles standing to the side. With a smirk on his face, Charles lifted his gun and aimed to fire.

  Emily didn’t think about what she did. All she knew was that she didn’t want to be on the planet without Michael. If he was going to leave this earth, then so was she, and wherever they ended up, they would be together.

  Without a thought for her own life, she threw her body in front of Michael’s and the bullet went straight through her heart.

  Epilogue

  MICHAEL WAS STANDING BEFORE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL and the magnificence of the angel was terrifying. He was a soldier, an angel who had overseen all the wars in recorded history, and his handsome, commanding presence sent fear through his namesake.

  “I sent you to do a job,” the archangel said, looking down his aristocratic nose at Michael.

  Michael had always wanted to be allowed to see the face of this most exalted of angels, but now that he was trembling in his presence, he almost regretted his wish. “And I failed,” Michael whispered. “I admit my failure and I beg forgiveness.”

  The archangel looked away toward his friend Gabriel, an angel many thousands of years old. Gabriel had once ruled the planet earth but long ago he had turned it over to the younger archangel, Michael. “You have been punished so go now.”

  But Michael didn’t move.

  “What is it?” the archangel said, his dark brows drawing into a single line.

  “I want to be with her,” Michael said, trying to be brave but the words caught in his throat.

  “You will be for the next hundred years then—”

  “No!” Michael said more sharply than he meant to, then he softened. “I mean that I want to be with her here in this life and now. On earth. In human form.”

  The archangel looked at Michael with a gaze so piercing that he was sure his soul was being flambéed. “But her earthly body has died.”

  Michael took a breath then swallowed. “It can be resurrected.”

  “Only God can do that,” Archangel Michael said softly, looking at Michael with curiosity.

  “Then I will ask Him,” Michael said firmly.

  “But there must be a reason for such a resurrection,” Gabriel said from behind his young friend.

  Michael gathered all the courage he had. “I will give anything to bring her body back to life and to be able to be with her.”

  In Heaven, one did not have to elaborate as the minds of lower-level spirits like Michael were easily read by archangels. “Do you know what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, I do,” Michael said and as he said it, the fear left his body. “Yes, I know exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Are you saying that you’d give up being an angel for her? You would give up Heaven for her?”

  “Yes,” Michael said without hesitation. “She gave up her life for me so I will give up all for her.”

  Archangel Michael dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “But she goes on to a better life. She has done well in this life even if it was short so she’ll be given better next time.”

  “I want to be with her in this life and in…in all future lives. I will give up Heaven for that,” Michael said and tried to keep the trembling from starting again.

  Archangel Michael looked at him for several moments. “If you did that you would be taking on all the horrors of human life. There would be pain and sadness, tragedy and—”

  “And love,” Michael said, and as he spoke he gained courage. “I love her. I have always loved her, I know that now. I’m not good as a guardian angel. I gave too much time to Emily and not enough to the others. And I manipulated lives, something that is impermissible. I even manipulated Emily’s lives because I could not bear to see her with other men. What kind of guardian angel am I if I interfere like that? And I bear her a mortal’s love. There is nothing holy about my love for Emily. In fact, it is very carnal.”

  “Ah, then,” the archangel said, still looking hard at Michael. “But you must understand that if you give up Heaven you cannot change your mind.”

  For a moment Michael almost hesitated, but then he smiled. “No, I won’t. I have loved her for centuries so my mind’s not likely to change.”

  “You will have no memory of the time when you were an angel. You will be plagued with all human ills.”

  “I understand and I am willing to give what it takes. Will you bring her body back to life?”

  “If you are determined. You will not change your mind?”

  “No. I am sure,” and when he said it, he was.

  “Then it is done,” Archangel Michael said. And it was.

  Epilogue 2

  IT’S DONE.”

  “You’re kidding,” Emily said, holding their eight-week-old son on her knee as she tried to fasten her dress. “No more rewrites?” she asked, teasing him.

  “None. Here, let me have him while you change,” Michael said as he reached for the baby.

  “Change into what?”

  “Very funny. Change your clothes because I’m taking the two of you out to dinner to celebrate. It isn’t every day that a man finishes a book.”

  “It isn’t every day that a man of thirty-seven writes his autobiography.”

  “Our autobiography,” he said, taking the baby and kissing him before snuggling him onto his shoulder.

  “Yours,” Emily said, smiling as she headed up the stairs of the big old house, and as she went, she thought over the last two years of their life. She thought how she’d met Michael, by nearly running him over with her car, how he’d had a case of amnesia and they had worked together to try to find out who he was. It was during their search, with the FBI chasing them, mistakenly thinking Michael was a wanted criminal, that they’d found out that someone was trying to kill Emily.

  For a moment she paused on the landing and looked down at the dark head of her husband holding their baby, gently swaying with him as they listened to the child’s favorite recording by Enya.

  She remembered how Michael had rescued her from those men, how they got away on Michael’s motorcycle and how, behind them, the car containing the three men and the woman had plunged down the side of a mountain. All four had been killed instantly. When it was revealed that Donald Stewart, Emily’s television news reporte