Page 102 of Avenging Angel

She holds out her left hand for me to slide the ring into place. “Yes. Angel Conway, I will be honored and blessed to be your wife. I love you more than life itself.”

I take the hand with the ring on it, bringing it to my lips. “And I vow to protect that life, so we can have one together.”

Before I can kiss her again and get carried away, God intervenes by sending Owen to the rescue.

The pad of slapping feet as Owen runs toward us in swim trunks captures our attention, as does his shout of, “Incoming!”

I react to the threat by shielding Daisy’s body from the wall of water that’s about to wash over us.

“Cannonball!”

The next morning, I pick Daisy up from her home outside of Charleston, about a twenty-minute drive from Jaxon’s house. I’ll be staying at his place until I find an apartment of my own. Since he’s about to be my brother-in-law soon, I may as well use the time to get to know him and my soon-to-be nephew, Charlie, better.

Once we’re pulling away from the curb, I lace my fingers with hers. “Are you okay?”

She stares at the newspaper in her lap. “I will be once I say goodbye. I wonder if Eva knew her parents had moved from California to Georgia. I mean, she had to know, right? I found them easily enough, and I didn’t even need Owen to help me do it.”

“I’m sure she did. I know it was hard telling the Vidals what happened to their daughter, but they have closure now.”

“A silver lining is better than no lining, even if it’s just a thin thread.”

I kiss the top of her hand to give a measure of comfort. “We don’t have to go to the funeral if you aren’t ready.”

“I know, but I need closure too. I want to close this chapter in my life and start the next one with you.”

It takes an hour to drive to the outskirts of Savannah where Jenna and Alanzo Vidal rebuilt their lives after losing their daughter, Eva, more than two decades ago. I park and escort Daisy across the cemetery lawn to meet up with the rest of the Southern Knights who have come to pay their respects. None of us really knew Eva all that well, but we respect the sacrifice she made—the sacrifice Uri had warned us about.

As selfish as it is, I’m grateful it wasn’t Daisy who had to make it.

The funeral service is a simple affair where a minister reads verses before an empty casket is lowered into the ground. Daisy, along with the rest of us, offers our condolences to Eva’s family. After everyone leaves, Daisy stands there looking into the hole at the handfuls of dirt and roses. “Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust,” she whispers.

“I’ll give you some time alone,” I tell her.

She grabs my hand and asks me to stay. “Your presence is comforting, and I need comfort right now.”

I remain silent as Daisy sheds a few tears and then unfolds the newspaper she brought with her.

Instead of looking at the casket, she moves her gaze Heavenward. “Eva, I’ve never been one to believe that once a person dies, they still keep watch over their loved ones and friends or take note of current events. Time moves differently in Heaven, so if a thousand years is a day, then you’re likely just arriving at the welcome celebration that Jesus throws when His children come home.”

Daisy sighs. “But I’m going to admit something in front of my fiancé that I know will come back to bite me in the butt. I’m occasionally wrong.”

I hold back the chuckle as Daisy says goodbye in pure Daisy fashion.

“In case I am, and you are looking down on us, I thought I’d bring you up to speed on everything that happened afterward. You missed the fireworks show as the Dominion facility imploded and Angel and I had to run for our lives. As you can see, we made it out. Bennett did too, but not for long. He’s now in FBI custody. I don’t know where he’s being held, but it’s probably Guantanamo or some other place he’ll never escape.”

Unfolding the newspaper, Daisy smiles. “You never met my friend Grace, but she’s an investigative journalist who is now married to one of my teammates. Twenty years ago, she was writing a story about my disappearance and found too many similarities to yours. Forced to write an ending she didn’t agree with, she never stopped researching or gave up hope that we were all alive somewhere. It took a long time for her to connect the dots—and I mean that in the literal sense—but what she discovered finally put me ahead of the next abduction and led me to you. If you’re listening, then you’re likely wondering why I’m bringing this up. It’s because she wrote an article that I think you would appreciate.”

Handing the paper to me, she says, “Angel, will you read it? I don’t know if I can get through it.”

“Sure,” I tell her.

I look toward the sky, wink, and then begin reading aloud.

“The Cost of Secrecy: A Legacy of Lies. In a coordinated international operation spanning multiple countries, the CIA, FBI, Interpol, and other government agencies partnered together to raid 32 facilities connected to Dominion Atrix Group after investigators uncovered a secret human experimentation program with roots inside the Central Intelligence Agency. Project CIPHER, short for Cognitive Influence and Persuasion in Human Emerging Reasoning, began in the mid-1980s as an attempt to determine whether enemy operatives could be psychologically manipulated into becoming American assets. Over the decades, the program evolved, moving from adults to young adults and eventually to boys and girls between the ages of 14 and 18.

Investigators now believe teenagers from around the world were abducted and subjected to prolonged isolation, psychological conditioning, and psychotomimetic drugs intended to make them more receptive to suggestion. Victims were fed lies about their families, shown manipulated images and, in some cases, told that the people they loved had abandoned them. Dominion would then step in as the rescuer, offering those same victims a new identity, a sense of purpose, and a place within the organization that had destroyed their former lives. Advances in technology, medicine, and security allowed the operation to become increasingly sophisticated and far more difficult to detect.

CIA Director William Ludlow has maintained that he knew nothing of CIPHER until the investigation reached his office, but he has not attempted to distance the agency from taking responsibility. CIPHER was created by the CIA, funded through channels involving Dominion and, although officially discontinued years ago, allowed to survive after Dominion became capable of continuing the work on its own. Ludlow responded by opening agency resources to investigators, authorizing cooperation with the FBI, and deploying CIA personnel in the raids against Dominion. “I inherited an agency with a past I cannot change, but I can decide what we do with the truth now that we have it,” Ludlow told investigators. “If accountability begins at the top, then it begins with me.”