Angel Face by Suzanne Forster

was cold. That realization made him wonder how long he’d been staring out the front window. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see the first glimmers of dawn, the pale pink glow that fringed the great oak in his front yard. He loved the neighborhood. He’d lived here almost forty years, and he’d been a doctor close to twenty. But lately he’d begun to think he needed a change. There were too many names on his waiting list, and he was spending too many hours in surgery. He was afraid of burnout, of making a mistake or of starting not to care, and he never wanted that to happen.
    There’d been some pressure on him to pick a potentialsuccessor as one way of lightening his load. He’d resisted the idea because there’d been no obvious choice, but it could be that he wasn’t looking hard enough. Certainly Teri Benson showed great promise. Even Jordan couldn’t deny her talent or her zealous passion for surgery. She reminded him of someone else at her age—of himself—and maybe that was the problem.
    They’d had an exchange recently that had been revelatory. She’d all but accused him of holding her back. She’d even implied that he was threatened by her and that it might be a male ego problem. Jordan had laughed at the time. He’d thought she was crazy and told her so, but now he wondered.
    He took another swig of the bitterly cold coffee and asked himself what he was doing. Suddenly it seemed imperative to pick a successor, even if it was someone he didn’t have total confidence in. What was he doing? It couldn’t be because he was already well on his way to being obsessed after looking at little more than a picture of a woman’s face, could it? Now, there was a great reason to alter his surgery schedule, and it was a pathetic comment on Jordan Carpenter’s social life. Maybe it should tell him something that he was starting to feel like one of them , all the other suckers who’d come into contact with Angel Face.
    It didn’t take him long to get the picture in question back into the bubble envelope it came in—and himself into the kitchen, where he poured the coffee dregs down the sink. He should have had a beer. Even warm, it was better than cold coffee, and he wouldn’t have been up all night.
    The CIA agent had left him a phone number and a sophisticated cell phone that was designed for international use, apparently via low-earth orbiting global satellite links, according to the instructions. Jordan had alsobeen instructed to use the agent’s code name, Firestarter, whenever he called.
    It was all very seductive to an overworked, burned-out, egomaniacal male chauvinist pig of a heart surgeon. But Jordan would not be calling.
     
    B IRDY was already on the floor, searching for lost sunflower seeds, when the beeping started. This time she knew right where to go. She’d dragged Jordan’s beeper to a bubble at the edge of the nearest rag carpet, where she’d stashed it with several other purloined treasures, including pens, pencils, paper clips, a TV remote, and last month’s light bill.
    Mesmerized again by the beeper’s bright green display, she began tapping on the screen as a message appeared.
MEET ME TONIGHT AFTER EVENING ROUNDS AT THE WINE BAR AROUND THE CORNER FROM CALIFORNIA GENERAL. YOU KNOW THE ONE I MEAN. YOU'VE BEEN THERE BEFORE.
    The initials that appeared were AF, but Birdy had already lost interest. She’d discovered a twist-off beer bottle cap and was happily making the sounds of a steel drum band with her beak.
     
    “D OCTOR? ”
    “Devil,” Angela responded without hesitation. Her eyes were shut, but she could hear the rustle of paper across the small room, the click of a ballpoint pen.
    “Angel?”
    “Sad.”
    “Sleep?”
    “Escape.” A very slight pause. “Yes, escape.”
    “Love?”
    “Learning . . . I love to learn.”
    “Hate?”
    “Gifts. I was given gifts when I was good. Dolls mostly. I still hate dolls.”
    “Angela, if you would respond with just one