Warrior Angel Read Online Free PDF

nice of you to include me,” said PJ.
    â€œYour mother seemed very happy to give permission,” said Mom. “She sounded lovely on the phone.”
    â€œYour dad?” Stepdad pulled slowly out of the parking lot, squinting at PJ in the rearview. Starkey thought his nose was twitching.
    â€œMy dad? He’s on TV, travels a lot.”
    Stepdad glared at Starkey in the rearview. Starkey bit his lip so he wouldn’t laugh out loud. He loved to pull the stepchain.
    Mom turned in her seat. Her voice rose and fell in an oscillating wave, the highs like screeching brakes, the lows like the growls of animals trapped in a stinking circus cage. The sounds hammered him against the back of the seat.
    â€œYooooooo can help usssssssss find a tiiiiieeeee for Rich-chard.”
    â€œI’d love toooooooooo.”
    Starkey tried to shake his head, but it felt locked in place. It was getting hard to breathe. He never thought Mom was Legion before, but now he wondered.
    That helped. Wondering.
    Centered him.
    Caught his breath.
    Stepdad said, “Yo! Locs ’n’ Bagels’ newest cut.”
    â€œHe just loves this group.” Mom rolled her eyes until only the whites showed, then they turned black. “He invented them.” She rubbed Stepdad’s thigh while he drove and hummed along.
    Starkey hated to see that. So he thought instead about Sonny on the morning TV shows, hollow eyed when they brought him back from his midnight run. Dad might have looked like that before he crashed.
    If Sonny had been driving instead of running…
    They started talking again once the song was over, but he tuned it out. PJ started rubbing his thigh the same way Mom rubbed Stepdad’s, but he blocked thinking about that by thinking about Sonny.
    Sonny wouldn’t give any interviews, but Elston Hubbard, that fat snake, gave dozens, spinning the same story over and over, how Sonny had been so shamed by his performance against Crockett that he needed to take a ritualcleansing run into the desert to purge the evil spirits in preparation for his next defense, against Floyd (The Wall) Hall. In all the TV interviews, the phony Indian, Red Ugly, was right behind him, nodding all the way. The sportscasters didn’t have the guts to ask them why they had to send helicopters and police cars after Sonny. Or even to follow up on Hubbard’s story that he had been drugged. Hubbard owned them, too.
    Sonny was battling evil spirits all right, but you need more than a little run in the desert to defeat them. Hang in there, Sonny. I’m on my way.
    He felt calmer by the time they got to the bottom of the long driveway, calm enough not to feel the windmill in his chest that usually started turning when the white stone mansion loomed into sight. The first time the town cops drove him home, whacked out of his mind behind the steel grate in the backseat of the cruiser, he’d yelled, “Welcome to the slammer.” He had never again looked at the big house on the reservoir without thinking he was being returned to prison.
    â€œWhat a lovely house,” cried PJ.
    Â 
    The housekeeper opened the door and hugged him—“Reee-chid, I miss you”—and bustled him inside. Lunch was waiting at the pool, plates and silver and linen napkins in ivory rings. At the Family Place they ate like animals, with their hands. Food tastes better when you’re not self-conscious, he thought. Maybe that’s why so many rich girls are anorexic and bulimic, their parents are so hung up on table manners. It screws up the food and then it screws you up.
    PJ hummed and oohed over everything but mostly pushed her food around the plate. Stepdad was on two cell phones through lunch. He kept apologizing, but he was in the process of forcing some record-store chain to put Locs ’n’ Bagels posters in their windows or he’d cut them out of some other deal and maybe eat their children.
    Starkey thought, Why am I