Chapter 5: Meeting Phil Crawley: Wannabe Tough Guy

Is someone playing a cruel joke on me? I stare at Arisen while I wait for him to start laughing. He doesn’t laugh. Instead, he returns my gaze with an intense look. I leap to my feet and begin pacing back and forth, wearing a hole in the black carpet.

“I don’t believe you,” I finally say, glancing up at him. His instant crestfallen expression sends a sharp pain in my chest, and I can’t hold in my surprised gasp. My words might be denying this, but my heart knows the truth. I let out a slow breath and rub my chest with my fingers. “This is just a lot to take in,” I amend. “I’ll need time to process this.”

Arisen smiles slightly and nods, hope entering his eyes. “Of course,” he says. “Take as much time as you need.”

I’m about to respond when the sound of familiar engines reaches my ears. I jog towards the front door and peer through the window beside it, peeking through the white curtains. A lead ball seems to drop into my gut as I watch the black SUVs I had seen earlier screech to a stop in front of my house. A man dressed in a black suit gets out of the front passenger seat of the lead vehicle and makes a show of glancing at the gold watch on his wrist and buttoning his suit jacket. He adjusts his glasses and heads up to the front porch. I slowly close the blinds, willing my racing heart to calm down. I turn around, clasping my hands in front of me with exaggerated calmness.

“So, we might have a little trouble,” I say.

Something about this guy screams bad news. Jaime suddenly jogs downstairs with his phone pressed to his ear.

“Sam, there are men in black surrounding the house,” he breathes.

“I know,” I mutter before pausing. “Wait, who are you on the phone with?”

Jaime hesitates. “That doesn’t matter right now. They’re probably here for Arisen,” he states. “We should hand the angel over to him. We have no obligation to keep him safe. We don’t need to be involved in this.”

I glare at him. “I’m about to give your role of best friend to someone else,” I snap. “Don’t say shit like that. We aren’t abandoning him.”

Jaime grabs my shoulder and spins me around to face him fully. He frowns. “Think carefully, Samara,” he says quietly. “If we do this, there is no going back. We’ll be in this, and we’ll have a target on our backs along with the Celestials. This is our only chance to pretend like none of this happened and carry on with our normal lives.”

I glance at Arisen to find him watching us. He smiles at me and nods reassuringly as if to say it’s okay to walk away. At that moment I make my decision. I turn back to Jaime with determination. “I refuse to abandon him,” I say firmly. “Even if I don’t fully believe he’s my soulmate, I won’t let our people hurt him anymore. You don’t have to be involved, Jaime. But I am.”

Jaime searches my eyes for a moment before he sighs. “I’m always with you, Sam,” he says. He turns to Arisen. “I’m choosing to trust you, bird boy,” he says harshly. “Don’t betray that trust.”

Arisen places a fist over his heart. “I will never betray you,” he says solemnly.

The doorbell rings followed by heavy knocking. I glance at Arisen, then turn to Jaime. “Get him out of here,” I whisper. “Or hide him somewhere.”

“I’m on the phone with your dad, by the way,” Jaime announces. “You just have to hold them off until they get home. They’re on their way. They turned around as soon as I called them.”

I groan. I’ll never hear the end of that. “Fine. Just keep Arisen safe.” I watch them until they disappear up the stairs. Taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly and open the door, pasting on a confused smile. “Yes?”

“Ma’am,” says the man with glasses in a nasal voice. “We are looking for anything unusual that anyone on this block might have seen.”

I chew on my bottom lip. “What do you mean, unusual?” I ask, playing dumb.

The man tries to look over my shoulder. “Something strange,” he hesitates. “Something, maybe, out of this world. We tracked the item to your block, but we haven’t been able to get an exact location.”

I shrug. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘out of this world,’ but I haven’t noticed anything,” I answer.

He frowns slightly. “Then you won’t mind if we take a quick look around?” he asks, trying to walk past me.

I keep a firm grip on the door and close it a little more, glaring at the man. “I absolutely do mind,” I snap. “Do you have a warrant? You can’t just barge into someone’s home without permission. Who the hell do you think you are?”

The man’s eyes narrow and a dark shadow passes over his face, making him look more menacing. “FBI,” he replies, flashing a badge at me too quickly for me to see. “Now let us in.”

I’m gripping the door so tightly my knuckles are white. “Show me a warrant,” I say in a low voice. This guy is obviously not an FBI agent.

“Young lady, you don’t want to cross us,” he growls. “We’re getting in there one way or another.”

“So, you’re the FBI and you’re going to break the law,” I say slowly. I shake my head. “Look, dude, I don’t know what you’re trying to find, but you can’t come into my house. So go bother my neighbors.”

One of the bigger guys suddenly pushes Mr. Glasses to the side and pulls out a pistol, pointing it at my face. I freeze in fear, eyes wide.

“Back the fuck up,” the guy snarls.

I obey quickly, legs shaking as I move back into the foyer, stepping away from the door. The man keeps the gun trained on me as he motions towards Mr. Glasses with his head.

“Go look,” he barks. “I’ll keep the girl here. Don’t take too long.” Mr. Glasses hurries through the house followed by a couple of other men in suits. “What’s your name?”

“I don’t answer questions with a gun pointed at me,” I say, surprised that my voice is steady.

The man doesn’t like that. He strides closer to me until the gun is pressed against my temple. “Name,” he growls.

“Janet Jackson,” I blurt out the first name that enters my mind.

“We will find him, you know,” the man says quietly after a moment of silence.

My heart thuds in my chest. “What do you mean?”

“Stop pretending, girl. You might have the boss fooled, but I’m not stupid. You’re hiding him, aren’t you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I hiss in pain as he digs the gun into my skin.

“Just tell me where he is. No one has to get hurt.”

“Except him!” I snap without thinking.

The man grins triumphantly. “Where is he, kid?” he demands.

My lips purse. “I’ll never tell.”

He glares at me with a narrowed gaze as the men stomp from room to room ransacking the place in their search for Arisen.

“You know we’ll find him, right?” the man states. “And you’ve seen too much.”

I suck in a sharp breath. “Are you threatening me?” I demand. I can only hope that Jaime has Arisen hidden well. With the way these men are tossing my belongings, it probably won’t take them long to find the main hiding spots.

The man just grins and shrugs, keeping his gun pointed at my head, although he backs up a step. A noise comes from upstairs, sounding like a crash. I flinch, jerking my gaze to the ceiling. The man chuckles in delight.

“Hey!” he calls to the assholes in the other rooms. “Check the second floor! Someone is up there!”

My heart begins racing in my chest. My body twitches as if I’m about to rush up the stairs. The man must notice because he steps closer to me, grabbing my shoulder in a tight hold with his free hand and pressing the gun against my head with his other hand.

“Do it,” he hisses in my ear. “Give me a reason to shoot you. Please.”

I shiver at the pure malice in his tone. How can someone be this evil? I try to swallow around the lump in my throat as I watch Mr. Glasses hurry towards the stairs. He’s just about to head up to them when the screech of tires outside alerts us to the arrival of the cavalry. For a split second, I wonder how they got here so fast.

I can’t hold in my grin as Dad storms into the house with his hunting rifle slung over his shoulder casually. His eyes are spitting fire, and his lips are drawn into a thin line. I’ve never seen him so angry as he sees the state we are in.

“You have two seconds to take your hands off my daughter before things get ugly,” he says in a deceptively calm voice.

It turns out Dad doesn’t even really need to make such an entrance to freak out the men in black. Arisen does it just fine on his own. He suddenly appears on the stairs with a disgruntled-looking Jaime two steps behind him. He leaps over the banister, clearing the distance between him and the man threatening me with one step. The man doesn’t even have time to react as Arisen grabs his shirt and throws him clear across the room, his gun landing several feet away from him. My Celestial takes up a defensive stance in front of me, eyeing everyone in the room.

“Samara White is off limits,” he announces thunderously. “No one touches her. I will kill the next person who threatens her harm.” His wings suddenly explode from his back, and he rises a few feet from the floor looking like an avenging angel as he glares at Mr. Glasses. “It’s over Crawley. This family is under my protection and the protection of the Celestials. Leave before I forget the treaty we’re supposed to have with your people.”

Saige slips past our dad and hurries over to me. One of the men must have been startled by his sudden movement because he fires his gun without any warning. I scream as Saige falls to the floor, clutching at his shoulder. He cries out in pain, tears falling from his eyes. The last time I saw him cry was when we were in elementary school, and he fell from the monkey bars and broke his wrist. Blood drips from his fingers, soaking his shirt and pooling on the floor. I move around Arisen and fall to my knees next to my brother.

“Saige?!” I screech.

He grimaces, his lips stretched into a thin, pain-filled smile. “I’m fine,” he grunts. “I’ll be fine.”

I glance back at Arisen with desperation. “Please,” I beg him.

“I would do anything for you,” Arisen tells me softly. He kneels beside me and presses a hand against Saige’s wound. The familiar golden glow spreads from his palm and seeps into my brother’s skin. I watch, fascinated, as Arisen’s healing power pushes the bullet out of the hole and slowly stitches the muscle and skin back together. When he finishes, he rises to his feet and stands in front of us, taking up another defensive stance. “You just shot a civilian, Crawley. One of your own people. I suggest you back off now before things get worse.”

Mr. Glasses looks like he just ate a lemon. “This isn’t over, boy,” he snarls. “For anyone.” He looks at me when he says those words. With a final glare, he leaves the house, followed by his goons.

The fear finally takes over me as my knees give out and I slump to the floor. What the hell just happened?