Conspiracy of Angels Read Online Free

to realize that I didn’t know the first thing about how to steal a motorcycle.
    Sirens wailed in the distance.
    “Dammit!” I snarled. It was a kick-start bike, so I tried forcing it into neutral and rolling forward as I jammed my foot down on the starter. With the way my feet were chewed up from walking, that hurt about as much as I thought it would. The pain was hardly a deterrent, though. I did it a second time and fiercely willed the thing to go.
    The engine growled to life.
    Astonished, I gaped at the controls. Down the road, the sirens blared ever closer, overpowering the pulse of the engine.
    “Not the time for questions,” I mumbled.
    Readjusting my grip on the handlebars, I pulled out of the lot just in time to see a bunch of guys spilling out of the front of the bar. They were led by Biker Santa. His face was scarlet as he aimed a shotgun at me, and he wasn’t the least bit jolly. Police lights flashed against the buildings south of the pub and the sirens ratcheted up to a deafening wail. My bad luck was holding. The cop cars were effectively cutting me off from the direction I needed to go.
    “Move now, think later,” I snarled, then swung the growling bike around and sped into the cornfield behind the bar.

6
    R iding a motorcycle through a cornfield without protective gear is a recipe for pain. Doing it while
barefoot
ranks right up there with rappelling down razor wire or wrestling a rabid porcupine. I was cruising for a Darwin Award. Add in the after-effects of weird psychic visions, pursuit by the local authorities, and being chased by a pack of gun-toting bikers, and my day was rapidly approaching nightmare status.
    Somehow I managed to lose them.
    More astonishing than that, I managed to find a road. It was little more than a narrow strip of asphalt running between whispering fields of dried corn, but it headed in the right direction. I leaned forward on the Harley, rocketing along as fast as I dared on the lonely country lane. Once in a while I passed houses, but they were all an acre back or more, their lights shaping dim constellations in an otherwise starless night.
    I continued like that for several miles, keeping an eye out for any cross street that was bigger than a driveway. Finally I came to Route 20. Given that this was the first intersection that had a stoplight, albeit a blinking one, it had to be a major road for this lonely corner of the Buckeye State. Swinging right, I followed 20 for a while as the clusters of houses became more frequent.
    Up ahead, fields and houses gave way to a wide and brightly lit expanse of asphalt. A monolithic building sat back from the road, squat and unattractive. From the look and size of it, I first thought it was an institution. As I drew closer, however, I spied the fluorescent lights spilling out from glass shop windows and automatic doors. A strip of navy-blue signage running across the entire upper portion of the building declared it to be a Wal-Mart. There were perhaps sixteen cars in the parking lot.
    Though desolate, it looked open.
    I slowed as I approached the turn-off, mentally tallying the remainder of my cash. If the police were looking for me, I didn’t dare use that platinum card in my wallet, however tempting it might be to procure a fresh set of clothes. But I needed footwear badly. I probably had enough cash to get a cheap but serviceable pair of boots, some socks, and maybe even a package of bandages. My feet were pretty chewed up at this point, so cramming them into boots wasn’t really a delightful prospect.
    Still, it was better than the alternative. I was lucky so far to have only scrapes and blisters, and if things were cheap enough, I might even have some money left over to feed the gas tank. Biker Santa had seen fit to keep it topped off, so that wasn’t yet a priority.
    I pulled up to the front of the store and started to park. Then I realized there was a serious flaw in my plan. Dumb luck and desperation were the only things