Terry tossed the car around the road and was certain he was going to kill them all as they hurtled down the freeway towards the glowing lights in the distance. They could see cop cars whizzing past them, going much faster than they were, and they knew the reason why they were racing so quickly. With everything explained to both Terry and Alison, and with everything Alison knew about Chelsea told to the guys, they all felt as though closure was nearby and they all pressed Terry to hurry just that little bit faster towards their destination.

************************************************************************************************************

Sam pulled into the disused station and saw a body lying on the forecourt, shrouded in a large white blanket. She held her breath as Kevin screeched to a halt and she leapt out, pulling out her gun and racing over to the apparently dead person lying there.

Yanking back the covers she gasped at her findings and looked up at Kevin as he caught her up. There, lying on the dusty floor in front of them in the dying light of the day, was Michael Palin. He was breathing, but heavily sedated, and Sam motioned for the ambulance team behind them to come forward and start treating the patient immediately.

The back up teams and snipers had all been in position for at least ten minutes now, but no one had reported any movement from the main building. The missing red truck had been recovered from the back of the station and all exits were watched as Sam and Kevin crept closer to the building, fully armed and bullet proofed up to the eyeballs.

A car swung into the lot and four men and a woman leapt free of it, just in time to watch Michael being put into an ambulance, and Sam glanced back at them with astonishment. She made out the figures of Eric, John and Graham before her, but would question how they escaped protection as soon as she had Annabel in custody.

She motioned for the teams to move in and they burst into the station at once, disappearing from view as everyone outside held their breath and waited impatiently for anything.

It wasn’t long before Sam reappeared and motioned for another ambulance unit to come inside, and it wasn’t long after that that Annabel, complete with respirator and stretcher and handcuffs to match, was escorted outside and into another ambulance, and everyone watched with awe as three policemen got into the vehicle with her and it sped off into the night.

It was decided that Terry and John would go to the hospital with Michael, and the others would follow, but Graham remained unwilling to leave until he spoke with Sam Nelson.

When she finally reached them she gazed at them with an interested eye. “So Mr Chapman, you wished to see me? I hope it’s to tell me how you managed to escape after injuring one of my officers?”

Graham blushed slightly and found himself bowing ever so slightly. “I’m terribly sorry about that Miss Nelson, but it was necessary under the circumstances.”

She nodded and smiled gently. “No harm done.” She said.

“Actually, it was about the contents of that building that I was wondering about.” He continued and Sam folded her arms and leant on a police car as he looked at her.

“What was it you wanted to know Mr Chapman?”

“I want to know what you’ve found in there so far.” He smiled softly. “Call it Poirotic curiosity.”

She nodded slowly and looked at the faces around her. “We found Annabel, some bags of the drugs she’s been using, Michael’s personal effects which will be returned to him soon as, and some junk.” She eyed Graham and added, “and lots of blood.”

He nodded. “That’s interesting Miss Nelson, as Annabel didn’t have many wounds about her person, and Michael was, from what I could see, completely unharmed.”

Sam looked at him in amazement. “Nothing gets past you does it Mr Chapman?”

“What does that all mean?” asked Eric in bewilderment. “What has blood got to do with anything?”

Graham shook his head. “You’ll have to excuse my dim-witted friend,” he said apologetically to Sam and she blushed and smiled as Eric looked put out. “It means that if Annabel wasn’t bleeding and Michael wasn’t bleeding then someone else was.”

“But there was no one else in there.” Said Eric confusedly.

“Not now, no.” said Sam quietly and smiled helpfully at Eric who suddenly clicked.

“So someone else was there? Who?”

Alison felt something like excitement and anticipation rattle into her stomach. “Chelsea.”

Sam nodded slowly. “It’s what I figured too.”

Graham nodded too. “As I suspected. But one thing I can’t understand is where she is now.”

“Do you think Annabel murdered her?” Eric asked quietly.

Sam shook her head. “I don’t think she did. Annabel has been dosed with a pretty hefty concentration of the drug she was using on Michael, which knocked her out. When we went in to find her she still had a crow bar in her hand.”

“So she stopped mid-fight you think?”

Sam nodded. “That’s the way it looks. But I can’t work out for the life of me why Chelsea would want to disappear once she had her lover’s captor in her hands.” She shrugged. “If I’d have been her I would have bashed the living hell out of Annabel.”

Eric looked astounded and Graham laughed as Sam blushed. “I didn’t mean to speak out of turn, but it’s what I would have done.”

“So what next?” asked Alison. “Chelsea’s registered at our hotel, the Shoal, but I don’t think she’d go back there, especially not if she’s lost blood and is hurt.”

“We’re already checking all the hotels in the area. She won’t have got too far from us.”

“She’d never leave Michael unless she had to,” said Alison and Graham nodded agreement.

It was settled then that Sam would keep them posted and continue the hunt for Chelsea whilst the others would go to the hospital and find out how Michael was doing.

As they all drove along there was hush but restrained calm over them all. They still didn’t know where Chelsea was, or whether she was alive, or dead.

***********************************************************************************************************

It was days, weeks, maybe even months to Michael since he had last seen light, and opening his eyes in the fluorescent light of the hospital with the first conscious realisation of what had happened not only made his eyes squint but his head hurt. Well more than it was hurting already.

Terry was on him before anyone else even realised he had finally come round, and was asking questions, poking, prodding, laughing, hugging and crying all at once.

“So glad to have you back with us old man,” he said and shook Michael’s hand ferociously.

“It’s so good to have you here Michael,” said Alison as she prised the fingers off Michael’s hand onto her own and bade Terry to sit down.

The other guys were there, and they all made their own homage to Michael as he looked at each of them, wondering all the while exactly what had happened and how he got here at all.

It took some explaining, but once the whole story was told Michael looked at them all with the same dazed expression he felt he had been wearing his whole life, and he looked at his arms and thighs and could see the evidence of his body’s abuse right in front of him.

“I saw an angel,” he said abruptly and the party turned to stare at him in amazement as he looked at them with innocent and tear-filled eyes. “I saw the most beautiful creature in the world right there in front of me. She was an angel. She told me to be brave.”

“Michael,” said John uncertainly, “you’ve been under a lot of stress. Are you sure you didn’t hallucinate this?”

Michael shook his head vigorously and the tears on his face flayed at the people before him. “She was real. She touched my face. She told me I wouldn’t be afraid of the dark anymore.”

The group stood in stunned silence, each silently passing judgment on the frail figure before them.

He looked at them with a half bemused half disappointed smile. “You don’t believe me. You think this has all gone to my head and I’m mental. Finally you can cart me off to the lunatic asylum.”

They murmured but no one came out and told him they believed him and he shook his head. “I think you should all leave me now. I need to rest.”

The other Pythons looked first from each other to the patient, and then back again, and all silently acknowledged to each other that maybe it was for the best and they would return later. They slunk out one after the other, until finally Graham was the last to leave, and he turned to Michael with an interested look.

“What did she look like?” he asked and Michael looked up at him with a perfect smile.

“She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, all haloed in the sun light.”

“Who did she remind you of Michael?”

Michael hesitated and then seemed dumbfounded before answering that he didn’t quite know, but she definitely reminded him of someone.

Graham nodded knowingly and pulled the door to him. “Just let it come to you. I’m sure her face will reappear to you again somehow.” He said and exited, shutting the door behind him and leaving Michael to his own thoughts for the meantime.

He wasn’t alone very long before there was a knock at the door and a small woman with rusty blonde hair and a sweet but unattractive face entered. She was in a suit and Michael knew before she withdrew her badge that she was an officer of the law. There was just something about her.

“Hi my name’s Sam Nelson and I’m the officer in charge of your case.” She said and approached the bed with a smile. “It’s a pleasure to meet you finally Mr Palin.”

After accepting her hand and telling her it was Michael, and after her inquiries about his health were finished with she looked at him for a few moments before continuing with her real course for coming there.

“Do you remember anything, Michael, that would help us piece together what happened in the gas station before we arrived?”

Michael shook his head vaguely. “I can barely remember anything about the whole experience,” he said apologetically.

She nodded. “I realise the drugs Annabel gave you were highly potent and had a black-out effect on you.”

Michael grimaced and touched the crevice of his inner arm with careful remembrance.

“Perhaps there’s one thing, but you might think me deranged,” he began and eyed his listener intently. She stared back at him with wide hazel eyes and an honest expression, so he continued with his tale of the angel that came to visit him.

Sam watched him all the while with curiosity and began slowly piecing together what he saw and what he didn’t, before nodding emphatically and folding her arms.

“I believe you saw someone Michael. It probably wasn’t an angel though.”

Michael shook his head. “I know this person was real,” he said, “I know she was human and she was there in front of me, and I know somehow she is responsible for saving me. Therefore she must be some kind of heaven sent angel. She rescued me. She tipped you off as to where I was. Either way she’s a true heroine and she will always be, to me at least, my guardian angel.”

Sam nodded slowly and then smiled at Michael with such honesty and belief that it touched him. “Do you realise who this angel is Michael?” she asked slowly.

He shook his head and looked expectantly up at her. “Do you?”

Sam felt in her heart that he must have known it was Chelsea in the station. The blood found there matched hers exactly, but as of yet no body, or no injured person had been found and there was little hope of tracing her as the days passed. She could be dead, she could be dying, she could have fled the country without anyone ever noticing.

And at the same time Sam felt that she couldn’t tell him it was Chelsea he had seen, because to then conclude with all of these possible tragedies was too much, even for her, to handle. So, using her police discretion in the most humane way possible, she shook her head and left him silently contemplating what he had seen.

**********************************************************************************************************

Michael sat bolt up right in his bed and cursed the nightmare that had gripped him in the last dregs of the night. He pulled his alarm clock to him and shoved it back in disgust. He wasn’t due to get up for the rehearsal for at least another three hours, and to be waking at 6am was something close to insanity. But ever since America and Annabel his sleeping patterns were so disturbed that he often found himself dropping off in the afternoon and not waking again until the early hours of the second day of sleep. And he had to sleep with at least a little light in the room now, just to get asleep at all. The side effects of the drugs she had pumped into him were wearing off gradually and his sleep was returning more or less to normal otherwise, as was his life.

The return from America came a month after schedule, but he was happy that he could make it back at all. It had taken a lot of rehabilitation and physiotherapy to get him back into the shape he was before the entire ordeal, and as he stepped off the plane back into his own wet and rainy home country, he vowed never to go to America again.

When he had first been in the flat he had an unconscious sense that something wasn’t entirely right with it, like there was something missing from his possessions there, but after hunting madly and turning up nothing, he had given it up, but the thought returned to him now as he lay in bed. It was like a nagging fact that you had the answer to. It was there, right in your head. You could see it, could even spell it, but drag it from your brain to your mouth was another matter altogether. Michael sighed and frowned. This thing he had forgotten seemed terribly important, but he was always forgetting things these days.

As for Annabel, not a lot could be said about her. She was in a secure hospital somewhere where no one could get to her. Deranged and psychotic, she had attacked several of her guards and her nurses, and constantly made them refer to her as Mrs Palin. She would not tolerate her last name, nor even her first name to be mentioned, and would fly into a rage as soon as anyone did so.

Michael had even tried to visit her once, but there had been nothing there, and instead of relieving his anger onto her he left feeling more pity and compassion for her than he had ever felt before in his life. So he had left her in her quiet cell back in America and moved on.

And now there were more projects to pour himself into than he had ever wanted before. His national celebrity had grown hugely since his departure, and he had been invited on more than one occasion, to the countries biggest chat show to talk about his ordeal. But each time he refused. It was something he didn’t want to relive in private, let alone on national television.

Michael switched on the light in his room and headed to the kitchen. It was 6am. He would just have to make use of himself now that he couldn’t go back to sleep, and he sat in his kitchen drinking coffee and reading until the alarm in his room announced the 8am bell and he leapt into the shower, dressed and prepared himself a light breakfast and waited for the post to arrive.

He stepped out into the hall with his coat and case and glanced at his watch as the letterbox rattled, and he picked up his mail without opening it as he left his flat and entered out into the big wide world of business and entertainment.

*************************************************************************************************************

Terry had called all of his friends but one, and now as he picked up the receiver he wondered why he hadn’t done it sooner and why this man hadn’t been the first on his list.

Michael’s phone rang on the other end, and after a few rings he picked it up, breathless.

“You’re a lucky man,” said Michael as Terry announced it was him. “I was just about to get in the shower when I heard the phone go off.” There was a small pause. “What’s up mate?”

Terry smiled gently on his end. “Nothing, just, I was wondering if you could make the annual Python reunion this Friday?”

Michael thought this over in his mind and considered it from all angles, and Terry imagined he could here the noises Michael’s head was making as it did all this.

“That will be fine,” he said his voice slightly edgy. “Who’s going?”

Terry coughed nervously. “Oh, you know, the usual crowd.”

Michael nodded on his end of the phone. “Everyone then.” He said, more as a question than a statement.

Terry felt the hairs on his arms prickle up and he coughed again. “Well obviously not everyone Michael, you know that.”

Michael nodded again but could find nothing to say.

“Anyway,” Terry continued hurriedly. “Friday at 7pm. See you there.”

Michael nodded as the line went dead and he replaced the receiver with a heavy heart.

No one mentioned Chelsea anymore, as though she had never existed at all. They tiptoed around the subject as though at any moment the egg shells beneath them might shatter and they would fall onto the inevitable spikes beneath. All pictures of her in his friends’ houses had disappeared overnight, and he often wondered where his own collection had disappeared to.

He noted the date on his calendar and sighed, dropping his hand to his side and remembering the woman who had filled his life with such joy. She had been so wonderful and he had let her slip through his fingers. And now she was nowhere to be found. Her flat was empty, her roles unfilled, her passport unused and her very existence denied by all he knew and by all the evidence before him. The last time anyone had seen her was at the Hollywood Bowl on the night of his last performance, of Alison’s assault, the night of his kidnapping, the night of Chelsea Marsh’s disappearance.

He had long given up hope of ever seeing her again and, although the others said nothing and mentioned nothing of the entire affair, he knew that they had all mourned for her in their own secret ways. It was inevitable to them that she was dead. Annabel had proved them all right with her savagery so far, so it stood to reason that there could be no other result than death.

But something in Michael told him she was still alive. He pushed it away now with the familiar hand of realism, and knew that what he hoped was a dream. Just like the angel they had never found, never traced and never spoke of again.

*************************************************************************************************************

Terry’s house was alive when Michael rolled up to the door, pushing his way in amongst coats, children’s toys and newly installed animals.

John, Eric and Gilliam were laughing heartily by the fire with scotch glasses adorning each hand, with Graham perusing a newspaper, smoking and drinking tonic water nearby.

Pushing into the kitchen area he found Terry and Alison canoodling one another and blushing as they were caught in the act.

“Ah Michael, I’m glad you’re here,” said Alison, turning to Michael and revealing yet another bump. She smiled at him and he smiled back, the congratulations he felt clear on his face. He remembered the time when he and Chelsea had been the first to know of their friends pregnancies. He smiled more for the memory than for the present moment.

“Please get rid of my harassing husband before he gets his way and adds another sprog to the one already in me.”

Terry poked out his tongue as Michael dragged him to the drinks cabinet and ordered a stiff gin and tonic.

“How’ve you been?” asked Terry quietly. “We haven’t seen much of each other recently.”

Michael shrugged. “We’ve both had things to do,” he said, and with a cheeky wink nodded towards where Alison was preparing some buffet style finger foods.

Terry smiled happily. He was so proud of his growing family. “Well yes, but we should make time soon friend.”

Michael nodded and downed his drink, ordering another as he headed into the living room.

The guys acknowledged him as always with smiles, some slaps, and some rude observation on John’s part, before he came further into the room.

Sitting next to Graham he glanced about him, as if looking for something, before resting his eyes upon her usual resting place next to the hearth and smiled as fond memories of her there began to crowd his mind.

Python gatherings were renowned for their loud and drunken adventures, but this one was subdued and quiet, and instead of youngsters pratting around they looked at each other, now in the early thirties, or in John, Graham’s case, his mid to late thirties, and each felt miserly and old now.

They enjoyed their chats, the food was good, and the entertainment was enough for them. They weren’t drunken louts messing around and prancing with all the air of self-superficiality, but expressed themselves reservedly, maturely, and with an ounce of decorum that had pervaded them all in the past.

There was a long silence as each in their own thoughts observed the fire. Eric, sat on the floor in front of Gilliam was flicking his shoe lace in one hand. Gilliam in turn was fingering his coat lapels and John, sat next to these pair was sucking his lip and blowing it out again. Terry sat in a chair with his wife at his feet, and he was touching her neck and her hair and she had held of the other hand over her shoulder. It wasn’t until Graham coughed and filled his glass with water and raised it that anyone moved a muscle.

“I think we should make a toast.” He said softly. “We’ve all come a long way together, but there is one person that can’t be with us now and we should honour them.”

Terry glanced warily at Michael who looked at Graham and then raised his glass alongside his.

“It’s been a long time coming, but Chelsea should be remembered without any fear of hurt, without any fear of pain, and with all the celebration we can muster for the finest woman I ever knew.” He said and smiled gently at Terry who relaxed and raised his own glass.

Finally, when John, Alison, Eric and Gilliam raised their glasses, Graham nodded to them all. “To Chelsea,” he said, “friend, confidante, lover and the light of everyone’s life.”

They toasted and suddenly felt freer to talk about her than they ever had done before in their lives.

Michael smiled at his friends and knew they didn’t mind the tears on his face and knew that he would leave that evening feeling released and freer than he had ever felt before.