A Touch of Grace Read Free Page A

presence, but not his comfort.
    She knelt beside her sister’s body and waited for the policeman.
    The officer’s dark, rough hand rustled the plastic. “Are you ready, ma’am?”
    Shoulders stiff and resolute, she gave one curt nod.
    When the still face was revealed, Gretchen didn’t react. She knelt there, staring down for the longest time. At last, when Ian wondered if perhaps there had been some mistake and this wasn’t her sister after all, she nodded.
    “That’s Maddy.”
    The policeman slid the cover back in place and moved quietly away, leaving them alone. Gretchen still didn’t move.
    Another siren wailed in the distance. Across the street teenagers bounced a basketball while staring openly at the swarming police, trying to get a peek at the tragedy. Motors roared. Doors slammed. Voices carried on the morning air. Other news crews had arrived by now and were filming from outside the barrier.
    Regardless of her occupation, Ian wanted to get Gretchen away from the reporters.
    “Tell me what you need, Gretchen. What can I do?” Ian asked.
    “Do?” she asked. “Do?”
    She shot up from her knees, and that quick the barracuda returned. She turned on him, green eyes flashing fire. “I think you’ve done enough.”

    He had no idea what she meant, but the lady was distraught.
    He reached for her. “Gretchen.”
    She slapped his hands away, striking out like a wounded animal. “You don’t know me.”
    Ignoring the rejection, he offered his hand again, palm up. He couldn’t leave her like this. “You need to get away from here. Come on, I’ll take you inside the mission.”
    “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Take me inside and feed me soup and a pack of lies. Tell me that you have all the answers to my problems like you did for my poor druggie sister.” Her face contorted in sarcasm. “You were different, Maddy said. You could help her get her life together.” She glanced from her sister’s still form to Ian, stabbing him with accusing green eyes. “Well, you really did a good job of that, didn’t you?”
    While Ian grappled to understand why he was the focus of her animosity, Gretchen Barker, the Channel Eleven barracuda, stormed across the wet grass to her van and drove away.

Chapter Two
    T he long, slow notes of “Amazing Grace” reverberated on the air and trembled into silence. Even in the worst of times, Ian found solace in his music and in the beautiful old saxophone his father had given him. Like the Psalmist David, he felt closer to God when he played than when he prayed.
    He leaned the instrument carefully against a chair and went to answer the knock on his office door.
    The bushy, gray mustache of Roger Bryant twitched at him from the doorway. “You fretting about something, son?”
    Roger always knew when something was eating at him. He claimed the saxophone sounded different. Ian figured it was true enough. Through his music he was able to express the emotions that otherwise stayed locked inside.
    Roger, skinny and frail with scraggly strands of gray hair slicked down with some kind of shiny oil, was oneof Ian’s first success stories. At fifty-nine, his ash-gray face and broken body looked seventy, a testament to years of slavery to alcohol and self-loathing. Homeless and destitute after too many stints in county lockup, he’d asked Ian to help him get his life together. Then he’d stuck around to help run Isaiah House. For Ian, who loved the hands-on part of ministry but detested the business end, Roger had literally been an answer to prayer.
    “I just got off the phone with our lawyer,” he said to his friend.
    Roger, hampered by a hip badly in need of replacement, limped into the office. His basset-hound face showed little reaction to Ian’s statement. He wasn’t shaken by much. “Bad news, I guess?”
    Ian tilted his head in agreement. “The lawsuit will likely go to trial.” He’d thought the whole thing a joke at first.
    “Foolishness. Who would expect a