Faithless Angel Read Free Page B

best of them during the past five years running Faith’s House. Ricky, “Pig-head,” played high school football, and she’d even wrestled him down once when he’d been uncooperative and a bit too sassy for his own good.
    She had faced knives before, too. She’d even stared down the barrel of a gun when Emily had been dead-set on running away the first week she’d come to the house. And always before, Faith had been scared. Terrified.
    Not this time. Jane’s image flashed in her mind—mousy brown hair, big, wide brown eyes—and Faith’s heartbeat remained steady, as if her life didn’t hang in the balance. But it did, she reminded herself. It did!
    She stayed calm.
    The frail chest pressed against her back heaved frantically, and she knew her attacker was anything but calm. He was frightened, as frightened as she should be, and he was all the more dangerous because of it.
    She raised one hand and gripped the wrist near her throat.
    “Don’t even think it, lady,” Daniel said, his voice shaky despite his threat.
    Still, Faith’s fingers wrapped about his wrist. The blade pressed deeper into her throat. She felt his pulse race beneath her fingertips.
    “Move another muscle and I’ll cut you,” Daniel threatened. “I swear it.” The knife edged deeper.
    Bradley turned stark white, his eyes pleading with her captor. “Let her go, Daniel! Don’t do this, man. You’ll be shipped off to a place a hundred times worse than this.”
    “Do it,” Faith whispered. “Stop talking and do it—” Her voice caught as the blade pressed deeper.
    “Shut up!”
    “You think you’re scaring me? she rasped while Bradley shot her a warning look. He thought she was trying to psyche Daniel out, make him blow his cool and lose his nerve. A bitter laugh rose to her lips. She was saying exactly what she would have said a month ago. The difference was, now she meant it.
    “You’re not,” she went on. “You don’t scare me, and neither does that knife, and death couldn’t be much worse than the past two weeks. So go on and put me out of my misery.”
    “I said
shut up!
” he ground out. Knuckles dug into her throat as Daniel adjusted his hold on the knife. “You wanna die? Well, you just might get your chance. Keep talking and you’ll get it good—” His words were cut off, followed by a yelp.
    The knife clattered to the floor and Faith found herself free. She stumbled forward, her fingers going to her throat. She landed on her knees, the room spinning around her for a dangerous second.
    Then a large, strong hand came from behind, gripped her arm, and helped her to her feet.
    Faith stared up into the face of Jesse Savage. Apparently, he’d come through the back door, approached from behind, and grabbed Daniel by the shirt collar. Jesse’s lips formed a deep scowl, his dark eyes alight with anger and worry and somethingelse—something she might have mistaken for fear if she hadn’t known better.
    But she’d known men like Jesse Savage. They came from the streets; they fought their way through poverty, most ending up behind bars or six feet under. Fear wasn’t a weakness they indulged in. But neither was kindness, yet here he was, her hero—whether he looked the part or not.
    “What the hell is wrong with you?” he demanded. “Are you crazy, testing a kid like this?” He glanced at the sullen-looking Daniel dangling by his collar. Jesse’s grip tightened on the boy’s shirt. “He could have killed you! A second more and he would have.” Those intense dark eyes riveted on her throat. “And I can’t say as I would have blamed him, with you running your mouth like that. You were asking for it.”
    “He was bluffing.”
    “But you weren’t.” Jesse’s fingertips burned into her arm, stirring a strange heat that made her body tingle. “Were you?”
    “No.”
    His fingers tightened considerably and she wondered who posed the bigger threat: this dark stranger who wore a look as menacing as thunder,