Mann 01 - Where Angels Rest Read Free

North Carolina. Let the system do its thing.”
    “The
system
just tried to kill my brother.” Her voice vibrated with emotion, but Victor was unfazed. He was a lawyer; he belonged to the system. Or, she thought—the expression on Victor’s face lifting the hairs on the back of her neck—there was something more. Something he wasn’t telling her.
    “Victor?” she asked.
    He dropped his head, then blew out a breath and looked at her. “I’m finished, Erin. If you want to go forward you need to find another lawyer.”
    “If I want—” Her blood stopped moving. “You don’t mean that.”
    He took her arm, lowering his voice. “Do you know that my secretary was afraid to come to work today? That I found graffiti painted on my car when I left my office this afternoon?” Frustration morphed to something that sounded like true fear. “Damn it, I don’t want to be on the wrong side of McAllister anymore.”
    Erin’s bones went cold. She glared in the direction McAllister had gone, anger and powerlessness colliding in her chest. She couldn’t believe Victor was bailing. He was a friend; he’d stood up with David at their wedding and stuck by her when even David hadn’t. To lose him now, when a sliver of hope glimmered on the horizon…
    “One more week, Vict—”
    “No,” he said, with a finality she knew was real. He glanced around, as if an assailant might be lurking along the dark edges of the prison yard. “I wish you luck, Erin. Really, I do. But I’ve got a wife, kids. I’m finished.”
    He turned away and Erin snagged his arm. “Wait,” she said. Tears came in a flash. “Did you see him? Did he see you?”
    “I saw him, through the one-way window. He didn’t see me.”
    “A-and?”
    “He’s thin but strong; his hair’s long again. He looks—He looks okay.” Victor put up a hand before she could ask more. “Don’t picture the details, Erin. It won’t help.”
    He headed for the parking lot and Erin looked at the stone sprawl of buildings that made up the Florida StatePrison, forcing herself to visualize Justin no longer strapped to a gurney with IVs in his veins and witnesses watching through one-way glass. She closed her eyes. Picture him in his cell, no IVs, sitting up. Alive.
    She pulled out a copy of the Internet picture she’d given to Victor three days ago. It was too dark to see the details, but they were emblazoned in her memory: a large, scenic inn in rural Ohio, with a folksy Pennsylvania Dutch pineapple stenciled on a sign that said W ELCOME TO H ILLTOP H OUSE . It did indeed appear to be set on a hill, surrounded by sprawling yew and chesty oak trees, with a whitewashed porch and homey ferns hanging at even intervals. Along the front walkway, ceramic sculptures of a girl and boy waded through beds of coreopsis and snapdragons. And on the front steps of the inn, the proprietor leaned against the porch railing with a caption that read, O WNER : J ACK C ALLOWAY .
    Erin didn’t think so. This had to be Huggins. Even if the photo was too distant to see his eye color, even if there were thousands of men of his age and build, even if it were true that everyone had a lookalike somewhere in the world, those two ceramic sculptures in the garden gave it away. Erin would swear Huggins’s wife had made those.
    The adrenaline that had sustained her for the past three days leaked from her limbs. She tucked away the picture, then put a finger to her lips and breathed a kiss and a promise toward the prison. She started for the parking lot. A security guard muttered “ ’Night, miss” as he pushed the various buttons that swung the final gate open and closed behind her. She headed across the pavement toward her car, fifty yards away, and squinted when she glimpsed a straggling figure standing in the far corner of the lot. A woman, she realized, the silhouette of along, flowing skirt moving as the figure scurried into the darkness.
    Mrs. McAllister? She glanced around. The skirt was