Mann 01 - Where Angels Rest Read Free Page A

right, but the senator’s entourage was gone. Bitterness rose to Erin’s throat: just one more gawker. Executions were good entertainment.
    A raindrop hit her cheek and she looked up. A thin smile of moon slipped out from behind a cloud, mocking her, the same moon that looked down just now on John Huggins a thousand miles away. Hopewell, Ohio. A small town with a quaint bed-and-breakfast and a no-nonsense sheriff. Online, it had all the earmarks of a Norman Rockwell painting, a place so peaceful people probably didn’t even lock their doors. The perfect haven for a murderer.
    Not anymore.
    Determination straightened Erin’s spine. She did the math: a five-hour drive back to Miami, put her caseload on hold, pack a bag. She could be in Ohio by tomorrow afternoon. Erin knew the way authorities worked. No way would she leave her brother’s life to some sheriff who wouldn’t care whether he lived or died, and if Victor wasn’t going to help her anymore, then she’d do it alone. God knows, she’d learned how to fight her own battles when she was sixteen years old.
    An engine turned over. Erin jumped; she hadn’t noticed another vehicle. She glanced around. Nothing. Just the hum of an engine somewhere in the darkness.
    Her pulse kicked up and she clicked her key fob—twice, three times—but her car was still too far away to read the signal. The engine grew louder and she picked up her pace, her skin pulling into goose bumps. She looked behind her. Darkness, but instinct pushed her to start jogging, her fingers frantically working the key fob to her car.Finally, her headlights blinked but the phantom engine drew nearer. Two columns of lights swept across her back.
    She veered right, running now, the headlights bearing down. She glanced over her shoulder and winced, blinded by the glare. The white disks barreled in, the car coming fast. She lunged for the fence and tried to scream to the guard.
    The sound never came.

CHAPTER
2
    Thursday, November 8
    Hopewell, Ohio
    11:58 p.m.
    M IDNIGHT, a silver of moon hanging over the rooftops and a couple of chimneys still breathing into the air. It was a settled neighborhood, the kind grown comfortable with squeaky screen doors and broken sidewalks. The kind that leeched kids into the streets on Saturday mornings and where folks let themselves into the house next door to borrow an egg. The kind whose residents would be seen on tomorrow morning’s news, white-faced, saying, “We never thought something like this could happen here…”
    The Angelmaker sat in a new Ford F-150, munching saltines, keeping track as the last few night owls turned in. A couple of houses down the street, the Richardsons’ front door cracked open to swallow a howling cat. A half-block behind the truck, the lights of Yaeger’s television snapped to black. And at the end of the street, where asingle light burned in the front window, Rebecca Engel stepped out onto the porch.
    The Angelmaker stopped chewing.
Rebecca
. Right there, just yards away, and alone. She was one of the chosen ones—able to see things she shouldn’t—yet there she was, oblivious to the fact that she was about to die.
    She dropped down the front porch steps, hunching into her coat and throwing a scarf around her face to ward off the sleet. She climbed into an old Camry and headed east, then north out of town. The Angelmaker followed, headlights picking out thin veins of fog. Easy now. No need to hang too close—there was no doubt where she was going. She’d be headed to Ace Holmes’s place, twenty miles out on County Road 219, just over the Hopewell County line. The middle of nowhere.
    Perfect.
    Rebecca’s car led the way for fifteen minutes, then the Angelmaker hustled around back roads and jumped ahead, got back on 219 and nosed the big Ford halfway across the double yellow line. Parked and popped the hood to wait. Two minutes after the truck was in position, the Camry’s headlights pierced the mist.
    Rebecca neared, slowing