Read Online Where Angels Rest by Kate Brady - Free Book Online Page A

closed her eyes, trying to ignore the ache between her thighs. She couldn’t get over it. Carrie was dead. All because Rebecca had told her she could score some crack from Ace. She was murdered on the same road Rebecca always used to come to Ace’s house late at night.
    Jesus. It could have been her.
    Ace made a sound deep in his throat and his fingers dug in.
    “Stop,” she said. “I have to work the breakfast crowd tomorrow, early. And if I’m late or my mom finds out I was here—”
    “You gonna get the money from the cash register?” He twisted her nipple in the fingers of his free hand. Ace’s idea of romance. “How do you expect me to take you away from here without money?”
    “I will, I will,” she said, and a spear of sensation shot from her nipple to her belly. It was more pain than pleasure but heady all the same. Ace was going to take her away; he’d promised. He was going to get her out of this two-bit, stuck-in-the-last-century town and go someplace where no one was breathing down their necks all the time. “I can’t go yet. The cops keep wanting to talk to me about Carrie.” She shivered. “God, I can’t believe she’s dead.”
    Ace came forward. “Forget her,” he said, and his fingers pushed up between her legs. Rebecca moaned, not with pleasure, but resignation. Nothing short of a SWAT team would stop Ace Holmes when he wanted sex, and besides, sex was what Rebecca Engel was. It was what she had to offer the world: an oversized set of breasts, a soft belly with a gold hoop through her navel, and a pair of naturally bee-stung lips designed for certain tasks.
    A girl’s gotta be good at something.
    She went through the motions until she felt his hips jerk and heard a groan ripped from his chest. Finally, he fell back onto the couch. Used up, at least for now.
    She got in her car and headed back to town, the sky pitch black and the road—where Carrie had died—seeming more stark and lonely than ever before. Rebecca steered past the spot where Carrie’s car had been pushed off the road, clenching her fingers and trying not to look. A mile or so later, she slowed, squinting at something in the road.
    A truck. Her heart skipped a beat.
    The truck sat at an angle, blocking the road. The shadow of someone trying to wave her down moved in the mist.
    Rebecca slowed, chewing her lip. This was Hopewell. People helped one another here. Yet the memory of Carrie on this very road just a few miles north lifted her hackles. Is that what Carrie had done?
    Rebecca locked her car doors—something she couldn’t remember ever doing before. Got close enough that she could see a figure opening the hood. Something was wrong.
    Random attack.
That’s what they said about Carrie. Police were still looking, but the paper had said authorities thought it was some impulsive act by a stranger passing through. Not someone from Hopewell, stuck on the road with the hood up.
    Still, she couldn’t seem to settle her heart to a normal beat, and even as her car drifted closer to the stalled truck, the fingers of one hand curled around her phone. For a split second, she had the insane impulse to call home and let her mother know where she was, but she shook it off. She was nineteen—a grown woman. Bad enough that she’d flunked out of college and had nowhere to go but Hopewell. But if her mom found out she’d been with Ace Holmes tonight—and tripping—she’d be a prisoner. She and Ace would never have the chance to get away.
    Rebecca took a deep breath and pulled closer to the truck. Don’t be a baby, she told herself. For God’s sake, this was Hopewell.
    Nick threw two logs on the fire then moved an old radio off the table and adjusted the lantern so he could read. Sims looked around.
    “It’s not much for creature comforts, but that blanket is clean,” he said, nodding to the mattress on the floor.
    She went to it, looking a little less confident than just moments before. She was in a cold, empty house in