Read Angel's Touch for Free Online

next.”
    “No wonder I got such a good deal.”
    “People have talked about building something on this lot for a long time, but nobody local would buy it.”
    “Lucky for me, then.”
    “You don’t care about the creepy vibe?”
    “You think there’s a creepy vibe? If you’d never heard that story, would you honestly think this place was scary?” Kira gestured toward the trees. “I like this place. It’s sad about that woman, but I don’t think her ghost is hanging around. Not that I believe in ghosts. It feels good here. It feels like…” She rolled her eyes. “Like clean air and ocean breezes and all that wonderful clichéd stuff I’m going to put in my ads. Not like rapists are hiding behind the brush.”
    She was right, actually. From the outside, it did feel creepy, but here it felt completely different. In all the times she’d walked by on the street, she’d never suspected there was such peaceful, undisturbed wilderness hidden back here.
    And Kira was going to clear-cut these beautiful old trees and destroy their magic. So she could build a spa. What a waste. If she wanted to create a healing environment, all she needed to do was preserve what was already here. Get rid of the invasive vines and clear a nature trail.
    Kira stared into space with her hands in her back pockets and her elbows out to the sides, lost in her vision for the site. “The minute I saw this, I knew it would be perfect for my spa. It was the same way with the hotel. I walked in the front door and I knew I had to buy it.”
    Megan knew what she was talking about. Despite its current state of disrepair, the hotel did feel surprisingly welcoming.
    “Don’t you think it’ll be great?” Kira said.
    Megan tried to picture herself inside Kira’s future building looking out at what was left of the scenery, but all she could think was that she didn’t want to be here the day the bulldozers crashed through and knocked down the trees.
    Why was this bothering her so much? She had to admit it was a beautiful setting for a spa. And better a small spa than a multistory hotel that would raze the whole site and smother it with a sprawling parking lot. This was one of the last big tracts of undeveloped land in the area. It was inevitable that someone would build here eventually. Yet sticking any new building here, even a small one, felt all wrong. She wandered around, spotting several more of the yellow markers and an ancient solitary boulder that was no doubt destined to be one of the displaced residents.
    Sad.
    “You’ve already had a surveyor measure this out?” Megan said.
    “Yup.”
    “But you don’t have a blueprint yet.”
    “It won’t be long. The size of the building’s not going to change, so why wait?”
    A lump formed in her throat at Kira’s callousness. Did she not care at all that she was destroying these trees? As she continued to walk, pressure built in her chest, and the sense of doom she’d always associated with this neglected lot increased.
    She stopped. Doom was taking it a little far, wasn’t it? Maybe the feeling was more like someone’s hands pushing her, resisting her. Cautiously, she took a step forward, and the pressure increased again. Weird. Mentally, she scanned her body. Where was the pressure coming from? She couldn’t possibly be having a heart attack. She chased a tendril of fear around her lungs, then found the fear hovering over her shoulders like a sweaty linebacker looming behind her. This was ridiculous. Her imagination didn’t usually come up with crap like this. So maybe it wasn’t her imagination. Could it actually be a spirit? Something left over from the woman who was murdered here? Megan leaned back and relaxed into Mr. Creepy to figure out what he was.
    Mr. Creepy and the sense of foreboding abruptly vanished. The pressure was still there, but now she realized it wasn’t coming from inside her at all. It was the air, resisting her. Or…it wasn’t the air. She was standing in