Read Mann 01 - Where Angels Rest for Free Online Page A

first shot jolted Nick, ripped through Yost, and splintered the trunk of the tree. Nick maneuvered the bolt action of the rifle and pulled off another.
Boom.
Reloaded and kept at it until his ears rang and his shoulder ached, until Yost was confetti and the center of the tree was kindling.
    He sank against the porch rail, tipping his face skyward. Sleet caught his cheeks like darts, in spite of the weatherman’s promise, and he propped the rifle on end under the eave and closed his eyes. Wondered how long Carrie Sitton had been alive on the road last night, feeling the sleet through the clay caked on her cheek.
    Damn it, stop thinking about her; she wasn’t his. Nick had some 20,000 residents he’d sworn to protect, including 16,000 in Hopewell proper and another 4,000 who lived in the outer stretches of the county. Carrie Sitton wasn’t one of them. Her killer was out of his hands.
    Just like Yost and all the others out there in the dark.
    Nick unrolled another paper human and walked it out to a tree. He stuck in a tack and pulled a marker from his pocket, the same one with which he’d labeled the others H-A-L-L and H-E-R-S-H-E-R and Y-O-S-T. He stared atthe blank target for a long moment, trying to picture the son of a bitch who would leave an eighteen-year-old girl to claw her way to the shoulder of the road and die there in the cold. Finally, he drew a question mark on the target, strode back to the porch, and picked up his rifle.
    “For you, Carrie,” he said.
    Saturday, November 10
    Columbus International Airport, Columbus, Ohio
    2:40 p.m.
    The Angelmaker watched from beneath a hat in a blue vinyl chair, pulse kicking up as a woman walked past just a few feet away. She carried a laptop and purse, and a fat nylon suitcase that would have just barely squeezed into an overhead compartment. Her strides were swift, a woman on a mission.
    Erin Sims.
    No surprise that she’d come. As soon as the news reported a reprieve for her brother pending an investigation in Ohio, there had been no doubt she’d show up. A little knowledge of her character and a check of the airline schedule was all it took: She would take the first flight she could, no layovers. And since American Airlines flew the only nonstop route between Miami and Columbus, it hadn’t been taxing to get comfortable near baggage claim and simply wait her out.
    Now, she passed nearly within arm’s reach of the chair, and the Angelmaker studied her. She hadn’t changed much, except that she looked a little worse for wear—like she’d taken a fall or something. But she was still slender and leggy, tall for a woman, and sporting thick waves of shoulder-length hair that could be brown or auburndepending on the light. She wasn’t beautiful in the traditional sense; her nose had a faint bend and her jaw was too square. But her lips were full and her eyes resembled green glass—big and bright and fringed with lashes so long there probably wasn’t a man alive who could look at her without imagining her on her knees, using her lips and batting those lashes up at him.
    No doubt she would bat them at authorities in Ohio just as she had in Miami and Raleigh. Determined to make everyone listen to her lies.
    The Angelmaker fell in behind her, sneering. The authorities wouldn’t believe her; they never had.
    The angels, though, were different. They saw truths they shouldn’t. And when they did, they had to die.
    Something Erin Sims might want to keep in mind.
    She hoisted her bag over her shoulder and walked away from a Hertz kiosk, fingering a new key fob, deep in thought. Busy planning her strategy, no doubt.
    Predictable as rain, the Angelmaker thought, and didn’t bother following her out of the airport. She wouldn’t be hard to keep track of. She’d probably show up at Hilltop before the night was over.
    And how far would she get this time? Apparently, there was some sort of new evidence, but the news hadn’t said what it was. Enough for authorities to issue