Wounded Angel (The Earth Angels) - By Stacy Gail Page 0,26
reported missing, I wanted to help. So I headed up the interstate to volunteer to look for you and the others.”
“You did?”
He nodded, his hardened expression making him almost unrecognizable. “It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out there was a monster hidden somewhere in the Smoky Mountains. In one week, three women who had no connection to each other except for their similar appearance—blond hair, blue eyes, early twenties, average height—suddenly vanished without a trace. By the time you, the fourth and final victim, vanished, I was ready to head up north and offer my services. Since I wasn’t too bad at finding things, I thought maybe I had a chance of finding you before it was too late.”
“You’re good at finding things, all right.” The words were out before she could stop them. “I can attest to that.”
“All four of you had disappeared at the edge of town, close to a logging road that led more or less in the direction of Charles Rainier’s posh cabin,” he went on, ignoring the acid she tried to throw his way. “None of the locals wanted to even touch that well-heeled family, but since I didn’t give a damn, I went for it. I’d been there less than an hour when I found you stumbling out of the tree line—naked, shocky from blood loss and carrying another one of the missing women over your shoulder. I almost couldn’t believe it.”
That made two of them. “I do remember...someone. Having that girl I was carrying, Jasmine, taken off my shoulder was such a relief. And there was a coat...”
“A jacket, actually. I gave you my Atlanta Braves baseball jacket with the sheepskin lining. You were shaking so hard I feared you’d die of shock then and there. Then I took the other victim, Jasmine Sims, wrapped her up in my shirt and got you both out of there as fast as I could. I didn’t know yet who had taken you, or that he was...”
“Dead.” The word came out like the flatline of a heart monitor. All things considered, that was probably appropriate. “I still have your jacket. Do you want it back?”
“What I want is for you to realize I’m on your side, Gabriella. I have been, long before now.”
How wonderful it would be if she could believe him. “Don’t call me that. Gabriella died at the hands of Charles Rainier. Just as surely as he died at mine.”
For some perverse reason Ella looked for signs of shock or revulsion at what she had done to survive, waiting viciously to hold his pious condemnation against him. But all he did was nod in what looked like glowing approval. “I did everything I could to get my hands on the police report, just to make sure Rainier really was as dead as the news was saying. I can’t tell you how proud I was of you when I read you’d taken the knife he’d used to carve his so-called art into you and the others, his ‘living canvases,’ and nearly took his head off with it.”
Her jaw locked as the memories tried to drown her—the horror of watching the others slowly bleed to death rising like a toxic tide to fill her stomach with acid. Even now she had no remorse for fighting her abductor when he’d unshackled her from the cabin wall where he’d kept his “canvases,” grabbing his favorite tool—a hunting knife—and charging at him in an all-or-nothing gambit. Two women had already perished, left to hang on his wall as Charles Rainier’s sick idea of masterpieces, while the third one was so anemic and traumatized she’d stopped speaking during the two days that Ella had been held captive. When Ella had decided to strike, she’d known it was either end up like the rest of them, or die trying to live.
There had never been a moment’s hesitation. Then, or now.
“It was him or me.” She nailed Nate with a look that felt as cold as her heart. “I made sure it was me.”
“Good.” The last thing she’d expected him to do was to return the look with a ferocious, approving smile that made her breath catch. “I’m just sorry the spineless bastard can’t die twice. I have no words to adequately express how deeply and with great passion I yearn to squeeze the life out of Charles Rainier with my bare hands.”
“Yet you’re working for his family.”
“You’re wrong, technically speaking. I get my paycheck from Archibald, who’s busy tying