A Touch of Grace. Linda Goodnight

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СКАЧАТЬ looked from the huge green eyes of the reporter to the covered body of the dead girl. Huge green eyes. They had the same eyes.

      He had been breathless before, but now he couldn’t breathe at all. This strong, self-confident woman was a sister to fragile, helpless Maddy?

      “Maddy. Maddy.” And then the woman he’d considered tough and hardened shattered before his eyes. She went to her knees on the thick, wet grass and sobbed brokenly. Ian followed her down, guilty for the negative thoughts he’d had about her, and gathered the shaking Gretchen to his chest.

      “I’m sorry, so sorry,” he muttered against silky hair that smelled as fresh as the flowers in his garden.

      Gretchen Barker, the barracuda whose news reports had teeth in them, felt small and soft and helpless in his arms. A protective urge, totally out of place given who she was, suffused Ian. For a man who kept women at arm’s length to protect the integrity of the mission, having a beautiful, grief-stricken woman in his embrace was not an everyday occurrence.

      If he hadn’t been so saddened by the circumstances, Ian would have seen the humor in his predicament. He didn’t even like the thorn-in-the-flesh reporter and here he was thinking how pretty she was and how good her hair smelled. He was more than exhausted. He was losing his mind.

      Reining in the wayward thoughts, he gently patted her back until the racking sobs subsided. Slowly, she pulled away, leaving damp spots on his green T-shirt. Her bereft expression tore at him.

      “Could I call someone for you? A friend? Your family?”

      “Maddy is my family.” Her face crumpled. She pressed shaking fingertips against her lips. “Oh, Maddy.”

      Wanting to help, but not certain what to expect from a woman who’d kicked him, hit him and then collapsed in tears, he slipped his arm around her narrow shoulders. For a fraction of a second, she relented and leaned against his side. Then, she placed a hand on his shoulder and pushed up. The knees of her dark slacks were grass-stained and soaked with dew.

      Crossing her arms as if they could shield her heart from the terrible sorrow, she said, “I have to see her.”

      Ian understood. He didn’t like it, but he understood.

      “I’ll ask the officer.”

      Since she was next of kin, they had no problem securing permission. The police appreciated a positive ID.

      Slowly, they walked toward the body. Ian had never in his life wanted so badly to comfort someone. She was shattered. She needed another human being to help her through this, but now that she’d gathered her composure and made up her mind to see her sister, she had pulled away from him, both emotionally and physically. She tolerated his presence, but not his comfort.

      She knelt beside her sister’s body and waited for the policeman.

      The officer’s dark, rough hand rustled the plastic. “Are you ready, ma’am?”

      Shoulders stiff and resolute, she gave one curt nod.

      When the still face was revealed, Gretchen didn’t react. She knelt there, staring down for the longest time. At last, when Ian wondered if perhaps there had been some mistake and this wasn’t her sister after all, she nodded.

      “That’s Maddy.”

      The policeman slid the cover back in place and moved quietly away, leaving them alone. Gretchen still didn’t move.

      Another siren wailed in the distance. Across the street teenagers bounced a basketball while staring openly at the swarming police, trying to get a peek at the tragedy. Motors roared. Doors slammed. Voices carried on the morning air. Other news crews had arrived by now and were filming from outside the barrier.

      Regardless of her occupation, Ian wanted to get Gretchen away from the reporters.

      “Tell me what you need, Gretchen. What can I do?” Ian asked.

      “Do?” she asked. “Do?”

      She shot up from her knees, and that quick the barracuda returned. She turned on him, green eyes flashing fire. “I think you’ve done enough.”

      He had no idea what she meant, but the lady was distraught.

      He reached for her. “Gretchen.”

      She slapped his hands away, striking out like a wounded animal. “You don’t know me.”

      Ignoring the rejection, he offered his hand again, palm up. He couldn’t leave her like this. “You need to get away from here. Come on, I’ll take you inside the mission.”

      “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Take me inside and feed me soup and a pack of lies. Tell me that you have all the answers to my problems like you did for my poor druggie sister.” Her face contorted in sarcasm. “You were different, Maddy said. You could help her get her life together.” She glanced from her sister’s still form to Ian, stabbing him with accusing green eyes. “Well, you really did a good job of that, didn’t you?”

      While Ian grappled to understand why he was the focus of her animosity, Gretchen Barker, the Channel Eleven barracuda, stormed across the wet grass to her van and drove away.

      Chapter Two

      The long, slow notes of “Amazing Grace” reverberated on the air and trembled into silence. Even in the worst of times, Ian found solace in his music and in the beautiful old saxophone his father had given him. Like the Psalmist David, he felt closer to God when he played than when he prayed.

      He leaned the instrument carefully against a chair and went to answer the knock on his office door.

      The bushy, gray mustache of Roger Bryant twitched at him from the doorway. “You fretting about something, son?”

      Roger always knew when something was eating at him. He claimed the saxophone sounded different. Ian figured it was true enough. Through his music he was able to express the emotions that otherwise stayed locked inside.

      Roger, skinny and frail with scraggly strands of gray hair slicked down with some kind of shiny oil, was one of Ian’s first success stories. At fifty-nine, his ash-gray face and broken body looked seventy, a testament to years of slavery to alcohol and self-loathing. Homeless and destitute after too many stints in county lockup, he’d asked Ian to help him get his life together. Then he’d stuck around to help run Isaiah House. For Ian, who loved the hands-on part of ministry but detested the business end, Roger had literally been an answer to prayer.

      “I just got off the phone with our lawyer,” he said to his friend.

      Roger, hampered by a hip badly in need of replacement, limped into the office. His basset-hound face showed little reaction to Ian’s statement. He wasn’t shaken by much. “Bad news, I guess?”

      Ian tilted his head in agreement. “The lawsuit will likely go to trial.” He’d thought the whole thing a joke at first.

      “Foolishness. Who would expect a Christian mission to allow pornographic magazines on-site?”

      “That’s my thinking. But even if a jury agrees, СКАЧАТЬ