All the Beautiful Brides by Rita Herron Read Free Book Online Page A

flashed behind his eyes, and he smiled. She would look so beautiful in white.
    “Cut that whore hair off of her,” Mama said.
    He nodded obediently, then grabbed the scissors from the kitchen and began to hack it off.

    Johnny Pike’s gut knotted as he listened to the guards talking in the walkway between the cellblocks.
    When that lawyer had contacted him a few weeks ago about the parole hearing, he’d tried not to get his hopes up.
    “Did you hear about that girl murdered at Graveyard Falls?” one guard asked.
    “Yeah. Found her the same day they held the memorial for the girls Pike killed.”
    Johnny curled his fingers around the bars. Another murder? Jesus.
    At least they couldn’t pin this one on him.
    Except . . . hell, Sheriff Buckley would if he could. He’d do anything to keep Johnny in prison.
    When he’d first been locked up, he’d shouted and screamed his innocence to everyone in this godforsaken place. But not a soul had believed him. Every inmate in this hellhole claimed they’d been set up.
    He’d stopped shouting long ago.
    Hell, the evidence had been so stacked against him that he’d had to take that plea.
    Besides, guilt smothered him. It was his fault those girls had died.
    The dreams . . . the nightmares of the murders kept him awake every night. He heard the girls’ screams in his sleep. Saw their eyes pleading to let them live.
    Saw his parents’, and sweet Anna’s, faces staring at him with disbelief and shock.
    Then their backs as they turned away from him.
    “Think the Thorn Ripper has a copycat?” the guard asked.
    Footsteps pounded as they walked down the block nearer him, and Johnny dropped back onto his cot, closed his eyes, and pretended to be asleep.
    He didn’t have to see them to know they’d stopped by his cell and were watching him with those condemning eyes as if he were some kind of monster. He should be used to those looks by now.
    “Maybe Pike has a protégé,” the guard mumbled. “Some creep who looked up to the sick son of a bitch.”
    Johnny thought about pictures of the dead girls the sheriff had found beneath his bed.
    The pictures of those damn roses crammed down their throats . . .
    Panic seized him, making his stomach churn.
    He had received hate mail over the years. And other letters from admirers who wanted to make a name for themselves as he had done.
    Was some sick bastard using the Thorn Ripper’s MO now to make himself famous?

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Mona combed the house, too antsy to sleep. Ever since Brent had died, she’d become an insomniac.
    Most nights she tossed and turned, only to finally fall asleep in the wee hours of the morning. Even then, she was plagued by nightmares.
    First of the miscarriage. Then of Brent’s death.
    She brewed a cup of hot tea, then paced to the sunroom that overlooked the woods and curled up on the glider. The snowy mountains looked majestic in the moonlight, the ancient trees swaying with the wind, the sharp ridges jutting out, creating cliffs and overhangs.
    So beautiful yet so dangerous.
    Brent had died on one of the mountain roads outside Knoxville. She closed her eyes, willing the image of his mangled car from her mind. He’d flown over the edge on a switchback and nose-dived into the stretch called Devil’s Canyon.
    Tears burned the backs of her eyes. If only she hadn’t pushed him about trying to get pregnant again, he might not have left the house that night. If she’d let it go, given him more time, he might still be alive . . .
    Too frustrated to sleep, she retrieved the yearbook from Graveyard Falls High as she had done so many times before, the one from the year of the Thorn Ripper.
    The girls had been killed a few months before she was born. Which meant that her mother’s picture might be inside this album.
    She’d looked through it several times, painstakingly, page by page, but maybe this time she’d see something she’d missed.
    Settling back on the glider, she opened the book and began