Angel's Dance by Heidi Angell Read Free Book Online Page A

for her to unlock the doors. They both climbed in and
she passed him the keys. He started the car and pulled up to the
motel lobby.
    “ Are you hungry?” he
asked.
    “ Not really,” Clear
sighed, her stomach a mass of knots that threatened to overflow at
any moment.
    “ Right, well, let me know
when you are.” Grant shrugged and ran in to settle the bill. He was
back in just a few minutes.
    “ If you are hungry, we can
stop,” Clear pointed out.
    “ Not so much. Finding a
friend half-dead in the shower tends to kill one’s appetite,” Grant
said a bit snarkily. So much for polite. “Sorry… I’m not really
much of a morning person,” Grant amended.
    Clear shrugged again and
pulled her hoodie around her tighter. Grant turned up the heat. She
gave him the ghost of a half-smile then turned to face the window.
The highway followed fields and fields of corn and barley. Their
stalks looking like gold in the early morning light. With all the
warmth and light, Clear still felt chilled. She just couldn’t shake
the cold from that dank room from her vision. What if she was just
leaving that poor girl behind? What if that girl died and Clear
could have helped her? But she bit back the torrent of feelings.
There was no way she could help. She hadn’t seen anything that
could help. She didn’t even know if it was happening now. She
needed to focus on helping Grant find his daughter. They would be
in Chicago in a few hours and she needed to mentally prepare to
face the windy city, all its inhabitants, and all their thoughts.
She carefully worked on mentally reconstructing the walls that she
and Anne had been working on. Part of her worried that this would
also block out anything from Kat, unfortunately, she didn’t know
how to make partial walls. That had not been the goal in their process. She
certainly couldn’t help Kat if she was being driven mad by everyone
else.

    Thirty minutes later and it was so hot
in the cab that she was sweating. She glanced at Grant and could
see the beads of sweat on his upper lip. She quickly cranked the
heater down and rolled down her window.
    She saw a sign for a drive-thru burger
joint and her stomach growled. She wasn’t sure if it growled out of
hunger or because the thought of food was still repulsive, but she
figured Grant needed to eat. “Are you hungry yet?” she
ventured.
    “ We can stop if you are,”
Grant replied casually.
    “ We don’t have to stop,”
Clear qualified, pointing at the next sign. “I mean, we just got on
the road.”
    Grant shrugged. He took the exit and
pulled into the drive-thru. After placing his order he turned to
Clear. She despised fast food, but didn’t really have any option.
She hesitantly ordered yogurt, apple dippers and opted for a glass
of water. Grant smirked at her out of the corner of his eye, but
placed the order anyway.
    As they waited for their order, Grant
said, “I didn’t know you were a vegetarian.”
    “ Are you kidding me?”
Clear gasped. “I don’t think there is a vegetarian in the entire
state of Montana!!” She shook her head.
    “ Well, your breakfast
choice…” Grant began.
    Clear waved him off. “Ha!… Hardly! But
the crap they serve isn’t real meat, or real eggs for that matter.
Besides, grease just isn’t a really good idea right now.” She
winced as her stomach gurgled loudly to illustrate her
point.
    Grant nodded. “I was wondering about
the burger last night. Makes sense.” He took their order from the
woman at the counter and passed it all to Clear. She divvied up the
food and offered him his sandwich. He nodded and she opened it for
him before handing it over. There was a moment of silence as they
both began to eat.
    Grant took a swig of his large coffee.
“So do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
    Clear was caught completely off guard
and chewed her apple slice slowly, wondering what ‘it’ he was
referring to. There were so many ‘its’ she wanted to talk to him
about, but she sort of