Ritual Sins by Anne Stuart Read Free Book Online

Luke’s accusing gaze with relative innocence.
    He loved it when things fit together.
    It took Rachel forever to get to Angel. The woman didn’t make a sound behind her heavy, locked door, and Gretchen, a long-haired, middle-aged woman in pale green pajamas, kept Rachel reasonably busy, reading to one patient who barely seemed to listen, rolling yarn for another who kept knitting the same square over and over again and then pulling it out. It wasn’t until late afternoon that she had a few moments to herself. Gretchenhad gone for a cup of green tea, a refreshment that filled Rachel with horror.
    The corridor outside Angel’s room was deserted. The window was low enough that Rachel could peer inside, and the sight that met her eyes stunned her.
    It was no madwoman curled in a corner, drooling and babbling. The woman who sat at the table, writing in a journal, looked neat, sane, and even pretty, her thick blond hair curling on her shoulders, her face determined.
    “Angel?” Rachel whispered.
    The woman lifted her head, staring at the door. Her eyes were clear, calm. “What do you want?”
    “It’s Rachel. Stella Connery’s daughter. Did you know my mother when she was here?”
    Angel put her pencil down. “I knew Stella,” she said. “They killed her.”
    Rachel froze. “Are you the one who wrote to me?” she asked urgently.
    “Wrote to you? I don’t even know you. I knew your mother. They killed her.” There was the madness, and yet she sounded so matter-of-fact, so reasonable.
    “Why would they do that? She was dying anyway.”
    “So they say. Maybe she really did have cancer. Maybe they hurried her along to put her out ofher misery. Maybe that’s what they did to all the others.”
    “All what others?”
    Angel rose and came to the door. She was a tall, slender woman, with strong-looking hands. “All the people who’ve died here. All the rich people who’ve come here to follow Luke’s way, only to find they have a terminal disease that no one can help. They die. They die very quickly. And they leave all their money to the Foundation.”
    “How do you know this?”
    Angel’s mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “Why do you think I’m locked in here? You think people are really nutcases like that little weirdo Calvin said? They’re trying to silence me. I found out too much, but they don’t dare kill me. Yet.”
    “Are you going to have your parents do something about it … ?”
    “Parents? My parents have been dead for years. That’s just another one of Calvin’s lies. I don’t know what they have planned for me, but by tomorrow I don’t think I’ll be caring. Unless you help me.”
    “How can I help you?”
    “Let me out of here. Give me a chance to get away from them. You don’t know how bad they really are, how evil. You don’t know what they’re capable of. I have all the proof I need right here in my journal—times, places, names of victims—butthey’ll never let me keep it.” She paused. “I could give it to you. That way if something happens to me, at least it won’t all be covered up. You’ll do that for me, at least, won’t you? Keep the journal, make sure it gets to the right people?”
    She didn’t even hesitate. Who was she to trust, Luke Bardell’s right-hand man, or a woman much like herself, who knew just what evil was going on beneath the saintly exterior of the Foundation of Being? Yet she denied being the author of that chilling letter. And if she wasn’t, who else knew of Luke’s horrific sideline? How many people were in on it?
    “Does anyone else know what’s going on? Is there anyone else I could talk to about my mother?” she persisted.
    “Your mother was a believer. Almost until the end. There are others who’ve begun to suspect, but they keep us separated, locked up if they can.”
    “Surely she must have had friends here … ?”
    “Stella was only interested in what Luke could give her.”
    That was her mother all right, Rachel thought