Page 1 of Price of Angels

One

September 1st.

I think I found my killer.

HMJ

**

Observant. That was the word for it. Holly knew all the things that she wasn’t. She wasn’t tall, and wasn’t boy-hipped like the glossy girls in the even glossier fashion magazines. She wasn’t smart or brave. Wasn’t clever or charming. There was nothing special or exceptional about her, really. Sometimes, she felt like that was an advantage. She didn’t live on any sort of false hope, based on an erroneous impression of herself. Not smart, but at least smart enough to know that no one cared about her. It was nothing but the truth for her, and that made it easier, in a way, when she unfastened the leather cuff bracelets she wore during her shifts at the bar and passed her fingertips over the scars that circled her wrists. The years and years’ worth of marks where the ropes had bit into her tender white skin time after time.

There were a few things that shewas, though, despite all the not-special. And one of these things wasobservant. Holly was quiet. She paid attention to things, little tiny things that no one else took the time to notice. She studied people, tried to learn them. Sometimes she took notes, when she was too excited about a particular observation to keep it to herself. Those tidbits she couldn’t tell the other girls at the bar, but were too important to hold inside. Those she wrote down in her journal, in a careful slanted handwriting that one of the girls had told her was masculine.

All her journal entries the last three months had been about Michael. Michael J. McCall, she’d gleaned from his credit card.

“You trying to steal numbers?” Carly had asked her with a little knowing smirk.

“No,” Holly had answered, truthfully. Not numbers, no, just names. She’d wanted to know his name, ever since that first entry, back in September, when she’d realized he was The One.

She’d come all the way to Knoxville, searching for the Lean Dogs, hoping against hope that one – just one of them – would be The One. She’d found him in Michael, she was sure at this point, after almost four months of studying him.

The trouble was, she hadn’t made her move yet.

“Ginger ale,” Matt said, and slid her drink order across the bar to her, jarring her from her thoughts.

“Thanks.” She smiled at him, just because that always seemed like the thing to do, and he smiled back, as always unaccustomed to one of his coworkers treating him with something besides indifferent politeness.

He nodded to her, and whistled to himself as he turned to pull the next drink.

She liked Matt. He was sweet. But she had no need of sweet. Maybe after, maybe once…well, maybe someday, in the future she’d never been able to imagine, she’d have the chance, and maybe even the bravery it would take to invite someone sweet into her life.

Right now, she only had room for one kind of man.

She took the drink in-hand and headed through the warm, hops-smelling interior of Bell Bar, thankful to be indoors on a bitter night like tonight. The weather had driven in lots of weeknight dinner patrons, in addition to the barfly regulars. The light was yellowed and muted, the dark boards and burgundy leather giving an impression of heat and comfort.

The customer who’d ordered the ginger ale had a small table tucked in a front corner, out of reach of the draft that flowed in each time the door opened. A dark-haired, slender girl with long, narrow fingers that glided over the keys of her open laptop. Her cable knit sweater was dark and shapeless over a pair of pale leggings. At her elbow, a small stack of paperbacks, scrap paper, a pen. She studied the screen, her face washed pale by its light, with rapt attention.

Holly knew who she was thanks to all those observational powers of hers. Ava Lécuyer, wife of Mercy Lécuyer, daughter of Ghost Teague. MC royalty.

“Ginger ale,” Holly announced in her bright, waitress voice as she reached the table and set the drink down. She whisked out a cocktail napkin and slid it under the glass. “Can I get you anything else?”

Ava’s expression was polite, almost friendly, but there was a screen up there. This was a careful girl, who didn’t make friends lightly or easily.

Holly understood that.

“No, thanks.” Ava started to turn back to her computer, then thought better of it. “Actually, bring him a Johnnie Walker Red.” She tapped the empty place at the table across from her.

Himbeing her husband, Mercy, who made Holly more than a little afraid.

“He’ll be here any second.”

“Sure thing.”

From Ava’s table, she swung by the other Dog-affiliated patrons who were in-house tonight. RJ and Walsh were at one of the tall tables, sharing a pitcher of Michelob.

“You boys doing alright?” she asked as she collected the empty pitcher.

“One more, darlin’,” RJ said, with one of those flirtatious smiles he wouldn’t stop flashing her.

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