Free Fallen Angels 04 - Rapture by J.R. Ward Page A

was in the hopes that the woman returned. Or at the very least, was okay.
    Looked like she was surrounded by missing people.
    Or at least it felt that way this morning. Especially when she thought of the man from the night before—the one who she was never going to see again, and couldn’t seem to forget.

     
    This was not his house.
    As the taxi pulled over in front of a ranch in a modest neighborhood, Matthias knew he didn’t live under its roof. Hadn’t. Wouldn’t.
    “You gettin’ out or not?”
    Matthias met the driver’s eyes in the rearview. “Gimme a minute.”
    “Meter’s running.”
    Nodding, he got out and relied on his cane as he went up the front walk, swinging his bad leg in a wide circle so he didn’t have to bend his knee. Things were hardly Home Sweet Home: There was a branch down in the scrubby hedge that ran under the bay window. The lawn was scruffy. Weeds had sprouted in the gutters, reaching for the sun so high above.
    The front door was locked, so he cupped his hands and looked into the windows on either side. Dust bunnies. Mismatched furniture. Sagging drapes.
    There was a cheapo tin mailbox screwed into the bricks, and he opened the top. Circulars. A coupon book addressed to “Occupant.” No bills, credit card applications, letters. The only other piece of mail was an AARP magazine that had the same name as that of the driver’s license he’d been given.
    Matthias rolled the mag up, shoved it into his windbreaker, and headed back to the cab. Not only was this not his residence, nobody lived here. Best guess was that the person had died within, say, four to six weeks—long enough so that the family had cleaned up the accountspayable issues, but before they emptied the place out to put it on the market.
    Getting into the cab, he stared straight ahead.
    “Where to now?”
    With a groan, Matthias shifted over and got out his wallet. Sliding Mels Carmichael’s business card free, he was struck by an overriding conviction that he shouldn’t involve the woman.
    Too dangerous.
    “What’ll it be, pal?”
    But shit, he had to start somewhere. And his brain was like an Internet connection gone bad.
    “Trade Street,” he gritted out.
    As they headed for the downtown area and got caught in a net of traffic, he stared into the other cars and saw people drinking coffee, talking to passengers, stopping at red lights, going on green. Totally foreign to him, he thought. The kind of life where you nine-to-five’d your way into a grave at the age of seventy-two was not how he’d lived.
    So what was, he asked his dumb-ass gray matter. What the fuck was?
    All he got back was a headache while he strained for an answer.
    As the
Caldwell Courier Journal
facility came into view, he took out one of the ten twenties in the wallet. “Keep the change.”
    The cabdriver seemed more than happy to get rid of him.
    Taking up res on the periphery of the front doors, Matthias loitered in the sunshine, being careful not to meet any stares—and there were a lot of them: For some reason, he tended to attract attention, usually from women—then again, the Florence Nightingale stuff was something the fairer sex was known for, and he did have scars on his face.
    Ooooooh, romantic.
    Eventually, he took cover across the street at the bus stop, parking it on the hard plastic bench and breathing in the secondhandsmoke from people impatient for their public trans to arrive. The waiting didn’t bother him. It was as if he were used to lurking, and to pass the time he played a game, memorizing the faces of the people who came and went out of the
CCJ
offices.
    He was extremely good at it. One look was all it took, and he had the person in his database.
    At least his short-term memory was working—
    The double doors pushed wide, and there she was.
    Matthias sat up straighter as the sunlight hit her hair and all kinds of copper showed. Mels Carmichael, associate reporter, was with a heavyset guy who had to hitch his khakis