Free Angels (Nevada James #3) (Nevada James Mysteries) by Matthew Storm Page B

there.
    “I’m not
sure I’m in the right place, honestly,” I said. “This is the food bank?” They’d
had a sign out front that said it was, but nothing about this place seemed
right to me.
    “It is.”
He nodded. “You look like you might need this, though.” His hand disappeared
underneath the counter and my own twitched in the direction of my shoulder
holster, but I managed to keep myself from drawing on him. His hand came up
with a business card that he offered to me.
    I
stepped forward to take it and looked it over. It had the name and address of a
local women’s shelter. “It’s a safe place,” he said. “Their security is the
best. If anyone calls asking if you’re there, they’ll say they never heard of
you.”
    What in
the world was going on? It took me a minute to figure out, and then it hit me.
My face. I didn’t much care about my appearance, but I must have looked like
I’d been in a hell of a fight to anyone that saw me. “No,” I said. “This
isn’t…” I pointed at my stitches. “I jumped through a window.”
    His eyes
widened slightly. “You must have been pretty desperate to get away,” he said.
His sympathetic look was starting to get on my nerves. “Do you want me to call
you a cab? It’s on us. Don’t worry about the money. We can write it off.”
    “Actually, he was the one trying to get away,” I said. “Usually I’m the one people
are running from.” That had sounded weird. I shook my  head. “Let’s try that
again. My name is Nevada James. I used to be a cop.”
    “Oh!”
Now his eyes widened even more. Great. “I’ve read all about you,” he said.
“Well, what can I do for you, Ms. James?”
    We were
finally getting somewhere. “I’m still not sure I’m in the right place,” I said.
“Isn’t this supposed to be a food bank?”
    “Yes.”
He nodded eagerly.
    “So…” I
looked around. “Where’s all the food?”
    He
looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. “I don’t understand.”
    “Do I
not know what a food bank is?” I asked. “Hungry people come in here, they pick
out some food, and they go home and eat it. Is that wrong?”
    “Oh.” He
nodded. “Now I get it. You were expecting this to be like a Costco or
something.”
    “I
guess. Maybe not that big.”
    “Well,
there is a warehouse just behind me in the back, but it’s pretty small. Mostly
what we do here is take donations.”
    “People
bring you food?”
    “That’s
right. Whatever we get that can be used we distribute to shelters, soup
kitchens, that kind of thing.”
    “So you
don’t really do retail here.”
    “No.”
    “I’ve
seen a box with this place’s name on it. What would have been in it if it
wasn’t food?”
    He
laughed. “I’m sure it was food. If someone comes in hungry, we give them a box
with whatever we have on hand. Technically you can only get one once a month,
but…” He gave me a conspiratorial look. “We’re not going to send people away
hungry. But we also refer them to services nearby. For people needing a meal,
it’s the soup kitchen over on Lemon. They do lunch and dinner five days a
week.”
    I held
up the card he’d given me. “And for women who look like they’ve been in a
fight…”
    “Yes.
I’m sorry if I offended you earlier. It’s just…well, it was just more likely
than not.”
    He
hadn’t needed to apologize. I was the one with the hair trigger. “No, it’s good
to know. Do you mind if I show you a picture?”
    “Go
ahead.”
    I took
my phone out of my pocket, pulled up Krystal’s photo, and showed it to him.
“Have you seen her in here before?”
    Rick
looked at the photo for a moment and then got a look on his face like he was
going to be sick. “She’s…she’s dead , isn’t she?” His voice was a
whisper.
    “Yeah.
Sorry, I probably should have said that up front.”
    “My god.”
    “Did you
know her?”
    Rick put
a hand on the counter to steady himself. If he passed out on me I didn’t know
what I