Defending Angels Read Online Free Page A

Sunny Skies. He’d smiled at her in just that way until the day he slid into a final peaceful sleep.
    “You sweet old thing,” Bree said affectionately. This dog did remind her of Sunny, at least a little. “I’ll just bet you had a good owner at one time, didn’t you? You surely do respond to people. And I can’t just keep calling you ‘pup.’” Bree tugged thoughtfully at her ear. “What about Sam?”
    The dog looked at her, tongue lolling.
    “No? What about Goldy? That’s what color your coat’s going to be when we get you all cleaned up.”
    The dog closed his eyes, and then opened them again.
    “Well, I don’t suppose you have any ideas,” Bree said with some exasperation.
    The dog sneezed twice. It was an odd sort of sneeze. Almost sibilant.
    “Sneezy,” Bree said instantly. “Like one of the Seven Dwarves.”
    The dog curled his lip in a truly expressive sneer. Bree laughed. Her little sister, Antonia, would love this dog. And she’d come up with a good name, too. But Antonia was many miles and a state away at the University of South Carolina. “So I’ll just have to come up with something all on my own.”
    The dog sneezed again, almost deliberately. “Sha! Shaa!”
    “Sasha,” Bree said. “That’s it. For the Russian in you.”
    Sasha gave a great sigh of relief and settled his head on his paws. Feeling pleased with herself, Bree brought him another small bowl of food, and settled down in the armchair next to him with the stack of résumés and her own meal of salmon and salad.
    The ad she’d placed in the Savannah Daily was straightforward:

Pleasant office ass’t for one-man attnys office. Computer-literate. Some bkping.
    The responses ranged from the hopelessly hopeful: “I think it would be, like, very cool to work for a lawyer. I can come every day after school” to the comically desperate: “I’ve got a PhD in English literature from the University of North Carolina. Will work for food.”
    Bree sorted through half a dozen replies, and set aside two. She held her first choice aloft for Sasha’s inspection. “This one seems likeliest, pup. A widow, poor thing. And she worked in her husband’s law office until he died. All the right credentials, I think. And this one ...” She reread the cover letter again. “This one’s so interesting I might just call him, too.”
    Sasha raised his head and gazed at her.
    “He’s a window-dresser, or was. And he wants to change careers. He’s been going to night school to better himself, he says. Just the kind of person you want to give a hand up to.”
    Sasha looked politely interested.
    “On the other hand, the widow’s experienced. And she doesn’t come right out and say it, but it appears she’s fallen on hard times.”
    Sasha growled quietly.
    “That’s right, pup,” Bree said, amused. “Tough section of town. So she might need a hand up, too.”
    Sasha growled again. This time he meant business. Bree set the résumés on the end table and got to her feet. The dog had propped himself up on his forelegs. He stared at the French doors to the balcony, his lips drawn back from his teeth. His growl snarled into a bark.
    “Hush, now, Sasha.” Bree went to the glass doors. She braced one hand against the bookshelf to the right of the door and peered into the dark. The moon was a quarter full in the misty sky. The lights of the city glittered on the banks of the river. “There’s nothing out there. Nothing except the moon.”
    Suddenly, Sasha leaped at the doors, knocking her aside and snarling like a demon.
    A white face grinned at her through the fragile barrier of glass. A white face enveloped in a column of smoke.

Three
    Hated by fools, and fools to hate,
Be that my motto, and my fate.
    —“To Dr. Delany, on the libels written against him,” Jonathan Swift
     
    Sasha whirled around and thrust himself at Bree. Both of them fell backward onto the sofa. The dog jumped awkwardly into her lap and for a moment, between the