Hell Read Online Free Page A

married in three days,’ Grace said.
    â€˜I don’t need reminding,’ Mildred said.
    â€˜But you must have so much to do,’ Grace said.
    Mildred’s smile was beatific. ‘I guess some of us are just better at time management than others.’
    Same deal as with the first heart.
    No reported thefts of bodies from anyplace. No reported mutilations of cadavers from hospitals or similar facilities.
    Neither heart had come from long-term laboratory storage, and in any case the ME had swiftly ruled out any possibility that the organs had been intended for transplant because the removal technique had, to say the least, been unskilled.
    â€˜Not performed by any surgeon this side of hell,’ Sanders had told Sam.
    No bodies brought in with organs missing.
    No DNA matches.
    But something real bad was happening in and around Miami Beach.
    Worse to come, Sam was way too certain.
    Pete Mankowitz, with his tow-colored hair and frantic hazel eyes, had been about as bad as Grace had ever seen him when she’d arrived at the one-storey house near Crandon Park.
    Full-blown panic attack, textbook style. Except this was no book; this was a living, breathing, suffering boy, and though Grace had managed, finally, to calm him down with techniques she had taught him over time, she had wondered at the severity of the attack.
    â€˜What triggered this, do you know?’ she asked his mother, once the youngster was finally resting in his bedroom.
    â€˜I don’t have a clue.’ Sara, a pretty brunette in her early thirties, sat on the edge of one of her gray leather armchairs, exhausted. ‘We’d been talking about going out for a burger with a friend this evening, but he seemed OK with that, and Pete knows if he starts feeling bad, we can get takeout or just come straight home.’
    â€˜Is this your new friend?’ Grace asked.
    â€˜Charles Duggan, yes.’
    She’d met him a couple of months back, had mentioned him to Grace because she liked the man, but had been trying keep the relationship low-key in case it upset her son, though Pete had expressed no concerns.
    â€˜Have you noticed any worsening of Pete’s problems when Mr Duggan’s around, or when he knows he might be coming around?’
    â€˜Not especially,’ Sara said. ‘Or not until today.’ Her expression grew more desolate. ‘I’ll have to stop seeing Charlie, won’t I?’
    â€˜Not if he’s a good man.’ Grace smiled. ‘They’re hard enough to come by, Lord knows.’ She paused. ‘But with a boy as sensitive as Pete, you may have to tread extra carefully.’
    â€˜I thought I had been.’ Sara was fighting back tears again, had been weeping when Grace had arrived. ‘I’m sorry.’
    â€˜Don’t be, Sara.’ Grace was gentle. ‘This is so hard on you. The last thing I want is to deprive you of any kind of comfort.’
    Sara shook her head again. ‘It’s no comfort if it makes Pete unhappier.’
    â€˜We don’t know if it has anything to do with your friendship. The chances are today’s attack had nothing to do with your plans for the evening.’
    â€˜I’ve called Charlie,’ Sara said. ‘We’re taking a rain check.’
    â€˜Probably just as well,’ Grace said. ‘At least for tonight.’
    Daniel Brownley, Claudia’s architect husband, had named their new house Névé because he loved snow-covered mountains almost as much as he loved the ocean, and in the midst of designing its soaring lines of solar glass and white steel, he’d thought of the word for the snow at the summit of a glacier, and no one had been able to dissuade him.
    Névé’s beauty was a little stark for his wife’s personal tastes, but Daniel had returned to Florida purely for her sake, and Claudia thought she might have lived in a hovel if it made Dan happy.
    Névé was certainly no hovel,