Hannah Grace Read Online Free PDF Page B

door, A jagged breath blew past his mouth, Fine way to start my first day on the new job, he thought, bringing a rapscallion along with me to the office because I don't know a single soul in town on which to pawn him. Who would want to take care of a mute child who refuses to stay put, anyway?
    "Lord," he muttered into the quiet office, "I need a big batch of wisdom,"

    Hannah lifted her skirts, and, with quiet determination, climbed each step leading to the double doors of the entrance to City Hall. She reviewed the morning's events in her mind so that she might give the new sheriff an accurate account. When questioned, she would say the stranger was tall and dangerous.. .no-in fairness, she couldn't say "dangerous." The sheriff would call it-what? Supposition? Stick to the facts, he'd say. I want details.
    Details. In her head, she began to imagine again. The man stood tall and broad shouldered, with a commanding presence. His blond hair tapered at the neck, a nice style, you might say, the sort that ...facts. He had a square-set jaw and fine nose, and, well, symmetrical face. And those blue eyes of his, why, one might call them shimmery and iridescent.

    The sheriff would be leaning forward now, pencil in hand, perhaps even tapping one end of it on his imposing desk, impatient for the particulars.
    She would finally concede that she had no way to adequately describe his physical features, but if he would kindly produce one of those books that featured all the criminals' faces, she would most certainly spot him straightaway.
    The solid door swung open when she used all her strength.
    "Kitty?" she called. `Are you about?" On the desk at the front of the office stood piles of papers, thick volumes of information, a Mason jar containing pens and pencils, a wilted flower in a vase gone dry, and a couple of ashtrays. At present, Kitty's little desk in the middle of the room, also piled nearly to the ceiling with paperwork, appeared unoccupied. Several plaques framed in dark cherry wood hung from the walls, as did a large painting of President George Washington. A United States flag graced one corner, its six-foot pole jutting out from the wall so that it hung at a nice angle.
    She knew that the sheriff's office was down the hall, first door on the right, but to get there, she needed someone on the other side of the counter to unlock the gate and let her through. She couldn't imagine why the sheriff's office, or the other rooms down the hall, for that matter, had to be so inaccessible to the public.
    From one of the back rooms emerged Nathanial Brayton, Sandy Shores' community treasurer. In his fifties and of medium height, he wore a perpetual smile. Round-faced and bulbous-nosed, he also sported a bushy gray moustache. Hannah remembered standing beside her father as he talked with Mr. Brayton in the churchyard after the Sunday service when she was a child, feigning interest in their conversation while staring intently at Mr. Brayton's bobbing moustache.

    "Wull, hello there, Miss Hannah. Kitty's out t' lunch, I'm sorry to say. What can I do for you?" With hooked thumbs, he held his brown suspenders-an accessory that didn't seem to serve its purpose, if one compared where the waist of his pants was supposed to fall and where it actually wound up: below his protruding belly.
    "Oh," She stretched to her full five feet and seven inches and stepped forward. Why did she suddenly feel like shrinking? She'd hoped to find Kitty at the counter. Kitty would have bolstered her reasons for coming.
    Beads of sweat pooled on her neck and trickled down her back. She removed her hat, a foolish thing to wear on a day pushing ninety degrees, and laid it on the counter. Its absence left her russet-colored curls to fall in complete disarray. "I've come to pay the new sheriff a visit,"
    Something happened to Mr. Brayton's perpetual smile. "Um, now might not be the best time, miss,"
    "But I insist on seeing him,"
    "He's had a bad morning."
    `Already?