Velvet Haven Read Online Free PDF

writing.
    “Yes,” Mairi whispered, closing Lauren’s eyelids so she wouldn’t have to see the vacant stare. The action made the elastic cuff of her lab coat ride up, revealing the pale, jagged scars on her inner wrist. Nonchalantly, Mairi pulled it back down, securing it by curling her fingers around the elastic.
    “When did you see her last?”
    “Thursday afternoon. I volunteer at Our Lady once a week. She was my last appointment of the day.”
    The detective grunted as he wrote down everything she told him. “So St. Mike’s has an outreach program or something with Our Lady?”
    “No.”
    “No? You do this pro bono? You a saint?”
    Mairi felt her face flush with anger. “There’s still some charity in the world, Detective.”
    “Yeah? I ain’t seen it in years.” He looked her up and down, his eyes narrowing. “Our Lady had problems with narcotics last year. Know anything about that?”
    “You don’t have to work in a hospital to get your hands on narcotics. Besides, the days of a drug cabinet and a set of keys are long gone. The dispensing is all computerized. No chance I’m signing out two Percocets and taking a handful, if you know what I mean.”
    He nodded, and Mairi knew he was just fishing, trying to bait her. Jackass. “So you go to Our Lady once a week. Why there? Why not some other place, in a better part of town?”
    She shrugged. “The sisters were good to me and my mother. So I return the favor.”
    His shrewd gaze landed on her left arm, where her fingers still clutched the cuff of the lab coat. He’d seen them—the scars .
    “Were you one of those troubled girls, Miss MacAuley?”
    Damn it. She didn’t want to go into this.
    “I don’t see how that’s pertinent.”
    His gaze shifted to the gurney. “Maybe she’d think it important.”
    Mairi tried desperately to look anywhere but at the mottling body beside her, but it was like trying to look away from a train wreck. God, why would someone do something so sick?
    “Miss MacAuley?”
    Mairi shook herself, trying to focus on Detective Morris and not the satanic symbols that had been drawn on Lauren’s body, or the scars that marred her own wrist. “My mother was a cook there, and when my father took it into his head to beat the crap out of her, the nuns let us stay with them till he came around, begging for forgiveness.”
    The detective stared at her with knowing eyes. “Did he do that a lot?”
    “Sometimes. Sometimes it’d be months and we’d be thinking he’d reformed. Then the hammer would drop.”
    His gaze once more dropped to her left hand. “And your world would collapse?”
    She really hated cops. Detectives most of all. Far too perceptive. “Look, the nuns fed us, clothed us, and they helped pay for my education. I think I can give them back a day a week, Detective.”
    He nodded and dropped his notebook onto the bedside table. “Did you examine her last week?”
    “Yes. And she didn’t have the artwork. I would definitely have remembered that.” Her gaze traveled over the pale skin that was marked so cruelly. “Who the hell would do something like this?” She’d seen a lot of shit in her career as an ER nurse, but this topped the list.
    “Someone with a lot of time, and a place where he knew he wouldn’t get caught.”
    “Where’d you find her?”
    “On Sanctuary, in the middle of the road. The guy who nearly drove over her with his minivan stopped and called 911.”
    “Was she dressed?”
    “Nope. She was lying on the ground, spread-eagle on an inverted pentagram that had been drawn on the road in chalk. Her belongings were dumped on the sidewalk.”
    Mairi pressed her eyes shut. “And she was still alive.”
    “Barely.”
    Exhaling, she looked at the young girl’s body. “I write a report and file it every time I counsel the girls. You’ll find my report at Our Lady.”
    He nodded, reached in his pocket, and unwrapped a piece of gum. “Do you remember offhand what you talked about?”
    A