Cut and Run by Carla Neggers Read Free Book Online Page B

has tickets for Lincoln Center tomorrow night. He suggests we meet there, after the concert, and—Catharina?”
    She’d gone white. “Rachel, she doesn’t know. Juliana. I haven’t told her.”
    â€œAbout Amsterdam? Nothing? ”
    â€œI couldn’t. Even Adrian…” Catharina shut her eyes briefly; Rachel watched her fight for self-control with a mother’s willpower as her daughter made her way to the table. “Neither of them knows what happened. I know I’m overprotective, but I didn’t want any of that to touch them. I just can’t talk about Amsterdam.”
    â€œThat’s your right,” Rachel said carefully. Having never married, she had never had to make such decisions. “I understand.”
    â€œYou’ll keep her out of this?”
    Rachel smiled reassuringly, and although she didn’t understand, perhaps didn’t approve, she felt good about being able to comfort her friend. “Of course. There’s no reason whatever for Juliana to be involved in this.”
    Â 
    Matthew Stark was in the middle of an argument on shortstops with a couple of sports reporters when Ziegler found him in the Gazette cafeteria. At thirty-nine, Stark was a dark, solidly built, compact man with a face that might have been good-looking except for the shrapnel scars. His eyes were deep-set and a very dark brown; people told him that sometimes they seemed black. He had on jeans, a chambray shirt, and his heavy, handmade Minnesota Gokey boots.
    â€œSorry to bother you,” Aaron said, “but Feldie’s got a guy downstairs who wants to see you. He looks like somebody out of Night of the Living Dead. Calls himself the Weaze.”
    â€œWeasel? Hell, I thought he’d be dead by now.”
    Without rushing, Stark refilled his mug and walked back with Aaron, a curly-haired kid who wore tassel loafers and suits and didn’t know a damn thing about baseball. Matthew knew he scared the hell out of Ziegler, but he didn’t let that trouble him.
    â€œFeldie was getting pretty impatient,” Aaron said.
    â€œRight.”
    When they returned to the newsroom, she had put her glasses, big black-framed things, on her nose. “Don’t hurry, for Christ’s sake,” she said.
    Stark didn’t. He hadn’t heard from Otis Raymond in a couple of years, but he’d had twenty years of his troubles and expected he’d have twenty more, if either of them lived that along. “Where’s the Weaze?” he asked.
    â€œI parked him over at your desk. He says he has a hot tip for you. Who is he?”
    â€œNobody who’ll sell newspapers.”
    Otis Raymond sat restlessly on a wooden chair next to Stark’s desk. Matthew just shook his head as he approached the thin, ugly figure and noticed the swollen bug bites along the back of the scrawny neck, the yellowed eyes and skin. He had on ragged jeans and an army issue jacket that didn’t look warm enough for him. He was shivering. It seemed crazy now, but lot of guys owed SP-4 Otis Raymond their lives. He’d been good. Damn good.
    â€œWeaze,” Matthew said, coming up behind him. “So you’re alive.”
    Weasel turned around on the chair, grinned, and rose unsteadily. His clothes hung on him, and he looked like hell. According to the book, he and Stark shouldn’t have become friends. A warrant officer and a spec-four, a helicopter pilot and a gunner. They’d flown Hueys together, and they’d survived two tours. Not many in their positions had. It was as good a reason as any for a friendship.
    â€œMatt—yeah, hell, I’m still kicking. Christ, I’m hitting forty, you believe it?”
    Stark went around and sat down, and Weasel dropped back in his chair, eyeing the cluttered desk. “Figured you’d have an office.”
    â€œA piece of the wall is about the best you get in a newsroom.”
    â€œYeah, I guess. I