Cut and Run by Ridley Pearson Read Free Book Online

besides these three universities? Do I smell federal government?”
    â€œHell of a nose you’ve got, Hamp.”
    â€œRomeros,” Hampton said. “Organized Crime Unit?”
    â€œColder. Think Benny.”
    â€œJustice?”
    â€œScalding hot.”
    â€œWITSEC.” The inflection was gone. Hampton had made it a statement. “Wait! Was he involved with the reorg of the master list?”
    Pure poetry. Larson knew Hampton would see the full scope of it now. They were not pursuing some old man who was missing his college lectures but—if Hampton was able to take it one step further—the man behind the
Laena
list, the lives of more than two thousand protected witnesses and their five thousand dependents. What came with that was a level of personal risk unlike anything associated with their typical day job: chasing down escaped convicts and wanted felons.
    â€œOur primary is Markowitz. He’s believed to need access to a supercomputer for whatever reasons. They want us interviewing the people running the computers at these places in hopes of intercepting him.”
    â€œSupercomputers? You go for that?” Hampton asked.
    â€œIt has merit.”
    â€œMoney, women, and work,” Hampton said. “That’s how you find a guy.”
    â€œNo argument there.”
    â€œWhy’s he need the computer?”
    â€œThat’s off-limits for discussion, as is most of this.”
    â€œThe Romeros?”
    â€œYou’re warm.” Hampton would put it together. It just might take a day or two.
    â€œScrotum’s taking his orders from WITSEC? What’s with that? Since when?”
    â€œIf this plane ever takes off, I should be landing before noon.” But another idea had surfaced. He would not be on the next plane out.
    â€œYou want me to pick you up?”
    â€œThat would be good. My car’s downtown. But I’ll call you when I leave. Meanwhile, you and Stubby get cooking. Rotem’s got the contacts for you.”
    â€œRiddle me this, Rolo,” Hampton said, still working out the information he’d been supplied. “Are you in Chicago on a layover or because the regional WITSEC office is up there? How involved are they? They wouldn’t be
missing
something, would they? Something our very own Ben Franklin created for them about five years back?”
    Larson wanted to congratulate the man, but he said only, “I’ll call you.”
    His return to St. Louis was going to have to wait a few hours.
    First things first.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Chicago’s North Shore, a string of bedroom communities developed a century before, retained some of its former heritage. Classic architecture lined the streets of the quaint villages. These townships had, for the most part, been spared the tract housing that swept across the American Midwest during the suburban sprawl of the postwar 1950s.
    But to Larson it all began to look the same—Winnetka, Glencoe—hard to tell one from the other, the difference being the occasional golf course with a brick clubhouse.
    On a Saturday afternoon the die-hard homeowners were out raking leaves. They wore creased khakis, leather deck shoes, and Izod shirts. The women had been released to jog, Rollerblade, and walk the dog, while their adolescent kids skateboarded or rode bicycles in packs.
    The cars he followed, Lexus, Mercedes, Volvos, and Cadillac Escalades, carried golden retrievers or Labradors in the back, with soccer camp and hockey stickers on the rear window and foolish bumper stickers announcing their kids were honor students.
    Larson’s small house in St. Louis—one of those ’50s ranches—would have fit into the garage of most of these palaces, though that space was probably reserved for the au pair or the Morgan or XKE. He double-checked the address and pulled over.
    Traveling through suburbia, the reminders of family and what his life might have been had he accepted Hope’s