Cut and Run by Ridley Pearson Read Free Book Online Page B

A pair of impressive oaks shaded the front yard, their leaves rattling at Larson’s feet. Intimidated by the surroundings, he rehearsed not only what to say, but how to say it.
    The door opened to a young teenage girl, self-conscious and wearing braces she tried to hide by covering her mouth as she spoke. She wore hip-hugger blue jeans, and a Gap T-shirt that showed her navel. Larson wondered what it was like being her parent.
    â€œMarley? Your dad home?” He took a risk by using her name, but thought the familiarity might soften her.
    She cocked her head. Curious. “May I tell him who’s asking?”
    The right words. The right schools. She didn’t invite him inside. She blocked the door with her foot. The right training.
    â€œDeputy Marshal Roland Larson,” he told her, handing her his business card. “Tell him I’m with,” he spelled it, “F-A-T-F.”
    â€œSure. Wait here, please.”
    She closed the door. For the hell of it, Larson tried the handle and found it locked. Sunderland’s kids had grown up to learn the complexities of living in the same house as a regional WITSEC director. Or maybe it was just suburbia. There were only four other regional directors who knew the program as intimately as Sunderland, but it had been Sunderland who had relocated Hope from the Orchard House.
    Sunderland’s face and his wrinkled clothes left the impression he hadn’t slept recently. A pair of smudged reading glasses hung from his neck by a thin black cord. He smelled of popcorn—or maybe that was the house itself. He had ice blue eyes that projected contempt, a Roman nose, the silver hairs of which needed trimming, a cleft chin, and awkward ears. He wore his graying hair cut like that of his fellow suburban businessmen, well in disguise. His right hand remained behind and screened by the massive door, possibly concealing a weapon.
    Larson caught a reflection in the narrow side window alongside the door. Two big guys, well dressed, completely out of place on a Saturday, stood back on the sidewalk between him and his car. Deputy marshals, no doubt assigned to protect the guy who protected so many. The loss of
Laena
had shaken WITSEC to its core.
    â€œCreds,” Sunderland ordered, fingering the business card.
    Larson turned over his ID wallet, his moves slow and controlled for the sake of the two behind him. “We met once, six years ago.”
    â€œDid we?” he asked, still studying Larson’s credentials through the half reading glasses on the bridge of his nose.
    â€œA woman witness,” Larson said, using this to jog Sunderland’s memory because women were such a minority among protected witnesses. “It was a farmhouse, outside of St. Louis. You came down there to debrief her.”
    Sunderland glanced over the top of his glasses. “You do look vaguely familiar.”
    â€œScott Rotem was in the field then. This is back before our protection squad was transferred to F-A-T-F.”
    â€œThat’s a nice promotion.” He still couldn’t place Larson. “Let me ask you this: my home? Are you out of your mind?” Sunderland’s phone number went unpublished and was not listed anywhere in any government publication, nor on any Internet site, standard security for a WITSEC regional. The five regionals ultimately relocated all the witnesses in the program or oversaw their relocated identities. As such, the regionals were carefully protected.
    â€œI traced you through Marley and Conner. You, or your wife, bought them each a cell phone about a year and a half ago. Marley’s phone had the home address listed. It took me about thirty minutes to get it.”
    Sunderland grimaced and then waved off the two guards. As he closed the door behind Larson he asked incredulously, “You found me through my kids’ cell phones?”
    â€œIt’s what I do for a living.”
    The living room was Chippendale,