Run With Me by L. A. Shorter Read Free Book Online

thinking. “Are you OK to drive now Sir?” he
asks lightly.
    I nod. “Yes, it's not a
problem.”
    “ OK Sir, have a good day.”
    Once more he turns away and
walks back off towards the cordoned off area. I watch him in my
wing-mirror and notice several men, dressed in suits, entering the
property with pads and pens. They look like detectives. Then there's
the CSI team, carefully fine combing every inch of the house for
clues.
    I know just what they'll find.
Nothing.
    I rev the engine again and start
speeding back down the road. Now questions begin to build in my head.
Where's Kitty? Has she already been taken? Did the killer kill her
aunt and uncle and then manage to capture her? And who killed them?
Why the fuck would Michael Carmine hire me to track her down if he's
only going to go ahead and send someone else out as well?
    What it does tell me, however,
is that he wants this girl big time. He's willing to hire
professionals to trace her, and kill anyone who happens to get in the
way. It's not what I signed up for. He never told me he wanted her
dead – that's not what I do. I track, I deliver, I don't kill. Not
unless I have to, not unless it's defense, or the guy really deserves
it. Innocent people are just that: innocent. They don't deserve to
die.
    I feel a pulse of regret surging
through me. Sometimes I grow numb, sometimes I do nothing but follow
orders. I'd have caught her and brought her back without asking any
questions. Ignorance is bliss. I deliver the girl, take my paycheck,
and move onto the next job.
    Track and deliver, track and
deliver. Don't ask questions and don't hear lies. It's how I get by.
But now my mind's tracing forward, extrapolating into the future. I'd
have found Kitty, delivered her to Carmine, and she'd be dead before
I stepped out of the office and into my car. If he's willing to kill
her relatives, he's willing to kill her.
    Now I can't help but ask why.
Why does he want her dead? Has she done something? Has she seen
something? I know the sort of man Michael Carmine is. He's powerful.
He's ruthless. He won't hesitate to kill anyone if they are any sort
of threat to him.
    I keep driving, my mind
galloping as quickly as the car. How many people might have been
killed as a result of my actions , I ask myself. A surge of regret
accompanies the question. I've always worked in the criminal world,
tracking those who have done wrong. Or so I'm told. It's how I
intended to catch the man who killed my family, the man who set my
house ablaze and made it look like an accident. I dived deep into the
criminal fraternity as a means of working my way to the truth. One
day, I thought, it will happen. One day someone will spill, someone
will know the truth.
    But nothing ever did happen.
It's been years, and I've gotten nowhere. The cops who worked on the
case – Rick included – could never get to the bottom of it. They
shut the book on it all too soon and threw it into the locker marked
'unsolvable'. Rick had no choice, but he beat himself up about it
again and again.
    But me – I lived beyond the
law. For me there became nothing but the truth. Nothing but finding
the man responsible, and making him pay for it. Over time, however, I
must have lost my way. I must have stopped caring about being a good
person, and more about getting revenge.
    I grew a one-track mind. I'd do
jobs all over the state and beyond, and soon my own moral compass
began to break down. Maybe I've contributed to the deaths of other
innocent people? I'd never kill an innocent, but maybe I've set them
up for death.
    Is the same true of Kitty? I can
see her face smiling at me from inside the file on my passenger seat.
She's young, she's pretty, she's got a full life ahead of her. What
could she have done to make her the target of Michael Carmine's
wrath? And why, why did I agree to track her without even asking what
he wanted with her?
    My mind is still racing as I
drive. I've been locked in thought for over an hour now,