See How They Run by James Patterson Read Free Book Online Page B

time in the morning, Alix smiled.
    “Arnold, I need a little time to be by myself … This terrible Nazi scare, I … basically, I have to get away from being such a big deal to everyone I’m around. I need to think. I need to be a plain nobody for a while. No admirers. No catty detractors.”
    Alix Rothschild smiled again. “And I’m aware, Mr. Manning, that at the rate I’m going, I could be a
nobody
for a long, long time to come.”
    Arnold Manning began to laugh as if he were being tickled by chimps with pink feathers. The peculiar laugh grew until the stout, bald man let out a howl.
    “So go away, Alix. I agree you have to relax. I agree you need some time by yourself. Everybody does. … I understand what this horrible neo-Nazi business must mean to you.”
    Manning had waited just long enough. Now he was giving Alix back her own ideas, almost her own words. They both knew what he was doing, but that was fine. That was the secret of the relationship between Alix Rothschild and Arnold Manning.
    “Where are you thinking of going, Al?” Mark Halperin was still nibbling his sunglasses. “Just in case your agent needs to get in touch.”
    “That’s my Mark-up!” Alix put on a smile.
    She was trying to be like her old self again.
Leave them laughing
, Alix had long ago learned on agency casting calls.
    “I was thinking of going upstate for a while. In a week or so. I have an old friend up there … who knows how to treat me like I’m nobody. He still calls me Alix Rothman.”
    Alix stood up, and the whole room of suits and sunglasses rose with her.
    “I’ll be going to a place called Cherrywoods Mountain House. But I won’t be accepting any phone calls.”

CHAPTER 18
    On Sunday afternoon, David Strauss sat on a bench out along one of Cherrywoods’ prettiest nature trails. Beside him was the FBI agent, Harry Callaghan.
    “I’m sorry about the other day. Our running debut,” Callaghan said. “I was trying to help—at least to let you know that I was available. I got mad when you shut me off.”
    “I’m sorry about what happened, too,” David nodded. “You were right. What you were trying to tell me. I was being a shithead. … It’s just that I have this unbelievable hate building up inside me. No outlet for it. It’s hard to communicate exactly.”
    “Not so hard. I can imagine at least some of what you must feel. I
would
like to help, though. That’s what I’m here for. My job. My vocation, you might say.”
    From their spot on the woodlands trail, David and Callaghan had a perfect view west across the Roundout Valley to the Rip Van Winkle mountains.
    “Hundreds of millions of years ago,” David said, “all the land around here was covered by a great inland lake. My grandfather used to tell me that every time the two of us came up here.” David Strauss smiled. “I guess I’m
still
off in my own world a little. Lots of family stuff floating around in my head.”
    “Yeah. Well, when you come back down to earth, don’t forget what I’ve been trying to tell you. Please don’t get me confused with any of the Washington bureaucrat images that you probably have. Which I have, for God’s sake.”
    “I appreciate what you’re trying to do. Really, I’m going to be fine,” David promised.

CHAPTER 19
    David couldn’t get the idea that
Heather was de$$$[MS PAGE NO 71]$$$
out of his mind.
That she was gone from his life
.
    Forever and always
.
    Never to be heard or seen by him again
.
    Distractions helped, David had to admit. The m$$$[MS PAGE NO 71]$$$e peculiar the distraction, the better.
    When he’d been an undergraduate at Princeton, David had begun a curious diary/journal that he called his Crapbook.
    The Crapbook now contained such treasures as a visitor’s pass into Olympic Village in Munich; a college letter for sculling; one of his favorite first lines from a book—“Like most men, I tell a hundred lies a day.” All sorts of junk that antique people call