The Hunted by Brian Haig Read Free Book Online Page A

years before, had stolen his beloved Ellie, and only after it wiped
     out the paltry savings they had managed to scrimp from a meager cop’s salary. His medical insurance had handled the prescribed
     treatments, but in the final months and weeks, as Ellie stubbornly wasted away, Bernie had thrown good money after bad, desperately
     investing in a plethora of unorthodox treatments and quackery, from Mexican miracle pills to an oddball dentist who swore
     that removing Elle’s silver and mercury fillings would incite a complete remission. To no avail, it turned out. In the end,
     Elle had passed away, stuffed with all manner of phony cures and big holes in her teeth.
    So now Bernie was rebuilding his life. No longer surviving one miserable day at a time, he was again viewing life as a promising
     future rather than a sad past. Both kids were grown, out of college, out on their own; the first grandkid was in the oven,
     and Bernie looked forward to many more.
    Plus, he was living in Europe. Europe! He had acquired this dream in his late teens when Uncle Sam borrowed a few years of
     his life, making him a military policeman in Heidelberg, a gorgeous city in a lovely country that captured his heart. Other
     NYPD types had Florida fever; they dreamed of sweating out their idle years in tropical heat, blasting little white spheres
     around manicured lawns. Bernie hated golf, hated heat, and desperately hated the idea of spending his sunset years reliving
     the good old days—what was so good about them, anyway?—in a community saturated with retired cops. He had always yearned to
     return to Europe: the slower pace, the opportunity to travel, sip exotic coffees, and of course, the money was fantastic.
    He hunched forward in his seat and noted, once again, the same wrinkled old biddy lurching and waddling down the aisle toward
     the lavatory. He had long ago learned not to ignore anything—not the innocuous, not the apparently innocent. The stakeout
     king, the boys in the NYPD had nicknamed him, with good reason—he had put more than a few banditos in the slammer by paying
     unusual attention to cars and pedestrians that appeared a little too often, often stickup artists and bank robbers reconning
     their targets. Pattern observation, it was called in the trade. Bernie wrote the book on it.
    This was her fifth potty trip, by his count. A little suspicious: she did look old, though, and faulty kidneys couldn’t be
     ruled out; or doctor’s orders to keep her blood circulating; or just plain oldage restlessness.
    In preparation for this job, the firm’s experts had produced a thick folder detailing all known and presumed threats to the
     client. It was a wealthy firm with a big ego that could afford to be comprehensive and took it to the hilt.
    Background checks were de rigueur for all prospective clients; unlike other firms, however, this was accomplished
before
a contract was signed. The client’s ability to pay the firm’s impressive bills was the principal topic of curiosity, of course.
     Also the nature of the client’s business, types of threat, known enemies, special circumstances, and bothersome vulnerabilities.
    British snobbery definitely weighed in. Unsavory clients were blackballed no matter how much they pleaded or offered.
    But in a ferociously competitive business, reputation counted for everything. It all boiled down to two simple questions:
     How many lived? How many died?
    The firm had dodged more than a few bullets by politely and firmly snubbing clients whose chance of survival was deemed subpar;
     in over thirty percent of those cases, the clients had been dead within a year, a striking piece of guesswork. A clutch of
     actuarial wizards lured from top insurance firms were paid a small fortune to be finicky. A computer model was produced, a
     maze of complex algorithms that ate gobs of information and spit out a dizzying spread of percentages and odds.
    A client or two were lost every year, a better