The Shadowkiller by Matthew Scott Hansen Read Free Book Online Page B

wrapped in a towel, her arms crossed.
    Ty looked surprised. “Hi.”
    Ty read her face, and despite her outward calm he saw the slightest bit of concern. As Ronnie undid the towel and tousled short auburn locks, her sloe eyes were cautious, inquisitive. She looked more like twenty-eight than thirty-eight. Her tossed gamine crop and pale, almost pixieish beauty gave the first impression that Veronica Greenwood was soft, even girl-like. Yet Ty told anyone who would listen that Ronnie had the balls of the family.
    At that moment Ty desperately wanted her, physically and emotionally, but knew he didn’t deserve to even come near her. She just wanted her husband to snap out of his malaise and come back to her. They both feared they would never be able to talk things out because the problem had become too complex. Yet they also acknowledged that very smart people sometimes overcomplicated the potentially simple.
    â€œI love you too. We all do,” she said, answering his earlier message. She lowered the towel and squinted. “You look terrible. What’s going on?”
    As Ty and Ronnie’s eyes met, he suddenly felt deep shame over what he had almost done a few hours before. The betrayal and abandonment of his woman and children would have been enough to cast him into eternal damnation, if he really believed in that, which he sort of did. Ty chose to walk out, kissing her cheek as he passed. “I’m okay,” he said.
    Ronnie watched her husband disappear down the hallway. She had feared for her marriage but now she feared for his life.
    Ty entered his office and thought of his Scotch-blurred promise to never return. He sat at his desk, unrolled the small newspaper clenched in his hand, and found those two words, broken trees, and reread them again and again, as if someone, an editor at this two-bit local rag had somehow stumbled onto the Truth. This just might be the Rosetta Stone Ty Greenwood had searched for to restore his name and his life.
    Unlike anything else he’d seen in three years, this piece of news was alive and right in the neighborhood, and no one but Ty knew what it might mean. He picked up the phone and started to dial the newspaper, then realized they wouldn’t be answering at seven ten on a Saturday morning. He hung up and stared at the headline.
    Tears came to his eyes as a wave of emotion washed over him. Please God, don’t let this be a false lead. Ty rarely prayed for anything, but this moment seemed appropriate. Why did I see this? Tell me this isn’t a joke to prolong my agony. Is this my answer? Ty could wait to make that call. For if this wasn’t what he had been seeking, then he would soon be back on that black road to oblivion, and this time he’d get it right.

    As a light rain began, Mitch looked at his watch. He’d been waiting at the trail’s Y for twenty minutes. After giving Jack ten minutes leeway, he allowed himself to steam over it. Why should he pay the price for this guy’s excesses? Mitch didn’t go out and get smashed and whore around till all hours in search of some cheap thrills.
    My God, can’t he move a little faster? That’s why he, Mitch, was making partner and Jack was lucky to get his leftovers. Mitch’s brain angrily searched for analogies and metaphors for Jack’s failed existence and his own growing success and it all came down to who would be first to the top of that hill ahead. That reasoned out—and after waiting precisely twenty-four minutes—Mitch continued up the trail, his staccato pace matching his irritation.

    John Baxter heard the phone ringing as he slipped the key into the lock of the glass door. He scurried, as quickly as he could at seventy-four, to the reception desk. It wasn’t even seven thirty and someone was calling, probably to place an ad for their missing dog in the classifieds.
    As publisher of the Snohomish Daily News, Baxter’s pragmatic hope was that