LITMIR.BIZ

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calm, as always.

      He remembered another time, another place, another killing.

       He was in the city, the seedy part of town. On the fourth floor of a dirty brick hotel that rented rooms by the hour, he set up his sniper’s nest and assembled his precision rifle with laser scope, silencer and tripod. With high-power, infrared binoculars, he observed the crappy apartment building directly across the street. Fourth floor, corner unit. Nobody home.

       He checked into the hotel at sundown. Hours passed. Dusk turned to nightfall when lights flickered on throughout the city. Not that he had a glittering view.

       When the lamp in the apartment across the street came on, he eased into position. Though he sat in the dark, the glow from a streetlight reflected dully on the barrel of his rifle and silencer.

       He peered through his scope. Through the uncurtained window of the apartment across the street, a man with fiery red hair paced from room to room with his gun in his hand, looking for danger.

       “I’m here,” Jack whispered. “Come to the window, you bastard.”

       This man deserved to die.

       But his target hadn’t been alone. A small woman with brassy blond hair and a child entered Jack’s field of vision. Two witnesses.

       The killing had to wait.

      From the loft in the barn, Jack watched as Rojas and his companion got into the SUV and drove away from Caitlyn’s cabin. She turned on her heel and rushed back into her house, moving fast, as though she had something burning on the stove.

      When the black SUV was out of sight, he rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling in the barn that needed patching.

      He knew who he was.

      A stone-cold killer.

      INSIDE HER CABIN, Caitlyn wasted no time. She dove into the swivel chair behind her small desk in the living room and fired up her laptop. It felt good to see the screen come to life. Back when she was a working journalist—especially in the field—her computer had been an ever-present tool, almost an extension of her arm.

      Her hands poised over the keyboard. But I’m not a journalist anymore. Not right now. She had no assignment, no story to investigate, and she wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted to go back into the fray.

      Her main reason for moving to this cabin had been to purposely distance herself from the 24-hour-a-day news cycle. During this time of self-imposed seclusion, she hoped to regroup and decide what to do with the rest of her life.

      Her parents and nearly everyone else who cared about her had encouraged Caitlyn to seek out a safer occupation. Not that they wanted her to quit writing, but they hoped she would leave the war zones to others. As if she’d be satisfied reporting on garden parties? Writing poetry about sunshine and lollipops?

      She wasn’t made that way. She thrived on action.

      Jack’s arrival at her doorstep might be fate. She hadn’t gone looking for danger, but here it was. She had armed thugs searching her cabin. If Jack Dalton had a story to tell, she wouldn’t turn away.

      She jumped on the internet and started a search on the name of Jack’s supposed “friend,” Mark Santoro. Expertly, she sorted through news stories, mostly from the Chicago Tribune, and put together the basic facts.

      As Jack had said, Mark Santoro was dead. He and four other members of the Santoro crime family had been killed in a shootout on a city street five months ago. One of the men had his hands cut off. Mark had been decapitated. A gruesome slaughter; it was intended to send a message.

      Allegedly, the Santoro family handled narcotics distribution in the Midwest, and they had angered the powerful Rojas drug cartel—the suppliers of illegal drugs.

      Agents from the DEA and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were all over this incident. They arrested and charged several members of the Rojas cartel, including the top man, Tom Rojas. The federal murder trial was due to start on Tuesday, four days from now, at a district court in Chicago.

      Reading between the lines, Caitlyn suspected that much of this story never made it to print. She used to date a reporter who worked at the Trib—a sweet guy who had taken her for that romantic sailboat ride on Lake Michigan and begged her to stay in the States. She’d refused to settle down, and he’d moved on. A typical pattern for her relationships. The last she’d heard, her former beau was happily married with an infant daughter. If she needed to find out more about the trial, she could contact him.

      Rapid-fire, she typed in the names of the two thugs: Drew Kelso and Greg Reynolds. A quick search showed several people with those names, but nothing stood out. She wasn’t surprised. Drug lords and thugs don’t generally maintain websites.

      Next, she searched for Tony Perez. After digging through a lot of worthless information, she tightened her search and linked it to Mark Santoro. In one of the articles about the shootings, Tony Perez was mentioned as a bodyguard for Santoro. Perez had been killed at the scene.

      But Jack Dalton was very much alive.

      Slowly, she closed her laptop. Though she hadn’t heard him enter the house or walk across the living room floor, she sensed Jack’s nearness. She knew that he was standing close, silently watching her.

      A shiver prickled down her spine. She wasn’t afraid that he would physically harm her. There wasn’t a reason, and he was smart enough to avoid unnecessary violence. But she was apprehensive. Jack was pulling her toward a place she didn’t want to go.

      “Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.

      She swiveled in her desk chair to face him. “You look pretty healthy for a dead man.”

      He crossed the room and returned her rifle to the front closet. “I brought your gun back.”

      The smart thing would be to send him on his way and forget she ever saw him. But finding the truth was a compulsion for her. “Those men were looking for Tony Perez. Is that your real name?”

      “Tony’s dead. Call me Jack.”

      “They said you stole a horse, and that you’re dangerous.”

      “Half right.”

      “Which half?”

      “I didn’t steal the horse. I borrowed it.”

      He approached her, braced his hands on each of the arms of her swivel chair and leaned down until his face was on a level with hers. “Those men are unpredictable. There’s no telling what they might do. I strongly advise that you stay with a friend for a couple of days.”

      “What about you? Where are you going?”

      “Not your problem.”

      He was so close that she could see the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. She wanted to rest her hand against his black T-shirt, to feel the beating of his heart. Instead, she picked a piece of straw off his shoulder. “You were hiding in the barn. In the loft.”

      “I couldn’t leave until I knew you were safe.”

      “Who were those guys?” She searched his eyes for a truth he might never tell her. “They said their names were Drew Kelso and Greg Reynolds.”

      “Not Reynolds. That was Gregorio Rojas.” He reached toward her desk and flipped her computer open. “You know the name. You were reading all about him and his pals.”

      “And his brother, Tom. His murder trial starts in four days.”

      He stepped away from her. “I have to go.”

      “Not yet. I’m still putting the pieces together.” She left her chair and stood between him and the front door. “I’m asking myself why Rojas is after you. Something to do with

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