Cut and Run Read Online Free PDF Page A

twenty-four-to-forty-eight-hour period, all in the name of love. A love less than three months old. A love fashioned under the threat of death and in the heat of battle.
    â€œRotem will try to talk me out of it. At the very least they’ll make me meet with a psychologist or psychiatrist. There will be papers to sign, releasing them of responsibility. It’s not a matter of breaking out the champagne and waiting to be relocated.”
    â€œSecond thoughts?”
    â€œIt’s too soon to have second thoughts. These are original thoughts,” he said. “I just need a little time to think it through and put it together.”
    â€œThere isn’t any time, is there? Do you think they’re going to warn you before they take me off? Do you think they’re going to warn me? No way.” She was right. It would be done in the dead of night, like a criminal act. Two or three vans all leaving at the same moment, all heading different directions. She’d be inside one of them, gone for good. She’d already been placed on the fast track. Her new identity would arrive any moment.
    He explained his situation again, detailing his need for a day or two at least. “I
do
love you. But I owe some explanations. I won’t leave my friends in false grief. I’ve seen enough of that.”
    They kissed, though for the first time without passion, and that kiss would haunt him as he told Rotem of his plan to join her, and later considered her offer through the night, phone off the hook, his bed not slept in.
    In the morning, his mind made up, he returned to the farmhouse.
    He found it empty and deserted. Even the tire tracks had been swept out of the dirt, as if no one had been there in years.
    He blamed Rotem, though never to his face. He blamed her for waiting so long to ask. He blamed himself forever for wavering, for leaving her side, even for a moment, that day.
    Touchdown returned him to the present and delivered the requisite black Navigator to the jet’s stairs. This kind of service made Larson feel both important and uncomfortable, neither of which pleased him. The three federal employees were whisked off by a driver, who also carried Justice Department creds. Larson was once again reminded of how serious this must be.
    Uncle Leo. It was little more than a name to Larson, but it carried weight, of legendary import in the realm of WITSEC. Uncle Leo had had something to do with the witness protection program’s modernization which had begun in the mid-1990s. Leo’s name spoke as much of secrecy as anything else, as did so much of the WITSEC program’s overhaul. It was the equivalent of the program’s very integrity, its security, and the security of its protected witnesses. Uncle Leo’s predicament had rallied the big hitters. It might be nothing more than an unscheduled vacation, or a trip to a hospital, but Uncle Leo had disappeared and Rotem had obviously been ordered to move heaven and earth, along with a sizable private jet, to find the man. It was as if WITSEC and FATF, separate entities, with one rarely having anything to do with the other, would be working together. The presence of these Justice agents spoke volumes. This was the varsity squad; if Larson was being called off the bench, as it appeared he was, then people wanted Uncle Leo found. The desk jockeys were ready to sit back and watch people like Larson work.
    This particular October night in Princeton, New Jersey, left Larson wishing he’d brought a sweater, rather than the black jeans and black blazer he’d been wearing at the play. The smell was of car engines and tire rubber as he climbed out of the Navigator, stepping onto a blacktop driveway alongside a modest, unremarkable home in what was probably called a “nice neighborhood,” a place where kids could ride bikes and skateboards at any hour but the current hour of four A.M .
    Larson, for no reason other than his own experience, had