Hide From Evil Read Online Free PDF Page A

her in the courtroom.
    She reminded him of himself thirty years ago, full of zeal and passion. Before he’d learned the compromises and tradeoffs he’d have to make to climb this high. Before he’d realized who really controlled the system of so-called law and order in which he worked.
    He swallowed the last of his scotch, his hand shaking as he reached for the phone. The liquor churned in his stomach like acid and he hesitated. Maybe there was another way. Maybe he could throw her a bone, let her carry on her investigation while making sure she was fed enough misinformation…
    No. They wanted her stopped. They’d made that clear. And he knew Krista too well. He could toss her all the false leads he wanted, but as long as she was digging, she was bound to discover something.
    He’d had his chance to stop her and he’d failed, and in the meantime she’d already discovered too much. Brewster had done a damn good job moving his money around, but Krista had easily connected the dates with the deposits. It was only a question of when, not if, she figured out who had been paying him and why.
    Now Mark needed to man up and accept the fact that a woman he looked on as a daughter would be lost as collateral damage in the aftermath of Brewster’s death. That was just the way it needed to be.
    He picked up the phone and dialed. “It’s me. I tried to get her to drop it, but she won’t let up.”
    “I’ll see it’s taken care of. I’ll call you when it’s over.”
    “Wait,” Mark said before the other man hung up. “Promise me they won’t…hurt her.” Images of Brewster’s victims flashed through his head and his throat burned with bile. The other people they used were capable of equal brutality.
    “I make it a practice not to micromanage,” the man said. “You’ll know when it’s taken care of.”
    The line clicked. Mark barely got his head to the trash can before the scotch came spewing back up.
     
    Thunk. Crack. Thunk. Crack. Krista followed the rhythmic sound as she picked her way down the rutted driveway to what she hoped was Sean Flynn’s cabin. When Megan Flynn, Sean’s sister, had told her Sean was living in their family’s hunting cabin outside the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Winton, it had only taken a quick call to Stew to track down the address.
    Problem was, about an hour out of town the GPS on Krista’s phone had crapped out, displaying an endlessly spinning pinwheel instead of the designated route. Luckily, it didn’t take too long for her to find someone in town familiar with Sean to direct her to his cabin.
    At first, the man working behind the counter in the combination gas station, grocery store, and post office had eyed her with suspicion. “What do you want with Sean?” he’d asked when Krista asked if he knew where she could find his cabin.
    “I’m a friend of his,” she lied. “He’s expecting me.” Also a lie, though to be fair she had left him four voice mails in the past two days, explaining that she urgently needed to talk to him about what had happened to Jimmy Caparulo. If Sean didn’t want people showing up on his doorstep, he should return their calls and tell them so.
    “Go around the south side of the lake and take Forest Service Road Twenty-Two,” the man working at the gas station in Winton told her. “About a mile in, there’ll be a fork in the road. You’ll wanna go left. Follow the road up the hill until the paved road ends, and about five miles in you should see a red mailbox. That’ll be the Flynns’ place. And as long as you’re goin’ up there, give him this.” The old guy handed her a pile of mail neatly stacked and bound together with a rubber band. “This is all that came in for the week.”
    She took the woodworking catalogs, a couple of bills, and offers for credit cards and tossed them on the front seat of her Toyota. She followed the old man’s directions exactly, but eight miles past where the paved road ended there was still