Intent to Kill Read Online Free PDF Page A

callbacks definitely jazzed things up, but they were always dicey.
    “Hey, I heard what you said, James. Now lemme tell you something. You are nothin’ but a washed-up wannabe who couldn’t even cut it in the minor leagues. You are a bleep-bleep-bleep loser who’s been whining all week about his dead wife. Get over it. Accidents happen. You hear me? Accidents hap—”
    “Okay,” said Jock, cutting off the call. “What do you say we take a question from one of our text-message addicts? What’s in the hopper this morning, partner?”
    Ryan was numb. Throughout the week, he’d made brief references to the third anniversary of Chelsea’s passing, mostly out of frustration that the police had never found the hit-and-run driver that had forced her off the road. Most listeners were sympathetic and supportive, but there had been some grumbling from purists who wanted sports radio to be only about sports. Maybe Tony was speaking for all of them.
    Accidents happen .
    “You with us today, buddy?” said Jock.
    Ryan checked the text-message display. The twenty-something demographic had just about overloaded the electronic inbox.
    “Yeah,” Ryan said, pulling up the first message. “Here as much as I ever am.”
     

    At 3:30 P.M. Ryan picked up Ainsley at school. He usually looked forward to their time together, but today’s mix of emotions was complicating matters.
    When Chelsea died, Ryan knew he couldn’t stay in Pawtucket. After leaving the PawSox, he’d considered moving back to Texas, but he couldn’t put a thousand miles between Ainsley and Chelsea’s parents. So he settled on Boston, where Ainsley would attend Brookline Academy, the school Chelsea had always wanted for their daughter.
    The South End was their neighborhood, a diverse and lively community adjacent to the utterly unaffordable Back Bay area. Ryan loved their old bowfront Victorian row house—there were more of them in the South End than anywhere else in the country—and the variety of good restaurants on Tremont Street was unbeatable. Ryan liked Boston more than he ever thought a boy from Alpine, Texas, possibly could, and his grandmother would have taken solace in the fact that he’d at least chosen a northern city that hated the Yankees with a passion.
    The verdict was still out, however, on Brookline Academy. No doubt, the education was first rate. The social component was what worried Ryan—was the school even remotely the real world? The academy was the kind of place where the nannies drove better cars than Ryan did. Families put themselves on a waiting list to pay an extra fifteen grand per year for a reserved parking space. There was a technical degree of ethnic diversity, though the lower school had lost 20 percent of its African American students when the Boston Celtics traded two star players to the Chicago Bulls in the off-season. Morning drop-off was a daily showcase of the rich and famous—the parent who was also a professional athlete, a local television anchor, a best-selling author, a college president, and on and on.
    Today of all days, Ryan had to run into Conradt Garrisen.
    “Ryan James, how’re you doing, my friend?”
    Garrisen was one of those old friends who came with emotional baggage. Losing Chelsea and then losing his shot at baseball had been devastating for Ryan. He’d let down himself, his daughter, his parents, his best friend, his teammates, and thousands of baseball fans who were pulling for him. Worst of all, he’d let down Chelsea’s parents, who never said the words, but who, Ryan knew, wanted to see him make it in the majors “for Chelsea.” The organization had given him every chance to salvage his career, and probably no one believed in him more than the owner of the PawSox, Connie Garrisen.
    Dr. Garrisen was also one of the most prominent physicians in Boston, where he was chief of staff at Massachusetts General Hospital. His specialty was plastic surgery for skin cancers, which afforded him a nice