Racing the Devil Read Online Free PDF

hiding from anything are easy to find. The reconciliation was tougher. Cam hadn’t seen her dad since she was two, and the chip on her shoulder was about the size of a redwood.
    In the end, she agreed to meet her father, and after a cool year, things had finally begun to warm up between them.
    “Hell, Billy, you already paid for that, remember? Two hundred dollars a day, plus expenses.”
    “Naw, man. You gave me back my little girl. That’ll never be paid back.”
    He said he’d be gone until about four-thirty, then took his massive self downstairs. When he was gone, I helped myself to two aspirins and a Dr. Pepper, plugged my phone in on Billy’s charger, left a brief message on Frank Campanella’s answering machine, and settled in to figure out my options.
    I knew I’d have to turn myself in sooner or later, but first I wanted to find out more about the woman I was supposed to have killed. Amanda Jean Hartwell. Amy. If I knew who she was, maybe I could determine who might have wanted her dead.
    And why her murder had been pinned on me.
    I still didn’t know why I’d been chosen. Had I just been at the wrong place at the wrong time, or did someone hold a grudge against me? There were plenty of candidates: guys whose insurance scams were derailed when I snapped photos of them lifting weights and dancing with their girlfriends, parents who’d lost custody of their children when embarrassing photographs surfaced, husbands who’d been caught with their pants down and lost half their assets in messy divorces.
    Not to mention all the scumbags I’d helped put away while I was still on the force.
    I grabbed a piece of paper and started jotting down names of people who might hate me enough to do this and be smart enough to pull it off.
    By the time Billy got back, I had covered most of the sheet. Some of the names weren’t really names at all, but descriptions. “Scraggly reddish brown hair, scar on left cheek, arrested for burglary.” “Big guy, lightning bolt tattoo, arrested on suspicion of rape.” Some were nicknames: Ice Pick, Hammerhead, Crossbones, Blade.
    I didn’t think any of the names would lead anywhere, but it was a place to start.
    Billy ordered us a sausage pizza with double cheese, which we washed down with a couple of Heinekens while we watched the evening news.
    Sure enough, my name was on it.
    My gut lurched when they showed the victim’s picture. Dropping my pizza back into the box, I leaned forward for a closer look.
    In the photo, Amy Hartwell stood in front of a Tudor-style stone house, her arms clasped around two young girls. Katrina and Tara, said the anchorwoman, ages twelve and seven. Amy’s hair and Tara’s were the same soft shade of golden-brown, like buttered toast. Katrina’s was as smooth and pale as corn silk.
    They were all smiling.
    The camera segued to an interview with the cleaning woman who had discovered the body. She was a buxom redhead in her fifties with a round, freckled face. Her hands, in her lap, twisted a frayed Kleenex into a corkscrew, and her eyes were swollen, rimmed with red.
    “It was early, you know, and she didn’t have . . . Ms. Hartwell didn’t have . . . the ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the doorknob. So I used my key and went in . . . And I went in, and it was . . .” She stifled a sob. “There was a naked woman on the bed. Her legs were spread, like . . . like he . . . somebody . . . wanted her to be found that way.” She held the tissue to her nose and honked into it as the camera cut away to the reporter.
    This time, they didn’t say I was wanted for questioning.
    This time, they said I was a suspect.
    I leaned over and flipped the channel to the Nashville station, where local celebrity Ashleigh Arneau was delivering the same news in a breathy, husky voice that made murder seem like seduction. She batted her eyes at the audience, wide blue eyes she insisted on calling “wisteria.”
    On the screen behind her was a photograph of me with my