The Fives Run North-South Read Online Free PDF Page A

out - of - diapers ass into the bay. Like laying on the horn, I’d let him know this was my road. My direction.
    But then I remembered what had happened after I’d done that to the red SUV. Consequences. Perhaps better to avoid them?
    I sat in my chair.
    No ,I thought. Best to bide my time. Patience. As I watched Kyle leave the room, I drilled my gaze into the back of his head. Young. Impatient.
    Good. They are the easiest prey for those of us who walked carefully into battle. I picked up the phone.

    Sometimes when you pull on a shoe lace, the laces come untied easily. Other times, you pull the same lace, the same way, it catches. The knot holds. You get a bunch of knots. And in pulling harder, it tightens into something that takes time, patience, and good fingernails to free up. Why? I don’t know enough about physics to explain the difference. It just seems you should certainly be able to control something as simple as untying shoes, shouldn’t you?

    As often happens, I was the last to leave the office that night. I punched in the security code, set the alarm, and stepped outside. It was growing dark, but the heat of the day still hung in the air, making it heavy outside. I put the key in the door, and clicked it to the locked position. I pulled my phone out of my breast pocket and hit my home speed - dial number. As I glanced at my car in its spot, it looked a bit crooked.
    “Hello?” Suze said.
    “Hi,” I said. “Just leaving and…”
    The car was crooked.
    “Adam?” she said.
    I stopped, my mouth frozen.
    “Adam?” Suze repeated.
    I blinked, hoping the evidence wasn’t so blatant.
    Two flat tires, both on the driver’s side. The rubber on the sidewalls jagged and shredded. Slashed.

4
    I hung up my cell phone and returned it to my pocket, shaking my head in disbelief. Suze was hopping into her car to come pick me up; she’d be here in about twenty minutes. I walked over to my BMW and bent down to look more closely at the tires (only four months old, if I remembered correctly). As it had appeared from a distance, this was definitely the work of a blade: intentional, rushed, and messy. It had happened fast; fast enough, it appeared, that the car had dropped with enough force to cause a slight dent on the bottom edge of one of the rims.
    I stood up straight and let out a growl of frustration. “Just fucking wonderful,” I said to the darkening sky above.
    I considered going back into the office but really just wanted to be at home with a glass of wine. So to keep from wasting precious time, I decided to wait by the car so we could get moving toward home as quickly as possible after Suze’s arrival. Pulling the phone out of my pocket again, I decided to flip through some unanswered e - mails and messages. Get my mind off of…
    What? The red SUV? The brick?
    Now this. Certainly not a coincidence. An annoyance, that’s for sure. Not what I needed when the real threat, the real area on which I needed to focus, was that cowboy Kyle Thomas and his little coup attempt. Another wise punk following some meathead script currently fashionable in the market where turbulence is sexy. He probably just graduated from his master’s program. Wrote a paper on the ideals of corporate growth and now wants to take his little theory - based ideas and get a skin for his belt. Pad his resume with a turnaround; probably in his mind a small - company turnaround. Easy pickings before graduating to a larger, more substantial company. As I flipped through my e - mails , paying little attention to them, I was already forming a plan, mentally enlisting allies…
    The red SUV. The brick. Now this…
    I tried to shake my mind free of the slashed tires, to get back to focus. But my thoughts wandered again. If it was the red SUV guy, he had to have been pretty ballsy coming here to slash my tires in this relatively wide - open parking lot. Sure, it was empty now, but certainly there had to have been someone here when he…
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