The Quiet Seduction Read Online Free PDF Page A

“It’s mostly small farms and cattle ranches. We have year round grazing here, so cattle are a big thing, but crops are big, too. At this point our farm hardly qualifies as a working ranch—we’re just hanging on to status quo, you might say, but— Oh, I don’t know why I even said that, you couldn’t possibly be interested. Anyway, we love it here. It’s a great place to raise a son.”
    If she was hoping something she said would trigger his memory, she was disappointed. They both were. She had a nice voice, though. A bit raspy, as if she might have screamed herself hoarse searching for the boy. She’d be the type, he was somehow sure of it, to run outside in the teeth of a tornado to rescue her child.
    Lucky kid.
    During the wakeful periods of the night they’d exchanged a few words—just enough to let her know he hadn’t gone off the deep end. From a few things she’d said, he’d gained the impression that she and the boy might be having a pretty rough time keeping their heads above water. Not that she’d complained. He’d had to ask a few leading questions. Somewhat surprisingly, he’d discovered that he was good at it, even when he wasn’t particularly interested in the answers.
    Although, oddly enough, he was. The woman was nothing to him. He’d brushed off her gratitude, saying that whatever he’d done for her son, she had more than returned the favor by hauling his ass out of that ditch.Not that he’d phrased it that way. Which told him something else about himself. It wasn’t enough, but it was a beginning.
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    Some five miles away, a terse conversation was taking place between two men. The air was redolent with the smoke of a Cuban cigar. “I’m telling you, Frank, he’s dead. He’s gotta be dead, else them two guys I sent scouting around woulda found him. They found what was left of his car over by that Quik-Fill place out on 59. I had ’em haul it to the chopshop.”
    â€œYou’re sure it was Harrison’s?”
    â€œI had a guy run the plates. ’Sides, his coat was still inside caught up in some branches where a tree limb busted through the windshield. Big mama! Rammed clean through the front and out the back. Man, nobody coulda lived through that! Hood’s gone, one o’ the doors ripped off. Nothing left but scrap metal.”
    Lying on a polished table between the two men was a sodden wallet, a driver’s license, several credit cards, a Triple-A membership card and ninety-eight dollars in cash. No one had reported the missing credit cards.
    â€œWhere the hell is he?” the older man muttered, stabbing his cigar at the driver’s license issued to one J. Spencer Harrison, six feet, one inch tall, one hundred eighty-seven pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, born November 4, 1967.
    â€œMan, I’m telling you, nobody could’ve survived that hit. Ask me, he’s buzzard bait by now.”
    Frank Del Brio paced in a tight circle, occasionally thumping ashes onto the plush carpet. After several minutes of silence he turned and jabbed his stub of a cigar toward the other man. “You ask around?”
    â€œYou know me, Frank. I say I’ll check something out, I check it out.”
    â€œWho’d you send?”
    â€œSal and Peaches.”
    â€œJesus Christ, man, those two couldn’t find their ass with a road map!”
    â€œYou wanted it kept quiet, didn’t you? Sal don’t talk and Peaches owes me.”
    More pacing. More scattered ashes. Finally, as if he’d come to a conclusion, Del Brio turned to face his companion. “I’m gonna have to trust you on this one. Joe Ed’s already positioned to take his place, but I swear to you, if Harrison turns up once a new D. A. is appointed, there’s no place south of the North Pole I can’t find you. You might want to notify your next of kin, just in