The Stolen Read Online Free PDF Page B

mind. I have your cell number, so I’ll just call when I’m ready to leave, right? You’ll be here?”
    “Faster ’n instant coffee.”
    “Glad to hear that, thanks.”
    I grabbed my briefcase, stepped out of the car. It was a sunny day, high seventies, a light breeze rattling leaves and lowering the humidity. I breathed in the fresh air, wished I could find it in the city outside of Central Park. It was strange to be in a town where you could see the horizon miles away. Unobstructed views over houses just a story or two tall.
    While what I said to Stavros was partly true, about wanting to stay incognito to the press as long as possible, I also didn’t want to give the wrong impression to the Linwoods themselves. I didn’t want to roll up in a Lincoln with a driver, step out of the backseat like some dignitary. If I was going to talk to Daniel Linwood, it was going to be on his level. With all the attention he’d be facing over the coming weeks, his family didn’t need to feel like they were being talked down to.
    I walked to the opposite side of the street, slow enough to avoid arousing suspicion, fast enough that residents wouldn’t think a solicitor was creeping around in their front yards.
    When I was just a block away, still unnoticed, I stepped into the pathway between two clapboard houses and sat down on a stone bench. I gathered my notes, made sure the tape recorder had fresh batteries. And then I sat and watched the beehive.
    The reporters camped outside the Linwood home were standing on the grass, their vans having left tire tracks in yards all across the street. No doubt the locals would complain to the city council about this, but with a story this big there was no stopping the boulder from rolling downhill.
    Since the night Daniel came back, the only comment from the Linwood home had been “no comment.” Today that would change.
    I sketched brief descriptions of the homes, the climate, the scene in front of me. Enough to give Hobbs County some color. I snapped a few pictures of the houses, even took a few of the press corps just for kicks. Then I waited.
    At one-forty I stood up, stretched and started to walk over. My heart was beating fast, and I wiped my palms on the inside of my jacket. One of the tricks of the trade Jack taught me. Most people wipe their hands on their pants, and that does nothing but make your source think they’re being interviewed by a guy who can’t jiggle out the last few drops of piss. Inside the jacket, nobody could see you were hiding the Hoover Dam in your armpits. Good thing Jack was a classy guy.
    I was hoping to enter the Linwood residence as quickly as possible. I didn’t want to answer any questions, or see my face on any newscasts. I’d had enough of that.
    Silently I crept toward the house, when all of a sudden a gravelly voice said, “Look who crawled out of the sewer,” and I knew I had a better chance of finding a winning lottery ticket in my hamper than staying incognito.
    One by one the heads turned. Clean-shaven newsmen with three-hundred-dollar haircuts, women wearing makeup so thick it could have been a layer of skin. They all looked at me with sneers reserved for subjects they were used to interviewing in solitary confinement. A piece of gum snapped, then landed on my shoe. I flicked it off, kept walking without looking to see who was guilty. Never let them see you angry.
    I nudged my way through the crowd without making eye contact with anyone. I recognized a male reporter from the New York Dispatch, somewhat surprised to see that Paulina Cole hadn’t taken on the story herself. Paulina Cole was the Dispatch ’s top columnist, a post she took after leaving the Gazette. We’d actually worked next to each other for several months, but now there was as much love between us as Hillary and Monica.
    You’d never picture the devil as a five-foot-six woman with platinum-blond hair, impeccable skin tone and a take-no-prisoners, ball-busting attitude that