Wildfire Read Online Free PDF

using hoods and scarves and umbrellas to protect themselves from the ice-cold gusts of wind and flurries of wet, sticky snowflakes, which meant he wouldn't be able to see their faces.
    Lightstone quickly realized that his chances of exposing and identifying the pair on the basis of a spontaneous reaction to another one of his unexpected moves were minimal at best. They were alert now, and they wouldn't make that same mistake again. Not if they were as professional as they appeared so far.
    So instead Henry Lightstone had begun working his way in the direction of the historic Boston Common, where there would be fewer innocent people around and better opportunities for both sides, if that was how it was going to go down.
    Out in the open now and away from the protective buildings, Lightstone found himself exposed to the full force of the intensifying storm. Like the rapidly fleeing city work force, he too was forced to hunch forward and use the hood of his jacket in order to protect his head and face from the freezing wind and numbing cold. Which, in turn, made it difficult to keep an eye out for any precipitous movements by his supposed adversaries.
    He was coming up on the statue that had been constructed in memory of the Boston soldiers and sailors who had died during the Civil War when he was suddenly aware that he was being stared at by a solitary figure, who had been standing in front of the statue, with his back to the asphalt pathway, before he suddenly turned around. A young man who, from all outward appearances, hadn't expected to encounter a raging snowstorm either when he decided to stand around in a light jacket, on an exposed hilltop, out in the middle of Boston Common.
    Henry Lightstone watched the solitary figure carefully as he maintained his steady pace. And, in doing so, he noticed that the expression in the youthful face suddenly changed from hopeful expectation to visible and almost stricken disappointment.
    Not the one you were expecting, am I? Lightstone thought as he continued on past the now desolate figure, noting the youth's fair features, the ice-covered granny glasses, the black portable computer case clutched in one hand, and his thoroughly soaked tennis shoes. Poor bastard, hope whoever it is you're looking for shows up pretty damn soon.
    But then Lightstone immediately forgot about all that because he was coming up on the Park subway station, and he suddenly decided that a quick phone call might not be such a bad idea after all.
     
     
    Larry Paxton, newly appointed assistant special agent in charge of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's reinstituted Bravo Team, a covert entity of the service's two-hundred-and-twenty-agent Division of Law Enforcement, had been growing increasingly worried by the minute. When the phone rang, he was pacing the bare wooden floor of the second-story loft that he and his fellow agents had converted into temporary living quarters pending their move to the newly created safe house.
    Paxton whirled around and started toward the phone, but Mike Takahara was closer to the couch and beat him to it.
    "Yeah?" Takahara paused and then smiled. "Henry? Where are you? . . . Oh, yeah? Well, it's about time you checked in. Larry's been wearing a path in the carpet for the last half hour, and he's about ready to drive us . . . what? Yeah, sure, hold on just a second."
    "Where the hell is he, and what the hell's he doing?" Paxton demanded as he and Dwight Stoner and Thomas Woeshack stood around the couch, listening intently to the one-sided conversation. But the Japanese-American technical agent waved them off as he grabbed for a pen and paper.
    "Okay, go ahead. Tremont to Avery to what? . . . Okay, yeah, I know where that is. Where do you want us?" He paused again. "You sure? How many are there?" Takahara paused again. "Okay, just watch yourself. We're on our way."
    Paxton and Stoner were already reaching for their jackets and shoulder-holstered pistols when Mike Takahara, slightly