A Murder In Passing Read Online Free Page A

for coffee with wounded vets from Afghanistan and Iraq. I’d appreciated the outside companionship when I underwent physical therapy, and I felt a duty to show there was life after a debilitating injury.
    On the Monday morning after my mushroom adventure, I left my apartment near Biltmore Village and took the back way around Beaucatcher Mountain to the Charles George V.A. Medical Center on Tunnel Road. A cup of black coffee and a blueberry muffin would be my ticket to a cafeteria discussion where I would contribute by listening, by simply being a presence in the midst of the turmoil and uncertainty facing our wounded vets.
    As I pulled into the visitors’ lot, my cellphone rang. Nakayla’s ID flashed on the screen.
    â€œWhat’s up?” I asked.
    â€œAre you with your buddies?”
    â€œNo. Just got here. Still in the car.”
    â€œWe have a client.” Nakayla’s words sparkled with excitement.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œA Marsha Montgomery.”
    â€œIs she there?”
    â€œNo. I set an appointment for eleven.”
    â€œWell, I hope it’s not tracking some two-timing husband. Did you tell her that’s not our specialty?”
    â€œShe said it’s about a burglary and she wants to meet in person.”
    I glanced at my watch. Nine-thirty. A burglary case was more interesting than anything else we had going at the moment.
    â€œI’ll take the meeting,” Nakayla said. “Just wanted you to know.”
    â€œI’ll be there, but I’m going to drop something off at the hospital first. See you no later than ten-thirty.”
    The something I had to drop off were two of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels I’d promised a young special ops soldier named Jason Fretwell. I found him sitting alone in the cafeteria, and from the clench of his jaw, I saw he wasn’t having a good morning. A couple of guys a few tables away waved for me to join them. I waved back and then nodded toward Jason. They understood he needed my attention more than they did.
    â€œHey, Hotshot.” I dropped the books by his tray. “Here’s just the thing to take your mind out of here.”
    He looked up without smiling. “Hi, Sam.”
    A half-eaten bowl of granola sat in front of him. I saw dribbles of milk splattered on the front of his shirt. He gripped a spoon awkwardly in his left hand. From his right sleeve projected the mechanical fingers of a prosthetic device that attached to the stump of his lower arm. Shrapnel from a roadside bomb had shredded the exposed portion of his body as he rode in the passenger’s seat of an armored personnel vehicle. A sniper by training, Jason Fretwell now couldn’t hit his own mouth with a spoon.
    I slid into the seat across from him. “How’s it going?”
    â€œDown the toilet.” He pounded his artificial hand on the table in frustration. “I can’t get this piece of crap to work right.”
    I pushed the books closer to him. “Then I guess you’ll have to spear these pages to turn them.”
    Anger flared in his dark brown eyes. His pale skin flushed and he reached out and grabbed my forearm with his artificial fingers.
    The pressure felt like a vise squeezing flesh against bone, but I held his gaze without flinching. “Go pick on someone who has two good legs.”
    Jason’s mouth dropped open. He stared at the alien fingers digging into my skin. Confusion swept over his face and then amazement as he marveled at the precise manipulation he’d unconsciously made. He looked like a kid whose basketball shot just swished through the net from half court. Hell, he was a kid, barely in his twenties.
    â€œSorry.” He released his grip, but he wasn’t sorry. Suddenly, he was alive.
    I shrugged. “No problem. For three weeks, I kept kicking people because I didn’t know where my new leg ended.”
    â€œAnd now you chase down bad guys.”
    â€œMaybe, if