Finders/Keepers (An Allie Krycek Thriller, Book 3) Read Online Free Page A

paper with a phone number in the pocket of the guy you just shot?
    Then again, she had also refused to finish him off, and even argued with the other two over it.
    What the hell is going on here?
    He stared at the phone, then at the piece of paper in his hand…then back at the phone.
    He didn’t move or act for the next five minutes.
    Finally, Hank picked the old receiver off the cradle and punched in the numbers. He swallowed, then cleared his throat, then spent the next few seconds waiting for the number to connect, going through a few hundred scenarios about what he was going to say when someone finally picked up—
    “Hello?” a female voice answered on the other end.
    “Um, hello,” Hank said.
    “Who is this?” the woman (girl?) asked.
    “Someone, uh, gave me your number.”
    The girl (Hank was sure of that now) didn’t answer right away. But she didn’t hang up on him either, because he could hear breathing on the other end. Was that because she was nervous? Suspicious? Maybe both. And where exactly was she? Hank had called a lot of numbers in his life, but he still couldn’t recall the area code he had just punched in.
    “You still there?” Hank said, if just to be sure. Who knows? He was getting old, and weren’t eyesight and hearing the first things to go—
    “Is she okay?” the girl asked.
    “Who?” he was going to say, but stopped himself in time. The girl was looking for information and was clearly just as uncertain about him as he was about her, so the last thing he wanted was to spook her. Right now, she was his only link as to what had happened at Ben’s and to the woman who had shot him.
    “I can’t say,” he said.
    “Why not?” she asked.
    “I can’t say too much over the phone. We should meet in person. It’ll be, uh, safer that way.”
    The girl hesitated.
    Shit. Did he just blow it? He had stammered a bit there at the end. Did the girl catch it? Did she know he was talking out of his ass? And the thing about not being able to say too much over the phone. Who did he think he was, James fucking Bond?
    Maybe he should have called Miller and given the number to him. The state police had a lot more resources on hand. Hell, they could have just punched the number into a computer and come up with a name—
    “Okay,” the girl finally said. “You have a pen?”
    Fuck me , Hank thought.

Three
    “ S o this is why I’m here,” Allie said. “Why Juliet was here before me.”
    Reese nodded. “We’ve found, through trial and error, that they respond better when there’s a woman around. Most of them aren’t inclined to cause trouble, but there’s always a rebel or two in the midst. It’s really just an emergency option—a just in case. Chances are we won’t need you for most of the trip, but it’s better to have you here when we do than not.”
    “What exactly am I supposed to do?”
    “For now, just keep them calm. Get them to trust you, in case a situation arises later where you’ll be needed. The more cooperative they are now, the easier it’ll be for all of us. And them.” He looked closely at her when he added, “Didn’t Juliet tell you?”
    “Not in so many words. But she didn’t tell me you’d make me rob a diner full of people just to see if I could do it, either.”
    He smiled. “We had to be sure you had it in you.”
    “And are you?”
    “The bags of money in the trunk say yes.”
    She stared at the door and didn’t move. There were no locks on it, nothing to keep anyone from coming out if they so chose. Except, of course, all the big bad men waiting on this side of the door.
    And right now, she was one of those “big bad men.”
    “As Dwight would say, it’s not rocket science,” Reese said next to her. “Be…motherly.”
    “Motherly,” she repeated.
    “It’s the presence of another woman that counts. After all the testosterone they’ve encountered so far, you’ll be a breath of fresh air. Get them to trust you. It shouldn’t be too hard.