NO GOOD DEED Read Online Free Page A

hell didn’t you trust me ?”
    He had blown his chance. Mark sagged back against the cinder-blocks. “I should have. But I was an idiot.”
    She paced again, her arms tight across her chest. “You’ve been running around Chicago sticking your nose into situations where it doesn’t belong. Turning up at bank robberies, or at the scene of a drive by shooting, only you just manage to get yourself and bystanders out of the line of fire.” She paused her pacing long enough to level a look at his leg. “Usually, anyway.”
    Mark dropped his hand to his left thigh, rubbing the scar. He could feel the ridge of it through the coveralls they had made him wear.
    “So, you’ve never once told me who your sources were. Do you understand how that makes you look now?”
    “Yeah.” He drew in a ragged breath and bent his head. The remains of a cockroach stained the cement between his feet. He nudged it with his toe.
    Kneeling beside the bed, she looked up into his face. “Listen, Mark. You helped me out a few times with tips on cases. I appreciated that, even if my boss gave me grief over how I’d acquired my information. So, now, I want to help you. Will you let me?” Her voice softened and her eyes bore into his.
    “I already told them the truth. What more can I do?” Mark held her gaze. Whatever it took, he’d do it. He had to clear his name. Even if that put the camera in the wrong hands. He grimaced. Not that there was much chance of that. The authorities had ridiculed that explanation.
    “You need to lay all your sources out for them. Names, dates, places. If you fully cooperate, your lawyer will push for leniency.”
    A roar built in his ears as his hope plummeted. “I can’t do that.” She asked the impossible.
    She shook his leg, her voice rising, “You have to do it. You have no choice in the matter.”
    “You don’t understand. I can’t do that because I don’t have any ‘sources’!” He raked a hand through his hair. “I have...” Oh God, this was hard. “I have a camera. Those times when I showed up...the robberies...the shooting...I-I have a camera and when I use it, the photos that come out...they aren’t anything I photographed. There’s pictures of those things happening.”
    Her eyes widened in shock and disbelief.
    He licked his lips and rushed on, “I don’t know where they come from, or...or how they end up on my film, but they do. Then at night, after looking at the photos, the images come to life in my dreams. Like a movie—” He shook his head with a mirthless laugh. “The next day, they come true...unless I do something to stop it.”
    The look on her face had gone from disbelief to pity.
    He reached for her hand. “Please, you gotta believe me, Jessie. You’ve seen me stop things. How else would I know what I know?”
    She pulled free and backed to the cell door. She turned, her shoulders slumped as she rested her head against the steel. For a long minute, she remained that way before facing him. “You realize how that sounds?”
    Mark nodded. What more could he say? He picked at an orange thread on his sleeve. It sounded insane. He knew that. Flicking the thread from his fingers, he watched it float to the floor and rest beside the cockroach. “They think I’m crazy don’t they? You think I’m crazy.”
    She threw her arms wide. “What do you expect? You give them this bizarre story and then wonder why they don’t believe you?” She stood in front of him, hands on her hips. “Come on, Mark.”
    “Jessie, listen, please .” He willed her to believe him. “I was only trying to help—I did help.You know that!”
    He saw doubt as she looked away. She thought he was crazy. Or guilty. Oh God . His gut twisted and pain ripped through him. Why had he tried to stop it? It wasn’t something isolated, like most of the things he’d changed. It had been bigger than himself. He should have realized that. This ability that he had to see the future in his dreams had never