The Samaritan Read Online Free

heels. “Yeah. Why?” Curiosity in her voice. She knew I knew she was withholding information and was more interested in how I knew than in keeping her secrets.
    “Because standard creepy exes park outside your house and post nasty messages on your Facebook page. If they’re really brave, they might even try to get physical. They don’t generally bring armed flunkies with them. Not unless they happen to have a couple lying around already.”
    “Who’s an armed flunky?”
    I took the gun out and held it in front of her in my palm. Her eyes widened. “I just took this from the third guy in the bar. The one you didn’t know about. It’s an HK45 Compact Tactical pistol. Costs about twelve hundred bucks. It’s not an entry-level model. Who’s the boyfriend?”
    “Oh shit. He said he was gonna kill me, but . . .”
    We reached the mouth of the alley. I motioned for Caroline to keep back and kept the pistol low, finger on the trigger. I glanced around the corner and found myself looking down the barrel of another gun.
    Which meant another change of plan.
     
3
     
    Caroline’s ex-boyfriend was the taller one of the two men I’d seen outside earlier. He looked in his mid-to-late forties, but in good shape, with jet-black hair and angular, handsome features. The combination of designer leather jacket, expensive hardware, and the dead, disinterested look in his gray eyes told me everything I needed to know.
    He waved us back into the alley, off the street, and told me to drop the gun. I did as I was told. I watched his eyes and saw there was more going on than was first apparent: calculation, deliberation. That was good. It meant I wasn’t dealing with an outright psycho. I slowly raised my hands, taking a second to glance down the street and confirm that he was on his own. I guessed the other one was still covering the front.
    “What’s this, Lizzie?” he asked, shooting a glance at the girl with the ever-expanding list of aliases. “New man already?” He spoke with the barest trace of an accent. If I’d had to guess, I’d say Serbian. Factor in his age and willingness to point guns at people, and it seemed like a reasonable bet he was a Kosovo veteran. The voice reinforced my impression of a calm, deliberate man. It also told me that he hadn’t chased Caroline down purely on account of her feminine wiles.
    “He’s nobody, Zoran,” she said. “Let him go.”
    He didn’t look at her, kept staring at me, and I was pleased to see a hint of consternation on his face. We both had a problem: I was the one with a gun pointed in my face, but he was the one who had to decide what to do about it. An irrational man would shoot me and leave me to bleed on the sidewalk. If my estimation of this man was right, he wouldn’t want to invite the potential consequences of that action, not without good reason at least.
    Zoran hadn’t taken his eyes from me the whole time. That was smart, because he hadn’t given me the split second I’d need to take the gun from him. It also meant he hadn’t been able to look down, to examine the gun I’d been carrying and perhaps identify it as the one belonging to his man in the bar. That left open the possibility that he might underestimate me.
    Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Caroline tensing, as though weighing whether she could make a run for it. I hoped she wouldn’t. It would likely be a bad decision for both of us, and particularly for me. No one said anything for a moment. I heard the low rumble of a northbound train on the Tri-Rail line a few blocks over.
    “What do you want?” I asked the man with dark hair, fixing my eyes on his so he would know that this was not a rhetorical question. We were just two guys calmly discussing how best to resolve a mutual problem.
    Zoran nodded at Caroline Church, still not taking his eyes off me. “I woke up two days ago and she was gone. So was fifteen grand cash from my apartment.”
    “Okay,” I said. Then, without turning