The Shadow Man Read Online Free Page A

hope.”
    “No, not foolish. I had confidence that you’d understand. You inspire that sort of confidence, you know.”
    “It brings votes,” Andrews said. He didn’t know himself whether he was joking. “You’re right about it being a world of variables. Take care, Dana.”
    “Always.” Larsen shook hands again with Andrews and walked from the office. Andrews heard him chat briefly with Judy Carnegie before leaving.
    For a few minutes Andrews sat thinking about what Larsen had told him. Then Judy knocked lightly on the door and poked her head into the office. “That meeting with the finance committee is in five minutes, Senator.”
    Good God, five minutes!
    Andrews rose from his desk, slipped his coat on and straightened his tie.
    “Write me a reminder to talk to someone about the Belmont sanitarium in New York,” he said to Judy, as he snatched up his attaché case and hurried from the office. He almost snagged his coattail as he closed the door.
    In the press of activities during the remainder of the day, he forgot about Dana Larsen.

Chapter Four
    As Andrews was leaving his office in Washington, in Carltonville, Gabe Beecher, manager of the Chicken Barn restaurant, wearily set his tenth order of the scrambled eggs with diced ham special in front of a waiting customer.
    “Where’s Carla today?” the customer, a ruddy farmer named French, asked as he salted his eggs.
    Gabe wiped his hands on a towel that was tucked in his belt. “Didn’t show up this mornin’ is all I know.”
    “Sick, I guess,” French said.
    Gabe shrugged narrow, muscle-bunched shoulders. “Couldn’t say. She ain’t called in yet.”
    Emma, the part-time waitress, smiled a toothy goodbye to the last of the breakfast crowd except for French and walked over to perch on a counter stool. “If you want,” she said to Gabe, “I’ll run on over to Carla’s place and see if she’s sick or something. There must be some reason she didn’t answer her phone or call in to let you know what was happening.” It was obvious from Emma’s tone that she hoped Carla’s reason wasn’t adequate. Carla was Gabe’s half sister, but Emma liked to think that business was thicker than blood. And everyone knew that she was a better waitress than Carla, who tended to spill things and act overly secure in her job. What Carla didn’t know about was the night Emma had spent with Gabe in Tarrytown.
    “Tell you what,” Gabe said, pulling the towel from his belt and tossing it onto the counter, “you stay here awhile extra and handle the late customers, and I’ll run over to Carla’s.”
    “Sure,” Emma said, sliding down off the stool and smoothing her waitress uniform skirt. “Glad to.” It might be better that way. Gabe might catch Carla by surprise, before she’d had time to make up some excuse for just plain oversleeping.
    Gabe studied Emma as he tucked in his shirt before leaving. In a lot of ways, he regretted that night they had spent together. Emma thought now that she had some sort of permanent claim on him. And it was ugly the way she kept trying to cut up Carla behind her back. Poor, clumsy, gentle-hearted Carla, whose only transgression was that she stood between Emma and where Emma wanted to go. Emma was a problem for Gabe. He wanted her in bed, but not in any other way. But he wanted her in bed badly.
    “Back in fifteen minutes,” he said, moving to the door.
    Emma stuck a pencil into the wave of her butterscotch blond hair and nodded. “You’re in good hands,” she said. She gave him a smile that meant something.
    Gabe jogged across the highway in the backwash of a speeding semi that blasted its air horn at him. He walked about a quarter of a mile, then strode down the grass-inundated lane to the clapboard two-bedroom house with its green-painted foundation. Carla shared the house with another girl, Lila English. But Lila was gone now, visiting a distant relative in Alaska—or so she said. Carla had hinted at a boyfriend in