Those Who Wish Me Dead Read Online Free Page A

run the same summer programs?”
    “Summers I work with kids,” he said. “I don’t do any training for anybody else until September. Summer is the kids.”
    “That’s what I’m talking about.”
    He raised an eyebrow. Ethan worked with probation and parole officers from around the country, took in kids who were facing lockup somewhere and brought them into the mountains instead. It was a survival course, yes, but it was a lot more than that. The idea had hardly originated with him; there were plenty of similar programs in the country.
    “I’ve got a kid for you,” she said. “I think. I’m hoping you’re willing to do it.”
    Inside the woodstove, a log split in the heat with a popping noise, and the fire flared higher behind the glass door.
    “You’ve got a kid,” he echoed. “That means…you’ve got a witness.”
    She nodded. “Nice call.”
    He took a seat in front of the stove and she followed suit. Allison stayed where she was, leaning against the kitchen counter, watching.
    “Why do you want him with me?”
    “Because his parents are refusing traditional witness protection.”
    “Nontraditional witness protection is what you do now, I thought.” Ethan remembered Jamie saying that she’d been with the U.S. Marshals but had left to go into executive protection. High-dollar private-bodyguard work.
    She took a deep breath. “I’ve got to be very limited in what I tell you. Understand that? I’ll try to give you the best sense of it that I can, but it won’t be as detailed as you’d like.”
    “Okay.”
    “This boy is…he’s beyond a critical witness. I can’t overstate his value. But what I’m dealing with is a situation in which he and his parents have a pretty healthy distrust of law enforcement. With good reason, based on what they’ve seen. The boy is at risk. High risk. And the parents want to stay with the son, avoid the WITSEC program, and just generally control everything. Enter me, as you said. But…”
    She stopped talking. Ethan gave her a minute, and when she didn’t pick back up, he said, “Jamie?”
    “But I’m not doing too well,” she said softly. “I could lie to you, and I was about to. I was about to tell you that the family can’t afford me. That’s true enough. But Ethan, I would protect this boy for free if I could. I really mean that. I’d make it my only job, I’d…”
    Another pause, a deep breath, and then, “They’re too good.”
    “Who is?”
    “The men looking for him.”
    Allison turned away just as Ethan searched for her eyes.
    “Then why me?” he said. “You’re better at it than me.”
    “You can take him off the grid. Completely. And that’s where their weakness will be. If he’s around a cell phone, a security camera, a computer, a damned video game, I feel like they’ll get him. But here…here he’s just a tiny thing in a big wilderness.”
    “We all are,” Ethan said.
    “Right. It’s going to be your call, of course. But I was desperate, and it struck me. At first, a wild idea, this implausible thing. But then I looked into it a little bit more—”
    “Looked into Ethan a little more?” Allison said. They both turned to her.
    “That was part of it,” Jamie Bennett said evenly. “But it was more looking into the feasibility of the whole thing. We make him vanish for a summer. But he’s not in the situation the parents are so worried about, he’s not in some safe house in a new city, scared to death. I have a very good sense of the kid. What he likes, what he’d respond to, what would make him relax. He is not relaxed right now, I assure you. He’s very into adventure things. Survival stories. And that, of course, made me think of you. So I pitched it, told them about your background, and I think I’ve got them sold on it. So I came here to sell you too.”
    “Shouldn’t it have run the other way, maybe?” Allison said. “Clearing the plan with us before selling the child and his parents on it?”
    Jamie