A Soldier's Revenge: A Will Cochrane Novel Read Free Page B

simple, but without the old encyclopedia in hand as the key to match the code, it would be impossible to break. And its creator was very clever, because there was no mention of me, nor anything else incriminating.
    He was taunting me.
    With the header in place, the ad read:
Honor Our Fallen Hero. I’ve waited. Now you have my cold dish. More tomorrow.
    T he message was clear.
    Honor our fallen hero. Was this a reference to me? Did he see me as a onetime hero who was now on the run because of him? And if so, how did he know I was once a hero?
    I’ve waited. Now you have my cold dish. This was about revenge. And, like all revenge, best served cold.
    Tomorrow there would be another message in the Post .
    Someone had set me up for murder. But why and who?
    I looked up. The iPad couple was separated. Girl still at the table, her device open on a Fox News headline. And my face on the screen. Her guy on his cell in the street, looking anxiously at his girlfriend while talking rapid inaudible words, clearly calling for help. So it was out there. I was now a hunted man and I had to get out of there—fast.
    I left cash on the table for my drink and exited the café. The moment I’d seen the dead woman in the bathtub, I knew that the media would be all over the story because of the venue. And the publicity on news networks and their online portals wouldn’t end today. Tomorrow the print newspapers would be running their headlines, keeping the story alive.
    I passed the young man on the phone, not too close but near enough to catch his reaction and to hear his voice. The man was a rabbit in headlights when he saw me looking directly at him. There was no doubt about what was going on here.
    I walked away from him, keeping a steady pace down Ninth, dodging shoppers idling under the awnings of cafés and restaurants, cheese sellers, bakeries, and butchers. A group of European tourists were being led in the center of the street by an American guide holding a stick in the air and looking miserable in the wet weather. They stopped by a fishmonger. I attached myself to the rear of the group, turned to look back up the street, and saw two cops on foot walking diagonally from one side of the street to the other. They were a hundred yards away, hands on holsters and radio mics.
    The tourist group moved on, me with them, hoping that the guide was going to announce that they were done with the market and needed to now walk quickly to another part of Philadelphia. Instead, the guide instructed everyone to take an hour’s break to browse and shop. Quickly, I moved to the head of the group before it dispersed, putting tourists between me and the cops. I walked fast, praying to God that the cops didn’t spot me and order me to freeze.
    If that happened, South Ninth Street would become chaos.
    I reached the end of the market and stopped, lifting an orange from a display and sniffing it while looking back down the street. The cops were visible, now two hundred yards away and stationary while one of them was speaking on his radio. A false alarm, I hoped they were telling their base. But the sound of police sirens told me that was not how it was being perceived. NYPD had moved faster than I’d expected, getting the media involved so quickly. I had to assume that the murder investigators would take today’s sighting as a genuine lead.
    I needed to get the hell out of Philly.

CHAPTER 3
    T hyme Painter and Joe Kopa ń ski entered the Manhattan Midtown North Precinct’s interview room and sat opposite Marty Fleet from the U.S. Attorney General’s office and a guy in his fifties called Phil.
    Fleet was a thirty-six-year-old lawyer, good-looking, with expensive clothes, dentistry that made his permanent smile gleam, hair coifed in the style of a 1920s golf pro, and the ready charm prevalent among those who don’t need to worry about grubby matters such as job security, bills, and bad genes. A Yale graduate, he was on the fast track to one day