Catch a Shadow Read Free Page A

remember the events was like a cancer inside him.
    The phone call promised to fill that gap, and the bait had been irresistible. But he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that it was a trap. Someone had spent great deal of money to see him convicted. They might well be displeased that the government had made a deal to protect some very sensitive information.
    His watch, the cheap one he had bought for fifteen dollars, said four o’clock.
    He looked around. The bar was obviously frequented by a cross section of people. Men in business suits, students with book bags, laborers in dirty overalls all pushed through the doors.
    Why here? Why Atlanta? Why not Chicago? Two reasons came to mind. The person who’d hired his caller was afraid. He didn’t feel free to travel. The second was that the individual knew Atlanta and how to get around the city. But Jake didn’t, and the location made him wary. Yet the invitation had beckoned like a flame to a moth. He’d been helpless against its lure.
    There was a third reason: a trap to lure him back to prison.
    He leaned against the wall, but his eyes didn’t stop searching the street. Nothing suspicious, but then the tavern might be loaded with bad guys. Or good guys “doing their jobs” which, at the moment, could mean hauling him in.
    For a moment, he looked upward. The sky looked brighter without bars dividing it, and the trees—God, it was good seeing trees again.
    Then his concentration returned. Since he had not been told to wear anything special, he could only suppose his contact believed he would either recognize him or find him at the designated table.
    More importantly, would he—Jake—recognize the other person? A member of the team? One of the two whose bodies he hadn’t seen? He’d considered that. Coldly. Unemotionally.
    He continued to study every individual who approached the tavern. If any of his team were alive, then they must have been a part of the ambush and theft. It also meant they would have been in hiding with new identities. Probably new facial characteristics, especially if they came back into this country. But it was difficult to disguise the essence of a person: the way you moved, the set of a chin, mannerisms you never recognized in yourself.
    Maybe the call didn’t come from one of the team but from someone in Special Forces. Someone who’d believed him—maybe even knew something—but couldn’t come out in the open. That was the most desirable scenario but not the most likely one.
    A figure caught his eye. A man of middle age. He’d parked his car down the street, like others, but something about his movements drew Jake’s attention. The man had that singular grace of an athlete or a stealth warrior.
    The newcomer hesitated, scanned the street in a way difficult for the untrained eye to detect.
    He was slight, both thin and not very tall. His body radiated a tension that no disguise or surgery could hide. The man Jake remembered was even shorter, but perhaps this one wore shoe lifts. His hair had once been dark, and now it was a dirty blond. His facial features had been hidden under a beard when Jake met him, but those quick, nervous movements gave him away. Del Cox had been unique among the other team members who were taught to mingle and mix among a multitude of nationalities. Cox’s intensity made him stand out. But he’d been a genius with explosives as well as electronics, and Jake had ignored his misgivings when he’d joined the team.
    Del Cox. Alive!
    According to the government, he was dead. According to a lot of people, at the hand of one Jake Kelly.
    Fury boiled in Jake’s gut. Cox had apparently left him for dead in the jungle, then let him rot in prison for something he didn’t do. Death would have been preferable to the disgrace, the look in his father’s eyes when he was charged. Hell, he’d had nothing to defend himself with except his