The Unsung Hero Read Free Page A

Tom could respect that. Besides, any man who’d managed to father Kelly Ashton couldn’t be that bad.
    Kelly Ashton. Tom thought of her every time he returned to Baldwin’s Bridge. Of course, he thought of her when he wasn’t there as well. In fact, he thought of her far too often, considering it had been more than sixteen years since he’d seen her last.
    What were the chances she’d be visiting her father this week, while Tom was in town?
    Slim to none. She was a doctor now, with a busy, full life that didn’t include sitting around, waiting for Tom to come home.
    And sixteen years was surely enough time for him to stop thinking about her. She’d obviously stopped thinking about him, considering she’d been married.
    Of course, now she was divorced.
    Which meant exactly nothing. For all he knew, she’d already remarried. Stop thinking about her. She wasn’t going to be there.
    Tom worked his way through the crowded airport, heading toward the overhang where the shuttle to the subway—called the T in Boston—would pick him up. He passed the luggage carousel, weaving his way through the throngs of people who were surging slightly forward now that the conveyor belt had started moving.
    The crowd was made up mostly of vacationing families and older travelers waiting for their suitcases. The businessmen and -women had all packed lightly enough to carry on their bags and they were long gone.
    But there was one dark-suited man in the crowd, about Tom’s height, his light brown hair streaked with gray. He reached down to pick up his bag from the conveyor belt, turning to hoist it up onto his shoulder in a strange twisting move that made Tom stop short.
    No way.
    There was no way that, out of all the places in the world, Tom should run into the man known only as “the Merchant” in LoganAirport.
    His hair was too light, although that’d be easy enough to change.
    His face was different—although it was roughly the same shape. But his nose and cheekbones were softer, less pronounced, his chin slightly weaker than Tom remembered. Could a plastic surgeon do all that? Was it even possible?
    Tom moved closer to the man, trying to get a better look.
    His eyes. The color was different. They were a muddy shade of blue and brown—that funky no-single-color that brown-eyed people could get when they bought blue-tinted contact lenses. But it didn’t matter what color they were. Tom would have recognized those eyes anywhere. Still, he’d only gotten a glimpse.
    God, was it possible? . . .
    The man moved with his duffel bag still on his shoulder, heading for the door, and Tom followed more slowly, hampered by the crowd.
    Now that he was walking, the man moved differently than the Merchant had, but a man who was the subject of an international manhunt would no doubt have worked to change his walk along with his face and his hair color. Still, that one twisting move . . . Tom had seen that many times on several different pieces of video—rare footage of the Merchant in action. And as for his eyes . . .
    Tom still saw the Merchant’s eyes in his sleep.
    As Tom followed him, the man pushed open the door, heading toward a taxicab waiting at the curb.
    Tom tried to get outside, doing some fancy footwork to keep from stepping on a toddler who’d escaped from his parents, then dancing around a pair of elderly ladies.
    By the time he reached the door, his head was throbbing and the Merchant had gotten into the taxi and was driving away.
    What now? Follow that cab?
    There were no other cabs available.
    Strains of the rock song “Paranoia” echoed in Tom’s head as he made a mental note of the departing taxi’s ID number—5768—stenciled in black letters on its trunk. He glanced at his watch. Nearly 0800.
    But if this really was the Merchant, calling the cab company to find out where cab number 5768 dropped his 0800 fare from Logan wasn’t going to do a hell of a lot of good.
    The Merchant wouldn’t go directly from the