Read Online Resurrection Express by Stephen Romano - Free Book Online

say acceleration is the only way to go. The guy’s a mad dog. We’ve gotta hit him before he snaps his leash. Even if he doesn’t get to us first, he could make a lot of noise, draw a lot of attention if he fucks up too bad. Another massacre like the one today might totally compromise our objective.”
    “Duly noted,” says the concerned citizen. “I have a question for you, Elroy.”
    “Yes?”
    “Why did you really make that call to your fixer? We were taking care of everything.”
    “I have no idea who you are or what you really want.”
    “Your father has vouched for us—you’re saying you don’t trust him?”
    “Let’s just say it’s hard to trust the ground under your feetsometimes, especially when you’re sitting in a room full of retired army guys with guns.”
    “So you don’t trust me .”
    “I don’t think I have any choice right now but to trust you.”
    Dad leans close to me, almost whispering. “Son, you have to believe me. These guys are on the level. They can help us get our lives back.”
    “It’ll be more complicated now that this has happened,” says the lady in black. “I’ll have to do a deal with someone to pull you both off the grid in a more permanent way. Once you’re officially dead on the books, we can set you up somewhere. Of course, that’s after you fulfill our original agreement.”
    I look her right in the eye. “Of course.”
    She looks me right back. “I’m dead serious.”
    And, finally, I see it.
    The thing she never gave me time to notice before, back in the joint.
    The killer behind her eyes.
    She speaks at a low, hypnotizing lull:
    “Elroy, I understand your need for revenge. Your need to take matters into your own hands. You had a window of opportunity and you took it. Under the circumstances, I might have done the same thing. But you must understand that’s the kind of rash thinking that put you in prison to begin with. You might never have seen your wife again.”
    “I was never completely convinced she was still alive. I’m still not.”
    “I showed you the picture. I thought it was clear to you.”
    “Pictures can be faked.”
    “Yes, that’s correct.”
    “And if she was alive, I was going to find her myself. My way. I wasn’t going to wait around to find out why I was working in a goddamn toy store.”
    “That’s dangerous thinking,” says the Sarge. “Kinda makes me feel like you’re not much of a team player there, son.”
    “Think what you want. I did some sniffing around. Nobody I was able to talk to online has seen or heard from Toni Coffin inside of three years. Not since she went with Hartman, and that was before I went inside.”
    “And I say she’s still alive,” says the lady in black. “That’s why you’re here. To help me find her, and my daughter. This is our primary objective, Elroy. But as you can no doubt surmise, full disclosure of everything we know about Hartman’s operation is something I have had to seriously reevaluate in the past several hours.”
    She’s still doing it. Using my name to make it seem like the universe revolves around me. But can I really trust them?
    More importantly . . . can they trust me?
    “Okay,” I finally say. “So I messed up.”
    She looks me right in the eye again. “We’ll put it down to a few simple questions.”
    “Okay. Shoot.”
    “Elroy, if you’d had the opportunity, if Hartman had threatened you personally and not been just a voice on the phone . . . would you have killed him?”
    “Yes.”
    “You realize that killing Hartman would have jeopardized our operation, maybe destroyed it?”
    “Yes.”
    “You realize that you would have been a liability at that point and no longer of any use to me?”
    “Yes.”
    “And I might have killed you, just to watch you die?”
    My father looks at the lady real seriously when she says that.
    I give her a little grin and say: “Hey, you can’t win ’em all.”
    The lady doesn’t grin back.
    I stop smiling. Then