Read Online Deadfall by Robert Liparulo - Free Book Online Page B

odds; and a story that piqued Hutch’s interest. For what turned out to be one of his most popular columns, he’d interviewed a man who’d spent twenty-three years erecting towers and running power cables through the Rockies’ most treacherous terrain.The guy had survived four separate bouts of frostbite, cumulatively losing only three toes, two fingers, and part of one ear. He’d fended off a mountain lion and two bears. And tumbled over three cliffs, one of which had plunged him into the North Platte River. He’d traveled through three miles of rapids before a whitewater rafting guide snagged him and pulled him out.
    Most stories were not as dramatic but were nevertheless inspiring. One chronicled a woman’s fight against an ill wind that was battering her life. After her husband’s untimely death, she’d faced foreclosure and bankruptcy. By sheer elbow grease and a previously untapped business mind, she had turned her property into what a half-dozen travel publications agreed was the nation’s premier dude ranch.Then there were the Eagle Scout who’d fought off a Bigfootlike creature—probably a bear—and saved a troop of Cub Scouts . . . the restaurateur who’d battled street thugs and naysayers to ignite a revitalization of Denver’s East Village . . . the Palmer Lake woman who had created a thriving business selling hand-painted trash baskets on eBay.
    The variety had given Hutch an appreciation for the struggles, both catastrophic and trivial, every breathing soul faced just to get from one day to the next. It had also educated him in countless fields of endeavors. Some knowledge had proven to be immediately practical: the dude ranch had given him, Janet, and the kids one of their best vacations ever; a contractor he’d interviewed had also been an avid fly fisherman and had pointed Hutch to some of the greatest holes he’d ever fished; and he’d switched from a compound bow to a recurve after profiling a renowned bow hunter. He’d bagged his first bull elk on his next hunting excursion, a feat he credited to the recurve’s lighter weight and quieter release.
    A pebble struck his cheek, snapping him back to the present.
    Terry was grinning at him. “Looked like you were dozing,” he said. Sitting, he stretched his body up, rolling his shoulders back. He had the lean, athletic body of a cyclist. He swam at the Y— not at the Denver Athletic Club anymore, he’d pointed out more than once—and played an occasional game of racquetball, but the build was largely genetic. “Can’t have that.”
    Phil huffed. “All the way here, and we still have to deal with you .” Terry shrugged. “Such is life.”
    Hutch and David grinned at each other. In unison, they said, “And it’s getting sucher and sucher.”
    Terry tossed pebbles at both of them.

9
    He,d been on the run an hour now—though “running” was not really what Tom Fuller was doing. More accurately, he had darted from one hiding place to another. At first he had zigzagged west, then tacked back around to within a block of Provincial Street, thinking he’d find a lone gunman to ambush with a crack on the head or . . . or something . But the few times he’d spotted them, between houses, through bushes, they’d been in pairs or in threes. For the most part, they had seemed content to mill around Provincial, as though they expected him to remain in some imaginary arena that kept them from having to venture too far. He’d considered commandeering a vehicle. Any of his neighbors would have accommodated his request. But then he’d remembered Roland Emery. His car had not saved him. Besides, the roads out of town made doing somersaults a faster proposition. A car would do nothing but make him a bigger target. He had not sought refuge in a house because he didn’t want to put the residents in jeopardy. If