Free Catch Me by Lisa Gardner Page A

you, just because I feared for my life didn’t mean I had unlimited resources.
    These days, I was a walking advertisement for safety and security on a working girl’s budget. Hence the real reason I had a two-hundred-dollar. 22, and not something much more commanding, such as a two-thousand-dollar Glock. 45. My instructor, J. T. Dillon, let me fire his one day. I thought the recoil was going to blow off my arm, but the hole in the target was something to behold. SWAT guys and Special Forces commandos often carry. 45s. I wondered how that must feel, confronting an unknown threat while surrounded by buddies you know have got your back and carrying a weapon designed just for a guy like you to get the job done.
    For the past two weeks, I’d been trying to picture January 21. J.T. kept walking me through it—visualization as a form of preparation.
    I stood in the middle of my charming little bedroom. Twin bed was pushed against the wall to the left, blond Ikea bookshelf behind me, old microwave stand topped with even older twenty-inch TV stationed beside the door. Room to move, fight, defend. Space to fully extend my arms, two-handed grip, my Taurus a natural extension of my body. My pistol was loaded with match-grade. 22-caliber long rifle, or LR, cartridges. The rounds may not pack the biggest boom, but I had nine shots to get it right.
    During my twice weekly training sessions, J.T. ordered me to empty my clip every time. Never practice hesitation, he instructed me, over and over again. Evaluate the threat. Make your decision. Commit to defend.
    I still couldn’t picture January 21. Mostly, I remembered the police reports—no sign of forced entry, no sign of a struggle.
    You gotta see him coming
, Detective Warren had said this afternoon.
You gotta welcome him with a smile.
    I holstered my Taurus, donned my heavy black coat, and headed for work.
    T HE DOG THAT WAS NOT MY DOG was waiting for me on the front porch. The rear of Frances’s narrow lot was barricaded by a five-foot-high wooden fence; otherwise I was pretty sure the dog would wait at the back door for me. She was that smart.
    I called her Tulip. She’d started hanging around six months ago. No collar, no tags. At first she’d just followed me down the street when I went for my afternoon runs. I figured she was hungry, hoping for a treat. But back in those days, I never gave her anything. Not my dog, not my problem. I just wanted to exercise.
    So Tulip started to run. All five miles, tongue lolling out, sleek white-and-tan body pounding out the miles. Afterward, it seemed cruel not to provide at least a bowl of water. So we sat together on the front porch. She drank a bowl. I drank a bottle. Then she sprawled beside me and put her head on my lap. Then, I stroked her ears, her graying muzzle.
    She looked like some kind of hound. Harrier, Frances had muttered one day. When I looked it up on the library’s computer, the breed turned out to be a small to mid-sized English hound dog. Tulip shared many of the markings—a short tan coat with white stockinged legs and broad white collar. Wire whip tail, floppy ears, broad, handsome face. Tulip was definitely an older dog. A grand dame who’d been there and done that. The stories she could tell, I figured, and knew exactly how she felt.
    Tonight, Tulip sat in the middle of the covered porch, away from the snow. She was a very patient dog; Frances said she sometimes sat there for hours waiting for me.
    I hadn’t seen her for several days—that’s the problem with a dog that’s not your dog. I didn’t know where she went, or even if she hadanother home. Sometimes, I saw her daily; sometimes a couple times a week. I guess I got to practice patience, too.
    She was shivering when I came around, and immediately I felt bad.
    “You can’t keep doing this,” I told her, rounding the corner, watching her rise in greeting and wag her whiplike tail. “January is no time to be homeless in Boston.”
    Tulip looked at me,