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The Program

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Chapter One

Dray walked briskly through the kitchen and entry, wiping barbecue sauce on her olive sheriff's-department-issue pants, which she still hadn't had time to change out of. She pulled open the front door, and the image hit her like a truck -- husky detective in a cheap suit thumbing a bound notepad, dark Crown Vic idling curbside behind him, partner waiting in the passenger seat, taking a pass on the advise-next-of-kin.

The detective crowded the door, imposing and cocky, which further added to her disorientation. "Andrea Rackley? Mrs. Tim Rackley?"

Ears ringing, she shook her head hard. "No." She took a step back and leaned on the entry table, displacing a tealight holder that rolled off the edge, shattering on the tile. "No."

The man's forehead creased. "Are yo u all right, ma' am?"

"I just talked to him. He was in the car, heading home. He was fine."

"Excuse me? I'm not sure what you ... "

He lowered his pad, which she saw was not a detective's notepad but a PalmPilot encased in fine leather. Her darting eyes took in that his suit was not cheap but a fine cashmere, the car was in fact a maroon Mercedes S-class, and the partner was not a partner at all but a woman with a wan face, waiting behind like a well-trained dog.

The flood of relief was accompanied by a torrent of sentence frag-ments even she couldn't keep up with. "You don't come to the door of a law-enforcement family all somber asking for a next-of-kin ID already lost someone in the family my God -- "

She leaned shakily against the wall, catching her breath. A draft sucked the doorknob from her grasp. Startled, the man skipped back, lost his footing at the step, and spilled backward, landing hard on his affluent ass.

Dray had a split second to note the pain and alarm register in the wide ovals of his eyes before the door slammed shut.

Tim stifled a yawn as he pulled into his cul-de-sac, the starch-stiff security-guard monkey suit itching him at the collar and cuffs. His baton sat heavy on his equipment belt, along with a low-tech portable the size of a Cracker Jack box, which seemed like a toy company's idea of a radio rather than the thing itself. A big comedown from his beloved Smith & Wesson .357 and the sleek Racals he'd used as a deputy U.S. marshal before his own shitty judgment in the wake of his daughter's violent death had forced him from the Service.

Yesterday he'd chased down a teen vandal at the facility where he worked on the northern lip of Simi Valley. The pursuit represented the second time he'd broken a sweat in the eleven months he'd been guarding RightWay Steel Company's storage warehouses; the first had been unglamorously instigated by a roadside-stand enchilada mole he'd injudiciously wolfed down on a lunch break. Eleven years as an Army Ranger, three kicking in doors with the U.S. Marshals Service warrant squad, and now he was a locker-room commando with a diminished paycheck. His current coworkers got winded bending over to tie their shoes, which seemed to come undone with such alarming frequency that he'd spent the majority of the monotonous morning debating whether to volunteer proficiency training on the matter. The old man's groan he'd inadvertently emitted while stooping to pick up a dropped key outside Warehouse Five had leached the superiority right out of him, and he'd spent the afternoon valiantly refraining from doughnuts.

He was reminding himself that he should be grateful for any work when movement on his walkway drew his attention. A man stood appraising his suit, dusting off the pant legs as if he'd just taken a spill.

Tim accelerated sharply, almost clipping a parked Navigator with tinted windows. He pulled into his driveway and hopped out as the man smoothed his clothes back into place. A woman had climbed out of the Mercedes at the curb and was standing meekly at the end of the walk.

Tim approached the man, keeping the woman in his field of vision. "Who are you? Press?"

The man held up his hands as if conceding defeat. He still hadn't caught his breath. "I'm here to ... speak with ... Tim Rackley. Marshal Tannino gave me your address."

The mention of his former boss stopped Tim dead on the lawn. He and Tannino hadn't spoken for the better part of a year; they'd been very close when Tim worked under his supervision, but Tim last saw him in the midst of a storm of controversy Tim had brought down on himself and the Service.

"Oh," Tim said. "I'm sorry. Why don't you come in?"

The man patted the seat of his pants, wet with runoff from the sprinklers. He glanced at the door nervously. "Truth be told," he said, "I'm a bit afraid of your wife."

The kitchen smelled sharply of burned chicken. Dray had forsaken her corn on the cob for a three-finger pour of vodka. "I'm sorry. Something about it -- the knock, his expression -- put me back there, the night Bear came to tell us about Ginny." She set her glass down firmly on the stack of overdue bills a t the counter's edge.

Tim ran his fingers through her hair and let them rest on her shoulders. She leaned into him, face at his neck.

"I thought my heart would just give out there at the door. Good-bye, Andrea, hasta la vista, sayonara, I've fallen and can't get up."

Her voice was raised and, Tim was fairly certain, audible to the couple sitting on the couch one room over.

"He's a friend of the marshal's," Tim said softly. "Let's sit down, see what he wants. Deal?"

Dray finished her vodka in a gulp. "Deal."

They shook hands and headed into the living room ...

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Program by Gregg Hurwitz Copyright © 2005 by Gregg Hurwitz. Excerpted by permission.
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