Up Country
Chapter One
Bad things come in threes The first bad thing was a voice mail from
Cynthia Sunhill, my former partner in the army's Criminal Investigation
Division. Cynthia is still with the CID, and she is also my significant
other, though we were having some difficulties with that job description.
The message said, "Paul, I need to talk to you. Call me tonight, no matter
how late. I just got called on a case, and I have to leave tomorrow
morning. We need to talk."
"Okay." I looked at the mantel clock in my small den. It was just 10 P.M.,
or twenty-two hundred hours, as I used to say when I was in the army not
so long ago.
I live in a stone farmhouse outside Falls Church, Virginia, less than a
half-hour drive to CID Headquarters. The commute time is actually
irrelevant because I don't work for the CID any longer. In fact, I don't
work for anyone. I'm retired, or maybe fired.
In any case, it had been about six months since my separation from the
army, and I was getting bored, and I had twenty or thirty years to go.
As for Ms. Sunhill, she was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, about a
fourteen-hour drive from Falls Church, ... read full excerpt from Up Country ebook
