Read Cut and Run for Free Online

summon his voice for anything more. Sitting there while Tori stared at him, Ethan panted in abject horror as he tried to blink away the images and reassure himself that he was unscathed.
    He was alive.
    The nightmare vision wasn’t real.
    Not yet, anyway.
    He had to get moving. If the run-in with the assassin wasn’t omen enough to tell him he needed to go, then the recurrence of the dream he’d been having with more and more frequency in the three years since Phoenix went dark sure as hell was. He needed to bail, head to ground as soon as he was able.
    Ethan moved to a better sitting position so he could drop his feet off the sofa, but a sharp tug of pain in his shoulder slowed him down.
    “Careful,” Tori admonished him. “You’ll tear the sutures. You need to sit still for a while.”
    He glanced at the bandages taped loosely over his wound. His chest was bare. “Where’s my shirt?”
    “You can’t wear it. It’s soaked in blood.” Tori said it like an accusation. “What’s really going on with you, Ethan? Or should I call you Daniel Gonzalez?”
    How the fuck did she know that name? A pivot of his head and he saw his wallet and cell phone lying on the table at the other end of the sofa.
    The pistol he’d retrieved from his assailant was there too. Someone had emptied the rounds from it and set the bullets on the table with the rest of his belongings. “You went through my things?”
    She scoffed. “I’m not sure whose things they are. Maybe you want to tell me why your photo is on someone else’s ID? Is the gun his too?”
    Ethan ground out a curse and heaved himself up to his feet. His vision spun, dizziness pouring over him. He pushed past it and pinned Tori in a glower. “Where’s your friend?”
    “She went to get takeout a few minutes ago. We didn’t get a chance to bring anything home from the market for dinner.” Tori crossed her arms over her breasts. “Don’t change the subject. Why are you walking around with a loaded gun, more than two thousand dollars in cash and a burner phone? Who is Daniel Gonzalez?”
    “I don’t know,” Ethan muttered. “Just the name the fake ID came with.”
    Tori gaped at him warily, disgust in every nuance of her pretty face. “Are you dealing drugs?”
    “Christ, no.”
    “Why else would you be skulking around like this, telling me lie after lie, getting stabbed and refusing to go to a hospital or the police? You’re acting like a criminal, Ethan.” She shook her head, her lips turned down, eyes shadowed with mistrust. “You’re acting paranoid, like you’re on something. Or like you’re having some out of control anxiety issues that are far from normal. Either way, you’re acting to me like someone who needs professional help.”
    “For fuck’s sake, Tori. I’m not crazy. I’m not some paranoid crackhead either, if that’s what you think.” He blew out a sharp sigh. “I’m not a criminal, and I’m not dealing drugs or anything remotely like that.”
    “Then what? Talk to me, damn you! Explain what’s really going on, so I can understand.”
    He considered the hired gun who’d come after him today, and the threat that man still posed as long as Ethan allowed him to keep breathing.
    That would-be killer had seen Tori too. Ethan knew it in his gut, in the chill that seeped into his bones at the thought of his enemies ever getting close enough to touch her.
    He couldn’t let that happen.
    As for the fiery vision, he was determined to prevent that too…if he could stay alive long enough to figure out what it meant.
    “The less you know, the better, Tori.” He stepped past her. “I have to go now. Being around me is only putting you in danger. It might be too late already, but I’m not going to risk it.”
    He walked over and began picking up his things. He slid the wallet into his shorts pocket, then put the phone in another cargo compartment before gathering up the rounds and the emptied pistol. His blood-stained T-shirt was