Read Left for Dead for Free Online

two. Yes, he played with blocks and could be persuaded to do “art,” as in finger painting, but what he really liked was being cuddled and read to. He also loved animals to distraction.
    “Where’s Sammy?” Colin wanted to know when it got chilly enough to go inside, where they settled into the playroom off the kitchen.
    Sammy was Ali’s one-eyed, one-eared adopted tabby. She’d come into Ali’s life years earlier, arriving as a particularly ugly sixteen-pound foster-care case. The fact that Ali had never had cats and hadn’t cared for them all that much was irrelevant. She’d rescued the overweight aging cat as a favor to a dead friend, but over time, Sam had become her cat.
    As Sammy had aged, she’d developed mobility issues. Ali and Leland had placed pet stairs here and there, which allowed Sam to reach her favorite spots—on the pillows of Ali’s tall bed or on top of the warm clothes dryer. Two years ago, a sudden loss of weight had necessitated a regimen of daily insulin shots. A month ago, Ali had awakened to find Sam seemingly asleep in her usual spot on the bed, only she hadn’t been sleeping. All that remained of Sam were the ashes in a polished elm wood box on the fireplace mantel in Ali’s bedroom.
    “I’m sorry,” Ali reminded Colin. “Remember? Sammy’s not here anymore.”
    “Where is she?”
    “In heaven.”
    “Where’s that?”
    “Far away.”
    “But why isn’t she here?”
    “She’s dead.”
    “What’s dead?”
    Ali had no compunction about tossing Chris under the bus. “Ask your father,” she said.
    Moments later, as if by magic, Chris returned to collect his offspring and helped oversee the process of putting away toys. After the exchange of sloppy toddler goodbye kisses, Ali went to her room to change out of her tracksuit.
    Earlier in the day, B. Simpson had called. “I hope we still have a date tonight for dinner at my place.”
    “Of course we do. I was just going to change from my sweats into something more appropriate.”
    “Don’t dress up,” B. said. “The menu is pizza.”
    “What a surprise,” Ali said. As a dedicated noncook, B. was big on eating out and taking out.
    Ali and B. had both grown up in Sedona but fifteen years apart, far too long for them to have known each other. Given the name Bartholomew Quentin Simpson at birth, B. had shortened his name to a single letter in junior high as the result of too much teasing from classmates about the “other” Bart Simpson.
    Like Ali, B. had left Sedona in hopes of making his mark on the world, and he had, earning a fortune designing computer games. In the aftermath of a failed marriage, B., again like Ali, had returned to Sedona to get his bearings. For months after coming back home, he had been a daily visitor at Bob and Edie Larson’s Sugarloaf Café.
    When Bob Larson had learned that his regular customer was in the process of starting a computer security company called High Noon Enterprises, he suggested that Ali look into using their services. At the time Bob made the introduction, he’d had no idea that he was acting as a matchmaker-in-chief.
    Ali and B. had now been a couple for several years. During that time, B.’s business, although locally based, had developed into an internationally recognized computer security company with more than a few government contracts. Operating out of a former warehouse in nearby Cottonwood, High Noon employed almost fifty people, an economic boom in an area where many businesses, especially those involving tourism, had taken a big hit.
    High Noon still did some private security work, though the company had morphed into one that specialized in providing anti-hacker services to both businesses and government agencies. Believing in fighting fire with fire, B. had attracted a cadre of talented young hackers who were willing to ply their high-tech trade in relatively rural Yavapai County, with its spectacular scenery and laid-back lifestyle. And the understated