by K. M. Hodge
Copyright
www.EvolvedPub.com
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RED ON THE RUN
The Syndicate-Born Trilogy – Book 1
SECOND EDITION*
*Previously Self-Published by Author as “Seasons”
Copyright © 2016 K.M. Hodge
Cover Art Copyright © 2016 Mallory Rock
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ISBN (EPUB Version): 1622531450
ISBN-13 (EPUB Version): 978-1-62253-145-5
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Editor: Sue Fairchild
Senior Editor: Lane Diamond
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eBook License Notes:
You may not use, reproduce or transmit in any manner, any part of this book without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles and reviews, or in accordance with federal Fair Use laws. All rights are reserved.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only; it may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to your eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination, or the author has used them fictitiously.
Books by K.M. Hodge
THE SYNDICATE-BORN TRILOGY
1 – Red on the Run
2 – Black and White Truth
3 – True Blue Son
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THE BOOK CELLAR MYSTERIES
1 – Walker Texas Wife
2 – Texas & Tiaras
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Save the Date
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www.KMHodge.com
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What Others Are Saying about K.M. Hodge’s Books:
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Red on the Run:
“A wonderful book! The characters are heroic and flawed and broken, and about 1/3 of the way through the book, I was hooked... rooting for them to overcome, rooting for them to have a happy ending, and scared to get to the end in case it wasn’t a happy one. Ms. Hodge has crafted an interesting tale of suspense amid a beautiful love story. You don’t know who to trust, so you are suspicious of everyone. I can’t wait to read her next book.” ~ Melinda McIntosh, Author of “A Bit of Tickle for the Mind”
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Red on the Run:
“Domestic abuse and addiction can be pretty tough topics but K.M. Hodge delivers in a debut novel that is fast-paced and very suspenseful. I wanted to keep reading and I enjoyed this novel to the end. Looking forward to future books in the series!” ~ Gail Olmstead, Author of “Jeep Tour” and “Guessing at Normal”
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Walker Texas Wife:
“It’s like Southern Gossip Girl for grown-ups, which is something I need in my life.” ~ Olivia Folmer Ard, Author of the “Bennett Series”
FREE GIFT
Thank you for picking up a copy of Red on the Run, book one in my Syndicate-Born Trilogy. As a way to thank my amazing readers, I have a FREE novel available to all my subscribers. As soon as you sign-up for my newsletter, you will receive a free copy of my sweet mystery, Walker Texas Wife. At first glance, the residents of Herald Springs lead charmed lives. But behind the dazzling smiles and inside the large brick homes, they all have their secrets. Most are harmless, but then again Annabeth King never did quite fit in.
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This newest neighbor is harboring a special secret of her own, one that could prove deadly. Will the members of the “drink and gossip” club figure out what Annabeth’s working so hard to hide before disaster comes knocking?
www.kmhodge.com/Subscribe
BONUS CONTENT
We’re pleased to offer you a Special Sneak Preview at the end of this book. In that preview, you’ll enjoy the First 5 Chapters of K.M. Hodges’s second book in this series, Black and White Truth. Just click on the link below the image to get your sneak peek.
SPECIAL SNEAK PREVIEW: Black and White Truth by K.M. Hodge
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BLACK AND WHITE TRUTH on AMAZON
Dedication:
This book is dedicated to my family, who has always believed I could do this... even when I didn’t.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Book by K.M. Hodge
Free Gift
BONUS CONTENT
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
SPECIAL SNEAK PREVIEW: Black and White Truth (Book 2)
More from Evolved Publishing
Prologue
Church Hill
Richmond, Virginia
June 15, 2025
4:00 PM
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I want to scream, to fill the room with my anguish, but for her sake I don’t. She wouldn’t want me to make a scene. Instead, I sit in the back of the room, away from the other mourners, in an ill-fitting black dress that I borrowed at the last minute. I’ve never been a details person, so when my best friend told me she was dying I didn’t think to plan out what to wear for her funeral.
I still can’t believe this is really happening. She doesn’t belong here in this dark cave. I want to pick up her lifeless body and animate her into the woman she’d been, but would never be again.
For as long as I had known her, she had worn the millstone of grief around her neck like a family heirloom. Loss was all she knew. We were alike that way, except that she accepted it and kept going, rather than rage against her fate or lament it as I do.
“Life is too short, Ellie,” she would say. “Choose joy all day, every day.”
Fate brought her into my life when I needed a friend the most, and her love and support saved me from myself. She, and the glimmer of hope she had brought out in me, became the very foundation I stood upon.
Now, without her, I feel as though I might crumble and fall back into the abyss. Why am I still here? Why is she gone? I’m left behind, again, alone with my grief and painful memories.
Maybe I should start smoking. I think about it often these days, but no one takes up cigarettes in their late 40’s. Out of habit, I check the time on my phone—the service was supposed to have started twenty minutes ago. People are sitting in groups quietly chatting, remembering, some of them familiar but the majority of them strangers.
She’d been a vivid storyteller, prodigious with her correspondences after I moved away and our regular sessions stopped. She had lived a life filled with one tragedy after another. During her weekly sessions, and then later in her phone calls and letters, she would artfully lay out each tragic landscape, stacking them one on top of the other, a veritable Lincoln Log house of horrors.
In the beginning
, the evocative imagery conjured by her life stories would leave me awake at night, bringing home for me the experience of secondary trauma.
As her therapist, I had crossed some basic ethical boundaries by taking her on as a client and then becoming friends with her. Our shared experience of having lost a child bound us together in a spiraling transference that should have caused me to lose my license forever.
Just the thought of those early days brings all the pain up anew, and I instinctively touch my stomach—another empty vessel.
The sound of mournful music playing out of old speakers in the front of the room brings me back to the present. The service has finally started, and the minister is talking, but I can’t hear a word he’s saying. Seeing her lying stiffly in the oak casket, with a waxy, yellowed pallor makes it hard for me to breathe. My heart is racing, my breath is coming in short gasps, and the room suddenly feels as if it’s closing in on me. I need to get out of this cave, this tomb, before it consumes me.
I make a beeline to the exit right behind me, and the heavy wooden doors give easily as I push them out.
The cool spring air immediately stings my burning flesh, and my wobbly legs implore me to sit down on the funeral home’s stone steps. My heart rate slows and my vision returns to normal as the panic attack abates. From my seat at the top of a hill, the city lays spread out before me, a barren, lifeless landscape, a ramshackle center of yesteryear—ruin porn. Death is everywhere here, following me around like a persistent black cloud.
Steeped in grief and self-pity, I didn’t hear the door open behind me or steps coming towards me, so I jump when he speaks my name in his deep baritone voice and the tips of his fingers brush my bare shoulder.
“Ellie?”
I look up at him. The skin on my chest and arms prickles and my heart skips a beat.
His deep brown eyes capture mine and his smile deepens as he speaks it again. “Ellie.”
A smile, curved inside book-ended parentheses, greets me. In one swift motion, he removes his hat, unbuttons his jacket, and lowers his large frame beside me. He’s aged but his smile and intense gaze, and the effect they have on me, are the same. Time slows almost to the point of stopping, expanding to envelop us in this moment.
I somehow regain control of my vocal cords and acknowledge him in a half question, half proclamation. “Christopher.”
Simply saying his name awakens my senses. I feel my face flush, and look away from him. His rounded shoulder playfully taps against mine. He had once been my respite, my port of call from the storms of life. My heart is heavy with grief and I long to burrow inside his embrace—cleave to him—like I had so many times before. I no longer had that right, though. I walked away, I remind myself.
How is this possible? Why now? My brain is in hyper-drive trying to process this odd happenstance. “Are you really here?”
“In the flesh,” he replies. As if to reassure me of his true presence, he takes my hand and brings it to his lips.
Sometimes seventeen years can feel like a breath away.
He nods his head towards the doors. “My mother passed away.”
His news constricts my already grieving heart. “I’m sorry.”
For the first time since he spoke my name, he turns away from me, trying to hide his pained expression.
“Yeah,” he says with a long exhale. His grip on my hand tightens as he clears his throat. “Today was the viewing, or whatever it is they call it.”
In that moment, I remember seeing the other family across the hall. I close my eyes and try to remember what she had looked like, the sound of her voice, and the smell of her kitchen.
He brings our clasped hands back up to his mouth, brushing his lips against my fingers. A lone tear falls from his cheek onto my index finger.
I stop breathing, but the heady silence is broken by his tearful laugh, and I finally breathe out again.
“What?” I ask as his sweet, soulful, brown eyes meet mine.
He smiles. “I was just thinking about how much my mother hated you, and about what she would think about my holding your hand like this.”
I can’t help but tearfully laugh back even if it is at my own expense. “Yes, she would be none too pleased.”
We look away from each other and instead gaze at the city at our feet—our city, our home. Well, it used to be my home.
He clears his throat and nods his head behind us. “What about you?”
My voice sounds shaky—not my own. “My friend Katherine passed away. I don’t know if you remember her or not.” A sudden shiver ripples through me as my body remembers.
Without a word, he places his jacket over my shoulders, pulling me closer to him. His large arm encircles me while the ministrations of his fingers on my arm begin to calm my overworked nerves.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding. My fingers brush the scratchy polyester jacket of his uniform just under the lieutenant insignia; he has done well, been promoted. I want to touch the cool brass bars, but years in the service have trained me to leave them unmarred by the pads of my fingers. He chuckles at me as if he can read my thoughts, making my cheeks hot and red. The visual show of my arrant embarrassment serves to fan the flames of his laughter, causing me to join in with him despite myself. As it dies down, we fall into a companionable silence. Like magnets, our heads are drawn together, deepening our embrace.
His free hand finds the hem of my dress and works it between the pads of his thumb and forefinger. “I’m sorry about your friend.”
I look up from the spot I had been studying on the step in front of me and meet his intense gaze. Our foreheads lightly press together.
My response comes out in a hoarse whisper. “She was Alex’s....” I take a deep breath and continue. “She was the one who lost the baby.”
His eyes lower in remembrance.
I reach with a trembling hand for his. “What she went through....” A ball of unresolved emotions chokes my throat.
He sighs and his heavy-laden lids, still at half-mast, avoid my searching gaze. “Alex,” he says under his breath, a name that holds such meaning to us both. Looking up at me at last, he asks, “Do you want to talk about it?” His voice implores me to open up to him.
I clear my throat, preparing to tell him the whole of it and unburden myself, and present to him my elegy to her.
Chapter 1
Nin’s Bar
Danville, Virginia
February 29, 2008
7:30 PM
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The clock radio on her 2003 Mazda 626 dash read 7:30. Katherine let out a deep sigh as she turned off the car. She was late for her meeting with Alex Bailey, the new FBI field agent assigned to be her partner. He had called her earlier that morning to tell her he was finishing a case in Richmond, and wondered if she might want to meet up later, before they were assigned their first case on Monday. She had agreed and suggested meeting in her hometown of Danville, Virginia in a high-end bar nestled right off of I-95.
She hated to be late, but that had been out of her control tonight. Her thumb rubbed at the spot where her ring had been all her adult life—so many years wasted with a man she had never even loved. She closed her eyes and let the tears slide down her cheeks. She swiped at her cheek, took a deep breath, and got out of the car.
The cold February winds whipped at Katherine, causing her to grip the side of the car for balance, and to wonder if even nature was conspiring against her.
She scanned the dimly lit bar and spotted him at the far end, fingering an empty shot glass. He had wavy, dark brown hair cut in a style that was outdated but looked perfect on him. His tall lanky form, five o’clock shadow and rumpled Men’s Wearhouse type of suit looked almost comical next to the excessively wealthy regular patrons, in their tailored Armani suits and Donna Karan ties. There was something else, though, that made none of the other stuff matter: he was one of those guys that exuded sex. His good looks and no doubt charm had most likely left many women waiting
for a call the next day.
She had heard through the Bureau grapevine that he was one of the hottest agents to ever step foot in the D.C. office.
***
He tapped his tar-stained fingers on the bar and mentally cursed whoever had initiated the smoking ban for this small town. Signs posted all over the bar warned patrons not to light up inside or within 200 feet of the entrance. He hated waiting, especially when he couldn’t smoke. It had been a long day, and the cigarettes he smoked in the car on the long ride over hadn’t quelled his anxiety. Since that was out, he’d decided to drink instead, and two shots of Bushmills Irish Whiskey later his anxiety had only worsened.
The clock on his phone told him she was already twenty minutes late.
A cold blast of air hit his back, and he turned on the bar stool to face the front door. The woman who had kept him waiting stood in the entrance. Maybe some things are worth waiting for. He took in every detail, as if he hadn’t pored over her personnel file with a fine toothed comb, memorizing every detail.
She stood five-foot ten—six feet in those heels—with a small athletic frame. He’d heard she was part of the FBI running club, ran upwards of five miles a day, and it showed. Her fitted black suit probably cost more than his entire wardrobe. The red soles of her expensive-looking shoes matched her long curly hair, which reminded him of the bald cypress trees in the fall.
She was beautiful, prepossessingly so.
He swallowed hard as he took her in. Damn. He adjusted his thrift store tie and smoothed out his suit, suddenly concerned about his own appearance and what she might think of him.
She blushed under the weight of his heavy, inquisitive gaze, but regained her composure and walked towards him with her hand extended in greeting. “Special Agent Bailey?”
He took her hand in a firm grasp and smiled. “Please, call me Alex. You must be Katherine. Do you want to sit at the bar or get a table?”
“The bar is fine.”
Alex, ever the consummate gentleman, nodded and held out his arm to let her go ahead of him. He couldn’t help but notice her toned calf muscles flex as she took her seat at the bar. He shook his head to try and regain his focus.