"True to its title, many people are on the run in this tense thriller involving secret government operations."
Reviewed by Tanzey Cutter
Posted January 14, 2014
Thriller
While on one of his late night runs along the beach, Sam
Dryden encounters a young girl who literally runs into him.
Being pursued by a group of armed men, she's frightened out
of her wits as she begs for Sam's help. As a retired
Special Forces operative with highly specialized skills,
Sam is sure he can protect the girl. But who are these men,
and why are they so intent on catching her? The girl's name is Rachel, she's 11 years old, and all she
can recall about her life is being held prisoner in a
secret place. As Sam and Rachel run for their lives, it
soon becomes apparent the government is involved. Keeping
Rachel alive and eluding military forces that will stop at
nothing to attain their goal will test Sam's expertise to
the limit. RUNNER by Patrick Lee is filled with nail-biting,
action-packed suspense keeping readers on the edge of their
seats with its complex characters and rapid-fire narrative.
The explosive ending is thrilling and astounding.
Learn more about Runner
SUMMARY
Sam Dryden, retired special forces, lives a quiet life in a
small town on the coast of Southern California. While out
on a run in the middle of the night, a young girl runs into
him on the seaside boardwalk. Barefoot and terrified, she’s
running from a group of heavily armed men with one clear
goal—to kill the fleeing child. After Dryden helps her
evade her pursuers, he learns that the eleven year old, for
as long as she can remember, has been kept in a secret
prison by forces within the government. But she doesn’t
know much beyond her own name, Rachel. She only remembers
the past two months of her life—and that she has a skill
that makes her very dangerous to these men and the hidden
men in charge. Dryden, who lost his wife and young daughter in an accident
five years ago, agrees to help her try to unravel her own
past and make sense of it, to protect her from the people
who are moving heaven and earth to find them both. Although
Dryden is only one man, he’s a man with the extraordinary
skills and experience—as a Ranger, a Delta, and five years
doing off-the-book black ops with an elite team. But, as he
slowly begins to discover, the highly trained paramilitary
forces on their heels is the only part of the danger they
must face. Will Rachel’s own unremembered past be the most
deadly of them all?
ExcerptCHAPTER 1Just after three in the morning, Sam Dryden surrendered the
night to insomnia and went running on the boardwalk. Cool
humidity clung to him and filtered the lights of El Sedero
to his left, the town sliding past like a tanker in the
fog. To his right was the Pacific, black and silent as the
edge of the world tonight. His footfalls on the old wood
came back to him from every part of the darkness. It was just as well not to sleep. Sleep brought dreams of
happier times, worse than nightmares in their own way. Mercury lights over the boardwalk shone down into the mist.
They snaked away in a chain to the south, the farthest all
but lost in the gloom where the boardwalk terminated at the
channel. Dryden passed the occasional campfire on the
beach, and caught fragments of conversations amplified in
the fog. Soft voices, laughter, huddled silhouettes haloed
by firelight. Shutter glimpses of what life could be.
Dryden felt like an intruder, seeing them. Like a ghost
passing them in the dark. These nighttime runs were a new thing, though he'd lived in
El Sedero for years. He'd started taking them a few weeks
before, at all hours of the night. They came on like
fits—compulsions he wasn't sure he could fight. He
hadn't tried to, so far. He found the exertion and the cold
air refreshing, if not quite enjoyable. Maybe the impulse
was his mind's attempt to kick start him from inertia. Inertia. That was what a friend had called it, months ago.
One of the few who still came around. Five years back,
right after everything had happened, there had been lots of
friends. They'd been supportive when they were supposed to
be, and later they'd been engaging—they'd pushed him
the way people did when they cared. Pushed him to start his
life again. He'd said he appreciated it, said they were
right—of course you had to move on after a while.
He'd agreed and nodded and watched the way their eyes got
sad when they understood he was only saying those things to
make them stop talking. He hadn't tried to explain his side
of it. Hadn't told them that missing someone could feel
like a watch you'd been assigned to stand. That it could
feel like duty. He passed the last of the fires. Here the beach beneath the
walk became rocky and damp, the moisture catching the glow
from each lamp post. The shore lay vacant for the next
several hundred yards. A minute later, in the middle of the
dead stretch, Dryden came to an intersection in the
boardwalk; a second branch led away inland. He slowed and stopped. He almost always did, at this spot.
He wasn't sure what drew him to it—maybe just the
emptiness of it. The junction lay in the darkness between
lights, and there was never anyone around. Nights like
this, with no moon and no surf, this place was the
equivalent of a sensory deprivation chamber. He leaned on the wooden rail with his elbows, facing the
sea. As his breathing slowed, faint sounds finally came to
him. The hiss of tires on the freeway, a mile inland beyond
the dunes. Tiny animals moving in the beach grass behind
the walk. Dryden had been standing there for over a minute
when he heard another sound: running footsteps on the
boardwalk's planking. For a moment he thought it was another jogger. Then he knew
otherwise—the cadence was too fast. This was someone
sprinting full-out. In the saturated air, the sound's
origin was hard to trace. He looked left and then right
along the shoreline stretch of the walk, but against the
light glow he saw nobody coming. He was just stepping back
from the rail, turning to look down the inland route, when
the sprinting figure crashed into him from that direction. He heard a gasp—the voice of a young girl. Instantly
she was fighting, pushing back from him in a panic, already
turning to bolt away along the shoreline course. "Hey," Dryden said. "Are you alright?" She stopped and faced him. Even in the faint light, Dryden
could see that her eyes were wild. She regarded him with
nothing but caution, and kept herself balanced to sprint
again, though she seemed too out of breath to go much
farther. She wore jeans and a t-shirt, but no shoes or
socks. The girl could have been no more than twelve. For
the briefest moment her eyes intensified; Dryden could see
the calculation going on behind them. Just like that, her defensive posture changed. She remained
afraid, but not of him. She turned her gaze inland instead,
back the way she'd come from, and scrutinized the darkness
there. Dryden looked, too, but saw nothing out of the
ordinary. The inland run of the boardwalk led to the harbor
road, across which lay the dune ridge, shrouded in the thick
night. All appeared calm and quiet. "You live near here?" the girl said. "Who's after you?" She turned to him again and moved closer. "I need somewhere to hide," she said. "I'll
tell you everything, but please get me out of here first." "I'll take you to the police station, kid, but I
can't—" "Not the police," she said, so abruptly that
Dryden felt an impulse to turn and continue his jog.
Whatever the girl was in trouble for, getting caught up in
it was not going to improve his night. Seeing his change of expression, she stepped forward fast
and grabbed his hand, her eyes pleading. "I'm not
running from the police. It's not like that." Her gaze snapped to the side again, in the same moment that
Dryden sensed movement in his peripheral vision. He
followed her stare, and for a moment couldn't make sense of
what he saw. Somehow he could discern the shapes of the
dunes now, invisible in the gloom only moments earlier.
They were rimmed with a faint, shifting light. The girl's
breathing trembled. "Yes or no," she said. "I can't wait any
longer." Dryden knew the sound of real terror in a person's voice.
This girl wasn't afraid of getting busted for some
misdemeanor; she was afraid for her life. The light around the dunes sharpened, and Dryden suddenly
understood what he was seeing: people with flashlights were
about to crest the ridge from the far side. The urge to
distance himself from the girl was gone, replaced by an
overwhelming sense that something was very wrong here, and
that she wasn't lying. "Come on," Dryden said. Still holding her hand, he ran north along the boardwalk,
back in the direction of his house. He had to slow his pace
only slightly for her. As they ran, Dryden kept looking to
the dunes. He and the girl had gone no more than fifty
yards when the first sharp spike of light topped the ridge.
Within seconds, three more appeared. He was surprised by
how close they were; the night had been playing tricks on
his sense of distance. Directly ahead along the boardwalk, one of the overhead
mercury lights was coming up fast. Dryden stopped, the girl
almost pulling his arm off as she stopped with him. "What are you doing?" she said. She watched the
pursuers as tensely as Dryden did. He nodded to the cone of light on the boardwalk.
"They'll see us if we run through the light." "We can't stay here," the girl said. The men with flashlights—six of them now—were
descending the face of the dune ridge at sprint speed,
making easy time. Dryden looked over the rail on the ocean side of the
boardwalk. The beach was only a few feet below. He
gestured to it, and the girl understood. She slipped under
the waist-high rail, and he followed, his feet touching down
on the loose stones piled beneath the walk. Beyond the
stones, the beach extended a hundred feet to the waterline,
rocky but still mostly sand. Dryden knelt and touched the
surface; it was smooth and flat, saturated by the mist, and
bore not a footprint as far as he could see in the
near-dark. If he and the girl made any move on the beach,
the pursuers would easily spot their prints and follow. He turned his attention to the space beneath the walk. It
wasn't promising. The piled stones were volleyball-sized;
picking their way over them would be slow going, especially
in the deep shadows there. Worse, support beams
crisscrossed the space every few feet. They'd make little
progress before the men arrived, and certainly at least one
of the six would drop to the beach to put some light under
the boardwalk. As a hiding place, it was a dead giveaway. Dryden looked up over the planking and saw the men reach the
base of the dune. It was all happening too quickly. In the
still night he heard their running footsteps on the asphalt
of the harbor road, and then on the wood of the inland
boardwalk stretch. In less than thirty seconds, they would
reach the rail above this very spot. Dryden looked at the cross bracing under the walk, and saw
the only solution available. He guided the girl
underneath. She was shaking, but seemed relieved to be
getting out of sight. Below the surface planks, heavy beams
ran lengthwise along the walkway. These were in turn
supported by far thicker beams, running sideways like the
planking. Above these lower beams were gaps, not big enough
for a person to fit into, but big enough for a pair of feet
or hands. "Hold onto me," Dryden said, and pulled the girl
against his chest. She complied without hesitating; the
footsteps of the approaching men began to shake the boardwalk. With the girl hugging tight against him, Dryden reached up
and grabbed one of the lower beams with his
fingertips—it was far too big to get his hands
around—and then swung his feet up and hooked them into
the gap above the next beam, five feet away. He made a
hammock of himself, with the girl atop him, and pulled
himself as tightly against the underside of the boardwalk as
he could. It was like doing a pushup in reverse. It was immediately clear he could not hold this position for
long. Everything about it was wrong. His fingertips had no
traction on the giant beam, requiring him to apply pressure
to hang on. The muscles in his forearms were burning within
seconds. At the same time, keeping his body straight
involved contracting half of his muscles in ways they
weren't meant to be used. The girl seemed to understand, perhaps feeling his muscle
tremors. As the footsteps thundered toward them, she put
her mouth to his ear and whispered, "They have guns.
They'll kill us." A moment later, the gaps in the boardwalk above filled with
flashlight glare. The men had reached the shoreline stretch
of the walk, and had begun to fan out along it. One of them spoke, his voice ringing clear and strong. It
sounded like a voice accustomed to giving orders. "Search the beach. Search beneath the causeway." Boots scuffed the wood, then landed hard on the rocks
nearby. A second later the flashlight glow was all around
Dryden and the girl, indirect but very close. She hugged
him tighter; he thought he could feel her shutting her eyes,
as she buried her face in his shoulder. The pain in his
muscles was beyond burning now, but pain wasn't the
problem. There were ways to disregard agony—Dryden
had learned them long ago—but at some point his
muscles would simply fail. Willpower couldn't beat physics
forever. He managed to swivel his head a few degrees toward the
beach. The flashlight beams swept the sand, found it empty,
and within seconds turned to scour the boardwalk supports.
Dryden looked upward again, to prevent his eyes from
shining. As he stared at the planking above his face, he
saw the diffused glow as beams passed directly beneath him.
If even one of the searchers was clever or suspicious enough
to raise his light by two feet, it would all be over.
Dryden waited for the blinding wash that would signal that
very thing. It never came. After an encouraging span of darkness, he risked another
glance at the beach; the searchers had moved on to the
north, inspecting the boardwalk as they went. It was time
to swing down and try for a quiet getaway, whatever the
risk. Every moment he delayed increased the chance that
he'd simply fall, which would be anything but quiet. He was
starting to slide his feet out of the gap when a sound
stopped him. Footsteps. Heavy and slow, on the boardwalk above. They
approached from the south, the direction the searchers had
come from. Dryden remained frozen. The man on the
boardwalk stopped directly above him; traces of sand fell in
Dryden's face. "Clay," the man called out. It was the leader.
He'd remained on the boardwalk while the others searched. One of the men on the beach, Clay apparently, turned and
approached, his flashlight playing haphazardly over the
ground. He stopped at the edge of the boardwalk, looking up
at the leader. Had he lowered his gaze and looked straight
ahead, he would have locked eyes with Dryden, no more than
eighteen inches away. Dryden dared not even turn his head
upward again; the slightest movement could give him away.
He hoped the shuddering of his muscles didn't show as
intensely as it felt. Of Clay's features, Dryden could see almost nothing. The
man was barely a silhouette against the black ocean and
sky. Only the backscatter glow from the flashlight beam
offered any detail: medium length hair, dark clothing, a
weapon hanging at his side by a shoulder strap. A
submachine-gun—something like an MP5 with a heavy
sound-suppressor. Above on the boardwalk, the leader said, "This is out
of hand already. Go back to the van, set up coverage of
police channels in a twenty-mile radius. Call Chernin, get
him working on personal cell phones of officers and whatever
federal agents are based in the area. Gold-pan the audio
for keywords like girl and lost. Try psych
ward while you're at it." "You think if she talks to anyone," Clay said,
"they'll think she walked out of one?" Dryden suddenly felt his fingertips slipping from their hold
on the fog-dampened wood. No amount of exertion could stop
it; he was going to lose his grip in a matter of seconds. "Solid chance of it," the leader said. Dryden's fingertips held by a quarter inch. He felt that
margin shrink by half in the span of a breath. "And if we lose the trail anyway?" Clay said. For a second the leader didn't answer. Then he said,
"Either she gets buried in the gravel pits, or we do." Dryden tensed for the fall, trying to imagine any way that
he could get on his feet and escape with the girl. At that instant he felt her move. Without a sound, she took
her arms from around his chest, reached past his head to the
beam, and clamped her hands as tightly as she could over his
fingertips. The minor force she could apply was enough to
make the difference; his grip held. Above the clamor of thoughts demanding Dryden's attention,
one briefly took precedence: how the hell had she known? A second later Clay pocketed his flashlight, climbed onto
the boardwalk, and ran off in the direction the group had
come from. Dryden waited for the leader to move off as
well, but for a moment he only stood there, his breath
audible in the darkness. Then he turned and thudded away to
the north, following the searchers. When his footsteps had
grown faint, Dryden at last slipped his feet from the beam
and swung down. Blood surged into his muscles like
icewater. The girl got her balance on the rocks, and leaned
past him to look up the beach. Dryden looked, too: the
searchers were a hundred yards away. The girl sniffled. Dryden realized she was crying. "Thank you," she said, her whisper cracking.
"I'm sorry you had to do that for me." Dryden had a thousand questions. They could all wait a few
minutes. He turned and scanned inland for the best route away from
here. There was a comforting span of darkness between the
boardwalk and the harbor road. A block north along the
road, the backstreets of El Sedero branched deeper inland,
into the cover of night. He and the girl could take the
long way around and circle back to his house, half a mile
north on the beach. Taking a last look to make sure the searchers were still
moving away, Dryden guided the girl under the boardwalk and
into the long grass beyond.
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