FBI Witness Protection Agent Roland Larson has committed the
unpardonable --- he has fallen in love with Hope Stevens, the
whistle-blowing accountant under his safeguard. Hope holds vital
information needed to convict members of the notorious Romero crime
family in the only way that insures that her life is worth no more
than the seconds it would take to remove it --- from her
mind.


Safehouses are proved to be anything but safe as a merciless and
ruthless contract killer pursues Hope with relentless fervor,
killing anyone who has come in contact with her. Finally, knowing
the government cannot provide the security it has promised, and
torn between her feelings for her protector and fear for her life,
Hope vanishes.


Larson is haunted by his failure to shield the woman he loves, and
is haunted by her disappearance. Six years later, the computer
expert who designed the triple-blinded Witness Protection computer
program, which lists names, family members, pseudonyms and
locations of every protected witness in the system, has been
kidnapped. The Romero family is behind the kidnapping, and if the
code is cracked the information will compromise thousands of
witnesses, with Hope at the top of the list. Larson is called back
on the case to help find the kidnapped programmer. In a darkened
St. Louis Shakespearean theater, he is sure he hears her laughter,
but he is not the only one who knows she is there. When he
discovers that she is now the mother of a five-year-old daughter,
he is torn between his personal feelings and his duty to the
government.


CUT AND RUN is a stand-alone novel that finds Ridley Pearson at the
top of his game. As Larson follows the trail of the killer in
pursuit of Hope and her daughter in a nationwide chase, we are
caught up in one of the tautest cat-and-mouse thrillers in
Pearson's vivid collection of novels. With his long-standing Lou
Boldt detective fiction apparently on hold, we're happy to see this
talented writer providing more thrills and great reading for his
fans.