This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold 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, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Published by Second Wind Publishing at Smashwords Published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC. Kernersville Second Wind Publishing, LLC 931-B South Main Street, Box 145 Kernersville, NC 27284 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations and events are either a product of the author’s imagination, fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any event, locale or person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Copyright 2009 by J Conrad Guest All rights reserved, including the right of commercial reproduction in whole or part in any format. This book is free for personal use. Running Angel, and all production design are trademarks of Second Wind Publishing, used under license. For information regarding bulk purchases of this book, digital purchase and special discounts, please contact the publisher at www.secondwindpublishing.com Cover design by R ‘n J Designs Manufactured in the United States of America I once had a life outside this park. Years ago, and it was a pretty good one, too. I’d been a private investigator and some of the cases I worked on would’ve made good reading had they been fictional. As a matter of fact, my last case had started out as a simple missing person—an attractive young woman from Gramercy Park had hired me to find her missing father. It seems her father had, for six years, been on the lam from a very elite overseas group. When I finally caught up with him, he spun a wild yarn about an alternate reality future in which the Nazis had won World War II. Of course the story sounded crazy to me, and I hadn’t believed any of it, but I couldn’t disbelieve the two Germans after him—I’d met them both. That was 50 years ago and all I remember until ... I first noticed the tall man passing through the gate at 86th Street. Obviously he was a tourist, with a Yankees cap pulled down over his eyes, wearing a University of Michigan t-shirt, and holding hands with a pretty woman who had eyes only for him. He looked familiar—slender with broad shoulders and gray hair showing from beneath the edges of his cap. Because I have a good mind for names and faces, I knew I’d never seen him before; yet I felt we had unfinished business between us. Our eyes met as we passed, going in opposite directions, and I saw brief recognition in his eyes followed by a look of shame mingled with guilt. The woman holding his hand, oblivious to the look we exchanged, laughed and whispered, “So do you love me just a little, J. Conrad Guest?” and the name registered, although I couldn’t say from where or when. That feeling of unfinished business grew stronger. I followed the two of them across Central Park, not intending to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help but hear bits and pieces of their conversation—two lovers on vacation from someplace in Michigan, and something about an unfinished novel and the writer’s block that seemed to have crippled the man’s creativity. Just before they exited the park from its west side, the tall man glanced back at me. I considered pretending I hadn’t noticed, but somehow I knew I couldn’t pretend anything in front of him: he had known I was here from the moment he entered the park. Even from a distance I could see his nearly imperceptible nod. A smirk came to his mouth; a moment later he winked at me and turned to leave the park with the woman. The exchange puzzled me, yet it seemed to comfort me as well. Somehow I knew this tall man who seemed familiar but whom I had never met, knew me intimately. I also knew that he wouldn’t forget me in this park, and that one day soon my life outside its walls would resume ... Other books from J Conrad Guest available at Second Wind Publishing http://www.secondwindpublishing.com You know Backstop. He plays the catcher’s position for any team in any city in America with a major league ball club. You cheer him when he delivers, and boo him when he doesn’t. You’ll cheer for Backstop, both on and off the field, as he plays the most important game of his career, haunted by the ghost of his father, and fights to win back the heart of the woman he loves more than the game. The author of January’s Paradigm, J. Conrad Guest has another novel based on the Joe January character, January’s Penitence, being considered for publication. In 2008 he completed Backstop: A Baseball Love Story in Nine Innings, published by Second Wind Publishing in 2009, and Chaotic Theory, a novella that explores the conjecture of how the flap of a butterfly’s wings in South America might result in a tornado in Texas. He is currently working on a murder mystery written around baseball legend, Ty Cobb. His fiction and essays appear in various publications, including Cezanne’s Carrot, River Walk Journal, 63 Channels, The Writers Post Journal, and the print publication Blood and Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine.