Hunter didn’t respond.
“And sometimes, you hate the fact that you can’t just ‘walk away.’ Life for you would be so much easier if you could. But you can’t, can you? And that bothers you, doesn’t it? So, you worry about your future with her. You know yourself well enough to realize that sometime, somewhere, somehow, push will come to shove again. And then you’ll be forced to choose between her and your sense of honor … And you know what? That’s exactly why I picked you out of all our CSTs, son. Because such things matter to you. Because you’re that kind of man.” A smile grazed his lips. “Yeah, I had all that in your file, too.”
Hunter remained silent for a moment. Then:
“Are you talking about me, Grant … or about yourself?”
It was Garrett’s turn to be startled; the only evidence was that he blinked a few times.
Hunter said, “What you just told me about your family—about losing them because you were an adrenaline junkie—that wasn’t true, was it? You loved them. You hated to be torn from them. You weren’t off chasing cheap thrills. You were off doing the work you had to do, because you knew it had to be done. And you couldn’t ‘walk away,’ either—could you, Grant?”
Garrett didn’t reply. Only his jaw muscle moved.
“Thank you for caring enough to tell me … what you just told me,” Hunter said.
Garrett coughed. Then glanced toward the kitchen. “I wonder if that coffee’s ready?”
The dash clock said ten-fifty.
“You want to give it more time?” Rusty asked.
“No. I’ve allowed them twenty minutes after the lights went out. They should be asleep.” Zak stretched in the cramped front seat; rolled his neck. “I figured out how to lay out the charges. His lab is not big at all. I’d bet that he just does basic screening and preliminary work here, then farms out more complicated stuff to outside labs. But from what we surmise, he did all the work on the NLA report here, by himself.”
Rusty didn’t ask Zak who he meant by “we.”
He recalled the photos on Silva’s professional website. The guy looked youngish and pleasant: brown hair, squarish glasses covering soft brown eyes, gentle smile. His wife and kids, appearing with him in a family portrait, looked white-bread wholesome, too. She was a pretty blonde; the two teen kids, a boy and a girl, looked cheerful and intelligent. He thought of them losing their husband and father. It bothered him, a little.
“So … you can’t just burn down his lab and office, then.”
Zak rolled his eyes. “No, Rusty, I can’t just burn down his lab and office. As I explained, he would simply redo his tests with new samples. And that would undermine the whole rationale for the EPA fracking moratorium. So he needs to be taken out of the picture, too.”
“I suppose so … But this action—it’ll be so obvious that it’s no accident, Zak. Won’t the cops figure out that somebody targeted this guy because of his work on fracking?”
“Which is precisely why I’m sending out a statement to the media tomorrow.” Zak sounded impatient now. “It will say that Silva was targeted because of his past work doing toxicology testing on animals. That should throw them off the scent—at least long enough for the EPA’s hydraulic fracturing panel to meet in another ten days and recommend the moratorium.” Zak sat motionless, peering at him in the near-darkness. “Getting cold feet, Rusty?”
“No! Hell, no, Zak. You know you can count on me. I’m just wanting us to be, you know, careful.”
“You realize how important this is, right?”
“Yeah. Of course I do.”
He reached behind Rusty’s seat for the black satchel, grunted as he lifted it and plopped it into his lap.
“This job will be more complicated because of the number of charges,” he said, unzipping the bag. “And because of what I’m using. I’ll need about forty-five minutes in there. But we’ll do it the same way as last time, with the walkie-talkies.”
Zak went through his familiar rituals: checking the bag’s contents and his field jacket pockets, pulling down his black ski mask, donning his gloves …
Then he faced Rusty. In the pale light of the dash, through the holes in the ski mask, his dark eyes gleamed and his teeth looked sharp and yellow. It took a few seconds for Rusty to realize that Zak was grinning at him. The man reached out and gripped Rusty’s shoulder.
“You know I couldn’t undertake these actions without you.”
Rusty felt a rush of pride. He swallowed.
But before he could think of what to say, Zak turned away and got out. He watched him cross the road, then once again vanish into the trees.
She laid aside the book she was reading and checked her bedside clock again.
11:15 p.m.
What is keeping him?
Grant had left a couple of hours earlier. Dylan told her he would be up “in a bit,” and she left him sitting on the sofa, a glass of wine in hand, staring into the glowing embers of the fire.
Something had seemed a bit off in his mood. She first felt it when she returned to the living room after she’d left the two of them to chat without her. Something in the way Dylan looked at her, then …
The thin curtains of her canopy bed hung around her, stirring slightly in the breeze from the slowly rotating overhead fan. She had expected him here an hour ago … perhaps to play their little game.
It was a ritual that they had somehow fallen into, wordlessly, in their first weeks together. Once in a while, he would approach her bedroom entrance and pause, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, silent. He would watch her through the gauzy white fabric, lying atop the dark brown comforter, nude or nearly so. Tonight she was nearly so—just a few wisps of translucent, cream-colored lace lingerie that he had bought her. “Gift wrapping,” he called it. Eyes closed, pretending to be unaware of his presence, she would move slowly, languorously, provocatively, sliding her long legs over the satin surface of the comforter, rubbing them together, running her hands up her body—then, sitting up, she would arch her back and stretch, displaying her breasts. Eventually, she would open her eyes, turn slowly to face him … and wait, motionless.
He would wait, too—for as long as he could stand it …
After ten more minutes of waiting, she decided to go find him. She slid out of bed through the veil of cloth and slipped into her sheer chiffon peignoir. Barefoot, she went to the stairs.
Descending, she paused on the landing. The living room below lay in complete darkness.
“Dylan?” she called out.
“Here,” came his voice.
She continued her descent.
“Stop there,” he said.
She halted, three steps from the bottom. She felt uneasy.
A new game?
She heard a soft clink—recognized it as a glass being set down on the marble top of her coffee table. From the light of the upstairs hallway above her, she saw shadowy movement on the sofa. Then the shadow rose, approached—and stopped.
“Damn … you are beautiful, Annie.”
She was then aware that the light behind her was pouring through her sheer lingerie, that she was practically naked before him. He stepped forward into the light, weaving slightly. His dark curly hair was disheveled. His eyes glowed like the embers he had stared at hours earlier.
“Dylan … are you all right?”
“So beautiful,” he said, moving to her.
For an instant something in his eyes caused her to flinch. She was about to retreat up the stairs, but he lunged forward and wrapped his arms around her waist. She gasped as he lifted her from the stairs and spun, in one motion. Then, crushed against him, she felt herself rush through space, backward. She gasped again as he tossed her roughly onto her back on the sofa … then she felt his hands on her, harshly ripping away the thin fabric that barely covered her.
“Dylan!” she cried out.
But then the weight of him was on her, and his mouth, tasting and smelling of wine, pressed hard on hers, and sh
e could only hold him tight until whatever torment had driven him to this had passed …
Voices and noise woke Marty Silva. It took him a few seconds to get his bearings. Then he heard the voices more clearly.
Mom and Dad … Are they arguing? They never fight …
He lay still, listening for a few seconds more, until he heard the stomp of footsteps and his parents’ door open down the hall.
“No, Shari—you stay right here! Get on the phone with the fire department and tell them how to get out here!”
Dad …
Fire department?
He threw off his covers and groped for the switch of his bedside lamp. Then rolled out of bed and ran to grab his bathrobe from the door hook. He slid into it as he yanked open the door.
His father’s receding footsteps pounded down the stairs.
“Dad! What’s happening?”
He heard the front door open and slam.
“What’s going on?” Naomi, poking her head out of her own room. Her eyes large and frightened.
“I don’t know!” he said as he ran past his younger sister, toward the lit rectangle of their parents’ room. “Something about a fire!”
“A fire?”
He stopped just inside their bedroom. Mom, clutching her own bathrobe around herself, had a cell phone to her ear.
“—and please hurry!” she was saying. “… That’s right, he’s gone out there with a fire extinguisher … I know! … Yes, there are dangerous chemicals, so please hurry, okay? I’m worried and—”
Damn!
He spun around, pushed past Naomi and raced for the stairs.
“Marty! Don’t you go out there, too! … Marty!”
He ignored his mother’s shouts and stumbled down the darkened stairs in his bare feet. He was just reaching for the front door knob when an electric blue flash lit all the windows and the entire downstairs as if it were morning—followed by a deafening bang that shattered all their glass and shook the floorboards beneath his feet.
Ears ringing, he could barely hear screams behind him, upstairs … his mind, dazed for a second, trying to function … then remembering …
“Dad!” he screamed. His voice sounded muffled by the ringing in his ears.
He fumbled at the door knob, tore it open, lurched outside. To his right, twenty yards away, Dad’s lab, a converted guest house—ablaze … coils of smoke and shards of flame billowing from gaping windows … the surrounding trees shimmering an eerie red-orange …
Horrified, he rushed down the porch steps into the yard.
“Daaaaad!” he screamed again.
He had managed only a few strides when a second blinding blue-white flash lit the building’s interior before him, and another shockwave, far more violent, knocked him to his hands and knees … then he was being pummeled with hot stinging debris … then something heavy smashed down on his back …
Face-down on the cold ground, numb and deaf, he saw-felt a third searing flash-concussion … a fourth … then nothing more …
TWENTY
“I’m sorry.”
She heard his soft voice, not much above a whisper, and opened her eyes.
Light from the pre-dawn sky outside the bedroom window filtered through the gauzy canopy curtains, lending pale illumination to the room around her. He stood next to the bed in his bathrobe, holding a tray bearing her favorite coffee cup, an apple Danish, and a lone red rose in a tiny crystal vase.
“How sweet of you!” She sat up, hugging the warm comforter around her. She reached out and parted the hanging curtain for him. He extended the short legs of the tray and positioned it across her lap.
“I owe you an apology for last night,” he said. “I was a bastard.”
“Something was bothering you—that’s all.” She watched him while she took a sip of the hot coffee. His eyes looked red and tired, as if he hadn’t slept much. Whatever had been troubling him was still there. She lowered the cup and hoped her smile would encourage him. “Care to talk about it?”
“All right,” he said. He sat on the edge of the bed beside her. “I know you haven’t much time before you have to get ready for work. We can talk about it more tonight.”
“That’s fine. What is it?”
He drew in a breath. “I’m afraid of losing you.”
It shocked her. “What? How could … But Dylan, why?”
He looked off, toward the dull gray rectangle of the window.
“Something Grant said. About himself, but just as applicable to me. About personal priorities.” He looked back at her. “Annie, I am thirty-eight years old. Have you ever wondered why I haven’t been married before?”
She forced a smile, placed her free hand on his arm.
“Well, I know you’re not gay. So I guessed you just hadn’t met the right lady.”
He didn’t return the smile. “Of course there’s that. But there’s something else … I think that, deep down, without ever admitting it to myself, I’ve always been afraid that whoever I loved might not be my highest priority. Might not command my first loyalty.”
Something fell inside her. Before she answered, she sipped some coffee to collect herself; the cup shook a little in her hand. “What do you mean?”
“My little chat with Grant forced me to face the fact that I’ve always placed one thing above everything else. Above any person.” He put his big hand on hers; it pressed down on her engagement ring. “Grant called it my sense of personal honor.”
“But I don’t understand. I love that about you. Dylan, I wouldn’t want you to be any other way! How could there ever be a conflict?”
“I’m not exactly sure. But something in my gut, something elusive—like an omen—tells me it’s so. When I was talking with Grant, he said his devotion to his work eventually cost him his family. I knew instantly what he meant. Not devotion to some job—hell, jobs are a dime a dozen. I mean something much greater than any job.”
“You don’t take on jobs,” she said. “You only take on missions.”
“Which, to me, is a commitment of honor. Of soul. Of self. Last night I finally asked myself: If I feel that way, can I make a higher commitment than that? Can I make a full commitment to you—a commitment that you have every right to expect, Annie?
Something froze within her. She became aware of the pulsing in her throat, in her fingertips beneath the weight of his palm.
“That’s when I suddenly felt afraid. Afraid that someday I might have to do something, out of honor, that will hurt you … Love, the last thing I would ever want to do is hurt you.”
She said quietly, “Then it’s not the last thing.”
She saw that he understood.
“We should talk about this some more,” she said. “But I need to get ready for work now.”
“And I should get ready to head back to the apartment.”
She stood under the needle-spray of the shower, the temperature turned up high. But still found herself shivering.
She got out and wrapped the towel around herself. She had thought of something that she wanted to tell him before he left. He wasn’t in the bedroom. Had he gone already?
“Dylan?” she called from the doorway.
“Down here.” A harsh rasp from the living room.
She went down there. Dylan was on the sofa again, now fully dressed.
He was bent forward, elbows on knees, head down. His cell phone was in his hand.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
He raised his head. His eyes no longer held pain. They held something else—something she had seen before, and didn’t want to. He gestured with the phone.
“Adair just called. Adam Silva has been murdered.”
He followed her back up to the bedroom, sharing the details as she dressed. It was an effort to keep her fingers steady enough to do up her blouse buttons. She recalled what Adam Silva had looked like over dinner. Now sickening images arose in her mind, unbidden.
“Nail bombs. Incendiary bombs.�
�� She zipped up her skirt. “That means—”
“—that Boggs is behind this, yes. But I don’t think it stops with him.”
“What do you mean?”
He began to pace the floor. “Qui bono?”
“A sociopath with a martyr complex may not be thinking in terms of who benefits.”
“Normally, I’d agree,” he said. “But something has been bugging me about all this. For one thing, I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“What coincidences?”
“Just how conveniently his ecoterrorism against Adair happens to align with unified government and environmentalist efforts to put the entire industry out of business. And with CarboNot’s interests, too. It’s the targeting. Boggs could have chosen to strike anywhere in the country. So why would he and his gang come all the way to this isolated spot in Pennsylvania to target this scientist, and this fracking project, right now?”
She rummaged through a rack of necklaces on her vanity. None appealed. “You said that was ‘one thing.’ What else?”
“All of a sudden, right before a pivotal event in this entire controversy, they show up. On a chartered bus. Who paid for that bus? Wonk said it: Boggs and his gang always seem flush with cash. Where do they get their money? We’ve been looking into it, and we have our suspicions, but nothing definite yet. Just lots of links in a tangled chain.”
“And you’re going to follow those links.”
“Right back to the end of the chain. To the person or persons yanking that chain.”
“If you’re right—if any of these other people are involved with Boggs—then they may have been in on Silva’s murder last night.”
“I think that’s a virtual certainty.”
Then it hit her.
She went to him. She tried to keep her voice steady.
“But if they’re desperate enough to do that—and you are investigating them—then you would logically become their next target.”
BAD DEEDS: A Dylan Hunter Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers) Page 18
