BAD DEEDS: A Dylan Hunter Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers) (23 page)

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 she 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 …

“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.”

“Don’t worry about that. They wouldn’t dare. I’m too high-profile.”

“Dylan …”

He wrapped his arms around her. “It’s all right, I tell you.”

She rested her head against his chest. Felt-heard the beating there.

“I didn’t tell you last night,” she said. “I didn’t want to ruin our evening. But when I was in the kitchen during the afternoon making dinner … I reached for one of the knives on the island.” She felt his hands stop moving on her back. “And all of a sudden, it was just like … I forced myself to grab it, anyway, but my hand was trembling and I dropped it. And I looked at the knife on the floor and that was even worse. But I told myself to stop being stupid, so I reached down to get it from where it slid under the island … Dylan, there was
dried blood
down there! The cleaners must have missed it. I couldn’t tell whether it was yours or … or
his
, but”—she was shaking, now—“
Damn it!
It all came back into my head again—you down there covered in blood and crawling toward me and the trail of blood behind you and—”

“It’s okay.” He held her tight, his hand rubbing her back slowly. “It’s okay,” he kept repeating. Her legs felt weak, but his strong arms kept her standing. After a moment he guided her to the bed and sat her in his lap; held her and rocked her gently in his arms.

“Sweetheart, when you get to work today, I want you to schedule some time with their counselors. You need to deal with this, and they are experienced with PTSD. Will you do that?”

“All right.”

“Promise?”

“I promise,” she whispered. “Dylan … they already tried already to kill you once, at the cabin. And if you keep after them …” She looked up at him. “I think about what they just did to Adam … and his family. You need to make a promise to me, too. Let the police go after them, now. Promise me that you will back off and—”