BAD DEEDS: A Dylan Hunter Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers) (35 page)

He sat on a recliner near the unlit fireplace, waiting. She emerged from the hallway. She wore a long, light brown cashmere coat and dark brown boots. She had pulled off one dark brown glove, and her fingers were tugging at the other when she saw him.

Then her eyes took in the gear on the floor. She stopped all motion. Her eyes rose to his.

“Going out, I see.” Her voice was tight.

He got to his feet. Nodded—just once.

“That’s right.”

She nodded, too—more than once.

“Like some coffee? Wine?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I won’t be here long.”

He came over to help her with her coat. He didn’t touch her. Didn’t try to kiss her. He went to hang the coat on the rack near the front door, then returned.

She was seated at the end of the sofa closest to his recliner. He returned to it. Then waited.

“I got a call today from Cronin,” she began.

He hadn’t seen that one coming.

“I can only imagine what he had to say.”

“I’m sure. He’s certain that you destroyed the Capital Resources offices.”

“Ed Cronin is a very good detective.”

She shut her eyes an instant. Then opened them and gestured at the items on the floor.

“So, what else are you planning to do?”

“I’m going to bring them down. All of them. In fact, it’s already started.”

She lowered her gaze. Nodded slowly. Then looked up at him again.

“What about Boggs?”

“I’m going to hunt him down. And kill him.”

She swallowed, visibly. “I see.”

He waited for her to continue.

“You know what this means, Dylan.”

“Yes, Annie. I know what this means.”

She gestured at the gear. “But you’re going to go ahead and do it, anyway.”

“You know why I can’t let this go. First were their attacks on all those innocent people up in Pennsylvania. Then the bomb that almost killed you. Then the murder of Adam Silva—which is entirely on me. Then the attack on me by their goons. Then the bomb at the
Inquirer
office. This won’t stop. They won’t stop. The government won’t stop them—because they
are
the government.” He paused a few seconds. “Annie, I’m doing this because somebody has to stop them. But there is nobody else to stop them. There is nobody but me.”

“You promised …” she began, then hesitated.

“I promised to try, Annie. And I truly did. I tried to let it go. But
they
won’t.”

“I know you did. But I didn’t mean that. I meant that you made a promise at Adam Silva’s funeral. To his widow and children.”

He didn’t see that coming, either.

“Yes,” he said softly. “I did.”

She closed her eyes. “If only I could deal with this. With the constant nightmares. If only I could get past it.”

“But you can’t. And it was cruel of me to expect you to stay with someone like me. Annie, I don’t know exactly why I’m this way. Why simple justice matters so much to me. But it always has. And it always will. That part of me will never change.”

When she opened her eyes, they held tears.

“I know, Dylan. And I don’t
want
you to change. Because if you weren’t as you are, I wouldn’t love you as I do.”

It felt like another stab wound, this one to his throat. It was all he could do to continue looking at her, steadily. At the stunning face, twisted with grief; at the wide gray slanting eyes, spilling tears.

“I would give anything …” he began, then stopped.

“Except what makes you who you are. And it was wrong for
me
to expect you to do that.”

She rose to her feet. Walked to him, head down. He stood to meet her.

She slipped the diamond off her finger. Just as he had known all afternoon that she would.

“I’m sorry, Dylan,” she said.

“No, I’m the one who owes you the apology.” He extended his hand. “I’ll regret this moment forever. Because I’ll love you forever, Annie Woods.”

She reached out, placed the ring on his hand. Then, with both of hers, she closed his fingers around it. She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it, then pressed it to her breast.

He leaned down and kissed her forehead. Straightening, he stared into those incredible eyes. No doubt for the last time.

Then she released his hand, and his eyes, and turned away.

He knew it would be unendurable for both of them if he followed her to the door and helped her on with her coat. So he just stood there in the middle of the room. He watched her leave the room. He heard the soft rustle as she put on her coat. Then the sound of the door opening.

And closing.

Lying back in the recliner, eyes closed, he tried to process what had just occurred.

He tried to convince himself that this had to happen—that it was for the best, for both of them.

Annie, I don’t know exactly why I’m this way …

His mind searched back, back to the time before he had become “Dylan Hunter”—back to the years when he was still Matt Malone.

… Why simple justice matters so much to me. But it always has …

Always?

Then he thought of his dad.

Mike Malone.

“Big Mike” …

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

July 12, 1983, 6:40 p.m.

Tucked deep in the shadowed canyons of buildings in downtown Pittsburgh, the expansive construction site was the latest part of the city’s revitalization effort. A sign on the metal security fence surrounding the perimeter described the new bank building to be erected there, along with an artist’s rendition of a gleaming glass tower. At the bottom of the sign were the words:

Construction by

Malone Commercial Development

The crew had knocked off for the night. Only Matt and his dad, Big Mike, remained behind, in the glass-enclosed cab of a Caterpillar D9L bulldozer.

Matt sat in the operator’s seat; his father stood, squeezed against the left-hand door of the closed, cramped cab. The interior was coated in dust and grime, and the smell of oil hung in the air. Here and there the mustard-colored finish of the walls and control levers was scratched and worn down to bare metal.

The beast idled in neutral, its throaty growl making Matt feel as if he were trapped in the belly of a huge yellow lion. The gas pedal, he had to remind himself, worked opposite from the one in a car: It was more like a clutch. When you took your foot
off
it, the dozer began to move. So he pressed his feet down hard on both the gas pedal and the brake to keep the thirteen-foot-high, 100,000-pound monster leashed. Its vibration shook him through the seat and the pedals.

He was sweating profusely, and not just from the heat and humidity of the July evening. He’d been at this for ten minutes under Big Mike’s patient gaze, and he still couldn’t manage to coordinate the various controls.

“Okay. Let’s get her moving again,” his father said.

He tried to remember the steps. The throttle lever was already pulled back. He raised his left foot off the brake, then his right off the gas pedal. The engine growled louder—but the dozer didn’t move.

Then he remembered:
You have to put it in gear, stupid.

His left hand reached for the gear shift lever at his side, but Dad bent down and grabbed his forearm.

“Remember, now,” he said mildly, “you have to keep the gas pedal pressed in when you shift gears.”

He felt his face grow warm.
Stupid.

“Right,” he said.

He took a breath; licked his dry lips. Pressed in the gas pedal, then pulled the gear shift lever back, into first gear. Black smoke puffed from the top of the vertical exhaust pipe that rose just outside the dirty windshield. He released the gas pedal, gingerly … and the beast began to crawl forward on its giant tracks across the expanse of dirt. His heart hammered with excitement.

“Good job. Now, remember how I showed you to turn. Try a left turn.”

He raised his hand to two side-by-side levers next to the seat; pulled back on the left-hand one. The dozer obediently started a slow turn to the left.

“Great. Now, let’s stop here and lower the blade.”

He hit the brake with his left foot. The huge machine began to lurch in spasms. Dad had to seize a grab bar to keep from falling.

A jolt of panic surged through him.

“Push in the gas pedal, too,” Dad said mildly.

He jammed both pedals to the floor. The dozer stopped rolling forward.

“Sorry,” he said, for what seemed like the hundredth time.

Dad chuckled good-naturedly.

“Stop apologizing, Matt. You’ll get the hang of it. It takes a while. My first time in the seat of a dozer, I was sixteen—already a couple years older than you are now. And I backed it right into an old pickup truck. Squashed it like a bug up against a cement retaining wall.” He chuckled again, pale blue eyes distant, remembering. “Fortunately, nobody was inside the truck.”

“Wow! That’s awful … So, did they fire you?”

“No. Why should they? After all, it was
my
truck.”

Matt burst out laughing. Dad laughed, too. Matt felt his jitters melt away.

“Well,” he said, “at least I can’t wreck anything out here in an empty dirt lot.”

“That was the idea … Well, I wonder what
he
wants.”

He pointed off to the right, toward the site’s parking lot. A black-and-white police car sat in the lot, the blue-and-red light bar on its roof flashing. A uniformed officer stood outside the vehicle, motioning in their direction.

“Okay, shift into neutral; push forward the throttle lever; then set the brake … Good. Now let me take the controls, and we’ll go see what he wants.”

His father expertly steered the dozer over toward the prowl car, then shut it down at the edge of the lot. They climbed down from the high cab onto its track, then hopped down to the muddy ground.

The officer was young and brown-haired. His dark navy uniform was crisply creased; his hat bore the department’s distinctive black-and-yellow checkerboard band; and his short-sleeved shirt revealed bulging biceps. He wasn’t short, but at six-three Dad towered over him, as he did most people.

“Problem, officer?”

“Is that your vehicle over there, sir?” The cop pointed toward the Lincoln sitting at the far end of the lot.

“That’s mine.”

“Well, I was just driving by, and I spotted a guy stabbing at your tires with something. I pulled in and caught him. I’m sorry to tell you that he punctured two of your tires before I could stop him. He’s sitting in the back of my car now.

“Oh, great.”

The cop asked for his name and identification.

“Mike Malone,” he said, handing over his driver’s license. “I own Malone Commercial Development. We’re the construction outfit here.”

The officer jotted down a few notes onto a pad.

“Do you know who the guy is, officer?”

“His name is Louis Marino. Know him?”

“Name doesn’t ring a bell.”

“I haven’t gotten much out of him yet. But he’s an older guy, which surprises me. Vandalism is usually a young person’s crime. So I wondered if this might be something personal between you two. Maybe if you saw him, you might recognize him.”

Dad went over to the car and looked inside the rear-door window. The guy inside yelled something that Matt couldn’t make out. Dad came back to the officer, shaking his head.

“Never saw the guy in my life. But for some reason he’s really pissed at me. I’d like to know what this is all about, too. Would you mind bringing him out here, so I can ask him a few things?”

The cop thought about it. “Okay. He’s cuffed, but still, keep your distance.”

He hauled the man out of the back and took him by the arm to where they stood. Marino was middle-aged with a hooked nose and salt-and-pepper hair. He reminded Matt of Tony Bennett.

“You son-of-a-bitch!” he shouted.

The cop got in his face. “Hey! You calm down, okay? We want to know why you’re out here trashing this gentleman’s car.”

“
Gentleman?
You call some prick who steals your house and business a ‘gentleman’?”

“What the hell are you talking about—me stealing your house and business?”

“Not just me. The whole neighborhood! Ten blocks of the Bloomfield district—dozens of row houses, dry cleaners, barber shops, my neighborhood grocery, everything. Don’t pretend you don’t know about it. We got a notice about the city council hearing. The universities want to expand, and the council wants more high-tech firms to feed off them, by building another ‘business incubator.’ So they plan to vote to just
take
our houses and businesses, under ‘eminent domain.’ And your goddamned company is going to do the development—it says so in the
Post-Gazette
, don’t say it isn’t true. So tell me, Malone: Does a bastard like you enjoy making your millions by stealing other people’s land? Or don’t you even stop and think about it?”

“Hold on!” Dad was frowning. “Sure, we’ve been negotiating a development deal with the city and the university. But nobody told me they were going to get the land by eminent domain.”

Marino snorted. “Well, how else do you think they’ll get all that property?”

“They aren’t buying you out? Offering you a fair price?”

“They’re making offers, sure. ‘Offers we can’t refuse’—like in
The Godfather …
Why are you looking at me like that? I know you don’t give a rat’s ass about it, but a lot of us have lived in Bloomfield for years—generations. My parents came over on the boat and settled there. My brothers and sisters and our relatives and friends were all born and raised there. We’ve built our businesses, homes,
lives
there. So we don’t
want
to sell, not at any price. But they’re just going to force us out, then demolish everything we spent decades building—and then just turn our land over to the universities, or to some rich, connected company. And of course, they pay
you
millions to do it.”

Matt had never seen his father look rattled by anything. It was a shock to see him standing with a stunned look on his face.

“My wife Marie and me, we sweat blood to build the grocery,” Marino said, his voice growing thick. “It took years to finally turn a profit. We invested everything in it, including our hearts and souls. We hired our family members and friends to work there. Everybody in the neighborhood shops there. Now, Marie’s crying her eyes out. We don’t have the dough to hire fancy lawyers to fight you rich guys. We just have to sit there and take it—then figure out where the hell we’re supposed to go, and what the hell we’re supposed to do with the rest of our lives, after your goddamned wrecking balls move in.”