BAD DEEDS: A Dylan Hunter Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers) (32 page)

“What do you mean—
even
he? Don’t I matter to you as much as he does?”

Damn.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. If I could drive myself, I’d leave you both here.”

“Give me one good reason why I can’t come with you, then, and Rusty and I
both
stay in the car?”

He looked at her, feeling helpless at the question.

“You’ve been acting so damned secretly, for so long! And then after the cops came and …” She stopped. Her red hair fell in tangled strands across her face; her tear-filled eyes looked desperate. “Zak. I
love
you. I want so much to believe in you, to trust you. But trust is a two-way street. I’ve trusted you all these years. Now you are going to have to trust
me.”

It was unanswerable.

“All right! All right … Look. I have to meet with this individual alone. You can come along. But you and Rusty have to drop me off, then drive away. I’ll call you when the meeting is done.”

Her head fell, and she continued to sob, quietly now. He went to her, sat beside her, put his arm around her.

“Okay. Take it easy. I’m not trying to shut you out. My contact insists on security, and I’m just trying to protect that. Can you understand my position?”

She nodded. Looked up at him with eyes trying to believe.

“Good. Now that that’s settled, I have to go outside and send my contact a text message to arrange the meeting. I’ll be right outside the room, and as soon as I’m done, I’ll be right back.” He gave her a squeeze and a little kiss. Her cheek was warm, wet, and salty. Then he got up and headed outside.

Avery Trammel excused himself from the elderly couple who had been chatting with him and approached Damon Sloan, who towered over the crowd. Sloan was thumbing his cell phone with a sullen expression.

“Good evening, Damon.”

The CarboNot CEO turned to him, startled. “Oh, Avery! Hello. Just give me a sec.” He thumbed a bit more, made a final tap, then pocketed his phone. “There we go.”

“You looked concerned. Problem?”

“Oh. No. No more than usual.” He smiled, half-heartedly. “Just texting my broker. While I’m here, I want him to monitor the Asian markets and give me a head’s-up about anything else that might affect our stock price tomorrow. With all that’s happened, I may have to issue some kind of statement first thing tomorrow, to reassure the shareholders.”

“Of course.” Trammel gestured with his glass of Chardonnay at the well-dressed guests jamming the conservatory and hallways of Conn’s spacious home. “Ash certainly managed to pack them in tonight.”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s him. I give most of the credit to your wife.”

Sloan nodded to where Julia Haight was posing for cell-phone photos amid a mob of bedazzled guests. Next to her, doing the same, were two others from Hollywood’s A-list: a distinguished African-American actor and a famous writer-director of blockbuster spectacles. Both were known for doing films with progressive messages. A thin, middle-aged socialite preened nearby, in animated conversation with Emmalee Conn. Trammel had encountered the socialite many times; she ran a Beverly Hills group that enlisted people in the industry to slip environmental themes into movies and TV shows. Emmalee wore a low-cut cocktail dress; she kept running long red nails through her just-got-out-of-bed blonde hair. He wondered if the rumors about her were true. For the sake of Ash’s campaign, he hoped they weren’t.

“Julia recruited them on short notice to show up here for the photo op with donors,” Trammel answered. “She is helping to line up others to attend his formal announcement fundraiser in Los Angeles next month.” He sampled the Chardonnay; it wasn’t bad. He moved in closer. “Have you been able to take another run at our reporter friend?”

Sloan’s features tightened. “No. My contacts don’t want to risk anything further after what happened last time … What about you?”

“I have someone on it. But since your effort, the reporter in question appears to be lying low. So far, the only things that we have learned are, first, that he never actually goes to the newspaper office. Second, his business address is one of those virtual offices downtown; to contact him, you must leave a message there. That is about it. We have not yet been able to discover where he lives, or to learn anything about his past.” He watched Julia hugging a smiling couple while a camera flashed. “It is most curious.”

“Well, it will be just a few more days till the hearing. If he causes no further trouble, we should be fine.” Sloan craned his long neck even higher to scan the room. “I wonder where Ash has run off to? … Oh, there he is out in the hallway, playing with his phone. Let me see if I can chase him down.”

Trammel nodded and watched him head off. He wandered toward the corner of the room where the jazz trio played, figuring it would be a good time to check his own messages. He set his glass on a tray next to the gleaming Steinway and pulled out his cell.

“… As many of you know, I’ve known Ash since he was fresh out of Harvard Law School, and came to us looking for a job.” Gavin Lockwood turned to smile at his old friend, standing beside him. “In those days, he didn’t have much money, and he was loaded down with college loans. But still, he was willing to take a low-paying job in Nature Legal Advocacy. That’s because to Ashton Conn, convictions mattered. His principles always came first.”

Lockwood let the applause go on as his eyes roved across one hundred twenty smiling faces, many of them familiar to him, all of them high rollers. For his part, Conn looked uncharacteristically serious, his head down. Clearly, this was an emotional moment for him.

“I don’t have to repeat what others here have already said about his many accomplishments in the years since.” He paused to look pointedly around the conservatory. “I
am
delighted that he has since found ways not only to pay off those college loans, but to acquire a few well-earned toys. In fact, he promised to give me a ride in the one sitting outside the front door.”

Everyone laughed heartily and clapped. A brief, uneasy smile passed over Conn’s lips.

“So it gives me great pleasure to introduce the man of the hour: the environmental movement’s greatest champion in Washington—and our next President of the United States:
Ashton Conn!”

The applause echoed off the marble floor and the walnut wainscoting. Lockwood moved to the side of the room to watch Ash, with Emmalee holding his arm, step to the center of the room. The jazz trio struck up a rendition of “It’s Not Easy Being Green,” which prompted gales of laughter. Conn grinned and pointed at them, making a shooting gesture with his forefinger and thumb.

Lockwood watched as his old friend and colleague began his speech. It was clear that the weight of the occasion was upon him. He seemed subdued, his voice soft enough that Lockwood had to cock his head to hear.

But almost immediately he heard the
pinging
of an incoming text message on his phone. A couple of people nearby frowned at him. He mouthed
“Sorry
,
”
then hustled to a nearby doorway and out into the hall. He pulled out the cell and saw who it was from. He would have saved it for later, but the subject line said
Urgent.

He tapped the message. Read it.

Felt his blood run cold.

Rock Creek Park cuts an elongated swath of nearly three square miles in northwestern Washington, separating the upscale suburbs of Chevy Chase from those in Silver Spring. From the National Zoo to its south, the popular wooded camping and recreational area runs north along the creek from which it takes its name. Beach Drive, a paved two-lane road, parallels the stream through most of the park.

At two a.m., Rusty drove them into the park from the east, on Military Road. He then turned north onto Beach Drive. In about half a mile they passed a small stone structure on the right, a public restroom facility. A few hundred feet further they crossed the creek over a little bridge at a place called Milkhouse Ford. Just beyond that, a narrow paved road on the left, like a long driveway, angled back toward the creek. It dead-ended in a thick tangle of trees near the water, a spot virtually invisible from the main road.

“Stop here,” Boggs snapped. Rusty pulled into the end of the driveway, up to a metal barrier that prevented further entrance. “I’ll walk in from here and wait for my contact to show. Turn around and go wait back at that outdoor restroom we passed, just on the other side of the bridge. I’ll call you on my cell when we’re finished. Don’t come back before then.”

“Man, you’ve been awfully touchy tonight, Zak,” Rusty complained. “What’s going on?”

Boggs spoke through clenched teeth as he opened the door. “I need to find out tonight if somebody has been playing us all for suckers.” He slammed it shut behind him.

Dawn watched him stalk off down the path into the distant trees. Weeks of gnawing anxiety, the sense that something was terribly wrong, had only intensified in the hours since Zak sent the text message. He had come back into the room and flopped onto the bed. He lay there with his arms crossed, his dark eyes fixed unblinking on the ceiling, his dark expression forbidding any questions. From time to time, he would mutter something to himself.

She had never seen him like that. It scared her.

Especially in combination with everything else that had been happening this past month. His eager violence at the fracking office and the diner. His secret absences and whispered conversations with Rusty. That mysterious bag that he sometimes carried off—but which he never brought back to their tent or motel rooms.

Where did he keep it hidden? Why? What was in it?

She didn’t want to think about the bombing death of that scientist. Or the cops showing up and questioning them all. But mainly about Zak insisting that she lie to them, assure them that they’d all been together in the camp that night … the same night that he told her that he and Rusty had gone to meet with a cell in Warren.

“How could I explain
that
to the cops, honey?” he laughed easily, persuasively. He shook his head. “Just my dumb luck that some guy gets himself killed the same night.”

It had seemed like such a strange way to put it. But she had gone along. Gone along, because she believed him. No—because she believed
in
him. She always had, since they first met, since his passion and unshakable confidence in his convictions had won her heart.

But now … She sat in the truck, staring into the impenetrable shadows where he had disappeared to meet some secret Washington contact … sat there in the dark, trying vainly to suppress the unstated doubts, the unmentionable fears …

Rusty backed out of the entrance and drove to the parking area outside the little restroom building. He turned off the headlights, then cracked open his window for fresh air while he let the truck rumble and the heater run. He eased back into the bench seat and closed his eyes.

She couldn’t stand being alone with her fears.

“Rusty?”

“Mmmm.”

“Did he tell you … I mean, do you know who this ‘contact’ is? A man or a woman, even?”

“No idea.” He opened his eyes, gave her a brief look. “Me and Zak, we go back a long ways, and he never keeps secrets from me. But that one, he always has … So, he hasn’t even told you, either?”

She shook her head. “Do you have any clue what this is about?”

“Wish to hell I knew. Like he always says, he’ll tell us if and when we have a need to know.” He pulled down the brim of his baseball cap and closed his eyes again.

They sat like that for a couple of minutes in silence. Even though the heater was blasting, she felt cold, cold that cut deep, and she found herself starting to tremble.

A pair of headlights appeared in the distance ahead of them, growing slowly as they got nearer.

Rusty blinked and pushed up his cap. “Hope that’s the contact and not the Park police.”

Her mouth went dry. The car drew abreast of them, its lights dazzling them, then swept past. Blinded, she couldn’t make out what it looked like.

She twisted around to watch. It crossed the bridge behind them; then its tail lights flashed a brighter red.

“It’s stopping. That must be the dude,” Rusty said.

She watched the vehicle slowly turn left, rolling off the roadway right onto the grass. It proceeded across the frozen lawn, going around the metal barrier, then up onto the paved path behind it. In a few seconds, only the flickering of its lights could be seen as it moved behind the trees. Then nothing.

She was shaking now. This was too much.

She had to know. She had to be sure of him.

“I … I think I’m going to be sick,” she said.

“Oh hell! Not in my truck!”

She got out and, bent forward, stumbled to the far side of the building, where the women’s entrance was.

But she did not go inside. Unseen now, she straightened, pulled the laces of her jacket hood tighter around her face, then continued around the back of the building, and into the woods.

She had to know …

Zachariah Boggs raised a hand to shade his eyes from the glaring headlights. When the car got close, the driver killed the beams, leaving orange afterimages on his retinas. The vehicle rolled forward a few more feet. Stopped. The engine died.

Boggs took a step forward out of the trees, revealing himself to the occupant.

The driver’s door opened. A dark shape in a dark overcoat stepped out. Closed the door with a solid thump. Then approached, shoes crunching across unseen patches of ice. Stopped about ten feet away, hands in his coat pockets.

“I can’t believe you!” the man said. He turned around, scanning the surroundings. “Insisting on this cloak-and-dagger nonsense out here, in the middle of the night! And on
this
night! My God, Zak, are you trying to destroy everything we’ve been working for?”

Boggs was recovering his night vision. Even though he had seen him on TV, he hadn’t met with him in person for several years. Now, up close, he was shocked at the changes. The puffiness that almost hid his eyes. The fleshiness around his chin and cheeks. The twin vertical gashes at the corners of his mouth. And the additional bulk under an expensive dark cloth overcoat.