Explosive (31 page)

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

Hours later, Sophie picked up her cell phone for the tenth time, cursed under her breath, and tossed it back down on the kitchen counter.

Who was she going to call?

She didn’t know Thomas’s cell phone number, not that it would matter if she did. His battery was dead, and she doubted he’d answer her call even if she could get through to him.

She’d gotten into her car and followed on Thomas’s heels as soon as he’d shot like a disoriented bat out of hell down her driveway, nearly careening into the ditch that lined the path before he’d neatly corrected and resumed his escape. She hadn’t caught a glimpse of his car anywhere—not on any of the increasingly wet and flooding surrounding country roads, not at the gas stations or Wal-Mart in town, not in Sherm and Daisy’s driveway, not at the fish and tackle shop at the north end of the lake.

She stared out the kitchen window. The rain continued, relentless and steady. Through the thick mist, she made out that the ditches at the side of her driveway were flooded with several feet of water.

She thought of the pain on Thomas’s face when she’d told him she knew about what Rick’s investigations had uncovered. The betrayal.

She picked up her cell phone again.
The police
. That’s who she should call. She’d just tell them that Thomas had left here in a highly agitated state, and that she was worried about his safety.

But she received an incoming call after dialing two numbers.

“Hello?” Sophie answered.

“Sophie? It’s Sherm.”

“I know,” Sophie replied, slightly impatient. Sherm and Daisy didn’t use cell phones and never seemed to understand that Sophie could see who was calling on her screen.

“Are you doing all right over there? Had any flooding?”

“I’m fine, Sherm. The sump pump is working overtime, but I haven’t had any problems so far. What about you and Daisy?” she asked dutifully, even though she was biting at the bit to call the police now that she’d made the decision. Thomas was out driving around in these conditions.

“Daisy and the house are fine—had some flooding in the basement—but nothing major. I hit some pretty serious flooding on Route 2, and your friend Thomas pulled me out of a ditch.”

Sophie straightened and held the phone tighter to her ear when Sherm continued.

“Ran into a little lake covering the road . . . made it through without stalling out—knew enough to keep my foot on the accelerator—but there was a damn landslide of mud after the water. Slicker than an oil spill. I went into a ditch. Thomas found me on his way back from Effingham. He dug me out, but I had to leave my car. We took a roundabout way to get back to the house.”

“Are both of you all right?” she asked rapidly. Her mind buzzed with questions, perhaps the most glaring one concerned Sherm’s rambling reference to Thomas
returning
from Effingham. Had he been on his way back to her house when he encountered Sherm and pulled him out of a ditch? Or had Sherm been confused by his accident, and assumed that Thomas was coming when he’d really been leaving?

“We’re both fine. Just made it back. We look like we’ve been wrestling with pigs in the mud, but we’re healthy. Damn weathermen never gave us any indication the rain would be this bad. Country roads are flooded out from here to Charleston and—”

“Sherm, where is Thomas?” Sophie interrupted.

“Oh, he’s here. Right here with Daisy and me at the house.”

Sophie shut her eyes and inhaled slowly. Thank goodness he hadn’t left after dropping Sherm off at his house. “May I speak with him, please?”

“He’s in the shower. Both of us were covered in mud . . . well, I still am, come to think of it.”

“All right. I’m on my way to your place,” Sophie said.

“No . . .
no,
girl, you stay put. The lake road is flooded out in parts as well. I don’t know what the stretch is like between our house and yours, but I do know that our drive back in Thomas’s car was a chancy thing. You can tell that boy served in the military; never flinched flying through patches of three-foot-deep water and kept that car solid on the road the whole way. I couldn’t have done it, that’s for sure, and I’d cringe thinking of you trying. Daisy’ll never let up about the fact that I drove into town under these conditions, but I needed some tying silk for a hackle fish fly—”

“But Thomas can’t stay there with you. I’m sure the road will be okay—”

But this time Sophie was interrupted by the sound of a deep, authoritative rumble in the background.

“Is that Thomas?” Sophie demanded.

“It is. And he agrees with me. He says for you to stay right where you are. It’s dangerous out there. I could feel undercurrents tugging on Thomas’s car when we went through some of those floodwaters. It was a miracle we didn’t lose contact with the road. As soon as the rain lets up, the flooding will go down, and then we’ll see about things.”

“Sherm, put Thomas on the phone,” she begged. She needed to know if he was still upset.

“Well, it looks like he headed back to the bathroom, Sophie. I’ll have him give you a call as soon as he’s finished cleaning up, how’d that be?”

“Make sure that you tell him to call me, Sherm.”

“I’ve made a note of it. Don’t you worry now. Give us a call if anything should happen over there.”

Sophie hung up the phone a few seconds later, feeling helpless and frustrated as she stared at the heavy downpour outside her window.

Obviously, Thomas had provided her with her answer as to whether or not he was still angry at her for knowing his secrets.

Sophie hated the rain. She’d never despised a force of nature so much as that steady, relentless downpour. It was only eight o’clock in the evening, but the sky was so overcast that it was pitch black outside.

She switched on the light in the kitchen, the cheery glow seeming unusually bright compared to the impenetrable darkness outside the windows. In the background, she heard the sump pump churning endlessly and wondered when the machine would finally give out from overuse.

At this rate, Thomas might have to spend the night at the Dolans’. The thought of him being a quarter mile away and not being able to see him, to try to explain things to him further, was driving her crazy. She felt like a caged animal.

The damn rain was her prison bars.

She put some hot water in the pot for tea and flipped on the burner, all the while listening to the weather report on the radio she kept on the kitchen counter. She scowled at the announcement that I-57 had been closed due to flooding. Multiple rural roads had been barricaded for hours, but the closing of a major interstate suggested that conditions were worsening, not improving.

Thomas hadn’t called, despite Sherm’s assurance that he’d ask him to do so once he was finished cleaning up. She was worried he’d take off come morning, and the gap that had opened between them when she told him what she’d known would slowly widen until it was an impassable crevice.

She poured some hot water into a mug with a tea bag and stared out the wet window into the impenetrable darkness. She’d called Andy earlier and told him what had happened. He’d been concerned for Thomas’s safety in his emotional turmoil, but he’d tried to assure her she hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Maybe it’s best that he’s not there with you, Sophie. He needs time to pull himself together . . . regroup. He has to work this out—”

“At his own pace. I know, Andy,” Sophie had finished for him. But she couldn’t help but thinking then, just as she thought it now, that Thomas’s “pace” for recovery might not be fast enough for an encroaching threat.

She saw the great, round bloom of fire in her mind’s eye and imagined the
boom
of the warehouse explosion. She shivered and stepped away from the sink.

For a few seconds, she considered trying to call the Dolan house again. But Sherm had assured her he would tell Thomas to call her. If he had done so, it must mean Thomas wasn’t willing to talk to her at the moment.

Sophie took her tea and curled up at the end of the sofa with a knitted afghan drawn over her legs. She flipped on the television to the all-news network.

Her anxiety only amplified when the anchorman reported that the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office were preparing to announce a formal indictment on a host of federal charges against Joseph Carlisle within the next few days.

A loud cracking noise made her startle, causing a few drops of tea to splatter on the afghan. She hopped up off the couch and peered out the picture window—the noise had issued from the direction of the lake. She jumped when she heard it again, a sound like wood knocking against wood forcefully. What was it? Something hitting her dock?

She considered going out to check, but thought better of it. There was nothing she could do about it in the pitch blackness and heavy downpour.

Again, she heard the loud cracking noise and shivered. She’d never felt isolated here at the lake house, but she felt very alone at the moment, like she existed on an island with an ocean surrounding her on all sides. She hurried into the kitchen and locked the back door, then traversed the long, dark hallway to secure the door that led to the screened-in porch. Since she never used the front door, it was already locked up tight.

When she returned to the kitchen, she picked up her cell phone to call the Dolans’ house, but their residential phone line was dead.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX

Sophie started into wakefulness and glanced around the living room cautiously, using only her eyes instead of moving her head. She’d fallen asleep with the television on. It cast the room in dim, flickering light, but the kitchen was swathed in dark shadow.

She held her breath in her lungs, listening.

The sound of the churning sump pump and the patter of rain on the roof told her the rain hadn’t abated. But the rain or the sump pump hadn’t been what had awakened her . . .

Her eyes went wide and a scream tickled her throat when a shadow separated from the thick blackness and the form of a tall man began to move toward her.

“Shhhh, it’s just me.”

She realized she’d sat up and was tensed to spring up off the couch.

“Thomas?” she gasped.

“Yeah.”

He stepped into the living room and she saw that he was completely naked except for a pair of white boxer briefs.

“I was . . . am . . . soaking wet. I stripped in the kitchen.”

Sophie just gaped at him, knocked off balance by his sudden appearance.

“How did you get in the house?”

“Picked the lock,” he replied levelly. Perhaps he noticed her stunned expression as she stared up at him. “It wasn’t that hard. I used the deadbolt to lock it once I got inside.”

“Oh” was all she could think of to say for a moment. “How . . . how did you get here? You didn’t drive, did you? The rain hasn’t stopped—”

“I walked. Well, swam during one part. There’s nearly four feet of standing water in one dip in the road.”

She stood. “Thomas, that was dangerous. Some of those currents can be strong, especially if the lake is meeting the floodwaters.” She noticed how erect his small, brown nipples were. “You must be freezing. Do you want something hot to drink? Or a shower to warm up?”

“No.”

His hair hung wet on his brow. Even though he’d removed his clothing, his naked skin gleamed with moisture. She tried to study his face, but his expression was unreadable in the dim, flickering light. It suddenly struck her with force that he was there in the house with her. She’d been hoping to speak with him—to see him—for hours, and now he’d suddenly appeared.

“Thomas, I’m so sorry. I wanted to tell you about Rick and Andy all along, but—”

“So why didn’t you?” he interrupted.

“I . . . I was worried about how you would take it,” she replied honestly. “I feel guilty about knowing such private things about you and your family, but the circumstances were so strange. When we became involved, they became even stranger.”

Sophie felt the weight of his stare as he studied her for several taut seconds.

“Have you told anyone what you knew about Rick? About Bernard Cokey?”

She shook her head. “No, of course not. Andy and I have discussed it, but—”

“
No one
else?”

“No.”

“You didn’t go to the police with the information? The Feds?”

“No, Thomas.”

“And your friend? Andy Lancaster? Is he trying to convince you my father is guilty?”

“
No,
absolutely not. Do you believe me?” she asked breathlessly.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” he admitted, his chin lifted, his stance wary. “Agent Fisk told me that they had a star informant, someone of spotless character who was feeding them information about my father.”

Her heart seemed to thud and then stop for a suspended second in her rib cage.

“It wasn’t me, Thomas. Is that what you’re thinking? That
I
gave inside information on Joseph Carlisle?”

He didn’t reply.

“It wasn’t
me
,” she repeated in a whisper.

“Bernard Cokey is dead.”

The sound of rain pattering on the roof turned into a dull roar in her ears.

“I couldn’t sleep over at the Dolans’ so I turned on the television. Cokey and his wife were shot, execution-style, in a roadside inn in Wisconsin earlier this evening.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered through numb lips. She longed to turn on a lamp so that she could make out his expression through the dark, flickering shadows. Rick’s source—the man who had once been a small-time crook within the mob—was dead. Perhaps the only people alive who knew about Cokey’s and Rick Carlisle’s connection were Thomas and Andy.

And herself.