The Bone House (22 page)

    Mark
Bradley was alone.

    He
made his way toward the rear of the house. His footsteps were soft on the
spongy earth. He felt occasional snow flurries melting on his face. He ducked
under the eave and crept sideways. The living- room window, which was open two
inches, was immediately on his right. He edged his face around the frame to
look inside. Mark Bradley was near the fireplace, studying a painting hung on
the wall. The canvas was wild with blood-red strokes and strange giant angels.
Bradley's back was to him, so he crossed the path of the window with two silent
steps. He was near the rear corner of the house now, where a door led inside
the screened porch. All he needed to do was lure Bradley outside.

    He
told himself he was doing the right thing. They couldn't afford to be exposed.

    The
warped door opened outward from the porch, offering him cover. When Bradley
pushed the door open, he could take a step and swing the forked tongue of the
crowbar squarely into the back of Bradley's skull. One blow. That was all it
would take. He'd done much harder things in his life.

    He
reached in his pocket and dug out a Fourth of July firecracker that was no bigger
than a birthday candle. He lit the fuse of the firecracker with a cigarette
lighter and flicked it end over end with his thumb. It flew and landed ten feet
in front of the porch door, but the fuse fizzled and burned out without
triggering a bang. He pawed inside his pocket for another noisemaker. He only
had one left, and it was old and just as likely to blow up in his hand. He
touched the fuse to the flame and again flicked it away, watching it arc with a
tiny glow. It landed, and he could see the wick burning.

    Crack.

    It
went off with a flash of white light, but the pop was oddly muffled. I He
wasn't sure if it was loud enough. There was a long, tense moment of silence,
but then the old house shifted with the movement of cautious footsteps on the
porch. Mark Bradley was coming closer, investigating the noise.

    He
cocked the crowbar in his arm.

    In
front of him, the porch door opened.

    'Mark?'

    Hilary
saw her husband in the doorway of the porch. He stopped as she called to him
and turned back into the house.

    'Is
everything OK?' she asked.

    'I
heard something outside.'

    He
lingered in the door frame. She saw him flexing his hands, as if his protective
instincts had been aroused. His tension fed her own anxiety, but when he saw
nothing, he let the door bang shut behind him and hooked it closed.

    'Anything?'
she asked.

    'I
guess not.'

    Hilary
breathed easier. There were always occasional moments of fear, living in a
remote area. It had been an adjustment, going from the suburbs to the island.
In Chicago, there were always people around, and as claustrophobic as it had
sometimes seemed to her, she realized there was a certain security about it,
too. Here, with only a few hundred people spread across thirty-five square
miles, there was no one nearby if something went wrong.

    She
also didn't know if she could trust anyone who did come to their aid now. She'd
begun to see everyone as a potential threat.

    Mark
sensed her unease and embraced her. His presence was strong and comforting, and
a little sensuous, too. He kissed her forehead and slid a fingernail down the
damp skin of her chest between the silk folds of her robe. He had graceful
hands. That wasn't why she'd fallen in love with him, but it was a bonus.

    'You
look good,' he said.

    She
heard the erotic rumble in his voice. 'That's for later. Right now, let's go to
dinner.'

    'I'm
not hungry,' he said.

    'Yes,
you are. Go take a shower while I get dressed.'

    He
patted her ass and stripped off his T-shirt as he headed for the bathroom.
'Your hair's still wet,' he called. 'You could join me.'

    'Go,'
she repeated.

    Hilary
padded behind him in bare feet to their bedroom, which was a twelve-by-twelve
square, painted in burgundy, with cracks in the old walls. The hardwood floor
was cold, and the first thing she did was sit on their queen bed and put on
socks. She stuck her legs into bikini panties as she stood up, then shrugged
off her robe. She caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror on the
closet door: topless, panties, black athletic socks.

    'Sexy,'
she muttered aloud, shaking her head.

    By
the time she had finished dressing, Mark was out of the shower his hair
dripping on the floor. He was naked, just as she'd been earlier. She eyed the
bedroom window, where the blinds were up, as they always were. They'd become
casual about their seclusion, to the point of not even thinking about other
people when they were in their home. For a woman who used to close the bathroom
door when she was alone in a hotel room, she'd become unselfconscious in a few
short years. She dressed, undressed, showered, peed, and had sex, all in the
belief that there was no one to see her.

    Oddly,
right now, staring at the window, she didn't feel alone. The sensation dogged
her like an unsettling dream. Gooseflesh rose on her skin.

    'Let's
go,' she murmured when Mark was dressed.

    They
took coats and headed out into the frosty night. She noticed that Mark didn't
switch off the house lights and locked the front door behind them. As they
drove, steam fogged on the glass, and she found herself shivering in the cold
interior. She cupped her hands in front of the vents, waiting for warm air.
Mark was silent beside her. She knew the arrival of Cab Bolton had left him
shaken.

    'You
want to talk about it?' she asked.

    Mark
didn't reply immediately. He flicked on the high beams to light up the twisting
stretch of road.

    'I
think I should tell Bolton I was out on the beach,' he said finally.

    Hilary
shook her head. 'No way.'

    'If
the DNA matches where Glory scratched me, Bolton will find out anyway, and
he'll think I have something to hide.'

    'You remember
what Gale told us? There's no case if they can't prove you were on the beach.
Period. You can't give up your best legal advantage, Mark. We have to be
practical about this. For all we know, they won't be able to recover any DNA
because Glory's body was in the water.'

    Mark's
eyes strayed to the rear-view mirror. 'Glory was talking about fire on the
beach,' he told her.

    'What
do you mean?'

    'She
was humming that Billy Joel song when I first saw her. "We Didn't Start
the Fire." She mentioned the Robert Frost poem, "Fire and Ice",
and talked about the world ending in fire. She asked me - she said, why didn't
I want to play with fire? It kept coming up.'

    'So
maybe it's true,' Hilary said. 'Maybe something happened in Florida that was
connected to the fire.'

    'Harris
Bone?'

    'It's
possible. He's out there somewhere.'

    'If I
told Bolton what Glory said, maybe he'll realize I'm not the only game in
town.'

    'I
know how you feel, but we can't say anything that might put you at risk. Look,
I'll find out whatever I can about the fire. I'll try to get Peter Hoffman to
talk to me. Harris Bone was his son-in-law. He may know something that would
help us figure out if Bone could have been in Florida. If I find something,
I'll give it to Bolton. OK?'

    There
was no answer from her husband. She realized that his eyes were fixed on the
rear-view mirror. Hilary twisted round and realized what Mark had seen behind
them. Headlights.

    Another
vehicle trailed them on the highway.

    'That
pickup's been back there since we left,' Mark murmured. 'I spotted the lights
when we turned at the cemetery.'

    'Do
you have any idea who it is?'

    He
shook his head. It was unusual to see other vehicles on the island roads at
night during the off season, and there were only a handful of other residents
living year-round in the remote lane past Schoolhouse

    Beach.
He slowed, drawing the truck closer, until the lights were immediately behind
them like giant white eyes. The vehicle made no move to pass.

    Hilary
squinted into the blinding brightness. 'I can't see the driver or the plate.'

    Mark
tapped the brakes and slowed until the Camry was barely doing twenty miles an
hour. The pick-up matched their speed and stayed on their tail, crowding their
rear bumper.

    'Hold
on,' Mark said.

    He
shoved down the accelerator. The Camry leaped forward, but the engine of the
pickup growled too. The road was dead straight in this part of the island, and
Mark accelerated to sixty and then seventy miles an hour before the speed felt
unsafe. Despite the burst of speed, the pick-up closed on them again, and as it
did, the driver switched on his brights, throwing a dazzling light through
their rear window. Next to her, Mark blocked his eyes and pushed the mirror aside.

    He
braked.

    The
pick-up accelerated. Mark barely had time to shout a warning before Hilary felt
a bone-rattling impact as the truck hammered into the rear of the Camry. Her
head was thrown back, snapping against the seat. The Camry swerved, fishtailing
as Mark struggled to keep control. The car veered from shoulder to shoulder,
weaving close to the gullies on both sides. Finally, the Camry slowed, and Mark
shunted the car on to the right-side shoulder, kicking up dark clouds of gravel
and leaves.

    The
pickup flew past them. Hilary barely saw the shape of the truck; she couldn't
pick out its color or see the driver. Ahead of them, she watched its tail
lights grow distant.

    Mark breathed
fast. His face was beet red, his body knotted up with fury.

    'This
ends now,' he said.

    'Mark,
don't.'

    - He
didn't listen to her. He gunned the engine and chased the pickup. Hilary clung
to the door and bit her lip until she thought she tasted blood in her mouth.
She saw the red lights of the truck a mile ahead of them, and Mark gained on
the other vehicle a tenth of a mile at a time. The chassis of the Camry
rattled. The border of the forest was a wavy blur.

    'Slow
down!' she shouted. 'For God's sake, Mark, you'll get us both killed.'

    Mark's
hands remained locked around the steering wheel, and his eyes were riveted on
the road. The car's engine howled in her ears. Wind sang in the seams of the
windows. They were half a mile behind the pickup when the tail lights winked
out in a single instant. Mark slowed sharply, but he was still going forty
miles an hour as the straightaway ended in a rightward curve. The car yawed
left. He yanked down on the wheel. Hilary was afraid they would roll, but the
tires grabbed the pavement, and he accelerated safely out of the turn.

    That
was when she saw a huge dark shape immediately ahead of them. The pickup truck
was parked sideways, blocking the road at the end of their headlight beams.

    There
was no time to stop.

    'Oh,
no,' she gasped.

    Cab
drove through the deserted streets of the town of Fish Creek and parked outside
the guest house near the harbor. It was a quaint village of candle shops and
cafes on the west coast of the peninsula, choked with tourists in August, but
quiet on a midweek evening in March. He'd rented a two-story apartment. The
smell of the bay was sweet as he got out of his Corvette, but he didn't linger
in the freezing air. He let himself inside and climbed the stairs to the main
level of the apartment, which had a full kitchen, a fireplace, and a balcony
that looked out on the water.

    He
was paying for it himself. He didn't apologize for the luxuries he'd known his
whole life. His money - or his mother's money, to be precise - helped him deal
with the ugliness of the world. Sometimes, when he was drunk enough to be
honest with himself, he also acknowledged that his money allowed him to build a
hiding place wherever he went. A pretty cage.