The Bone House

by Brian Freeman

  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.

  * * *

  Chapter Nineteen

  '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.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty

  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.

  Cab turned on the oven in the apartment's kitchen. He'd found a restaurant on the north side of town that sold vegetarian quiche, and he'd ordered it to go, along with a bottle of Stags' Leap Chardonnay. He deposited the quiche on foil lining a baking sheet and put it in the oven, then located a corkscrew and opened the wine. He found a glass in a cabinet above the stove and poured the wine almost to the rim. With the Chardonnay in hand, he dimmed the lights in the apartment and switched on the gas fireplace. He settled into the leather sofa, put up his long legs, and drank the wine in gulps as he watched the fire.

  He thought about calling his mother. They texted each other several times a month, but he hadn't actually heard her voice in six weeks.

  It was the middle of the night in London, so he used his phone to send her a message instead.

  Cold as hell here. Lonely but beautiful. See pic. C.

  He attached a picture he'd taken with his phone on the crossing from Washington Island, with the angry water against the gray sky and the forested coastline of the peninsula looming ahead of him. His rented Corvette had been the only vehicle on the ferry. Right now, in the empty guest house, he felt like the only man alive in the town of Fish Creek.

  He was accustomed to that sense of isolation. He thought of it as being homeless with a roof over his head. If he were back in his condominium in Florida, he would have felt the same way.

  His mother had extended an open invitation to join her in London. Neither one of them had anyone else in their lives who really mattered. Even so, he'd resisted moving there, because he didn't know if he was ready to stop running. Whenever he looked back, he saw Vivian Frost chasing him. He still needed to exorcize her ghost. That was something his mother didn't understand, because he'd never told her the truth about Vivian's death.

  Cab finished his glass of wine. He got up, checked the quiche in the oven, and poured another glass before sitting down again. He watched the gas fire, which burned in a controlled fashion, never changing. Fire wasn't like that. It was volatile and unpredictable, twisting with the wind, sucking energy out of the air. It was also, he knew, a particularly excruciating way to die. Hilary Bradley may have been blowing smoke his way with her story about Harris Bone, but she was right about one thing. If you were capable of burning up your wife and children, then you were the owner of a cold, dead soul, and you would feel little remorse watching the life flicker out of a girl's eyes on the beach.

  Then again, he'd felt no remorse himself watching Vivian die. Not then. Not until later.

  Cab got up restlessly and took his wine with him. He walked to the west end of the apartment and pushed open the glass doors that led to the balcony. He went outside, where the wind shrieked and cut at his face. The empty boat docks of the harbor were below him, and street lights glowed in haloes along the waterfront.

  He thought about Hilary Bradley and realized he was annoyed with her. He was used to being the smartest person in the room, and he had the sense that she was every bit as smart as he was. He didn't like it that she had put a finger squarely on his vulnerability without knowing anything about him. It also bothered him that he experienced a glimmer of jealousy at the idea that she was so deeply in love with another man. It was an unwelcome reminder that his own life was emotionally and sexually barren. When he did have sex, it was generally the end of a relationship, not the beginning. He'd even gone so far as to pay for sex on a few occasions when he was living overseas, in order to be free of any complications.

  'Cab.'

  He heard the voice, but he didn't move or look around, because he knew it wasn't real. It was just the echo of a ghost. Vivian had always had this way of wrapping her Spanish-tinged British accent around his name, so that it came from her lips like a prayer. She'd said it that way so many times. When she recognized his voice on the phone. When she was under him and her body was arching with one of her violent orgasms. When she was on her knees on the beach, pleading for her life. Begging him to spare her.

  Cab.

  That was the last word she'd ever spoken.

  She disappeared on a Tuesday.

  They had planned to meet for paella and Mahou at a street cafe north of the Diagonal, but Cab sat there alone for an hour, watching the crowds for her face. She never arrived. When he walked to her apartment six blocks away, everything personal to her had been stripped. The kitchens and bathrooms stank of bleach. It was as if she had never existed. She left nothing behind.

  The next morning, black smoke poured skyward from the shattered windows of the Estacio-Sants train station. Twenty-seven people died.

  The Spanish police needed only four hours to identify the terrorist behind the bombing. Cab knew he'd been played for a fool when he saw the CCTV feed from inside the station. The grainy footage showed Diego Martin, an American fugitive wanted for gang murders in Phoenix, arm in arm with Vivian Frost.

  Diego Martin, who had led Cab and the FBI on a chase to Barcelona. Diego Martin, who had used Vivian to spy on Cab.

  There had never been any love in Vivian's heart. Only sex and betrayal. Only lies.

  That night, Cab drove north. He brought his gun. He knew what no one else did; he knew where they'd gone. A few days earli
er, he'd found reservations for a rented house on a secluded beach near the rocky coast of Tossa de Mar. It was the ideal hideaway for two criminals on the run.

  Vivian and Diego.

  He arrived after midnight on one of the most serene nights imaginable. The gentle breeze off the Mediterranean was warm, the air was scented with flowers, and moonlight flooded the beach. He climbed down the sharp hillside to the sheltered cove and quickly realized that he wasn't alone by the still water. They were there. He could see them on the sand. Entwined. Vivian on top, her back to him, displaying an ivory expanse of naked skin sloping from her neck to the cleft of her buttocks. He heard the guttural noises from her throat, so intimately familiar to him, and even now, after everything, her abandon could arouse him. They were fifty yards away, in the wet sand, close enough for the surf to lap at their bodies.

  He lifted his gun as he walked closer. He thought he had the element of surprise, but he was young and out of his head with anger.

  Diego's hand moved with the speed of a snake. Cab dove into the surf as bullets screamed past his head. When he spun back with his own gun, Diego already had Vivian in front of him. His gun was at her temple. Diego lurched out of the sand, dragging Vivian with him.

  'You want to kill me,' Diego said, 'but you have to kill her first.'

  'Do you think that's a problem for me?' Cab asked.

  'I know this woman. I know what she does to you.'

  'Cab,' Vivian pleaded. 'Cab, I'm sorry. Let us go.'

  He stared at her. She was naked, her body lit up by the moonlight, shadows under her breasts. Streaks of sand clung to her damp skin. The natural thing would have been to fold her up in his arms and lower her to the beach and make love to her.