“Which brings us to CarboNot,” Hunter said. “What have you learned about any possible links between that company and WildJustice?”
“The connections are attenuated. The folder contains background on CarboNot’s principals, staff, and some of its investors. I have run a database query. One possibility is the CarboNot CEO, Damon Sloan. Also, Avery Trammel is known to have invested significantly in CarboNot and also is a donor to and trustee of Nature Legal Advocacy. Both men lived and worked in Boston during periods that overlap with the known presence of Zachariah Boggs. And both men have reputations for ruthlessness.”
“Trammel,” Annie said. “He’s the billionaire who supports all those left-wing causes, right?”
“That’s the guy,” Hunter said. He turned back to Wonk. “Anything more?”
“I shall continue to work on it.”
“Just follow the money.”
Wonk looked around his upscale apartment and smiled. “I always do.”
He bent forward. Pressed puffy hands that looked like small catcher’s mitts against thighs that looked like fallen tree trunks. Then rocked several times and pushed up to his feet. He stood wobbling for a few seconds before gaining his balance.
“If that is all for now,” he said, panting, “I believe I shall have a look at the present you brought me.”
They were back in the elevator before they spoke.
“Dylan …” she began, then stopped.
He looked down at her. Involuntarily visualized what had almost happened to her. He placed his hands on her arms.
“If only I had known his history, the other day at the diner—” He stopped, seeing her stricken look.
“Dylan—let it go.”
“I’m trying, Annie.”
THIRTEEN
The aroma of vegetable soup wafted into his face from the steaming kettle suspended from a tripod over the campfire. Strands of smoke curled around him and rose aloft, dissipating into a sky the same color.
Rusty was enjoying both the aroma and the fire’s warmth when he noticed Zak emerge from a distant tent, spot him, then head his way. He paused his stirring; he could tell from Zak’s stride and the look on his face that something was wrong.
“Marcy, take over for a minute, okay?” he said to one of three women who sat at a nearby camp table, peeling potatoes. He handed her the big wooden spoon and walked off to intercept Zak away from the others.
As his friend approached him, the strain on his face was even more obvious.
“Hey, Zak. What’s up?”
“I asked one of the kids with a radio to tune in to the local news and let me hear if anything interesting was going on.”
“And?”
“Nothing.”
A chill breeze cut across the clearing. Zak jammed his bare hands deep into the pockets of his field jacket. He continued.
“I had Jimmy and Sarah visit a few stores this morning and chat up the clerks for local gossip. Our action at the diner was mentioned several times. But nothing about …” He looked around, as if wary that his voice might carry. “You know.”
Rusty nodded slowly. “Yeah, it’s been, what? Three days?”
“I rigged it in the cabin Wednesday night. Today is Saturday. If it had worked, we should have heard something about it by now.”
“Maybe it did, but nobody knows yet. That place is isolated.”
“With what I used, there should have been a fire,” Zak said. “That was part of the plan. But if the cabin went up, it would have been all over the news.”
“Well, maybe they never came back there … Do you want me to go take a look?”
Zak stared at him, those dark eyes of his not blinking. Like—what do they call them?—like black holes.
“We’ll both go, Rusty,” Zak said. “I may need to check things out. But after dark. I’ll meet you at your truck at six-fifteen.”
She finally pulled back from him, laughing. “You’re the third man who’s kissed me like that this week.”
“What?” Hunter said, surprised.
“First Brad Flynn, then Dylan Hunter, and now … what did you say your name was, sailor?”
He laughed, too. “Yes. Now you get to sample Vic Rostand—you promiscuous hussy.” He took her coat and hung it on the rack near the front door. “So how were your morning meetings?”
Her smile died. “Meeting, singular. With Grant. He’s worried.” She hesitated, then sighed. “He thinks we may have another mole.”
It shocked him. “Two moles in the CIA, in one year?”
“That’s why he needed to see me so soon. Next week he and I have to hit the ground running and launch another investigation, all over again.” Her face brightened. “But for the rest of the weekend, I don’t want to think about any of that. Why don’t you show me around?”
The house on Connor’s Point stood midway along a narrow, mile-long peninsula that poked out into a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. Located east of Annapolis, across the Bay Bridge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, it still was only an hour’s drive from Washington. The Bay Bridge Airport, where he kept his private plane, was fewer than ten minutes away.
Hunter explained how he had purchased the brick Colonial home four years earlier, under the Victor Rostand alias, as part of his secret plan to leave the Agency and drop off the grid. He led her through the front parlor, dining room, den, small kitchen and breakfast nook, then out onto the enclosed back porch that faced the marsh. Upstairs, he showed her the four bedrooms—one of them transformed into his office, another his library. In the master bedroom they found Luna sprawled on the bed’s comforter.
“So there you are, you lazy girl!” Annie said. The cat sniffed her extended hand and closed her eyes while she scratched her head. Then Annie went over to gaze at the marsh through a sliding glass door that led out to a miniature balcony.
“It’s charming here, Dylan.”
“The rooms are much smaller than what you’re used to in Falls Church.”
She turned to him. “But this is so cozy … You know, I was cooped up in the car for an hour and a half on the way over here. I could use a walk now.”
“Sure,” he said. “Okay, Luna, you stay here and protect the house.”
He meant it as a joke. But Annie looked serious as she said: “I’m sure she will.”
It was much warmer here than it had been in Pennsylvania, even this late in the day. The sun hung low over the marsh as they walked down the quiet street, hand in hand, toward the northern end of the peninsula. He pointed out that the homes on his side of the street abutted the marshland, while those on the eastern side enjoyed open water.
“Why didn’t you choose the water view?”
“I like the marsh. We have every kind of bird and critter out there. Blue herons, geese, red-winged blackbirds, mockingbirds, ospreys diving for fish. The occasional bald eagle. I’ve had rabbits, deer, and foxes in the backyard. The foxes even dug a den there last year, at the edge of the water.”
He felt her squeeze his hand. “I’ve seen you in the forest, and now here. You’re a real nature-lover, Dylan Hunter.”
He heard puzzlement in her tone. “That surprises you?”
“All things considered—yes,” she said. “I wouldn’t have expected you to be an environmentalist.”
He paused at a break between two homes to view the sunset. The sun was a big red disk now, almost touching the tops of the waving grasses in the distance.
“Loving nature isn’t the same thing as being an environmentalist.”
“No?”
“No.” He pointed at the flaming sky. “Environmentalists think there’s beauty out there. And meaning.”
He waited while she took in the sight. Watched her brow wrinkle. “You don’t think that’s beautiful or meaningful?”
“You didn’t quite hear what I said, Annie. I said: Environmentalists think beauty and meaning is out there. But it isn’t ‘out there.’” He pointed at her eyes. “It’s in there.”
“The beauty and the meaning are in your eyes, love. In our eyes. Without us here to watch that, it’s nothing but solar rays and weeds. Without us, the entire universe is just clusters of meaningless stuff. It’s our awareness of the world, our interpretation of it, that gives it beauty and meaning.”
“‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ then.”
“More than that. Without an intelligent beholder, there is no beauty in nature. And no meaning.”
“That’s what Vic Rostand, Nature-Lover, says. But environmentalists say …?”
“That beauty can somehow exist without our eyes to see it. That meaning can somehow exist without our intelligence to make sense of things. That nature is somehow ‘valuable in itself’—without anyone to value it.”
He draped his arm around her shoulder and they watched the red disk sink slowly into the dark grasses. A blue heron rose suddenly into the air, a sharp angular silhouette against the russet sky that skimmed gracefully across the shimmering water.
“I never thought of it like that,” she said, her voice soft, her hand tight on his arm. “But then again, I didn’t major in political science at Princeton.”
“I didn’t learn that at Princeton,” he said. He thought about it. “I guess I learned it from my dad.” He watched the earth swallow the last fiery curve of the disk, and added: “I learned most of the important things in my life from Big Mike.”
They remained quiet on the way back to the house. No traffic interrupted their walk down the lightly traveled street. Around them, warm yellow light poured from the rectangles of neighboring windows; overhead, a few cold white stars winked in the dark blue field.
“I wanted you to see this place. While I still have it.”
She stopped. “You’re planning to sell it?”
He nodded.
“But why, Dylan? Why would you want to get rid of it? You told me you love it out here.”
“You want me to cut the strings to my past, don’t you?”
“Hey, Vic!”
They looked down the street in the direction of the female voice. Hunter saw his next-door neighbors, Jim and Billie Rutherford, in their front yard. Jim gripped one end of a leash; on the other end a puppy strained to run in their direction.
“Remember,” he whispered, “It’s ‘Vic Rostand’ and ‘Annie Forrest.’”
They walked over to the middle-aged couple. Hunter performed the introductions while trying futilely to fend off the golden retriever pup, a fuzzy blond ball that bounced and rolled around his feet. He gave it up and bent to tussle with it. Jim explained that they’d just bought the pet a week earlier and that her name was Happy.
“No kidding,” Hunter said, letting the little dog chew his fingers enthusiastically.
“It’s so nice to meet you,” Billie said to Annie. “Vic has told us nice things about you—and your cat.”
“What? Oh. Yes. My cat,” she said, shooting a look at Hunter. “Luna has taken quite a fancy to Vic. In fact,” she added, dead-pan, “I honestly don’t know how we’d live without her.”
“So how did you two meet?” Jim asked.
Hunter jumped in. “We were both standing in a check-out line.” He smiled at Annie. “I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ask for her phone number.”
“He was very persistent,” Annie said. “I’m still not quite sure what I’ve gotten myself into.”
“Well, I can tell you’re well suited for each other,” Jim said. “If you’re going to be around for a few days, we’ll have to invite you over for dinner.”
After another moment of pleasantries, Hunter and Annie left them with their puppy and returned to his house. As they hung up their coats, he spoke first.
“You see? I can’t be myself here. To all these neighbors, I’m a traveling marketing consultant named Vic Rostand. Just as to everyone in Pennsylvania, I’m a reclusive Iraq vet named Brad Flynn. And now, whenever you are around either of those guys, you can’t be Annie Woods, either.”
“I have to admit, I don’t like the prospect of hiding forever behind aliases. Pretending to be people we’re not.”
“Which is why I have to sell this place. And the cabin. Leave it all behind. Jettison all the aliases and cover stories, and become only Dylan Hunter.”
“Is that what’s going to happen?”
He understood what she was really asking. “You mean, am I retiring from the vigilante business? I never meant it to be a career, you know.”
Her expression remained solemn. “But as I said the other day: You are easily provoked.”
He moved close. Felt her warm curves press against his body.
“Then I guess I’ll just have to learn to control myself.”
She looked smug. “You don’t feel as if you’re doing a good job of that right now.”
“Oh. Well, that’s different,” he said. “Which gives me an idea. What do you say we go kick Luna off the bed?”
He bent to greet her lips with his.
Rusty parked the truck in the same place as he had on Wednesday night. Boggs got out and moved through the trees, rather than up the driveway. As he approached the cabin, he saw no parked cars. And the cabin door looked intact and closed.
Maybe Rusty was right. Maybe they came back here that night, and one of them just got into the other car, and they both drove off without ever entering the cabin.
Then he remembered the cat.
No, that didn’t make sense. They wouldn’t leave without the cat.
The place was dark. He didn’t think anyone was inside—how could they be?—but he approached and circled it cautiously, just in case. He reached the window on the right side and peeked in. Seeing nothing, he risked flicking on the flashlight.
The boxes and bags he’d seen on the floor three nights ago were gone. He played the beam across the floor and walls. The place was completely empty.
But how?
The angle made it impossible to see the cabin door from the side window, so he continued around to the back. Then stopped and stared, disbelieving, at the sight of a rectangle of plywood nailed in place across the lower broken half of the window.
He stood on tiptoes, barely managing to peer over the plywood. He aimed the flashlight beam into the room through the upper unbroken panes, toward the spot above the door.
“Holy shit, Zak!” Rusty exclaimed when he entered the truck. “You looked totally spooked.”
He sagged in the car seat. His head, jaw, and hand were throbbing again. He closed his eyes.
“The cabin,” he muttered. “It’s completely cleaned out. Like nobody had ever been in there.”
“But … what about—”
A flash of fury tore through him. His eyes snapped open and he whipped around to face him.
“The bomb is gone, Rusty! Gone. Don’t ask me how—I don’t know! I don’t know how they possibly could have avoided setting it off. But it’s gone—and so are they.”
He flopped back against the seat, closing his eyes again. Rusty fell silent, leaving him alone with the dull rumble of the idling engine, the steady rushing noise of the heater’s blower, and an image floating in his mind: the cold, savage face of a red-bearded guy named Brad.
The man had looked and fought like a demon. Now, impossibly, he had survived and vanished, like a ghost …
As if reading his thoughts, Rusty said, “No wonder you look spooked.”
FOURTEEN
“Thanks for agreeing to see me on such short notice,” Hunter said to the three people facing him across the conference table.
“We’re used to dealing with newspaper deadlines,” Gavin Lockwood said. “And we’re delighted that the Inquirer is interested in the results of our new study. By the way, I hope you enjoyed the tour of our offices by our receptionist.”
“It certainly was interesting,” Hunter said, his eyes wandering around the glassed-in conference room to the space outside. “Sunlight pouring in
through all these windows and skylights. Plants in every cubicle. And your lobby display—I’ve never seen a work of art consisting of ivy growing up an interior office wall.”
Lockwood’s easy grin made him look even more boyish, despite his white hair. “We at Nature Legal Advocacy like to be reminded constantly about our mission—about what is most important to us. That’s why bringing in a lot of green from the outside has been a priority.”
“Well, you’ve certainly been successful at doing that,” Hunter replied. He saw Lockwood’s grin waver, so he offered his own and continued. “Nature Legal Advocacy is widely regarded to be the single most effective environmental organization in Washington.”
Lockwood smiled again, relaxing. “Environmental litigation, lobbying, media outreach, congressional testimony, publishing research reports and scientific studies—yes, we do it all.”
Hunter glanced down at his notepad. “Let me see if I have the basic facts right. I understand that you have an annual budget of over one hundred million dollars, about forty percent of which is devoted to energy issues.”
“That’s right. We’re actively fighting the infrastructure that supports production and use of fossil fuels. That’s why we litigate and lobby against such things as environmentally intrusive pipelines, refineries, coal mining, and shale drilling for oil and natural gas.”
“To do all that, you maintain a staff of—what?—three hundred lawyers, scientists, media people, and other specialists, in offices all around the country.”
“Also true. And our staff is the best.” Lockwood nodded at the two people flanking him at the table. “Lars and Wendy are stellar examples of the kind of talent we attract.”
As the man began to summarize their backgrounds, Hunter studied each of them more closely.
BAD DEEDS: A Dylan Hunter Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers) Page 12