Ark Storm (26 page)

“Depends what. You askin’ me to kick someone’s ass? My buddies and I are always here.”

Gwen reached out, laid her hand on his huge one. “Thanks Dwayne. I know it. I hope I won’t ever have to call you on it. It’s information I want. Er, I have this friend—”

“Uh, uh, here we go. And she has a problem…”

“It’s not me, Dwayne. It’s a he. A former Marine. I get the feeling he also did some kind of Black Ops. Truth is, I’m not sure what he did.”

“He the one scaring the shit outta you?”

Gwen shook her head. “No. He doesn’t scare me.” Although not quite true, she told herself. There was something about Daniel Jacobsen that frightened her. It just happened to excite her at the same time.

“You want me to dig the dirt?” asked Dwayne, moving off the bench, squatting down before Gwen so he could eyeball her

“There might not be any dirt.”

“
Everyone
has dirt, you dig deep enough,” said Dwayne expansively.

“That’s a wholesome vision of mankind.”

“You saying different?” asked Dwayne, eyes narrowing. He loved verbal fighting with Gwen nearly as much as he did physical. She played dirty on both counts and could take insults as well as dish them out.

“No,” she conceded. “Anyway, can you do this?”

“He your boyfriend?”

“No. Not yet anyway.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why you asking me?” asked Dwayne, straightening up, shaking his legs out.

“’cause that’s it. Everyone has something wrong with them. He’s too perfect.”

“Now who’s got the screwed-up worldview?”

“Fine!” Gwen threw up her palms. “Me.”

“Must be something about him got you bothered.”

Gwen’s eyes went distant, pondering. “Money, maybe. Flash car, house on Seventeen Mile Drive, on a journalist’s salary.” She looked back up at Dwayne, towering above her. “And it’s just a feeling I get, that there’s a lot more to him than what’s visible.”

“Sounds like a dude!” exclaimed Dwayne, hands on hips, eyes beaming approval.

Gwen gave a soft chuckle. “He
is
. I just don’t want to make a mistake.”

“Life’s not worth living, in my view, if you’re not ready to screw it up time to time.”

“Enough with the homilies. Can you do it?”

Dwayne, looking thoughtful, ignored the barb. “No, but I know a man who can. Gimme the guy’s name.”

“Jacobsen. Dan Jacobsen.”

Dwayne nodded. “Gimme a few days. Now beat it.”

Gwen got to her feet as Charlie came out, immaculate in his
gi.
A few sessions with Dwayne seemed to have already put a spring into his step, lit his eyes with some new confidence. Gwen knuckle-punched him.

“Hey Charlie. Give him hell,”

The boy laughed. “Maybe in another life!”

“Hey, this one’s good. You got time on your side. Big, bad Dwayne doesn’t. Believe it!”

She left Charlie laughing and Dwayne cursing. She walked out to her car, shivering in the evening cool. Late October mists were swirling in from the sea, bringing with them the smell of the fish plant and the ocean: salt, with just a hint of putrefaction. Gwen put her car in gear, turned on the heater, and drove off for Seventeen Mile Drive. To Dan. She felt suddenly grubby, disloyal. Why couldn’t she just take Dan for what he was? Gorgeous, irresistible, and just let herself fall headlong into bed with him. Why did she have to look for monsters under that bed?

66

SEVENTEEN MILE DRIVE, TUESDAY EVENING

Gwen paid her nine-dollar entrance fee and drove through the gated entrance to Seventeen Mile Drive. It was now seven in the evening and the sun was setting. Amber light flowed through the trees, dappling the road as she accelerated away from the security kiosk.

She had always loved this place for its beauty and drama, for the just-glimpsed mansions which lay behind the high hedges, beyond the long sloping grass lawns. All that manicured elegance just yards from the cliffs, from the Restless Sea, as it was officially named. The whole place was pure poetry. She loved it for the forests of Monterey cypress. She drove through them now, the gnarled branches reaching up in a desperate but slow-fought race with their neighbors for the touch of the dying sun.

It was amongst those same cypress trees that Elise Rochberger had met her death, had been buried, had been unearthed. It was here too that Gabriel Messenger lived. And Daniel Jacobsen.

She found the driveway to his home. It was on the higher elevation of the seventeen miles of drive, on the sea side of the road. Gwen bet the views would be spectacular. Again she found herself wondering how a jobbing journalist had the means to live here.

She followed the driveway as it arced round a circular drive before veering off, away from a huge Spanish hacienda-style house to come to a stop before a small, two-story structure of stone and wood, built in a more modern, angular style.

Gwen exited her car and walked to the cottage. 127A. The heavy wooden door had an old brass knocker and an electronic doorbell. She tried the knocker, tried the doorbell. No one came. She tried again. Still no answer. She tried the handle. The door opened.

“Dan?” she called out, feeling a flash of apprehension. “Are you home?”

Her voice reverberated away to silence, to the silence of an unoccupied house, it felt like. But he’d said he’d be here. Gwen walked into the narrow hallway, flagged with wood, and out into a room flooded by light. A floor-to-ceiling window looked out over the foaming ocean. Gwen strode up to it and gazed out. The view
was
spectacular. The cottage was only a hundred feet or so above the sea, and from its perch it seemed as if every thundering wave would shake it to its foundations. The lowering sun gilded the frothing waves. Above them seagulls dipped and squalled, an aeronautic riff to the day’s end. A distant bank of clouds meeting the fading horizon of sea seemed to mark the edge of the world. There was an air of enchantment to the place, to the evening. A tremor ran through Gwen. All her senses felt supercharged.

She turned her attention to the interior. On one side she could see a cozy, eat-in kitchen. On the other, a spiral staircase led to the upper floor, which she supposed housed the bedrooms.

The house was neat, clean, warm, and lived-in. Books crammed the bookcase that lined one wall. Papers were stacked neatly in an in-and-out tray on the small desk that faced the other wall. The faint smell of coffee lingered, a paperback lay closed with a marker extending from its curling pages: Korda’s biography of Lawrence of Arabia.

Gwen smiled as she sighted a simple wooden-framed photograph. She picked it up: three men in army fatigues, desert DPM, arms draped over each other’s shoulders, tanned, dusty-faced, smiling like they were immortal—Dan and two friends. Was one of them the friend who had been blown up, right next to Dan?

“Dan,” she murmured, softly replacing it. “Where are you?”

She walked on through the house, through the yellow-painted kitchen, out through the back door and onto the deck.

Immediately she saw another building off to her left, a small wooden barn. She could see that the big double doors were thrown open. And she could here grunts coming from it. Rhythmic, guttural grunts. Two sets of them.

She walked toward them, mind racing. She stopped before the open doors, and just looked.

Dan Jacobsen stood naked from the waist up, the wicked scar daggering up his side. He was clad in shorts and he was hefting weights. Huge weights. His body glistened with sweat, and, obviously well into his workout, his muscles were pumping. Next to him stood another large, well-muscled man, hefting weights of his own. Gwen recognized him from the photograph. They both seemed utterly intent on their exercise. Gwen wondered if they’d noticed her.

They finished their circuit and in unison laid down their weights and turned to her. They’d noticed.

“Gwen,” said Dan, on a heavy outbreath that made his voice deeper than normal. He gave her his crooked smile. Gwen smiled right back. He leaned in, kissed her. She could smell his sweat: salty, musky. It smelled good. Some men did. Some men didn’t. Maybe it was a hormone thing, a gene thing. If their genes were good for yours, then they smelled good to you.

“This is my buddy, Spence.”

“Hi, Spence,” said Gwen, shaking his hand.

“Gwen.” He smiled briefly, gave her an appraising look. Gwen got the feeling he knew exactly who she was.

“Care to join us?” asked Dan.

“Already worked out.”

“Another time then.”

“Sure. You’ve got some good kit here,” said Gwen, eyeing the free weights, the pulley system, Bosu balls, the VersaClimber and rowing machine. And by the evidence before her, he clearly made use of it.

“We’ll be another fifteen minutes, give or take. Make yourself at home. Cold drinks in the fridge.”

Gwen was glad to get away. She didn’t think she would have been able to stand there just watching him without wanting to take a bite out of him
. And that is a bad idea,
she murmured to herself.
Let me count the reasons …

She opened the surprisingly well-provisioned fridge: steaks, salads, berries, six pack of something called Liberty Ale;
BREWED IN
S
AN
F
RANCISCO
,
said the label. She popped one open and ambled back onto the deck. She leaned against the table, sipping the ale, enjoying the yeasty hop flavor, gazing at the sea. She caught the flare of red, the briefest flash of green as the sun slipped below the horizon. Then the color leached quickly from the sea, all blue gone, leaving dark turbulence. She stared at it, sipping and thinking.

The men sauntered up through the gloaming. Long, easy strides, loose limbed and relaxed. They’d pulled on t-shirts and sweatshirts against the chill that fell with the quickening dusk. Gwen could hear the ocean and the crickets starting up in the grass, then the slosh as Dan opened two more ales. He carried out the bottles in one hand. In the other he held a small bag.

Spence drained his ale in one long draft. He was acting all casual, but Gwen could feel him scrutinizing her. There was something about him that made her wary.

He set his empty bottle on the table.
What, was she supposed to take it in for him?

“Shower time,” he declared in a slow, Southern drawl. He nodded to Gwen, smiled at Dan, then ambled past, a rolling athletic gait.

“One of my best buddies,” said Dan, as his friend disappeared into the kitchen.

“I saw the photo. Three army boys.”

“Marines. We were in the Marines. Did three tours together.”

“Afghanistan?”

“Hm,” Dan’s eyes went distant for a moment. Gwen wondered if he were seeing the images that flashed across her TV screen: the sand, the rocky mountains, the flashes of gunfire, the thud of explosions. His eyes came back to her. Hard. Unreadable.

“Quite a place you have here,” observed Gwen, suddenly ill at ease, looking for a subject change, clumsily grabbing one.

“Not bad, is it? Seems we both lucked out on the real estate stakes.”

Gwen caught the edge in his voice, tilted her head to contemplate him.

“Your point being?”

“We both live in multimillion-dollar properties without the apparent means to afford them.”

“Ah.”

“You were digging, Boudy, in your oh-so-subtle way.”

Dan said it with a smile, but still the edge was there. Gwen remembered the sense of honor she had picked up when she’d first met him at Stanford with Reilly.
I don’t need threats to keep secrets;
honor and sedition, cocky grin and hard eyes, openness and secrets, surfer and Marine … she still didn’t know who he was, couldn’t get a handle on him. Most people she could peg, could figure out who they were and what they wanted, but not him. Was it her desire that stopped her seeing or was it that Dan did not want her to see?

She shrugged, affecting indifference. “So call me the Curious Cat.”

“I’d rather not. We all know what happened to her.”

Gwen smiled. “I got no plans to die for a while yet.”

“My grandfather died,” said Dan, startling Gwen. “Six months ago. He left me this place.”

Gwen felt herself scrambling to keep up. There were too many undercurrents swirling around: the slightly hostile friend, the edge in Dan’s voice, the warmth and the cold, the desire …

“You were close?” she asked.

“Very. Closer than to my parents.”

“I’m sorry,” said Gwen softly.

Dan frowned. Gwen noted that, like her, he disdained sympathy.

“My father’s a lawyer, my ma does the whole society shtick. Grandpa was an entrepreneur, made a ton of money. The big house you drove past was his main residence. This place belonged to his staff.” He smiled. “Hell of a perk.”

“So did your parents inherit the big house? Is that where they live?” Gwen glanced in the direction of the mansion. She really wasn’t in the mood to meet Mama.

Dan gave a grim smile, softened by a glint of amusement.

“They expected to. The old man left it to a veteran’s charity. They’ve put it on the market. The vets can do a lot with the cash from that big old place.”

“So he wasn’t close to your parents?” asked Gwen.

“Not really. They were very anti my going into the Marines.
Not the kind of thing a boy from our sector of society does,
I quote. I thought
fuck that
. Grandpa thought
fuck that,
” Dan laughed. “He told ’em so too. He was behind me. Totally supportive. Remember, he’d lost his other son on Nine-eleven.”

“You miss him,” stated Gwen.

Dan turned his eyes on her. For once they were unveiled, no cockiness, no hardness, just pain.

“Yeah, I miss him,” he said simply.

Gwen knew how that felt, didn’t offer any homilies about it getting easier. The rawness went, the longing never did. “Where do your parents live?”

“San Fran. Nob Hill, of course.”

“You see them?”

“A little. We’re cordial.”

Gwen winced.

Dan drained his bottle, got to his feet. “I’m gonna get another. Can I get you one?”