BAD DEEDS: A Dylan Hunter Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers) (8 page)

Sherry said, “Yeah, but you probably won’t run into them anymore. They’ll be heading home tomorrow or Friday.”

Not good. “
That’s too bad.” He took a last swallow from the mug, then dumped a couple of bucks on the counter. “Well, my cousin oughta be home from work by now, so I better push off.” He rose, stretched casually, nodded his goodbyes.

He kept the grin till he reached the door.

Dan Adair’s house on Higgins Hill Road commanded a bluff overlooking the Allegheny River. Like its owner, the dwelling was a combination of rural unpretentiousness and modern attitude. Its natural-wood exterior seemed of a piece with the surrounding trees, but rose in angular, contemporary lines. The western side of the home ended in a sharp triangular outcropping, a glassed-in porch that jutted over the embankment. It afforded a panoramic view of the river valley.

Hunter stood beside Adair at the window of that porch, sipping a superb Lagavulin single malt. Across the river, the setting sun rim-lit the deep green rolling waves of mountains. Standing here, where the panes of glass intersected, he felt as if he were at the prow of a ship. Adair, his lean legs planted apart, blue eyes trained on the horizon, looked like its captain.

He recalled what he’d read about the man in a magazine profile. Born and raised near Cincinnati, Adair studied petroleum engineering at the University of Texas in Austin. He then took a job in oil-and-gas exploration with a nearby start-up company. Adair had a knack for figuring out inventive solutions to difficult drilling problems and was promoted fast. But his dream wasn’t to work for somebody else. With savings from almost every paycheck, he scooped up company stock during its growth years. Eventually, he cashed out and used the proceeds as seed money to hire a first-rate geologist and open his own exploration and drilling outfit.

Adair borrowed heavily to lease mineral rights on promising land. But like most wildcatters, he struggled during the oil glut of the Eighties. Prices collapsed, wells tapped out, companies closed, and many petroleum engineers left the industry. Scrounging for cash, he sometimes contracted out his engineering and drilling services to larger companies. But with a young wife and baby daughter to support, he barely managed to meet the mortgage on their cramped, 900-square-foot ranch house.

Hunter watched Adair savor a slow sip of the Scotch. Traces of the battles he had endured were etched in the lines around his eyes and mouth.

In desperation, Adair tried out ideas that he read and heard about. He drilled one of his wells at a slant and hit a “payback” reservoir in a bed of naturally fractured limestone. That strike got his creditors off his back. And when he experimented with new horizontal drilling techniques on other wells, their impressive output attracted new investors.

Adair became a pioneer at combining horizontal drilling with fracking. This proved so lucrative that, had he been able to focus fully on emerging opportunities, he might now be a billionaire. But his momentum stalled for several years while he cared for his wife, who finally succumbed to ovarian cancer. The brutal loss also left him the single parent of a little girl. With his responsibilities and attention divided, Adair lost ground while his competitors forged ahead.

Now this man found himself in a new battle, this time with foes of a different kind. He hadn’t yet spoken of it, but Adair Energy’s future—and much more—rested on the precarious foothold that he had established here in the Allegheny National Forest.

From inside the kitchen behind them, Hunter could hear Annie and Adair’s second wife, Nan, laughing and chatting like old friends. In the darkening valley below them, scattered lights appeared in the homes along the river. Its surface had become a flaming ribbon, reflecting clouds ignited by the now-hidden sun.

“I can see why you love it here,” Hunter said quietly.

Adair held his gaze on the unfolding spectacle. “Did I say that?”

“Your eyes betray you.”

The man chuckled and faced him. “Well, it’s true. I’ve always loved being out in nature. The wilder, the better.”

“Your environmentalist enemies would be surprised to hear you say that.”

He took another sip. “That’s what I don’t get. You know, Dylan, until lately—since they’ve been trying to shut me down—I called
myself
an environmentalist. Hell, I even used to donate to environmental groups. Drillers like me, we love the environment. We do our damnedest to take care of it. Look”—he gestured with his glass at the world beyond the window—“and tell me why I’d want to ruin all that. I hate pollution as much as anybody.”

“But your critics say you’re, quote, ‘vandalizing natural vistas.’ That you’re ‘plundering the world’s precious resources.’”

“Which is total bullshit. We don’t ruin the natural landscape. As I told you, we restore it when we’re finished. And we don’t waste resources. Why would we? We can’t afford to. We even purify and reuse our waste water. We use nature responsibly.”

“I know, Dan,” Hunter said. “But to them, that’s the problem.”

Adair frowned. “That we use nature responsibly?”

“That you use nature at all.”

Adair was about to respond when they heard the sound of the doorbell.

Dawn Ferine stood atop the hill overlooking Queen Creek, where the path down to the camp joined the access road. Her gaze was fixed on the dazzling, shifting color patterns in the sunset sky above the Forest.

She always experienced her most intense sense of spirituality at the beginning and end of day—with the sun’s first kiss upon the sky in the morning, and with its parting kiss upon Gaea’s lips in the evening. Each day she stopped whatever she was doing at these two sacred moments. She paused to remind herself of the timeless enormity of the Cycles of Life, of the grand Ecosystem in which she and everyone and everything were just insignificant parts. This was her form of prayer: a daily ritual in which she always felt this overwhelming surge of
belonging,
experiencing her oneness with the Cosmos. Her prayer, at sunset and at dawn …

Dawn.

She recalled the day that she chose that name, not long after she met him
.
She shed the ugly, meaningless name of her birth—
Judith Hernstein.
It annoyed her that she even remembered it. How she hated the crude, harsh commonness of the name that her parents had hung upon the shy, lost child that she had been. But she was no longer adrift, and no longer that person, not anymore—not since she met her soul mate.

She shuddered, partly from the icy breeze, partly from the ecstasy of the moment, partly from her memory of the time when she held his hand and chose her new Self: one name to remind her of the start of day, the other to remind her of the beauty of Life, untouched and wild and free:

Dawn Ferine.

Her vision began to blur with tears. She knew she had to share this with him.

“Zak …”

She turned away from the luminous sky to look for him.

He stood about twenty feet away, his back to her, staring up the road into the distance. The mysterious black bag was on the ground at his feet.

“Zak …”

He raised his hand to his face to look at his watch, then said something under his breath; she could hear only the name “Rusty.”

She glanced back at the sun for an instant; its colors already were slightly muted.

“Zak!”

He spun and looked at her. “What?” he snapped.

It rattled her. She tried to hold onto the feeling.

“Zak … please come here for a moment. Share the sunset with me.”

He stared at her blankly.

She felt the familiar pang of anxiety rising once again. She walked toward him, but he had already turned his back and was looking up the road again.

“What in hell could be keeping him?” he muttered. She reached out a gloved hand to touch his arm—then hesitated and drew it back. Fearful to intrude on his thoughts.

“Zak. I just …”

He turned to her. “What? What’s the problem?”

“It’s just so …
spiritual.
I want us to share it.”

“Share what?” His voice cold and impatient.

“The sunset.”

He glanced up at the sky for a few seconds. Nodded.

“That
is
very pretty.” He smiled at her, his lips twisted from the swelling on his face. “It’s lovely, honey. Thanks for pointing it out.”

She didn’t know why she suddenly felt so hollow. Why she felt that touch of fear again.

He turned to look once again up the road. “I hope he didn’t get a flat.”

She licked her lips; her tongue ran over the sore puffy part that had split. “It’s what you said, Zak. Earlier today.”

“What did I say? What are you talking about?”

“That … that when you look at Nature, you stand humbled, with a sense of awe.”

“Oh that … I wondered what you meant.” He reached out his gloved hand to wipe away the tear on her cheek. She felt the coarse cloth crawl across her skin. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. But you can see I’m preoccupied. It’s really hard to enjoy nature when humans are screwing it up.”

“Well, can’t we stop once in a while, for a few minutes—and just appreciate it?”

His features tightened; so did his voice. “I suppose it’s a matter of priorities.” Then his expression softened. He shook his head slowly and squeezed her shoulder. “Sometimes, I wonder if you are tough enough for this war.”

A flash of light caught their attention. Headlights emerged from the west, around a bend in the tree-lined road.

“Finally!” Zak leaned over her and kissed her cheek. “I’ll be back in a few hours. Meanwhile, you go get yourself warm. And have something to eat, okay? You haven’t been eating enough.”

She nodded, saying nothing.

Rusty stopped his battered pickup where they stood. Zak hefted the satchel over and got in on the passenger side. Slammed the door. She stood aside as Rusty turned around in the intersection of the road and the path, grinding through the worn gears. Zak gave her a little smile, and a little wave.

Then she watched the truck accelerate away, back in the direction from which it had come. Watched until its tail lights vanished in the dark tangle of trees.

She walked slowly back down the path that led into the campsite.

She had asked him earlier where he was going. And what was in the bag. He laughed and ruffled her hair and said he and Rusty had to drive over to Tidioute and deliver something to some people. He reminded her of what he said this morning, about cells. “This is ‘need-to-know,’ Dawn. And you really don’t need to know about this stuff.”

She shivered as she walked, but only partly from the cold. The other part was the unsettling, nagging doubt that she still was not fully part of his world. And maybe never would be.

From the campsite, a dog-eared map steered them through the narrow, winding dirt roads—first west, then south to an intersection where they picked up East Hickory Road. The dying light of the sky clothed the surrounding trees in shrouds of deep shadows. After a few minutes, Rusty hit the brakes, and the old truck shimmied as it slowed.

“That must have been it. That little dirt path back there.”

Boggs peered ahead and pointed. “Okay, turn around at that wide spot near the little bridge.”

They saw no traffic on the isolated road, so Rusty took his time executing a K-turn. They came back north slowly, and Boggs told Rusty to kill the headlights and hug the narrow berm at the side of the road. They continued rolling past the break in the trees that marked the rutted driveway. After about twenty more yards, he had Rusty pull off onto a patch of scrubby grass and dead leaves.

“All right, let me go over it a last time.” Boggs said. “You stay here with your lights off and your walkie-talkie on. I’ll go in on foot and check out the place. If no one is home, I’ll signal you, get inside, and rig the bomb. If you see them coming home, warn me and I’ll get out of there, then circle back here through the woods.”

“Got it,” Rusty answered. “Just like what we did at that animal research lab in Michigan.”

Boggs remembered. When was that—five years ago? He had to smile. “You’re only bringing that up to remind me again how I almost got caught by that rent-a-cop.”

“And you would’ve—except for me.” Rusty's grin flashed faintly in the shadows. “I sure did save your skinny ass that night.”

“You won’t ever let me forget that, will you?” In truth, Rusty Nash had earned his trust years ago. Only one other ally had worked with him longer—or knew as many of his secrets.

Boggs hoisted the heavy black-canvas satchel from the floor to his lap. It contained the necessary tools and accessories, along with the pipe bombs and detonators. He turned up the collar of his Army field jacket, whose pockets were useful for actions like this one. Tugged his gloves tight. Pulled the black ski mask down over his face.

“Don’t go blow yourself up, now,” Rusty said, rapping him lightly on the shoulder.

“You know better than that.”

He opened the door and slid out. Closed it quietly behind him. He paused a moment, staring down the dark path that led back into the trees. Aware of the weight of the bag in his hand. Aware of the wool scratching the tender flesh of his bruised cheek.

Aware of the familiar rush of energy and excitement.

It never got old.

The crystal chandelier reflected off the dining room window like a spray of fireworks. A wood fire blazed and crackled in the large, pass-through fireplace, sharing its heat with the living room.

Dylan and Annie sat across the table from Adair and his wife. Nan Adair was a petite brunette in her mid-forties. She explained that, like her husband, she had been widowed for several years when “Danny” stopped by the Tionesta real estate office where she worked, trying to learn who owned the mineral rights to some local land.

“That was four years ago,” she said, looking at him. Their eyes told the rest of the story.

“Good thing she was a realtor,” Adair said, winking at her. “She got us one hell of a deal on this place.”

“Yes, I can see that you only married her for mercenary reasons,” Annie said, and they all laughed.