Crash Into You (22 page)

             
Using the disposable cell phone, he dialed the number for his contact at Verizon.   He stood up, pacing the floor like a jerk as the phone rang.  He’d been doing that a lot, it seemed.  Waiting for people.  Aimee.  Carlos.   This was not how the world was supposed to work.

             
The cheap disposable cell phone rang.  

             
“Yes?”  The voice of his Verizon contact was positively neutral.   A couple years ago, he’d been accused of credit card fraud.  Seth “accidentally” misplaced some files critical to the case. The Verizon employee now routinely provided Seth with the information he needed.  It was a lot easier than getting a search warrant.

             
“You were supposed to call an hour ago with the password,” Seth intoned.

             
“I was just about to call.  It’s R-E-D-exclamation point – 4-5.”

             
“You sure?”

             
“What do you mean am I sure?  That’s the password.”

             
He hung up and glanced at the time. Half past noon.  Bryan and Jake were at work.  Bryan was a lawyer and Jake was a banker, so they kept regular hours.  Seth walked to his front door and peeked outside.   He touched the gun on his hip, on point and alert in case Carlos appeared.

             
He stayed like that for a moment, waiting.   When he was sure it was all clear, he walked outside.  Seth dashed to the other side of Bryan and Jake’s house, keeping to the wooden fence along their driveway behind the house.  A blue Prius was parked in the carport – but that meant nothing.  They both took the Metro every day.

             
Seth quietly eased open the screen door and tried the knob.   Locked, as he expected.  He pulled out the small tool in his pocket and easily unlatched the deadbolt.  He held the knob for a few breaths, then eased the door open, waiting to hear the wail and shriek of an alarm.  Nothing but the little dainty footsteps of their stupid white dog.   She stood looking at him curiously.

Seth
stepped inside the foreign kitchen and quietly shut the door behind him.   He had never been inside their house before.  Aimee used to come over here for coffee a couple of times per week, but he put a stop to that. It drove him crazy trying to imagine what they talked about.   He believed that Aimee was discussing their personal, private business with those guys – and he didn’t like them knowing anything about his household.  Plus, he didn’t like them because they were gay.   It actually
angered
him.  It was disgusting, what they did.

             
With the little white dog following, he stepped inside an office and spotted a laptop on the black modern desk.   Perfect.   He heard an indistinct, muffled sound.  He looked at the dog, wondering if it had whined at him.  Had to be the dog or someone outside.

             
He opened the email program.   It asked for a password.   He typed in Red 45!

             
And there, in all its glory, was the item he was looking for.  Email from Aimee Baxter.   His blood was pumping with the spurts of adrenaline and the steady stream of anger that nourished him.  He felt pure gluttonous rage as he read:

All is well here.   I’ve sent a postcard to Kimberly, so she knows generally where I am.  I’m not willing to risk Seth finding me though.

So Kimberly knew where she was.  That was a start.  Bryan’s reply was less important, but he smirked when he saw that he had mentioned Seth:

             
Thank God you’re okay.  Seth has lost his mind.  We’ll cover for you.  Take care and let us know where you are when you can.

A long moan boomeranged off the walls upstairs. Seth listened, stock still.  Another moan.   He suddenly realized he was not alone in the house.  He pressed the power button of the computer and turned it off.  Then the noises increased.

             
“Yes…. God yes…”

             
The rage already boiling in his veins zinged through him like a pistol shot.   They were upstairs fucking.   Why was his cock suddenly at full salute?   His involuntary biological reaction only served to make him angrier.   He pressed his hand to his crotch, trying to make it go down as he began to creep back toward the door.  He was looking up the staircase when he stepped over the dog, catching its leg under his footfall.   The dog yalped loudly.

             
“Damn it!” Seth hissed.

             
“Did you hear that?” One of the voices rumbled from upstairs.  Seth heard footsteps treading down the stairs.  He flung open the door and ran as fast as his legs would take him up the driveway.  

             
“Seth?” someone called behind him.

             
He slammed his front door closed, locked it, and stood very still, his heavy breathing the only noise in the quiet house.

             
Oh fuck
.   He grit his teeth, shutting his eyes while he tried to get his breathing under control.   Would they confront him?   Were they actually going to bang on the door and ask him what he was doing in their house?  He’d love to see that, love to be confronted by those contemptible, disgusting faggots.   It would give him the perfect excuse he needed to beat them to a pulp.

             
He ran upstairs and shucked his pants.  Rage and sick sexual jealousy and some other dark emotion he couldn’t name bubbled inside him. He lay down on his bed and began to pump his cock with a tight fist.  As his release became inevitable, an unbidden image of what they might be doing next door popped into his head.   He hated himself for it, but he’d never had a more intense climax in his life.

At PDX, Seth rented a Chrysler and, following the Google maps he’d printed out before he left his office earlier in the day, drove the unfamiliar streets through the Portland suburbs to the Dunthorpe neighborhood where big houses lined wide, tree-lined avenues.  Kimberly and Rob’s house was at the apex of a secluded cul-de-sac, a wide, modern monstrosity that made Seth feel inadequate both times he had seen it.   When he got the money back from Aimee, he’d start to feel like he could compete a little better with douchebags like Rob and Kimberly.   The money was critical, but he also had plans for Aimee herself.   Leaving him was not forgivable.   The humiliation that woman had put him through would have to be answered.  But first things first.

             
Seth parked the rental car behind a gleaming Lexus so young it still had temporary tags.  Another reason to hate these stupid yuppies.

He knocked and rang the doorbell.

              A few seconds later, two blurred figures appeared behind the frosted glass in the cutouts of the mahogany door.   They peeked through the peephole and then there was some whispering and scuffling.

             
“Open the damn door, Kimberly,” Seth barked. 

             
Rob opened the door a crack, his body filling the space.  “What are you doing here?”

             
“Don’t be coy,” Seth said.  “I know Aimee is here.  I need to talk to her.”

             
“She isn’t here,” Rob replied.   “Go away.”

             
“Prove it.  Let me see,” Seth challenged.

             
Rob didn’t move aside like Seth expected.  “Get out of here, Seth.  Go away.”

Seth suddenly
pushed the door, forcing it into Rob’s face.   Seth used the moment of shock to push his way inside.   “Aimee!” he roared.

“She isn’t here,” Kimberly said, trying to see if Rob was bleeding from getting a door in the face.

Seth was already barging through the kitchen, hollering for Aimee.  

“Get out of here!” Kimberly
shrieked and grabbed his arm.   He flung her off him, sending her careening into the fridge.   On the black granite bar, a blast of color caught his attention.  A postcard.   

“I’m calling the police,
” Rob said through gasps; Seth was gratified to see that Rob’s nose was bleeding and broken.

Seth held up the postcard.  “
Found what I was looking for.”

Kimberly grabbed the phone and dialed 911.

“Montana, huh?  What on earth is she doing there?”

“That’s from Kimberly’s
college roommate,” Rob said smoothly.

Seth laugh
ed.  “You think I don’t know Aimee’s handwriting?”

Kimberly yelled into the phone, “He’s here now!  He won’t leave!”

Seth grabbed the phone out of her hand and threw it against the wall, where it knocked off a piece of art.

Rob grabbed the bigger man
by the arm and tried to maneuver him back toward the door.   Seth shoved him back.  Kimberly cowered behind her husband.  

“You touch my sister, I will kill you.”

He smiled.  It felt good to finally discharge some of the energy that had been building up since Aimee left.   He lunged toward her, but Rob stopped him with a brutal punch to the nose.  Momentarily stunned, Seth just looked at them, holding his cheek.

He was sick of getting hit in the face. 

“Fuck you both,” he finally said.   Knowing Portland police were on the way, he stomped out of the house.  

His hands were shaking as he turned the key in the starter.    He tried to get his breathing under control, knowing he needed to be clear-headed for this.    He had to get a plan together and look perfectly reasonable if he were actually stopped by Portland PD.

He drove the speed limit along the streets to the first place he saw to turn off.  Under the bright lights of a convenience store parking lot, Seth read the postcard, hating Aimee with white-hot hatred.  He wanted to burn holes in the postcard with his x-ray eyes, wanted it to singe her even in Montana.

Spanner, Montana, according to the postmark.

He tried to think over the pounding, chanting bloodlust in his mind.   He could find a hotel and get a plane in the morning.  But his body was humming with wild, random energy; he felt like he could drive there in one long stretch.   In fact, he was eager to do just that.   He checked the fuel gauge.  It was still full; he’d only driven from the airport.   He’d head to Montana tonight.  No time like the present.

             
But just as he put the car in reverse, a police cruiser pulled behind him, blocking him in.

Twelve

Guy Theriot
, the NTSB agent in charge of the Flight 134 investigation, glanced at his watch and winced.  He’d told his boss he would be late but this was really pushing it.   Francesca’s IVF treatments were causing him to lose a lot of time at work.  He felt vaguely guilty about it, but more guilty about not being able to do more for his wife.   It was another blow when they sat in the doctor’s office and were told that no, she wasn’t pregnant.   The latest round – their fifth – had been another failure.

             
“We’ll try again,” Guy said in the elevator, after it was finally over.  Francesca just looked at him with endless pain in her red-rimmed eyes.

             
Francesca skipped work altogether today to cry in bed with a stack of tabloid magazines and truffles.  It was the first time she’d checked out of work altogether, and it had alarmed him.  It had taken some time to make sure she was okay.  And now he was stuck on Interstate 70 because Denver was experiencing its first freak snowfall of the season and it seemed every fair citizen had forgotten how to drive.

             
By the time he made it to his office, he was feeling conspicuously late.

His desk was tidy: an inbox of folders, a pen set, a list of contact numbers pinned to the half-cube wall beside a photo of Francesca.  The red voicemail light was blinking insistently on his phone.  Shrugging off his coat, he sat down, grabbed a pen from his desk and a yellow legal pad, then keyed in his code.

              “Guy, its Kevin Black, FBI.   I’m about to send over a report to you but I wanted to give you a heads up about United 134.  Give a call when you get a second.”

             
Guy jotted the phone number and dialed.

             
“Glad you’re getting back to me,” Black said.  “I’m about to send over some info we got from the medical examiner over there in Boise.   The ME says there are two people missing.”

             
“What do you mean missing?”

             
“Their names are on the manifest but the investigators have found no DNA at the crash site.”

             
“Huh.”

             
“And those hundred dollar bills you found?  They’re counterfeit.  The Secret Service in Boise has been notified.”

             
“Holy crap,” Guy hissed.

             
“Yeah, those bills were beautiful.  The Secret Service said they were some of the best fakes they’ve ever seen.”