Just Evil (23 page)

He toyed with her lip with his teeth, nipping and urging her
to open, until he felt her quiver. A yearning glaze settled in her eyes. He
deepened the kiss, plunging headlong until he lost all thought of anything but
her.

The frigid water did nothing to cool his need; he
reluctantly released her. She shimmied toward the boat and he followed.
Squeezing the water from her nose, she shook her hair back and said, “That’s it
for me. What about food? I’m starving. Nothing like a swim to build up the
appetite.”

Yeah, Jake thought, and nothing like working up a different
kind. He’d just have to suffer.

But he wasn’t happy about it.

When Kit reached the boat she climbed the ladder onto the
deck where she’d left her clothes. With Jake right behind her, he pulled out
several dry towels from a storage locker then pointed to the outdoor shower,
turned on the water. “Get some of that salt off your skin.”

She gave him a quick look before turning to stand under the
running spray to wash off. Jake stepped into the spray directly behind her
still wearing his swim trunks.

She felt him behind her, felt the heat of his body, the
sexual tension hanging in the air between them, sensed what was going to happen
before he actually touched her. When he did, when he reached for her, she
turned and all but melted into his wet chest like ice in August.

He wrapped his arms around her. Their bodies touched. They
went from slow slide to a fast hot, molten furnace. The air sizzled. By the
time he deepened the kiss, her bones had turned liquid from head to toe.

One of them moaned.

He shut off the water and leaned his frame against the tile
behind him for support. Kit kept her arms wrapped around him, rubbing her hand
along hard-toned flesh. She put her lips to his, opened her mouth. His mouth
devoured. One hand snuck around the back, unhooked the clasp, and began an
exploration of her breast, settling on a ripe nipple, tweaking the peak between
thumb and forefinger while the other hand probed beneath the bikini bottom,
fingers reaching damp heat. “God, I’ve spent a year missing you.”

Just then, a loud static crackle from the boat’s radio broke
the moment. A frantic SOS call filled the air. “Mayday, mayday, this is
Wind
Dreamer
we’re taking on water, going down; we need help. Somebody help,
over.”

They bolted apart. Dripping wet, he ran to the controls,
while Kit grabbed for her clothes. “It’s a distress call.” Once he reached the
helm, he adjusted some instrumentation on the control panel, and then picked up
the radio. “Roger,
Wind Dreamer
, we copy. This is
Sea Warrior
.
Give me your position, over.”

Dead air, then static before finally they heard the voice
rattle off GPS coordinates. “Roger that,
Wind Dreamer
we have your
position and understand the situation. Will radio your position to the Coast
Guard. We’re en route to your location, ETA approximately ten minutes. Can you hold
on ten minutes? Over.”

Breaking up now, the voice sounded panicked. “…will
try…we’re going down fast…don’t know how much longer…radio…will work…over.”

Jake started the motor and didn’t bother raising the sails,
turning the boat 180 degrees southward and to the east. He placed the call to
the Coast Guard, passing along the GPS coordinates for the
Wind Dreamer
,
hoping the Coast Guard would get there ahead of them.

Kit handed him his shirt, and he handed Kit the binoculars,
telling her, “Look for any movement in the water, a capsized boat, a raft,
anything floating. Keep an eye out for debris of any kind.”

Five minutes out, scanning the horizon with the binoculars,
Kit spotted a dot in the distance, a speck in the sky closing in on the
Sea
Warrior
from a northwesterly direction. She pointed to it, realized it was
a helicopter; and Jake told her, “Let’s hope that’s the Coast Guard.”

But in spite of her constant scan of the horizon, Kit still
didn’t see a boat in distress or anything moving up and down on the water. Soon
Kit watched as the helicopter overtook the
Sea
Warrior
, bypassing
them, heading in a southeasterly direction. Jake followed the chopper’s path,
grateful the Coast Guard had shown up first.

Finally, in between the swells, bobbing in the water, Kit
spotted something that looked like a boat turned sideways, and shouted, “There.
Over there. There’s a small boat.” As Jake veered that way, she told him, “I
don’t see anyone on board, or anyone in the water, though.”

As they got closer, Jake could see the sloop was old and
listed noticeably. Even though he didn’t see anyone in the water, he knew they
could have drifted with the tides.

They watched as the helicopter circled the capsized boat. As
the
Sea Warrior
drew within a hundred feet, the sound of an explosion
pierced the air, knocking Jake and Kit backward to the deck. A huge ball of
fire sent flames skyward. Black smoke engulfed them. As they picked themselves
up off the deck, debris began to rain down on both of them.

Hours later, after filing his report at the Coast Guard
station, Jake went in search of Kit. As he wandered the hallway looking for
her, he remembered the words Petty Officer Mac Brown had told him, “If you’d
been fifty feet closer to that old boat, you and that pretty lady of yours
might have been blown to bits. That sloop was a derelict, unregistered. It
certainly wasn’t the
Wind Dreamer
. But you did the right thing, you
responded to what you thought was a legitimate distress call.”

So they’d reacted to a bogus signal from a boat that didn’t
exist.

It didn’t make any sense. And if they’d been seconds faster,
arrived sooner, they’d be toast right about now. Could the whole thing have
been staged for their benefit?

He couldn’t prove it, but he was sure of it. Had the intent
been to scare them? Or something far worse, and for what purpose?

He found Kit curled up sound asleep on a bench in the
hallway. He bent down, rocked on his heels in front of her to watch her sleep.
Awake, the woman was a dynamo, talking, energetic. Asleep, she made such a
peaceful, serene picture; he hated waking her. He couldn’t help but chuckle to
himself; this was the quietest she’d been all day. If he woke her…

His ringing cell phone did it for him. At the sound, she
stirred, waking from a sleepy daze. When she realized Jake was there with her,
she sat upright all at once and put her arms around his shoulders, felt the
tension in him. He touched his fingers to her cheek and simply smiled at her.
The ringing phone persisted and he answered it in his usual brusque manner,
saying merely, “Boston.”

“Someone hacked our system,” Dylan informed him on the other
end.

Jake asked the obligatory questions. Did we lose any data?
Was their client information compromised? Was it virus related? If so, where
did it attack first?

When he hung up, he’d resigned himself to a long night ahead
and wrapped his arms around Kit, telling her, “Baby, as much as I’d like to
finish what we started this afternoon, it looks like I’ve got another crisis at
work. I’ll take you home. You look wiped.”

Even at two in the morning, high in the Hollywood Hills,
the blistering heat that had gripped the city of angels for most of the summer
refused to let go. The thick night air, just as hot and humid as it had been
before the sun went down, hung heavier now that the car was approaching ranch
country, that forgotten part of L.A. where barns once outnumbered studios.

Even with the windows rolled up on the sleek Mercedes,
the earthy smells of manure managed to drift inward and penetrate the air
conditioning cranked to max.

As the vehicle climbed higher, zipping along through the
canyons, hugging the curves of the winding blacktop, rock music blared from the
radio with Mick hoping you’d guess his name. The music had their blood pumping.
But it was the mix of amphetamines and cocaine running through their systems
that gave them that extra kick they needed to do the job, a job they’d planned
since last spring.

As the Benz picked up speed, roared past the weathered
sign marking the turnoff—barely more than a wide spot in the road—the driver
missed the turn and threw out a string of profanity. For the next few seconds,
the sound of grinding gears popping into Reverse replaced the chirp of crickets
that hummed along the roadside as the vehicle backed up, squealing the tires in
protest.

When the driver tried to squeeze through the opening,
make the narrow turn, the front bumper clipped the rural mailbox, leaving the
metal canister hanging sideways in a twisted heap. But the driver never
bothered to hit the brake. Instead, with the accelerator gunned to the floor,
the car lurched forward, shooting along the long, unlit driveway like a
missile, kicking up gravel, sending sharp pings into the car’s underbelly.

By the time the vehicle screeched to a stop mere feet
from the side of an isolated ranch house, the clock in the car read 2:35.

The old couple, asleep inside the house, had less than
thirty minutes to live.

The car doors flew open and two people got out, bickering
nonstop all the way up the walk to the porch until one of them shoved a key
into the front door lock. They stepped inside the darkness into a tidy living
room made darker by paneled walls and ugly brown carpeting. Stumbling around in
the blackness, one of them bowled over a lamp and the other one caught the
thing before it crashed to the floor.

“Do you think you could have remembered a fucking
flashlight?”

“Don’t start with me. I might have if you hadn’t been in
such a damned hurry to leave the house. We don’t need a flashlight. Just flip
on the lights, they’re dead to the world, remember? Could we just get this over
with? I’m sick of listening to you talk it to death, sick of listening to you
bitch.”

“Me? It’s you who complains about every little thing.”

“Like hell. Why is it you never give me credit for
anything? Wasn’t it my idea to drug the old farts’ tea with sleeping pills
earlier? If we do this right, they’ll never wake up; it’ll be a piece of cake.”

“More like taking candy from a baby.”

They snickered like school children.

Completely at home in their surroundings, they showed no
concern for waking the old couple as they entered the tidy but outdated
kitchen. One of them reached to flip on the light switch, looking around in
disgust. “Look at this dump. This place must be fifty years old. Can you
believe people actually live like this?”

“Well, not for long, huh?”

That made them start giggling again. They began pulling
open kitchen drawers, digging around until one of them let out an excited
squeal at finding a large butcher knife. A gloved hand brought it down in a
wide arch as the sharp blade carved air in a practice swing. 

“Perfect. You ready?”

“I still have to load the gun.”

“You should have done that already. For chrissakes…”

“Look, I’ve never actually fired one before, just handled
a prop. I told you that. And this is one of those big ones, a .357.”

“Fine. I’ll be down the hall. I knew you’d flake on me.”

Leaving in a huff, the one with the knife left the
kitchen and walked down an unlit hallway using the wall as a guide, heading
toward the master bedroom.

Once inside the room, moonlight framed the window,
casting eerie silhouettes on the walls. But the intruder never noticed.
Standing next to the man’s side of the bed, the shadowy figure watched as the
old man’s chest rose and fell, watched as he slept.

After all the months of planning, it came down to this
one moment in time. At the thought of actually plunging the knife into flesh
and connecting with bone, the intruder’s hands started to shake so much that
the knife fell on the ugly, carpeted floor. In the blink of an eye the
amphetamine rush faded, offering one last chance for reason. While bending down
to retrieve the knife, there was still hope.

They didn’t have to do this.

But movement in the doorway added one more shadowy
outline to the room.

“You can’t do it, can you? All that big talk; all of your
big plans. You drag me all the way to Hicksville in the middle of the damn
night and can’t fucking go through with it.”

“Shut up. I’m nervous. That’s why I dropped the knife.”

“Sure that’s it, you’re nervous because you’ve talked
this to death until I’m sick of it. Now just when it gets dicey, you want me to
do your dirty work. Figures.”

As the argument grew more heated, the gun dangerously
waved back and forth while the shadows on the wall mimicked their bickering
movements.

Despite the sleeping pills earlier, it didn’t take long
for the loud voices to wake up the woman. She tried to pull herself out of
slumber and sit upright. The gun went off. A brilliant flash of gunfire lit up
the small bedroom as a bullet entered the woman’s chest, sending her backward.

Reacting to the noise, the man attempted to crawl out of
bed to try to escape. Another blast pierced the air. It went wide. But then
another shot rang out. This time the bullet hit its mark, leaving a hole in the
man’s head.

The one holding the knife simply stood frozen in place,
watching the event play out in slow motion, watched as the couple’s blood
splattered the headboard, sprayed the walls, and soaked the bed linens.

“Snap out of it. Don’t just stand there. It’s done now.
You know what you have to do, right? The newspaper said the other crime scenes
had words written in blood―all over the walls. Can you do that?”