Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(119)

Shepard still stood calmly, arms at his side. Never a twitch toward his weapon. What was he thinking about? wondered Peter. Maybe he wasn’t thinking at all. Maybe that was the secret to it.

“June,” he said. “You’re still the boss. What do you want?”

Her voice was sharp. “My mother was killed. My house was burned to the ground. I want vengeance. I want fucking retribution.”

Peter tightened his finger on the trigger of the pocket Glock. He knew Lewis would be preparing, too. Shepard was less than ten yards away. He still looked calm, but something was different. He watched Peter with a level of attention that was nearly tangible.

Then June sighed, and shook her head. “But that wouldn’t bring her back, would it? And it would make me as bad as Sally. So, no. No more killing.”

Peter released the tension on the trigger. In the corner of his eye, he saw Lewis relax his two-handed stance. A faint expression ghosted across Shepard’s face. It might have been a smile.

“What about Oliver’s offer,” said Peter. “Do you want to stay?”

She looked at Oliver. Again Peter saw her strength, her self-possession.

Something had changed up in that black barn with her dad. He’d have to ask her about it. He wanted nothing more than to walk through this orchard with her in the light of day, to talk to her, to make her laugh, to see the brilliance in her bright eyes.

He could spend a lifetime at it, if she’d let him.

Was this what it was like, to fall in love?

But she wasn’t looking at Peter. She was looking at Oliver.

“Tell me who you work for.”

“We’re an unofficial group,” said Oliver. “Washington would prefer not to know that we exist. But we do, because some tasks are necessary, and should remain secret. Like this one. Unfortunately, Sally was one of ours.”

“So, what?” she said. “You just decide what happens? Who lives, who dies? No oversight?”

“We have oversight at the highest levels. But because situations develop and evolve rapidly, we often make significant decisions in the field. We are frequently forced to choose between a bad option and a worse one.”

“What will you do with Chip Dawes?”

“Our funding is directed through a series of useful shell companies. We plan to incorporate Mr. Dawes’s organization into our operation. This is why he remains alive and in good health. So we can transfer ownership and assets.”

“And after that?”

Oliver’s face was politely opaque. “That depends entirely on Mr. Dawes.”

“Why should I trust you?” she asked. “Why should I believe a thing you’ve said to me today?”

“You’re alive to ask that question, are you not?” His face warmed with a soft smile. “Conversely, I already believe that I can trust you. Because you and your friends came here to take action. Not for yourselves, but for others. An admirable sense of mission, and one much lacking in our society today. But you never answered your friend’s question. Will you stay? Will you help?”

She stared at Oliver. “If I do, I get to determine what happens here,” she said. “I’m the boss. Full and final say.”

Oliver nodded. “As long as the technology stays in our hands, and our hands only. I can have it in writing tomorrow. Tell me the language you need.”

“Then yes,” she said. “I’m staying.” She looked at her dad. “He’s the one who needs looking after now, not me. I can look after myself.”

Yes, thought Peter. She sure as hell could.





58





Peter set up his tent beside the cook shack. There was a bathroom nearby, and a kitchen for breakfast, and it was far from the site of the killings, although he could still smell the burning car. If he closed his eyes, he could still see the whole thing. And Sally Sanchez jerking backward beside him, the back of her head gone soft and bloody.

June was with Oliver Bent in the main house, ironing things out.

He unrolled his sleeping pad and thought about that psychologist in Oregon, telling him to learn to meditate. To find a support group. To get on with his life.

Well, hell, he thought. I can do that.

Sometime after midnight, as he lay there thinking in the dark, she came through the flap of the tent, naked as the day she was born, all showered and soap-smelling, her skin cool from the spring air.

It was gentle and slow, and toward the end, she cried.

Afterward, he wondered aloud whether she had walked naked all the way from the main house.

No, she told him. It was too cold. She’d tucked her warm clothes under the tent fly to keep them dry.

? ? ?

THE NEXT MORNING, they walked side by side through the orchard, the buds straining against their casings. He could smell the greenery just aching to burst forth into life.

She said, “I don’t know if you’re ready for domestic life, Peter.”

“I am,” he said. “I really am. Tell me what you need me to do, I’ll do it.”

She stopped and turned to face him.

“I need you to already know what to do,” she said gently. “And you don’t. Not yet. So I want you to go away. Whatever the hell it is you’ve got in your system, work it out.”

Peter opened his mouth, but he didn’t know what to say.