Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(60)

As he hauled the cedar planks from the van, June stepped outside and followed him through the brush, coatless, her feet bare on the wet fallen leaves. She watched silently, shivering, as he tacked down the decking with just a few nails, making a neat platform seven feet long and five feet wide. It rocked when he stood on it, so he shimmed one corner with a stone.

He used the claw end of the framing hammer to split his scrap into thinner pieces. He found more stones in a heap at the back of the neighbor’s yard and borrowed them for a fire ring. He took pages of the local free weekly, the Stranger, crumpled them up, then arranged the kindling on top. He pilfered an armload of firewood from the dry middle of the neighbor’s mossy, untended woodpile. June still hadn’t said a word.

The rain started up again as he worked, a soft hush on the plastic tarp. He lit the fire and made a final trip to the van, returning with the new sleeping pad and bag he’d bought at REI that afternoon, tucking them in a dry spot under the eaves of the neighbor’s garage, and two short fabric camping chairs, which he unfolded on the little deck.

He set the light on the platform and turned to June.

“I know you weren’t crazy about that last hotel,” he said. He couldn’t read her face in the dark. “I doubt this one’s any better. No bathroom. No spa. No room service. But it does have a fireplace.”

When she turned and walked back toward the house, he thought he’d screwed it up completely. Misread her, misread everything. For chrissake, he’d only known her for two days. He stood beside the struggling fire in the cold wet night, feeling the ache in his ribs and listening to the rain on the tarp, which sounded too much like the static in his head.

Then June pushed her way back through the rhododendrons, holding the bottle of wine in one hand and two jelly jars and a Swiss army knife in the other. He took the knife from her and turned it in his hand, trying to find the corkscrew in the dark.

She said, “Put that down, you idiot. The wine’s for afterward.”

He looked up at her then, saw the firelight on her freckled face, the heat in her eyes.

She grabbed him by the front of his jacket and kissed him hard. Her stitches prickled. “Ow, fuck,” she said. “My lip.” Then kissed him again, harder. “You better kiss me someplace else.”

Peter kicked the chairs from the platform as she pulled his jacket and shirt off, not bothering much with the zippers or buttons. He took a little more time with her clothes, enjoying the slow revelations. Her skin was hot to the touch, soft as silk, and she tasted still of that exotic spice that he knew now was utterly, completely, entirely addictive.

She said, “There goddamn well better be room for both of us in that sleeping bag.”

He licked her nipple experimentally. “Maybe if one of us is on top?”

She arched her back and pressed herself into him. “I’m the boss and don’t you forget it.”

? ? ?

THE WINE WASN’T for afterward so much as it was for between. The evening passed in a long, languorous dream punctuated by intervals of slippery athleticism. It didn’t help Peter’s ribs any, but it was very good for the rest of him.

He got up several times, naked in the night, to feed the fire from the neighbor’s woodpile, turning to see June ogling him from the sleeping bag. Later he woke to see her creeping back through the jungle, nude but for the stitches on her lip and the bandage on her arm. Her firelit figure was a sylvan fantasy of compact curves punctuated by a fierce, lascivious smile. She’d brought a carton of ice cream.

He licked it out of her belly button while she giggled and shrieked, scandalizing the neighbors.

And so on, and on, and on.

? ? ?

IN THE MORNING, she was gone. The sleeping bag was a wreck. He found his clothes, hung the sleeping bag where it might somehow revive itself in the open air, then pushed through the dripping underbrush. Her door was unlocked, but she was not inside. It was after ten.

He ran the shower hot and stood under the spray, eyes closed, backing down the static with the memory of June floating above him, upturned nipples bobbing with her greedy, eager motion. Then she was there in the flesh, slipping through the gap in the shower curtain. Naked and sweaty from a long run, and definitely delighted to see him.

“No way,” he said, “I’m not used to this kind of workout.”

“Don’t be such a baby.” She climbed him like a monkey and bit his ear. “What about my needs? You’ve got to get yourself into shape.”

They stopped talking after that.





28





SHEPARD



Shepard strode purposefully into the hospital’s main lobby, pulling out his credentials as he approached reception.

This was the most challenging aspect of his work. Pretending to be a normal human being.

Killing had never been difficult for Shepard.

Making conversation was much harder.

Tonight, he wore a dark suit, a striped tie, an American flag pin, and aggressively polished shoes. His credentials were quite good, almost as good as the real thing, because for all intents and purposes, they were real.

The young man behind the counter looked up when Shepard approached. “How may I help you?”

Shepard held up the laminated ID. “Homeland,” he said. “I need to talk to your senior security person on duty. Right now.”