Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(88)

The conversation between the Yeti and the boat driver became heated. The big man waved his arms, then jabbed his finger at the boat driver’s face. The sound of shouting drifted over the water. The boat driver shook his head and put his hands on his hips until the Yeti, moving faster than anyone his size and age should be able to move, took a single long stride toward the boat driver and shoved him hard in the chest.

The boat driver flew off the dock and struck the water ass-first with a splash.

The Yeti watched the boat driver flounder for a moment, then untied the boat’s bowline, put one foot to the hull, and pushed it away from the dock. It moved slowly, but its momentum carried it farther from the shore, where the wind caught the boat’s profile and began to push it into ever-deeper water. The boat’s name, written in black on the stern, was Spooked.

The Yeti turned to the pilot and shooed him toward his plane with the back of one hand. The pilot climbed back into his seat and the engine started up again. The Yeti untied the plane and stepped onto the pontoon, pushing the plane out into the lake as he did, then stepped up into the passenger seat and closed the door. The plane taxied around the swimming man and his drifting boat, turned into the wind and came up to speed, skimming across the water until it lifted into the air.

Peter looked down the fire lane and saw a female figure standing by a silver Escalade, looking out at the lake.

She’d seen it all. The whole thing. Her father and Chip Dawes.

He turned back to the water, where the man was swimming after his boat, clumsy in his trench coat. Dawes appeared to have lost his sunglasses. For a moment, Peter wondered if the wind would blow the boat faster than the man could swim. Apparently the man was concerned about the same thing, because he stopped for a moment to shed his coat and his shoes, leaving them to sink behind him as he struck out strongly for his drifting boat. He’d swum at least a quarter of a mile in foot-high chop before he finally got a hand on the swimmer’s deck and climbed aboard in shirtsleeves and socks. Not bad for a corporate spook.

Peter looked down the fire lane. June was gone.

The fast boat’s engine fired up with a growl. Peter couldn’t see the driver in the covered cockpit as the boat cranked around in a tight circle, its wake spreading as it headed back to its slip. The boat disappeared from view behind larger boats, but he heard the snarl of the engine as it reversed hard into the slip.

Peter figured Chip Dawes IV was cold and wet and pretty unhappy.

Dawes came through the gate a few minutes later wearing a crisp black fleece jacket, fitted training pants, and sandals. He carried an elegant leather briefcase in one hand and a wide black umbrella in the other, held up to keep the rain at bay. His unruly mop of hair was damp, but looked towel-dried and surprisingly fashionable, as if he’d stepped out of the locker room rather than fished himself out of an urban lake. He had the same tanned face as his photo, the same square jaw, the same smug look of the cat who swallowed the canary.

But there was something else there that the photographer had missed. A distance to the eyes, a harshness in the lines bracketing the wide, mobile mouth. Peter had known many men who’d gone to war. It changed you inside. It made you someone new, or revealed who you had always been, sometimes a little of both. Sometimes for the better, eventually. Sometimes not.

Peter was pretty sure which way things had gone for Chip Dawes.

He angled away from the restaurant service entrance to intercept Dawes at the edge of the parking lot. Dawes turned to look at him, basic threat assessment. He didn’t stop walking, and he didn’t free up his hands.

Twenty feet and closing. “Nice day for a swim,” said Peter. “Unhappy client?”

“You have no idea,” said Dawes.

“Oh, I’m starting to figure it out,” said Peter.

Dawes’s mobile mouth formed a mocking smile while those distant eyes flickered across Peter’s face. “No, truly,” he said. “You actually have no fucking idea whatsoever.”

Peter shrugged. “Maybe not,” he said. “But here’s what I think. You hired the lawyer, Nicolet, to negotiate the purchase of some software from Hazel Cassidy. I’m thinking you were hired by her ex-husband, Sasha Kolodny, who is not quite right in the head.” Dawes’s smile had lost some of its gleam. “How’m I doing so far?”

Dawes did something to the U-shaped umbrella handle with his thumb, not taking his eyes from Peter as the black cloth folded itself up with a soft slither. He tucked it under the arm carrying the briefcase.

Peter brought the Glock from behind his back and raised it to point directly at Dawes’s face. “Stop moving,” he said pleasantly. “Anyway, Hazel didn’t want to sell, and she didn’t bow to any of your attempts to intimidate her by pulling her grant money or getting a former student to accuse her of sexual misconduct. So you killed her, thinking you’d just take the software. But you couldn’t find it. So you tried to kidnap her daughter. Repeatedly. And failed. Maybe that was Kolodny’s idea, but by his recent reaction, I’m thinking it was yours.”

Behind Dawes, a boxy black Mercedes SUV turned off the road and rolled down the ramp to the parking lot.

Dawes kept his eyes on Peter’s face. “This isn’t the kiddie pool. You are in deep fucking water with some very big fish and you have no fucking clue what’s going on.”

The Mercedes SUV came to an abrupt stop behind him. The driver’s door opened and a very big man slid out and planted his feet on the asphalt before the Mercedes stopped rocking.