On Fire. Carla Neggers
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what had happened yesterday on Schoodic Peninsula. She kept the news to herself. When she’d left Mount Desert Island, she’d said only that she was taking a long weekend. She hadn’t mentioned going to visit Emile.
With any luck, there’d be a message from the police on her answering machine telling her the man she’d found had been identified, he’d died in a tragic accident, end of story.
She had a one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a triple decker just off Porter Square in Cambridge. There was no message from the police on her machine. There was one from her mother, asking her if she was all right. Nothing from Richard St. Joe. Her father was in Bath, checking on the Encounter II, the state-of-the-art, ecologically friendly research vessel the center was having built. He would be back tomorrow.
She heated her eggplant parmesan in the microwave and whisked a bit of balsamic vinegar and olive oil together for her salad. It felt good to reacquaint herself with her routines. After dinner, she’d put in a load of laundry and clean out her fridge.
Her telephone rang, and she grabbed the portable out from under a newspaper on her kitchen table.
“What would you do if I told you I was on the curb outside your apartment?”
Straker. Her stomach knotted. “You have a sick sense of humor, Straker. You’re not on my curb. You live on a deserted island. You hate people. You wouldn’t traipse all the way to Boston just to aggravate me.”
“You wouldn’t invite me in?”
She tightened her grip on the phone. He sounded close. She remembered he didn’t have a phone on the island. She took her portable into the front room, knelt on her futon couch, leaned over and pulled back the blinds so she could peer down at the street.
It was dark, but she could make out a beat-up, rusting gray Subaru station wagon with Maine plates.
“Damn it, Straker, you are on my curb!”
“So, do I get to come in?”
She hit the off button and tossed her phone onto the couch. What did he think he was doing? Six months alone on an island—and now Boston? He’d kill someone. Someone would kill him. He was not fit for the civilized world.
It was the body. Something must have happened.
She was hyperventilating. She clamped her mouth shut and held her breath, forcing herself to count to five. If she didn’t let Straker in, what would he do?
If she did let him in, what would he do?
She unlocked her door and took the two flights of stairs two and even three steps at a time. She picked up so much momentum, she almost went head-overteakettle down the front stoop. After throwing up, all she needed was to split her head open at Straker’s feet.
He had his window rolled down.
Riley caught her breath. “I can’t believe you drove all the way down from Maine.”
He popped the last of a Big Mac into his mouth. “Now that you mention it, neither can I.”
“What do you want?”
He reached for a backpack on the floor in front of the passenger seat, rolled up his window, locked his door and climbed out. He looked just as powerful and strong and unflappable on her Porter Square sidewalk as on Labreque Island. The city didn’t make him any more or less than what he was—a man she would be wise to avoid. His own mother had said so.
“Our body came with a nasty blow to the head,” he said. “CID’s treating it as a suspicious death.”
“You mean—what—” Her stomach rolled over. “Are you suggesting he was murdered?”
“That’s my bet.”
He hoisted his backpack over one shoulder and started for her front stoop as if he’d just told her a dog had peed on her rug. Riley stayed on the sidewalk next to his car. She couldn’t move. Her knees wobbled. He wasn’t just John Straker, obnoxious teenager from her past. He was an FBI agent. He’d been shot twice by some dangerous nut on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. He’d spent the last six months as a recluse.
Straker turned back to her. He shook his head. “You aren’t going to throw up, are you?”
That unmoored her. She brushed past him and walked up the steps with as much nonchalance as she could fake. She prided herself on her ability to look reality square in the eye. Right now, the reality was that Straker was here, and she had to deal with him. She headed upstairs, assuming he would follow. He did.
“I figured you for a condo on the water,” he said from behind her.
“Too expensive.”
“Well, I guess you’re comfortable among Cambridge eggheads.”
She glanced back at him, cool. “Don’t inflict your stereotypes on me, Straker.”
He shrugged. “Tell me your apartment won’t have egghead written all over it.”
“Just shut up.”
She could feel his grin as she pushed open her door. He’d always known how to jerk her chain. He walked in past her, took in her living room with her stuff stacked and spread out everywhere and gave her a smug wink. “I rest my case.”
“I haven’t had a chance to clean—”
“You have enough books and magazines and crap in here to start your own think tank.” He walked over to her computer table, cluttered with printouts and Post-it Notes. The wall behind it was covered with nautical charts. He ran a finger over the flamingo Beanie Baby she kept on her monitor. “Egghead with a touch of kook.”
Riley gritted her teeth. “Straker, I swear I don’t know how people stand you.”
“They don’t.” He abandoned her computer and came closer to her. It was as if he’d brought an electric current into her apartment; the air sizzled. “You’re looking a little green at the gills. Want me to fetch you a drink?”
“No. I want you to tell me why you’re here.”
He lifted a stack of Audubon magazines off her futon couch, set them on the floor next to a stack of Smithsonian magazines and sat down. “Emile took off.”
“What do you mean, he took off?”
“I mean he took out the trash, made his bed, locked up and vamoosed. No car, no boat. He probably hid one—my bet’s on the car. Emile’s a sailor at heart. He’d go by water if he had a choice.”
Riley ignored a sudden chill and uneasiness. “You’re thinking like an FBI agent instead of someone who knows Emile. He does this sort of thing. He’ll go off for days at a time without telling anyone.”
“Does he always hide his car?”
“You don’t know he hid it. He could have just used it to haul supplies to his boat, then didn’t want to take the trouble of driving it back up to the cottage, so left it.”
Straker shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He leaned back and stretched out his thick legs. Riley didn’t remember him being so earthy. He seemed to exude sexuality. It had to be deliberate. A way of throwing her off balance in case she was hiding something from him. He glanced around. “No cat?”
“What?”
“I figured you’d have a cat.”
She groaned. “This is outrageous. I think you should leave.”
“I’d have to sleep in my car. I don’t have enough dough on me for a hotel.”
“Don’t you have a credit card?”
“Nope. I got rid of all my plastic after I got shot.”
He was perfectly calm, controlled and irritatingly at ease. Riley sputtered, “You can’t think…”
She