“Calvin.” Olivia gasped. “You’re alive.” She struggled to wrap her mind around that as well as the fact that he pointed a gun at her and Sal.
“Very much alive.” He held up his right hand. “Minus one finger. It hurt like the dickens, but it had to be done if I was going to sell the whole kidnapping story.”
“You cut off your own finger?”
“Had to make it convincing. I knew you’d recognize the ring.”
Comprehension settled in. “You bought the ring so I could identify the finger as belonging to you.” How long had he been planning this? She thought of something else. “Your teeth were found on the boat.”
“I went to an out-of-town dentist, had a few teeth pulled, made sure they’d be found in the wreckage.”
“And the phone calls? You made them.”
“Give the lady an A. I bought one of those nifty voice synthesizers. I could barely keep from laughing when I called you. You sounded petrified.”
She didn’t bother hiding her disgust.
“How did you always know where I was?” That was something that had troubled her from the beginning.
“I put a tracker in your briefcase a while back,” Calvin said. “You never go anywhere without that piece of junk. I figured a tracker might come in handy someday. Turns out I was right. Then there was the bug in your office. It was almost too easy. I tucked it behind that ridiculous painting.”
“Whose body was that in the explosion?” Sal asked.
“Some stiff I bought online. Turns out you can buy just about anything on the net if you know where to look. Including a dead body. Of course, I had to cut off the finger. By the time the DNA results got in, I’d be long gone. Or I was supposed to be.”
“How did you know about Timmons and Jeppsen?”
“Those two bozos have been following me for the better part of the year. Why do you think I had to disappear? It was child’s play to spoof Timmons’s phone and get you here.”
His words were a slap in the face, wiping away everything she thought she knew about the man she’d called friend. “I don’t know who you are.” Grief coated each syllable. She thought of all the pain his actions had caused. “I was almost killed because of you. And Bryan, you set him up. He was never a part of this.” Her instincts had been correct, but she’d never suspected Calvin of being behind the plot to pin the kidnapping and murder on Bryan. How could she have been so wrong about him?
“Of course I set him up. He was a patsy waiting to be used. I’ve known about his embezzlement from the first. I bided my time, waiting for the right moment to use it. The little twerp stole from me. Me. He got what he deserved. I put that file about him selling secrets on the drive as insurance. If anyone found it, they’d concentrate on that, wouldn’t look further.
“I knew Homeland was on my tail and that they were closing in. In my hurry to get away, I forgot the drive. Still, everything would have been all right if you had brought the right drive to the exchange.” Accusation rang loud in his voice.
“Why didn’t you just call me, ask me to bring you the drive?” Olivia asked. “Why all this cloak-and-dagger?”
“I’d originally planned to ask for money for ransom, but after leaving the drive, I thought it would be the perfect thing, not to mention throwing blame on Hewston and the drug company.”
Calvin made a rude sound and directed all his venom at Olivia. “How could you have been so stupid as to mix up the drives in the first place? You think I wanted a drive with pictures of leaves on it?” He nearly spat the last.
What was she supposed to say? I’m sorry I interfered with your terrorist plot? She knew a wild desire to laugh at the absurdity of it. She shook her head in bewilderment. “I don’t understand. Any of it.”
“Let’s just say I happen to be really fond of the color green.” He gave a lipless smile that was somehow worse than no smile at all.
And then she got it. It had been obvious, if she’d been looking. Calvin’s extravagant lifestyle. His insistence upon having the best of everything. “Money.”
“You’re catching on.” As he sneered, he didn’t look anything like the man she remembered. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have places to go.” He grabbed her briefcase. “I figure you still have the drive in your briefcase. Once I have it, I’m home free.”
Only the USB drive wasn’t in her briefcase. Not any longer.
“Goodbye, Olivia.” Calvin clicked something, then darted out the door.
She heard the ticking. “What is that?”
Sal scanned the room, pointed to what appeared to be a small clock sitting on a table near the door. “A timer.”
She started for the door, but Sal grabbed her. “The bomb’s rigged to the door.” He pushed her toward the bathroom, then grabbed the mattress from the bed, dragged it in after them. “Bathtub,” he shouted.
She scrambled inside the tub and lay down.
He did the same, covering both of them with the mattress. “Whatever happens, stay down.”
Just as he said the last word, the room exploded. Olivia struggled to breathe beneath Sal’s weight and that of the mattress. Indistinct thuds sounded. Probably pieces of drywall landing on them, she thought with the small portion of her brain still functioning.
She registered Sal’s chest pressed against her back, his arms protecting her head. She prayed the mattress was shielding him from the worst of the falling debris.
The very air seemed to shake. Or maybe it was her. She couldn’t tell. When the aftershocks stopped, she took a shallow breath. Another.
She struggled to get up, but Sal urged her back down. “Not yet.”
“Is it over?” she whispered after several minutes had passed.
“I think so.”
Sal pushed the mattress off them. He climbed out, then helped her out. When her legs threatened to give way, he clamped his hands on her shoulders and held her against him. “Better?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
A chalky substance covered their faces and arms. Dust from exploding drywall, she thought absently. Her mouth was dry, and she wet her lips.
Cautiously, she and Sal picked their way over the rubble in the room and out to the landing.
“Careful where you step,” he warned. “We don’t know how far the damage goes.”
They hurried off the landing and down the stairs. People were spilling out of doors, bewildered expressions turning to horror when they saw the gaping hole of what had been the motel room. Cell phone cameras were pointed in their direction.
Olivia cringed. The last thing she wanted was for her picture to be trending on social media sites.
Sal kept his arm around her, turned her face toward his side. Another grief-induced breath drew raggedly through her. An unfamiliar sensation in her ear had her putting her hand to it. She wasn’t surprised that her finger came away bloody. Though she’d remembered to open her mouth as Sal had told her during the explosion at the dock, her eardrum had probably ruptured this time due to the proximity of the blast.
“Here.” Sal handed her his handkerchief. “Your ear should be fine in a little while. In the meantime, keep taking shallow breaths.
“Better get ready for questions,” he advised as sirens sounded in the distance. “From the police and the fire investigators.”
Olivia took a bracing breath. Answering a bunch of questions from the authorities was the last thing she wanted to do right now, but better to get it over with. When had her life spun so out of control?
He tightened his arm around her. “We’ll get through this.” The words were simple enough, but, like a quiet smile, they comforted and warmed.
What would she have done if Sal hadn’t been here? He’d saved her life. Again. If not for his quick thinking, they would surely have died in the explosion.
“Calvin tried to kill us.” Her words were as broken as she felt. Even after knowing that Calvin had deceived her, she couldn’t believe that he’d wanted her dead. Had everything she’d ever known about him been a lie?
Her roiling thoughts ripped through her memories, memories going back more than two decades, churning up every experience and every moment spent in Calvin’s company. How had she not seen what he was? How had she been so stupid?
Whatever grief she was feeling was now overshadowed by fury. Fury at Calvin. Fury at herself. Fury that she could be so easily deceived.
This wasn’t over. Calvin had to be brought to justice. He had almost gotten away with his plot all because she’d been too blind to see what he truly was. She should have looked beneath the polished exterior to the ugliness that festered inside.
She turned back to stare at the yawning maw of the blown-out room, the desolation a metaphor of her feelings. Both had been destroyed by a man who put greed above all else.
She and Sal were treated by EMTs who offered to take them to the hospital. Both refused. They had work to do.
* * *
After the police were finished with them, Sal took Olivia home. She’d excused herself to clean up, reappearing thirty minutes later in a white top and jeans.
Floating on exhaustion, she looked almost ethereal in the soft glow cast by moonlight streaming through the plantation-style shutters. Sal barely refrained from reaching for her. It would be a mistake to touch her when his feelings ran so hard and fast.
He knew he was in danger of stepping over his self-imposed boundaries. If he did, what then? The point of no return loomed close. Too close. He needed to take a step back from Olivia and his growing feelings for her.
He focused on the practical. “You need to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You still need to eat.” He placed the sandwich he made on a plate and set it on the table.
She picked up the sandwich and took a bite, chewed, swallowed. “You’re right. How could I be hungry and not know it?”
“You’ve been running on fumes for the last week.” He hesitated, not wanting to add to her burden, but this could be important. “There’s something else that’s been nagging me ever since Chantry showed up. He said that if someone found the drive and saw the file about Hewston, they wouldn’t be tempted to look further.”
Olivia nodded. “That’s been bothering me, too.”
“We need to get that drive to someone who knows a lot more than I do about computers.”
“Like Shelley?”
“Like Shelley. If there’s something on there to be found, she’ll find it.”
They shared a smile. There was no one better at decrypting hidden files than Shelley Judd, and she’d be the first to say so.
With that out of the way, Sal focused on how to help Olivia get through the next hours. He knew her boss’s actions had chewed up her heart and then spit it out in little pieces. Her next words proved it.
“I can’t help wondering if everything in my life was a lie. Calvin wasn’t just my boss. He was my friend. What does it say about me if that’s the kind of friends I attract?”
Sal wanted to tell her that it said she looked for the good in everyone, but he knew she didn’t want to hear that. She probably didn’t want to hear anything except that it was all a big mistake.
Tears pooled in her eyes. He watched the movement of her throat, saw her swallow. It was obvious that the effort cost her. Of course, it did.
She’d just learned that the man she had looked up to, had thought of as an uncle and a mentor, was dirty, dirty right up to the starched collar of his designer shirt and the knot of his silk tie. She had believed in him until she couldn’t deny the evidence of his guilt any longer.
Not only was he dirty, he had tried to kill her.
What must that do to her?
Sal wanted to promise to make everything all right, but he was powerless to do that just as he was powerless to take away the pain. With a startled realization, he knew that he wanted to do more than that. He wanted to make a life with her.
He couldn’t give that to her, not with his past that cast a shadow over every part of his life, but he could keep her safe. Olivia knew of the darkness within him, but eventually she’d look at him with disgust. He couldn’t bear that.
She was holding up, had even found a small smile. “I wanted the truth. Looks like I got it. And then some. Nothing was real, was it?” And the smile, tiny as it was, slid right off her face. “Everything about Calvin was a lie. How could I have been so stupid? I believed him, believed in him.”
“None of this is on you.”
“Isn’t it?” she challenged. “I thought I knew him. Now I’m sure I didn’t know him at all. It feels like I don’t know anything anymore.”
“That’s the grief talking.”
“There’s no grief,” she denied, her voice a shadow of its normal resolve. “The man I thought I knew didn’t exist. So, no, I’m not grieving over him.” The anguish on her face as well as the self-blame in her voice tore at his heart.
“You just said it. The man you thought you knew didn’t exist. You’re grieving over that.”
“I can’t get a handle on it. Not any of it.” Tears formed in her eyes, the glistening drops clinging to her lashes.
Sal resisted the urge to wipe them away. To touch her now would spell disaster for both of them. If he gave in to the desire to comfort her, he’d be unable to prevent himself from kissing her.
He wanted to spare her the suffering but knew she would have to process it in her own way in her own time. “Give yourself a break. You’ve been going flat-out for days. No one can keep that up.”
And then the dam broke. Sobs shook her slender body. He pulled her to him, her temple pressed against his chest as misery overtook her.
He would have taken the pain for Olivia if it had been possible. Watching her shatter into pain-filled shards twisted his heart, his gut. How would he feel if someone he’d thought of as a friend had done the same?
When she drew back, she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt.
“I want to say that I know how you’re feeling,” Sal said, “but I don’t.”
“But there’s Someone who does.”
Confused, he stared at her until he realized she was speaking of the Savior.
“Jesus was betrayed by a man He’d made a disciple. I picture Christ asking Himself why a friend turned against Him as Judas had. It must have caused Him unbelievable torment.”
As Sal watched, a fierce resolve settled on her face, a resolve born of pure steel. “We have to stop Calvin. We have to make things right.”
Sal had never been more proud of her than he was at that moment. She had gone through the refiner’s fire and had emerged all the stronger for it.
Olivia gazed at him with tear-wet eyes. “The Lord knows and understands our heartaches, our weaknesses, our fears. Yours and mine and that of everyone else on earth.” She thumbed away the remaining tears.
Sal felt tears sting his own eyes. “You sound like you’ve had personal experience with it.”
“When my father died, I fell into depression. It got so bad that I couldn’t get out of bed, much less go to work. Finally, I knew I had to do something. I took my grief to the Savior. He didn’t take it away, not at first, but He gave me the strength to deal with it.”
Emotion wadded up in his throat. Sal cleared his voice with a rough cough, trying to put an end to the subject.
Hurt flickered in her eyes. He’d cut off what had promised to be a deeply spiritual discussion. At one time, he’d been an active believer. His time in Afghanistan had changed that.
What he’d witnessed there had chipped away at his faith until he started questioning what he’d once believed. How could a loving God allow such cruelties to occur? By the end of his last tour of duty, he hadn’t been able to reconcile the atrocities he’d seen with the God he thought he knew.
“Talking about faith isn’t easy,” she said, correctly interpreting his reluctance to continue the conversation. “It’s sacred, but the Atonement is the greatest gift the world has ever known. Because of it, the Lord has taken our sins upon Himself.” She took his hand. “What I said in the cave—it hasn’t changed. He’s there for you. You just have to go to Him.”