89

 

SEVENTEEN MILE DRIVE, FRIDAY NIGHT

The setting sun filtered through a dome of high cirrocumulus clouds, the rippled clouds known as “mackerel sky.” It gilded them red gold. Gwen and Dan stood on the back lawn near the cliff edge sharing a bottle of beer and admiring the display. They stood hip to hip, finding reason to touch, as they so often did. Dan wasn’t saying much. Gwen could sense his preoccupation, felt it cloud her own mood. Dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved t-shirt, she gave a sudden shiver as a gust of wind pulsed over them.

Dan put his arm round her, pulled her closer, gave her his heat.

Gwen molded to him. He had the quality that no other man but her father had had: the gift of making her feel safe. When he held her, she could feel in that moment that all was right in her world, never mind whatever was going on outside the circle of their arms. She knew it was transitory, partially illusory, didn’t care.

“Storm’s coming,” she said, gazing up at the clouds.

Dan frowned. “How can you tell? It looks so peaceful up there. Those clouds are downright beautiful.”

Gwen looked into his eyes, smiled. “Beautiful things can be lethal too.”

“Oh, I know it,” he answered with a smile of his own. “But you haven’t answered my question.”

“Well, firstly, the large area of high cloud tells me there’s a lot of moisture up there at the top of the troposphere,” said Gwen, swinging from play to serious, enthusing about her passion.

“In temperate regions like here, this can be an advance warning of a depression coming in, bringing rain. And those ripples we see? Up high they’re real big choppy clouds, like big waves on a rough sea. That means the winds up there are strong.”

“I’m impressed, Doctor Boudain. Let’s go in and light the fire.”

“Is that code?”

Dan laughed, the tension he had carried breaking. He gave her his crooked smile.

“Both.”

*   *   *

Inside, they lay together on the sofa, staring into the fire that jiggered and played in the stone fireplace. Neither spoke. After a while, Dan got up, opened a bottle of Carmel Road Chualar Pinot Noir, poured out two generous glasses, drank a good sip, and handed one to Gwen. He lifted her legs, sat on the sofa, drawing her legs back over his lap. Gwen noticed his tension had returned, furrowing two vertical lines between his eyes.

“I’m being surveilled,” Dan said slowly. “Four different guys over the past week. It’s a Pattern of Life study. The full works.”

“Shit!” replied Gwen, spluttering into her wineglass. She knew better than to ask if he was sure. His eyes said he was. They were oddly dispassionate.

“The question is, why would anyone want to surveil me?” Dan continued, his voice thoughtful, empty of the outrage Gwen would have felt.

“Messenger’s bad guys?” she suggested.

“Yeah, but here’s the weird thing. They’re not surveilling you.”

“And you know this because?”

Dan gave a grim smile. “Because I returned the favor, slipped them without appearing to try to do so, surveilled them. They didn’t follow you. I checked several times. No one’s on your tail, unless you’re with me.”

“Wonderful,” declared Gwen, taking a big swig, swallowing with a gulp. “So what do we do about it?”

“We appear to do nothing.”

“You think they’ve bugged you here?”

Dan shook his head. “Not in the house. I’ve checked. It’s too well protected for them to get in anyway. But my car’s bugged. The driving mirror has a little fucker stuck behind it.”

“Nice. You leave it there?”

“Of course, so we have to watch what we say in there. Listen, Boudy, do something for me, please try to stay away from situations where you find yourself isolated, or alone. I have a real bad feeling about this. I’ll be with you a good chunk of time, but I can’t protect you twenty-four/seven and I know you wouldn’t want me to.”

Gwen sipped her wine. She kept the glass pressed to her lips, gazed over the rim at Dan.

“We can’t go on like this, just you and me, a two-man investigation team.”

Dan said nothing, just swirled his wine in the bell glass, gazed thoughtfully into the viscous red.

“Let’s just give it a bit more time,” he said, looking across at Gwen. “We get the FBI in, we scare the bad guys off and we’ll never get the bastards. I get the feeling things are accelerating. Some kind of move is gonna be made. Let’s just keep our nerve.”

“I guess we can give it a bit more time,” said Gwen thoughtfully. “It’s beginning to get a bit out-there on the mad-and-scary spectrum tho.”

Dan nodded. “We need to keep alert, keep our radar on, keep to crowded places.”

Gwen thought of the faceless men, perhaps watching Dan’s house even now, beyond the curtained windows, out there in the darkness.