Passion (57 page)

“And you’re crazy,” Teryl replied, her voice every bit as mild.

Martin smiled, amused by her retort, then turned cold and harsh when he looked at D.J. “Did you bring them here?”

“No.” She answered quickly, desperately. “I came out to see you, and as I drove around the last curve in the road, I saw them
sneaking around back. I came in to make sure they didn’t disturb anything, to make sure they didn’t take anything, before
you got back.” Twisting her hands together, she moved toward him. “What are you going to do, Simon?”

“Kill them, of course.” He smiled again—and
crazy,
John thought, didn’t come close to describing it. “They’ve given ne no choice.”

Although she claimed ownership of the original plan, although she had acknowledged when she first arrived that Martin wanted
them dead, D.J. seemed disturbed by the idea low. Wringing her hands again, she looked from him to John and Teryl, then back
to him. “I understand him, but… do you have to kill her, too? She’s not important. Who could he tell? It’s all so crazy that
she didn’t even believe it herself in the beginning. No one would believe her now.”

“Don’t be a fool, Debra Jane.
Everyone
would believe her. Slut or not, she’s not like you. She doesn’t lie as naturally as
she breathes. They both have to die.” Sliding open the credenza drawer, he withdrew a pistol, a hell of a gun, the kind that
could undoubtedly leave a hell of a hole in a person, and leveled it at them.

John stiffened, dread turning his skin cold, and Teryl, next to him, shifted behind him. It wasn’t a safe place to hide, he
thought regretfully. With a gun like that at this close range, the bullet would tear through them both without losing any
of its momentum. With a gun like that, they didn’t stand a chance in hell of surviving. That meant he had to stall. He had
to find some way out, some chance for escape, at least for Teryl. “You’re going to shoot us right here. In your office. Where
you work.”

“Well, I’d rather not, but if it’s necessary…” Martin shrugged. “Actually, I’d rather not shoot you at all. It seems a shame
to change methods so late in the game.”

“So you’d rather keep trying the bombs until you get them to work.”

“Oh, no, not me. Why, I’m just a writer. I know nothing about bombs.” He shrugged again, then used the gun to gesture around
the room. “I never cared much for this place. It was fine for somebody like that hack—” with the barrel, he pointed toward
the yearbook on his desk, toward the picture of himself—“but it’s hardly suitable for an author of my stature. I deserve something
a little grander, something along the lines of the Grayson estate, don’t you think, Teryl? I can get rid of this place and
the two of you
and
throw suspicion your way, all in one afternoon.”

Teryl slowly edged out to once again stand at John’s side. She might be scared senseless, might be facing death much sooner
than she wanted, but she’d be damned if she would do it cowering. Not in front of this crazy man. “And how would you do that?”

Once more he pointed the gun at them—or, specifically, at John. “He’s already connected with the bombing in Colorado. Of course,
right now the sheriff believes he was the intended victim, but it wouldn’t take more than a few well-chosen words to change
his perception entirely. He’s also connected with the bombing of your house. The fact that he
survived both isn’t in his favor. Do you know what the odds are of an innocent victim who is truly uninvolved escaping a building
only seconds before it blows up not once but
twice?
Walking away once is a miracle. Walking away twice is suspicious. Dying the third time… that’s justice.”

D.J. approached him, coming between him and Teryl and John. “Please, Simon,” she said, her voice small and pathetic. “Please
don’t kill Teryl, please.”

He looked at her with enough scorn to make Teryl flinch, but it seemed to have no effect on D.J. She seemed used to it. “You
hate her. You’ve always hated her at least as much as you loved her. Don’t beg for her life.”

D.J.’s shrug made her hair shimmer. She looked the same as always—beautiful and provocative—but for the first time in her
life, Teryl didn’t envy her. For the first time she felt nothing but pity for the woman she had believed was her best friend.
“I’ve begged for plenty of other things. I don’t mind begging for this. Please, Rich—”

Neither woman was prepared for the sudden blow he struck her. One moment he was apparently calm; an instant later, he was
slamming the butt of the gun into D.J.’s face. She was so small and slender, and he struck her hard, knocking her to the floor.
Stunned and frightened by her friend’s stillness, Teryl instinctively moved to go to her side, but John caught her arm and
held her back. “Takes a lot of courage to hit someone half your size,” he said in a faintly mocking drawl.

“Takes a lot of stupidity to taunt the man who’s holding a gun on you.” Martin walked toward the open door and waited there.
“Let’s go. I’ve got plans to make. I can’t screw around with you anymore.”

Teryl went first with John right behind her, his hand resting at the small of her back. With Richard Martin right behind him,
she didn’t want to think what he felt in
his
back.

Martin directed them to the kitchen, then through a side door into a combination utility/workroom. A battered washer and dryer
stood in one corner, a worktable in the middle. Shelves of tools were braced along one wall, and a hot water heater filled
the corner. The room smelled faintly of fabric
softener and lint and almost overpoweringly of modeling clay and gasoline. The source of those last odors was the items laid
out on the table. A five-gallon can of gas. Four one-gallon glass jars. Clay. Timers. Wire filaments.

“Everyone who’s come into contact with you believes you’re delusional, John,” Martin said from the far end of the table. “They
know you think you’re me. It won’t be too hard to convince the authorities that you
were
insane. You became obsessed with Simon Tremont, began having delusions that you
were
Tremont. You blew up your own house and Teryl’s to try to convince people that someone was trying to kill you to keep you
quiet. When you failed to prove your claims, you became violent, as mentally ill people sometimes do, and you decided to kill
me. However, something went wrong, and one of the bombs detonated before the others were in place, killing you and the poor
unfortunate woman who was foolish enough to believe in you.” He smiled, enormously pleased with himself. “Hey, I’m pretty
good at this. I ought to be a writer.”

John leaned back against the windowsill, his arms folded over his chest. “Your plot has holes,” he said flatly. “For starters,
not everyone thought I was crazy. Rebecca
knows
I was telling the truth. For the sake of her reputation, she’s not going to do anything about it—so far—but if Teryl and
I turn up dead, how long will she stay quiet?” He paused only briefly. “And what about my family? They know the truth. They
know about you. Do you think they’ll sit back and let you win?” Another short pause. “What about Teryl’s family? They’ll never
accept that she was helping a madman try to kill someone when she died. And D.J. She may hate Teryl as much as she loves her…
but the same can be said about her feelings for you, can’t it? Knowing that you killed her sister will eat at her. It will
destroy her… and she’ll destroy you.”

“Minor details. I’ll take care of them all once you two are out of the way.” He waved the gun again. “Get started.”

Teryl looked at John, who glanced at the table filled with equipment, then smiled thinly. “If you think I’m going to put together
the bombs that you’ll then use to kill us, you
are
crazy. You want to blow us up, you’ll have to do it yourself.”

Before Martin’s movement even registered with Teryl, he was halfway around the table and holding her wrist in a vicious grip.
He yanked her to him, holding her tight against his chest, and pressed the barrel of the gun to her temple. “I don’t like
that response, John,” he said mildly. “Come up with another one… before I blow her fucking brains out.”

Looking regretful as hell, John left the window and approached the rickety table. She watched as he uncapped the gasoline
can, then tilted it over the first jar, dribbling it out in a thin stream. When it was half-full, he stopped and looked up
at Martin. “You have to give me directions. I’ve never made one of these before, and I didn’t stop to examine them closely
at Teryl’s house. How much gasoline?”

“That will do. Go ahead and fill the rest.”

She wondered what the chances were they would get out of this alive. Probably not very good. She wished she had known the
last time she’d seen her mother that it
would
be the last time; there were things she would have liked to tell her. There were things she wanted to say to John, too, starting
and ending with
I love you
and with about a million
I’m sorrys
in between. She was sorry she had ever doubted him, sorry she had distrusted him, sorry she had demanded proof, sorry she
had thought him crazy, sorry she had gotten him into this in the first place.

Following Martin’s directions, John placed the filaments next, suspending them in the space between the mouth of the jars
and the surface of the gasoline. Teryl wished there was something he could do to save them. She wished she had the courage
to tell him not to worry about her, not to obey Martin’s orders simply to protect her. If she had to die—and it was looking
very much as if she did—she would prefer a gunshot to the head over the blast of a bomb and the flames that would follow.
If she absolutely had to die, it might as well happen right now, before she had to endure Martin’s touch any longer.

Almost as if he’d read her mind, Martin drew her even
closer, brushed her hair back, and murmured in her ear, “Do you know how long I’ve fantasized about you? About what I would
do to you and how you would look and act and sound? That’s the only reason I ever did it with Debra Jane—because when I was
inside her, I felt closer to you. I wanted to be close to you. Do you understand that, Teryl? I only wanted to be close to
you. It’s
your
fault that he has to die. It’s
your
fault that you have to die.”

He lowered his head, kissing the soft skin just beneath her ear, and her stomach began churning, bile surging high, threatening
to make her ill. On the opposite side of the table, a murderously cold look came across John’s face, turning him into as much
of a stranger as the man behind her. Before he could act, she did, raising her hand, digging her nails into Martin’s face,
making him shriek with pain. He hit her in much the same way he’d struck D.J., the clammy steel of the pistol coming into
contact with her cheek, creating waves of pain that dulled her senses to everything else, sending her staggering against the
table. It swayed precariously beneath her weight, then, suddenly, John was supporting her, holding her against him, warning
Tremont, Martin, or whoever the bastard was not to touch her again.

As her vision cleared, she saw that she had knocked over two of the glass jars, their fuel seeping through cracks in the wooden
table, dripping to form a puddle on the ancient linoleum. The smell made her sick, and the blow to the head had left her woozy.
If John weren’t holding on to her, she wouldn’t even be able to stand.

Then sheer terror brought her upright in his arms. The floor, as in so many old houses, slanted just the slightest bit toward
the outside, and the gasoline pooling there was following its slope straight toward the water heater. “Oh, God,” she whimpered,
her tongue thick, her voice weak, the words of warning she sought evading her.

It wouldn’t have mattered if she could speak, though, because John was muttering his own prayer as Martin, cursing savagely,
raised the pistol and pointed it straight at them. The safety was off, and his finger was on the trigger,
pulling slowly, squeezing so damned slowly. “Fire,” Teryl whispered weakly, and John thought damned right he was going to
fire. The bastard was going to kill them both right now.

With a whoosh that seemed to suck the very air out of the room, a wall of fire burst up through the center of the room, engulfing
Martin in its flames, muffling his tortured screams with its rush. The heat was intense; in the second it took John to remember
the window behind them, it seared his skin and parched his lungs. He fumbled for the lock but couldn’t budge it. Grabbing
the first tool he found on the shelves, he smashed the window, using the crowbar to rake away the glass, then kicked out the
screen. He lifted Teryl to the ground, then, flames licking at his skin, he followed her out, scooped her into his arms and
ran like hell.

The concussion from the first explosion knocked them to the ground; it made his ears ring and his chest go tight. A second
and a third explosion followed, sending flames out shattered windows, reaching high into the sky, consuming old wood and shingles
as if they were paper. John rolled onto his back, feeling the sting of burns on his arms and neck, and pulled Teryl, her expression
dazed, her face bruised, into his arms. Together they watched as the house, fully involved now, collapsed inward on itself.
She began crying softly—for D.J., he thought, until he saw the slender red-haired woman standing a safe distance away, openly
sobbing, obviously heartbroken.

Richard Martin was still inside.

He regretted that the man had to die, even after all he’d done to John and especially to Teryl. He also regretted his own
loss. All the Tremont papers were gone for sure this time. All the documentation of his career. Eleven years’ worth of work,
of suffering, of healing, turned to ash.

Richard Martin wouldn’t die alone in this fire. His precious Simon Tremont was dying with him.

But John Smith was coming to life. It was time to stop hiding, time to give up his isolation, time to appreciate all that
life had given him, starting with the woman at his side.
The wind shifted, sending the thick, choking smoke the other way, and he breathed deeply, filling his lungs with sweet, clean
air. He had a future, and he had Teryl.