Greg Iles - True Evil

It took most of a minute to get her breath back. Then she slowly rolled over and sat up.

Will was on his knees a few yards away, trying in vain to pull a large splinter of glass out of his back. Behind him, a vast column of black smoke climbed into the sky. All the windows in the front wall were gone. Behind the smoke, Alex saw a blue-white flame that looked more like the glow of a Bunsen burner than a roaring blaze. The heat emanating from the building was almost unbearable. As she struggled to her feet, an inhuman shriek of terror echoed across the empty parking lot. Then a dark simian shape burst from the building, running on all fours, trailing smoke and fire. Alex staggered three steps toward Will, told him to leave the splinter where it was, then fell on her face.

Andrew Rusk had taken two Valium, a Lorcet, and a beta-blocker, yet his heart was still pounding. His head was worse. As he stared into his wife's vacuous eyes, he felt as though someone had taken hold of his spinal cord where it entered the base of his brain and was trying to yank it out.

"But I don't understand, " Lisa said for the eighth time in as many minutes.

"Those men outside," Rusk said, pointing to the dark patio windows of the house. "They're FBI agents."

"How do you know that? Maybe they're IRS or something."

"I know because I know."

"But I mean Cuba ?" Lisa whined.

"Shhh," Rusk hissed, squeezing her upper arm. "You have to whisper."

She jerked the arm away. "This is the first time you've ever mentioned Cuba to me. Why? Don't you trust me?"

Rusk squelched a desire to scream, Of course I don't trust you, you silly bitch!

Pouting like a child, Lisa retreated to the sofa and tucked her legs beneath her, yoga style. She was wearing biking shorts and a tank top that revealed the usual fleshscape of spectacular cleavage.

"Cuba?" she said again. "It's not even American yet, is it?"

He gaped at her. "American?"

"I mean, you know, capitalist or whatever."

Lisa's primary virtue was physical beauty combined with a ravenous libido. Rusk still had difficulty with the idea that someone of middling intelligence could experience truly intense passion, but he'd finally accepted it, based on empirical evidence. Maybe it was a vanity of intellectuals to believe that dumb people couldn't enjoy sex to the degree that smart people did. But maybe they did. Maybe they enjoyed it more. Still, Rusk doubted it. At bottom, he figured Lisa was some kind of prodigy, an idiot savant of sexual technique. And that was fine for the bedroom and minor social intercourse. But when it came to actual thought, not to mention decision making, it made things difficult.

He knelt before the couch and took Lisa's hand. He had to be patient. He had to convince her. Because there were no more options. They had to get out of the country, and fast. Thora Shepard was lying under a painter's drop cloth in the back of his Cayenne. If one of the FBI agents outside bent the law and broke into the locked garage, it was all over.

Rusk had tried to shut out his memories of the afternoon, but he couldn't do it. After the first euphoric moments of triumph, he had looked down at Thora's shattered skull with horror-but he hadn't frozen. Extreme sports had taught him one indelible lesson: hesitation killed. Knowing that Ponytail would return any moment, he'd rolled Thora into the drop cloth, then carried her featherweight body through the metal studs to a distant office in the construction area. There he'd found a gift from God: a sixty-five-gallon trash can on wheels, with the brand name MIGHT AS WELL imprinted on the lid. Thora fit easily into the can, which he'd rolled straight to the parking garage. He transferred Thora to the back of his Cayenne, and then-after returning the trash can to a different side of the fifteenth floor-he'd returned to his office as though nothing had happened.

But something had happened. And since that murderous minute, he'd felt his time as a free man draining away like blood from a severed vein. He had an escape plan, but to initiate it he'd first have to break free of FBI surveillance. He did not know how to do that. He still held out hope that Dr. Tarver would save them-if Tarver had not already bolted. The doctor had requested an emergency rendezvous at Chickamauga via e-mail, but Rusk had been unable to keep it without dragging the FBI along with him. Nearly frantic, he'd gone to a friend's office in the tower and sent Tarver an e-mail summarizing every threat arrayed against them, in the hope that Tarver could somehow cut through the closing net. But if Tarver didn't contact him soon, Rusk was going to have to take drastic measures. Like calling his father. He dreaded the thought, but at this point-without Dr. Tarver's help-it would take the legendary clout and connections of A.J. Rusk to save him.

"Lisa, honey," he said softly. "We're only talking about a few months in Cuba. I've arranged for us to live on a beautiful yacht right in the marina. Guys like Sinatra paid through the nose to hang out there with Ava Gardner and Marilyn Monroe."

"Yeah, like in the Dark Ages."

Lisa was twenty-nine years old. "Castro's history, babe. He's going to die any day now. He may already be dead, in fact."

She looked skeptical. "Didn't JFK try to assassinate him like a bunch of times, and he couldn't do it?"

Rusk wanted to kill Oliver Stone. "That doesn't matter, honey. As soon as the heat is off, we'll move to Costa Rica under different names. And Costa Rica is a goddamn paradise."

"But I like my name."

Rusk squeezed her hand. "Think of it this way: With the name you've got, you're worth about five million bucks. Under your new name, you're worth twenty. That's a big difference."

This got her attention. "Twenty million dollars?"

He nodded with the gravity such an amount demanded. He could see the wheels clicking behind her gorgeous green eyes. Despite the pounding at the base of his skull, he managed a smile. "That's Hollywood money, babe."

"But why can't we go to Costa Rica now ?" she asked in a girlish voice.

He forced himself not to scream. "Because it's not safe. We have to let the FBI check Costa Rica and find nothing. Then we can go there."

"What have you done, Andy? You said it was some kind of tax thing. How pissed off can the government be about that?"

What have I done? I killed a woman who looked a lot like you, only better. And if you keep this up, I might just kill you, too. He glanced worriedly at the dark windows. "You don't understand these things, Lisa. The simple truth is, we don't have a choice."

She gave him a long stare, surprising in its coldness. "Maybe you don't have a choice. But I haven't done anything. I can stay right here until it's safe in Costa Rica. Then I can join you there."

Rusk stared, incredulous. She sounded just like Thora Shepard! "You'd stay here without me?"

"I don't want to. You're the one making this happen, Andy, not me."

She's right, he thought. Cuba had seemed such a cool idea when Tarver suggested it five years ago. It was one of the last mysterious places on earth, the last commie outpost save China. And it had that Hemingway glamour. What more macho retreat could there be? The fucking Cold War was still going on there, for God's sake. But then Castro got sick. Nobody knew what was really going on. And forty-eight hours after having his umbilical to Dr. Tarver cut, Rusk thought the prospect of living in postcommunist chaos sounded dicey. Lisa certainly wanted no part of it. Maybe she wasn't so dumb after all.

"I can't do it, Andy," she said with sudden conviction. "I promise I'll come to Costa Rica when you get there. But I don't want to leave my mom and my friends to go to Cuba."