Brian Freeman - Spilled Blood

Chris leaned closer to look at the Bible. Marco had highlighted the verses of Genesis 6:5 to 6:7.

And God saw that man’s wickedness was great on the earth and that his imagination and thoughts were nothing but evil.

And God repented that he had created man on the earth and was grieved to his heart.

And God said, I will destroy man from the face of the earth, man and beast, every creeping thing.

‘Marco,’ Chris pleaded aloud, as if the motel owner could hear him. ‘What are you doing, my friend? This isn’t the way.’

He followed the hallway to the cottage’s second bedroom, which smelled of cigar smoke. Ash sprinkled the floor. Marco had fashioned it as an office, with a roll-top desk, an old leather chair, and oak filing cabinets so stuffed with papers that the drawers didn’t close. There were photographs hung on the wall from Marco’s decades with the police in San Jose. Marco in a perfectly fitted uniform, his expression serious, his badge gleaming. Marco in a row with other officers, all of them with their hands neatly folded behind their backs. Above the desk, Chris saw four framed graduation certificates, too. They were all identical, from different years over the past decade, all signed by the Director of the FBI and the Secretary of the Army. Marco had gone through explosives training at the Hazardous Devices School at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsfield, Alabama.

Marco wasn’t just a cop. He had spent his career in the Bomb Squad.

Chris felt his breathing quicken. He was suddenly conscious of every second that passed. He opened the drawers of the desk and piled papers in front of him, and everything he found made him sick.

Engineering diagrams.

Orders for electronics. Tools. Switches. Wires. Chemicals.

Web print-outs on underground sources of explosive materials. Comparisons of yield. Bomb designs.

Photographs.

Marco had taken hundreds of photographs in a single location, and Chris recognized the innocent stretch of roadway, not even a hundred yards across. People who drove across it didn’t even know what was built below them. It was no more than three miles away, upriver. It was the cork in the bottle controlling the flow of millions of gallons of water into the valley.

The Spirit Dam.

Marco had analyzed the dam in exhaustive detail. He’d taken close-ups of every gate, valve, and pipe. He’d obtained the structural blueprints and marked notes on the elevation, cross-sections, and contour lines. He’d mapped the points of maximum stress. He’d studied the FEMA flood plains for southwestern Minnesota. He’d consulted with security experts and engineers by letter and e-mail, using his bomb-squad credentials to seek help from outsiders in assessing the risk of an IED to the integrity of the dam.

Instead, unknowingly, they’d helped him design a bomb to blow it up. Destroy it. Bring a wall of water down on every creeping thing.

Sometimes choices are easy. Sometimes they are hard.

Chris bolted through the cottage. He had to get to the dam. He had to stop Marco, but even as he ran, he knew in the pit of his gut that the effort was futile. Marco was already there. He had chosen his path of revenge. He was unstoppable.

As he passed through the dining room, with its odd settings of plates, crystal, wine, and flowers, he spotted a slim envelope tucked under one of the lace placemats. He stopped long enough to pull it into his hand, and he was startled to see his own name written across the envelope.

Marco was way ahead of him.

Chris opened the envelope and removed a single sheet of paper inside. He knew what he would find. It was a note of death, and yet it made him cry. It was the last note from Aquarius.

TO THE ATTENTION OF

MR. CHRISTOPHER HAWK

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, MIO AMICO,

YOU KNOW THE TRUTH

I AM SORRY

WHAT IS DONE CANNOT BE UNDONE

SOON I WILL BE WITH LUCIA

SOON JUSTICE WILL BE MINE

I WILL PRAY THAT YOU AND YOUR FAMILY ARE SAFE

NOW YOU HAVE YOUR CHANCE

TO START OVER

MY NAME IS

AQUARIUS

50

Marco Piva staggered backward as the bullet tunneled through his body, splintering bone, searing and tearing muscle, and splattering blood, tissue, and skin across his back as it exited into the cold air and spent itself in the dead grass beyond the river. Inhaling, he felt knives cutting open his chest. He coughed, spraying red-tinged spit onto the white cotton of his T-shirt. Blood pulsed through the hole in his torso with the pumping of his heart. Even so, he managed to laugh. His lips folded into a smile. He’d expected deceit from Florian Steele.

‘ Bastardo ,’ he whispered.

Florian kept the gun pointed at him. ‘Who are you?’

Marco focused beyond the agony of every breath. His T-shirt had a small breast pocket, and he slid out a photograph. It was partly soaked in blood now. He stared at his beloved Lucia, in one of the happiest times of their lives. A decade earlier, they had spent a month in his hometown outside Milan. For four weeks, they had gotten drunk and made love like teenagers.

He stared at her face. Her eyes making love to the camera. Her lips blowing him a kiss. That was the image of her he wanted to take to the grave. That beautiful memory, inked into his brain.

He handed the photograph to Florian, whose eyes flicked to the picture in confusion. It took him a moment to recognize her. She looked different in the lab, her hair pinned, her glasses on that perfect sharp nose. The scientist was all business. The wife and lover let her hair down.

‘Lucia Causey,’ Florian said finally, remembering her face. He studied Marco, dying in front of him. ‘You’re her husband.’

Marco thumped his chest. ‘Thirty-two years.’

Florian shook his head. ‘You crazy son of a bitch. This was never even about Mondamin? Hell, you should thank me instead of trying to kill me. I saved you, both of you. Your wife was gambling your lives into oblivion. You were going to lose everything until I came along.’

Marco stabbed a finger at him. ‘You killed her.’

‘She killed herself.’

‘It was you,’ he insisted.

‘What, do you think I sent someone there to murder her? You’re wrong. You may hate it, you may not want to accept it, but your wife went into that garage all by herself and chose to end her life.’

Marco gripped the bridge railing for support. His knees buckled, and he sank toward the ground, feeling dizzy. ‘I know.’

‘You know?’ Florian demanded angrily. ‘If you know, then why the hell are we here? I had nothing to do with your wife’s suicide!’

Marco bowed his head. He’d been expecting those words. The arrogance of the man was amazing. It was why he and his company were beyond salvation. Out here, unashamed, unaware of his fate, Florian Steele still managed to believe that he was innocent.

‘Ashlynn knew,’ Marco whispered.

‘ What about my daughter? ’

‘She understood. She knew who you are.’

Florian pointed the gun at Marco’s skull. ‘What did you do to my daughter?’

Words came harder now. He was floating with the loss of blood. ‘She knew . . . you destroy . . . everything you touch.’

‘Ashlynn loved me.’

‘You can love . . . and you can still hate.’ He wrapped his left arm around the railing, holding himself up.

He’d loved Lucia. He’d hated her, too. He’d hated what the gambling did to her, how it had sent her spiraling into despair. He’d hated watching his beautiful wife devolve into someone he didn’t know. The begging, the pleading, the threats, the screaming, made no difference. She was in thrall to the disease. She couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t help pouring the fruits of their life down a pit of adrenaline and thrill.