Infamous (39 page)

Surely Alison would know.

The tall man with that ponytail had said that he’d exploded Wayne’s head all over the back windshield of his car. If Alison had seen that, then she was certainly still having nightmares. Although A.J. had a point. Why she hadn’t gone to the police right away was …

Huh.

And I realized, as A.J. pulled himself back out from under the Jeep and dusted off his jeans, that maybe Alison
hadn’t
seen Wayne’s murder. But Wayne, with all of his tattoos, may well have been an easily identifiable man. As was his tall, ponytailed killer, with that easy-to-distinguish scar near his eye.

What if Alison had seen them together, just prior to Wayne’s death?

I wasn’t any kind of lawyer, but that made me scratch my head, because it seemed to me that simply seeing two men together before one man died, didn’t provide evidence—beyond a reasonable doubt—that the second man was guilty of murder.

So maybe there was more to it than that. Which seemed to make sense, because despite Wayne’s being as charming and lovely as he no doubt must’ve been before death had stolen him, it also seemed odd that the FBI had been called in to solve a simple homicide.

Which made me twice the fan of the knock-on-Rob-and-Charlotte’s-door idea.

“Brake line’s severed,” A.J. reported. “But it was badly frayed. It was definitely an accident.”

I shook my head. “There are ways to fray a line. Remember, they wanted to make it look like it wasn’t deliberate.”

A.J. sighed heavily. “Look, Gramps, I just—”

“This is a rental car,” I pointed out. “You think they don’t check these things regularly?”

“Apparently not regularly enough,” A.J. said, and I knew, just from looking at him, that I wasn’t going to convince him, even though I went on and told him everything that I’d just been thinking.

This accident was just that to him—an accident. Plus he saw it as a good thing, a happy occasion—because it had thrown him back into Alison’s willing arms. The boy was besotted, that much was clear.

He was also in that place—I’d been there myself—where, after a long stretch of no sexual congress, he’d gotten some, and now desperately craved more. He wasn’t about to listen to reason when all he wanted to think about was planning the logistics behind the next time he could get this girl alone.

I wanted to suggest to him that right now—and over the next few days—might be the perfect time to keep his belt fastened and his pants zipped. He’d achieve more by refusing to be Alison’s cheap and meaningless plaything, but I knew that A.J. wouldn’t be able to hear that news flash right now either. So I kept that to myself.

“Let’s talk to the rental car company,” I said. “Find out the date when the brake line was last checked. See if it was starting to fray and I’d bet you it wasn’t. In the meantime, I’ll keep an eye on the man I think is Gene, while you get Alison
safely to Alaska and stick close to her. Like that’s going to be a hardship.”

He smiled a little sheepishly. “Sorry about before. In the Jeep. I kind of kicked you in the head.”

“I don’t have a head to kick,” I told him. “Besides, I saw your intention and got the hell out of Dodge. Lookit, do me a favor? Will you at least let me ask her about Wayne and Gene and the tall man I saw burning that car?”

He sighed. “She’s not an idiot.”

“I’m aware of that, kid.”

“Let’s do it later,” he said, “please?” and he went toward Alison, who’d just closed her phone.

“Paula’s coming with another car,” Alison reported. “She’s going to drive us to the airport. She’s already on the road—she’ll be here in about ten minutes. It’s going to be close, but we’re still going to make our departure time.”

And then she stopped talking because A.J. kissed her.

A.J. definitely wasn’t bored on the plane.

And Alison wasn’t either.

She didn’t even try to pretend that, after they’d boarded the aircraft—luxurious and plush, with that king-sized bed lurking there in a private, spacious room—they weren’t going to end up napping.

Together.

After not napping together.

They sat in the comfortable captain’s chairs in the main cabin during takeoff. And A.J. must’ve seen her anxiety. She’d never been a happy flier and somehow he knew and reached over and took her hand, lacing their fingers together.

It was so thoughtful and sweet, it nearly made her cry.

Of course it seemed as if almost everything, over the past few days, nearly made her cry.

And she was still badly shaken by that plunge down the hill.

Not to mention how quickly and thoroughly she’d thrown away her resolve to, as she’d stated quite succinctly moments earlier, never have sex with this man again.

So, okay. A little near-death experience had made her realize that life was too short to not take advantage of the kind of connection that she and A.J. had made.

As long as they both understood that their time together was temporary.

It had to be.

They reached cruising altitude and the seat belt sign went off, and Alison stood up. And this time, she held out her hand for him.

He didn’t argue, didn’t say a word. He just followed her into the bedroom, where she locked the door behind them, and pulled him in close for a kiss.

He tasted like A.J.—sweet and funny with familiar coffee overtones, because he drank so much of the stuff. It was odd how quickly that had happened—that familiarity. It wasn’t long ago that kissing him had been new and strange and wonderful. And now it was just wonderful.

He got her naked—with her enthusiastic help, of course—and then he made her come, hard and fast, just blowing the top of her head off, leaving her gasping and weak and yet, somehow, longing for more.

And then he delivered more, for longer than she would have believed possible. Slowly, sweetly, tenderly, and this time when she came it was in glorious slow motion. This time he came with her, sighing her name as if, for him, she were the beginning and the end.

And again she nearly cried, because she wanted this, but she didn’t want
this
. She wanted someone a lot like him, but different. She didn’t want this man,
this
A.J.—not with the luggage with which he came burdened. It was luggage he’d never lose and the thought of handcuffing herself to it, too, was too much.

Somehow he knew that as well, and he whispered, “I’m sorry.”

And then he fell asleep, as did Alison.

For a little while.

She awoke to find him moaning, still fast asleep, and she
shook him to try to wake him, afraid he was caught in the claws of some horrible dream—something he’d done or seen or lived through. He’d lost a kidney, he’d told her. In Hor al-Hammar. And she knew that wasn’t all that he’d lost there.

But when he opened his eyes—they were so blue—he smiled at her. “Hey,” he said. “Don’t tell me we’re there already.”

“No,” Alison said. “I think you were having a nightmare.”

He looked surprised and then he laughed. “No,” he said. “That was … Not a nightmare. I’ve had my share of nightmares and … But you were there in this one and, um …”

“Um?” she said, smiling back at him. “Really? Then I’m sorry I woke you.”

He pulled her down for a kiss. “Dream versus reality? I’ll take the real thing. Although you
were
wearing this incredible lingerie. I was sitting on this chair—like the ones in your kitchen. And I was tied up—to the chair. And you came in, in these black panties, with these really high heels and I knew you were going to, you know, jump me. Which I love, very much, when you do it, not just in my dreams.”

She had to laugh. “Shades of dominatrix,” she said. “Was I wearing leather and maybe carrying a whip?”

A.J. laughed, too. “No, it was that stretchy kind of lace, like you were wearing today. I don’t know why, but I’ve always really,
really
liked that.”

“So … do you also really,
really
like being tied up?” Alison asked.

“Actually,” he said, “I don’t. I don’t find it even remotely appealing. I’m not sure why I dreamed it. Although, in my dream, it wasn’t a bad thing.”

“Your hands are tied,” she said. “Maybe it was symbolic. Was it just your hands?”

“God,” he said, “I can’t remember that. All I know is that I wasn’t trying to get away.”

“Do you always remember your dreams so vividly?”

A.J. looked at her, as if deciding how to answer. He was a smart man, and he’d no doubt figured out exactly the direction
she was heading. But then he nodded and said, “Yeah. Usually.”

“Do you have nightmares a lot?”

“Not so much anymore.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s been awhile since I’ve done the whole wake-up-screaming thing. You’d know it if I was having a nightmare, by the way. None of this
are you or aren’t you
ambiguity. You’d know.”

Alison propped her head up on one hand, elbow out, so that she was looking down at him as she played with the hair on his chest. “Do you have those nasty recurring ones, with the same dream every time? Or …?”

“They usually start out differently,” he told her. “And end up the same.”

And of course, her next question was,
Will you tell me about it?
She could see him bracing himself for it, see him start to consider his options—what to say, what to do.

“If I asked you to tell me about your nightmare,” she said instead, “would that be a bad thing? Would, you know, talking about it make you more likely to have it again?”

He was both surprised and amused. “You do know you just gave me an out.”

Alison shook her head. “No, I gave you a chance to answer—honestly—what I believe is a very serious question.”

“My honest answer,” he said, “is that I don’t know. Because I’ve … kind of, um, never talked about it.”

“Kind of?”

“Never,” he clarified with an apologetic smile. “I do that a lot, don’t I? Equivocate.”

“Yes, you do. Don’t change the subject.”

“I wasn’t trying to.” He reached up and pushed her hair back behind her ear with the gentlest of caresses.

“You’ve never talked to your friend Lutz?” Alison asked.

“No,” A.J. said. “I was always trying to push that part of my life away. It was over and I was moving on. Revisiting
what happened didn’t seem like a good plan. So I didn’t talk to Lutz about anything. I didn’t talk to Lutz at all.”

“Wow,” Alison said. “Maybe I should be wearing the
I’m with Stupid
shirt.”

A.J. laughed. “But I’m doing okay.”

“Wouldn’t you rather be doing better than just okay?”

“When I’m with you, I am,” he told her. And he meant it, which scared the crap out of her.

So she said, “Tell me about your nightmare,” because she wanted him to back away, to admit that he was unwilling to open up and tell her. Of course, that would be more brutally awful fuel to add to the fire upon which all of her doubts blazed. More reasons to help convince herself that there was no way in hell this relationship could ever be anything real and lasting.

And she could see from his eyes that he knew why she was pushing him to tell her, and it made him sad—but not sad enough to douse his relentless hope.

“It’s one of those dreams,” he told her quietly, “where I know exactly what’s going to happen. I see it coming, but I can’t stop it. It just bulldozes over me. I think that’s one of the reasons why I stopped having the nightmares. I finally realized that even if I’d seen it coming, back when it really happened, even if I hadn’t been so naive and trusting, it wouldn’t have mattered. I still wouldn’t have been able to stop it. It was not a situation that I could control, even though I tried. I did the best I could, and nearly died.”

He took a deep breath and let it out in a rush.

“At the time, it was hard not to blame myself. We went in knowing that the enemy was … cruel. They allegedly answered to the Republican Guard, but they were led by a powerful local warlord who was even more brutal. And although he had plenty of ammunition, he preferred to crush any opposition in a far more up-close and personal way, starting with his opponents’ children. And if you didn’t have children, his men would kill your nieces and nephews or even the neighbors’ kids. They didn’t give a damn. They also
liked to draw it out. The killing. And make it public. Witnessing it kept everyone else in line.”

He was telling her what had actually happened, not what he’d dreamed. He was telling her about Hor al-Hammar.

“And yet, when we went into the village, into what we called Hor al-Hammar, there were still people willing to help us. I told them—because this was what
I
had been told—that after we’d liberated Kuwait, we were going to push, hard, into Iraq. So they helped us set up a base. They helped us make it secure. But then, just like that, it was over, and we were being ordered back over the border. I was so goddamned young and naive. I remember running to find my commanding officer, because I knew it had to be a mistake. And when I couldn’t find him, I went further up the chain of command. And when I realized we really were leaving, I told the major that we had to get those people out of there—we had to take them with us—all the civilians who’d helped us. But he said there was no time. And even if there was, there was nowhere to put them—they’d be refugees. Imagine the uproar if we showed up back in the States with a few thousand stray towel-heads. He actually called them that. Besides, he said, they wouldn’t want to go.

“I told him he was wrong, and then I told him to go fuck himself, which kind of ended my career—there’s that
kind of
, again. It ended my career, but that’s okay, by then it was already over. I was ready to get out. He got pissed and he called for the MPs, but everything was in chaos so I just walked away. And then I ran. And then I stole a Jeep, which went onto my list of transgressions. I made it out to the village, but the fighting had already started. Our people—our allies, the so-called
towel-heads
who’d already helped save countless American lives—they were armed and they were holding off the attack, but they weren’t going to be able to hold it forever. And they knew by then that we’d abandoned them.