Darkness Falls (15 page)

"Stop."

"What?"

"We're on an open line, Carrie. No speculating, okay?"

"What about at dinner tonight?"

He stared at the empty wall to his right and imagined the chaos just beyond it. "I'll do my best, okay?"

Chapter
18.

Erin Neal leaned his chair back against the wall and questioned his sanity for the fifth time that night. The more he thought about the scenario he'd dreamed up, the more farfetched it seemed -- nothing more than an elaborate fantasy that brought Jenna back to life, made her innocent, and heaped the blame on someone he'd always hated. A neat little package without so much as a single loose end. How convenient.

Michael Teague was a hypocritical, arrogant prick who cared only about himself, but even Erin had to admit that he wasn't a complete idiot. What could he hope to accomplish by all this?

It seemed nearly impossible that these bacteria had been designed independent of the work Erin had abandoned years ago, and that still pointed to Jenna. But maybe her involvement was less direct? Maybe she'd talked to someone about his theories.

Or maybe she'd written something down and someone had gotten hold of it, then sunk the ship she was on to cover his tracks.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

He reached for the legal pad on the table in front of him, but then stopped, staring blankly at it by the dim glow of his laptop screen.

The list wasn't even close to being complete, despite the time and money he'd spent creating it. If Jenna really was alive, was her new name and address on it?

She didn't have any family she was close to, so that was a dead end. And he knew she wouldn't be stupid enough to contact old friends. So that left him trying to narrow things down by answering less pointed questions. Would she hide in plain sight or in a remote area? Probably remote -- she'd never been one for cities or crowds.

In the U. S. or in a foreign country? That was a harder question, but he was assuming the U. S. because she'd stand out more in a foreign country.

Obviously, she couldn't work as an environmentalist or biologist -- it was too small a world -- and she'd never mentioned another interest that might lead to a career. Every path that might lead to her became an obvious dead end after even minimal thought. All except one.

He'd never shared Jenna's passion for rock climbing, but he was certain she wouldn't be able to give it up. The problem was that the world of climbing wasn't much bigger than that of biology or environmentalism --making it impossible to go out to the cliffs without running the risk of being recognized. And she couldn't use climbing gyms for the same reason.

So her only choice would be to build a home wall like the one she'd built in her apartment in Salt Lake. And to do that, she'd have to buy handholds -- an unusual specialty item manufactured by only a few companies in the world.

He'd purchased the mailing lists of nearly all the businesses selling holds over the Internet and was in the process of creating a prioritized spreadsheet. She was a woman, she would have purchased them all over a short period within the last eighteen months, and she probably wouldn't live in an urban area. Although general, those parameters narrowed things down by almost ninety percent.

Erin ran his finger down the pad in front of him and dialed another number into his phone.

"Hello?"

He sat upright at the sound of the woman's voice, but then sagged back down in his chair when he was forced to admit to himself that it wasn't Jenna.

"Is Sara there?"

"This is Sara."

"Hi. I work for Nicros. I'm just following up to see how you like the climbing holds you purchased from us."

"Well, they were a gift for my boyfriend and he isn't here. But I think he likes them."

"Great," Erin said, already looking for the next phone number on his list. "Remind him that if he has any problems, we're here."

"I will. Thanks."

He started dialing again, but then stopped and walked off his porch into the darkness. He'd called more than a hundred numbers and every time Jenna didn't answer, he felt another piece of his soul being chipped away. How much was left?

He cocked his arm back to throw the phone, but managed to regain control before he doomed himself, once again, to hours of wading through cactuses with a flashlight.

"Self-control? Who would have ever thought?"

He spun toward the voice, losing his footing and falling backward into the dust. She was just a vague, colorless form in the starlight, but it didn't matter. The shape of her, the way she stood, the pace of her speech -- it was all indelibly burned into his mind.

Jenna Kalin resisted the urge to run to him, to pull him to his feet, to wrap her arms around him. The dark helped, though not as much as she'd hoped. At least his expression was softened by shadow. After everything that had happened, she didn't think she had enough strength to take the full brunt of his reaction.

She'd been rehearsing this moment for the last five hours -- the time it had taken her to hike there through the desert, avoiding roads and open areas where she suspected Jonas was waiting. And despite that silent practice, all she could do was stand there, not breathing.

After so much time, how could her feelings for him not have diminished? If anything, they had become starker against the loneliness she'd created for herself in Montana.

"Are you all right?" she finally managed to say. "You . . ." Her voice trailed when she realized there was nothing she could say. The elaborate apologies and lengthy explanations that had sounded so reasonable alone in the dark suddenly seemed meaningless.

He put his hands behind him, but didn't try to stand. He just scooted back a few feet before seeming to lose all strength. He pulled his knees up and his forehead sank to them. In the dim glow of a single light inside his house, she could see the raggedness of his breathing.

"I'm so sorry, Erin."

His body convulsed in a bitter laugh before he raised his head. His face was briefly illuminated and she looked down at the ground, but not before seeing too much.

"About what, Jenna? Turning your back on me when I needed you? Or do you mean making me think you'd drowned in the middle of a freezing cold ocean? Or using one of my ideas to build a biological weapon?"

She didn't look up. "All three?"

He finally found the strength to stand and walked past her to his house. She considered just walking back out into the desert, and for a moment even thought about going out to the road to let Jonas finish what he'd started. In the end, though, she followed him inside.

He was in the kitchen, sweeping the contents of a high shelf onto the floor, finally coming up with a grimy six-pack of beer. He twisted the top off one of the bottles and took a long pull before turning around.

She forced herself to look directly at him, a task made easier because he wouldn't do the same. The blood had mostly drained from his face, but otherwise he hadn't changed at all. The same soft eyes, the same barely controlled blonde hair. When she looked deeper, though, she saw a sadness so intricately woven into his expression that someone meeting him for the first time would assume he'd been born that way. She knew better.

"I was the first person the government called," he said.

"I know. There was an article about you in the paper."

When he finally met her gaze his eyes were a little glassy and, for a moment, she thought a tear was going to break loose and run down his cheek. In all their time, she'd never seen him cry. God. What had she done to him?

"I've been looking for you," he said. "What do you mean?"

"I ran back the time on Ghawar. It happened after your boat went down."

"I don't understand. What does Ghawar have to do with anything?"

The intensity of his gaze increased, as though he was searching for something, but it quickly faded into something she'd never seen in him: hopelessness.

"I used to think I could tell when you were lying," he said. "Kind of funny after everything that's happened."

"I never wanted to hurt you, Erin. I know how empty that sounds right now, but you have to understand what I was doing. What I was trying to save. You've seen firsthand what they're doing in Alaska. I know you think Mother Nature is going to wake up one morning and kill us all, and maybe you're right. But what if it's too late? There's no reason to drill in Alaska --"

"And how does Saudi Arabia fit into all that?"

"What are you talking about, Erin? What does Saudi Arabia have to do --"

He let out a frustrated breath and stalked past her, throwing the swinging door to the kitchen open hard enough to crack the wood around its hinges. After a few moments, she followed, finding him in his small living room staring out a window that the darkness had turned into a mirror.

"How could you be so stupid, Jenna. How could you let Michael Teague manipulate you like this?"

"Don't try to twist this around and make it about Michael. It wasn't."

"You really don't know what you've done, do you?"

"I'm not stupid, Erin. And I don't do things without thinking. This wasn't something I just suddenly --"

He slammed his empty beer down on a table and then charged past her again, this time on his way back to the kitchen. A moment later, he reappeared with a fresh bottle.

She caught him by the arm as he passed, the act of touching him sending a jolt of adrenaline through her that she tried to hide. "I think one's enough, Erin."

"Don't even fucking start," he said.

She released him and let him return to his position in front of the window. He was right. She'd abandoned him in the worst way imaginable and now, when she found herself alone and in trouble, she showed up on his doorstep and started telling him what to do.

"Ghawar has the same bacterial infestation, Jenna."

She didn't answer immediately, thinking for a moment she'd misunderstood. "That's not possible. It can't spread. It --"

"Wake up, for Christ's sake! It didn't spread. Somebody dumped it into the water injectors."

"That doesn't make sense, Erin. We --"

"And not just Ghawar," he said, finally turning away from the window. "If I'm right, they hit all the major water-injected fields."

"No. It can't . . ." she said, her voice faltering.

"Come on, Jenna. Did you really think Michael Teague was going to be satisfied with Alaska? Or did you just tell yourself that so you could go out there and save your stupid caribou?"

Chapter
19.

"You don't have anything at all to say?"

Mark Beamon remained silent, staring down at the wilted food perched on plates in front of him. As promised, it was all there lutefisk, vegetables wrapped in wheat tortillas. Even a bran muffin topped with a tiny statue of a bride and groom.

"Jesus, Mark. Are you okay? This was supposed to be a joke." Carrie abandoned the pots she was washing and sat down next to him. "It's not really what we're having at our reception. I'm just winding you up."

He nodded absently.

"So I take it this is a disaster in the making."

"What?"

"This oil thing you've gotten yourself involved in."

"No, I'm just a little tired. It's fine." "How long have we been together, Mark? I know the signs. That hangdog expression means problems at work. That expression with the smell of cigarettes means big problems at work. That expression with the smell of cigarettes and Twinkie crumbs on your shirt means a disaster in the making."

Beamon jammed the muffin into his mouth to avoid answering. On one hand, he hated being so easy to read, but on the other he was glad that someone cared enough to bother.

"Would it be fair for me to assume that the bacteria in question isn't just in Alaska?" Carrie asked, leaning back in her chair and smoothing the oversized Buffalo Springfield T-shirt she wore as an apron. "I read that we import more oil from Saudi Arabia your new favorite travel destination -- than any other country but Canada."

"Really?" he said through a mouthful of muffin. "I didn't know that."

Carrie grinned. "Not going to talk, huh. Then tell me how you feel about suddenly being in the middle of whatever it is you're in the middle of."

"I'm not happy about it."

"Really?"

"You're psychoanalyzing."

"I'm not! We're having a conversation. I mean, you went from pretty high-powered to basically no-powered. I recognize you did it for us, but sometimes I wonder if it was too much. Maybe a happy medium would have been better."

"Mediums are never happy for me. You know that."

She pointed to the beer on the table in front of him. "You managed to moderate your drinking. You didn't just give it up. I've said it before, Mark. I'm not trying to get you to live a healthy lifestyle -- physically or spiritually. All I'm asking is that you don't go out of your way to kill yourself."

He smiled and shook his head.

"What?"

"I'm marrying a woman who uses the word 'spiritually.'