The Last Templar - Страница 46

She didn't seem to see anything paradoxical about it. "I'm a scientist, Sean. I'm like you, I deal in hard facts. When I go out and dig, I look for evidence about how people lived and died and fought wars and built cities . . . myths and legends I leave to others."

"So if it can't be scientifically explained . . . ?"

"Then it probably didn't happen." She set down the box of lokmas and wiped her face with a napkin before stretching back lazily and rolling over to face him. "I need to ask you something."

"Shoot."

"Back at JFK."

"Yeah ..."

"How come you didn't pull me off that plane? You could have arrested me, right? Why didn't you?"

From the vaguest hint of a smile and the glint in her eyes, he knew what she was getting at. She was taking the lead, which was just as well given his grating hesitation to move in that direction himself.

He ducked it, for now, with a noncommittal "I don't know," before adding, "I knew you'd be a real pain in the ass and probably scream the house down if I took you in."

She edged closer. "Damn right I would."

He felt a slight quickening in his chest and shifted his position, sliding down and leaning in more to face her. "Plus ... I figured, what the hell. Let's see if she's as smart as she thinks she is."

She leaned closer still. Her face was now hovering inches away from his, her eyes moving over his face. The curling smile widened. "How magnanimous of you."

The sky, the forest, the campfire ... it was perfect. He could feel the warmth of her lips radiating out, beckoning his, and for a brief moment, he felt everything else fall away. The rest of the world simply ceased to exist.

"What can I tell you, I'm a magnanimous kind of guy. Especially when someone's out on their own .

. . pilgrimage."

She held the minute gap separating their lips. "So given that you're here protecting me," she whispered, "I guess that kind of makes you my own personal Knight Templar?"

"Something like that."

"You know," she mused, eyeing him playfully, "according to the official Templars' manual, you're supposed to stand guard all night while the pilgrims sleep."

"You sure about that?"

"Chapter six, subsection four. Check it out."

The feeling was unreal.

"You think you can handle that?" she asked.

"No sweat. It's what we Templars do."

She smiled. And with that, he leaned in and kissed her.

He moved in closer and the kiss turned more urgent. They melted into each other, lost in the moment, their minds free from thought, consumed by a sublime rush of feel, smell, and taste—and then something intruded, a familiar undertow nagging at him, pulling his mind to a darker place, to the face of his devastated mother and to a man in an armchair, his arms hanging lifelessly to his side, a gun lying innocently on the carpet, the wall behind him splattered with blood.

He pulled back.

"What?" Tess said dreamily.

He frowned inwardly as he sat up. His eyes had taken on a haunting, distant glaze. "This . . . this isn't a good idea."

She raised herself and snaked a hand through his hair, pulling his mouth closer to her. "Oh, I beg to differ. I think it's a great idea." She kissed him again, but just as their lips touched, he drew back again.

"Seriously."

Tess pulled herself up on her elbow, momentarily dumbfounded. He was just looking at her, dejected.

"Oh my God. You are serious." She looked at him askance and flashed him a cheeky grin. "This isn't some Lent celibacy thing, is it?"

"Hardly."

"Okay, so what then? You're not married. I'm pretty sure you're not gay, although ..." She made a

"maybe" gesture. "And last time I checked, I thought I looked pretty damn good. So what is it?"

He was struggling to put it into words. It wasn't the first time these feelings had sneaked up on him, but it had been a while. He hadn't felt this way about someone for a long time. "It's hard to explain."

"Try."

It wasn't easy. "I know we hardly know each other, and maybe I'm jumping the gun here, but I really like you, and . . . there are things about me I think you need to know, even if. . ." He didn't continue, but the implication was clear. Even if I end up losing you because of it. "It's about my dad."

Which completely threw her.

"What does this have to do with us? You said you were young when he died, that it hit you hard."

She saw Reilly wince. From the first time he mentioned it back at her house that evening, she knew she was trespassing on difficult ground, but she needed to know. "What happened?"

"He shot himself. For no reason."

Deep down, Tess felt a knot unwind. Her imagination had taken her to some even darker places.

"What do you mean, for no reason? There had to be a reason."

Reilly shook his head, and his face clouded. "That's the thing. There just wasn't. I mean, none that made sense. He was never outwardly gloomy or moody. We eventually found out he was sick, he was suffering from depression, but there wasn't any reason for it. He had a good job, he liked his work, we were comfortable, he had a loving wife. By all outward indications, he had a great life. It didn't stop him from blowing his brains out."

Tess leaned into him. "It's an illness, Sean. A medical condition, a chemical imbalance, whatever you want to call it. You said it yourself, he was sick."

"I know. The thing is, it's also genetic. There's a one in four chance that I'll get it."

"And a three in four chance that you won't." She smiled supportively. He didn't seem convinced.

"Was he getting treated for it?"

"No. This was before Prozac became the new aspirin."

She paused, mulling it over. "Have you had yourself checked?"

"We have routine psych evaluations at work."

"And . . . ?"

"They haven't found anything wrong."

She nodded. "Good. I don't see it either."

"See it?"

Her voice softened. "In your eyes. I could see something, a bit of distance, like you're walled off, always holding something back. At first I thought it might be your M.O., you know, the badge talking, the strong, silent type." She was beaming with conviction and reassurance. "It doesn't have to happen to you."

"What if it does? I've been through it, I saw what it did to my mom. I wouldn't want to put you, or anyone I care about, through it."

"So you're going to shut yourself off from the rest of the world? Come on, Sean. It's like telling me we shouldn't be together just because, I don't know, your dad died of cancer. Who really knows what's going to happen to any of us? You just live your life and hope for the best."

"Not everybody wakes up one morning and decides to ride a bullet out of this world. The thing is, I recognize a part of him in me. He wasn't that much older than I am now when he did it. I look in the mirror sometimes and I see him, I see his look and his stance, and it scares me."

She shook her head with obvious frustration. "You said your priest helped you through it?"

He nodded absently. "My dad wasn't into religion. He questioned faith out of existence, and my mom, well, she kind of toed the line, she wasn't particularly spiritual anyway. After he died, I just shut down completely. I couldn't understand why he did it, why we didn't see it coming, why we didn't stop it from happening. My mom was a total wreck. She ended up spending more and more time with our priest who, in turn, started talking to me about it. He helped me understand why neither of us was to blame and showed me another side of life. The Church became my sanctuary, and I never forgot it."

Tess visibly rallied herself, speaking now with renewed determination. "Well, you know what? I appreciate the concern and the warning, it's very gentlemanly of you, but it doesn't scare me in the least. You needed me to know, and now I do, okay? But I don't think you can go on like that, you can't let something that'll probably never happen ruin your life. You're only helping to turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're not him, okay? You've got to let go, live your own life, and if that's not working, well then maybe something's fundamentally wrong in the way you live your life.

You're alone, which isn't a great start, and God knows you haven't exactly chosen a bright and merry line of work."

"It's what I do."

"Well maybe you need to do something else." The grin made a timely, and welcome, reappearance.

"Like shutting up and kissing me."

Reilly's eyes moved over her face. She was trying to make sense of his life, drumming heartfelt optimism into him, and yet he hardly knew her. He felt something familiar, something that he was starting to recognize only happened when he was around her: in a word, alive.

He leaned into her and pulled her onto him, tightly.

***

As the two figures on the screen drew closer, their gray-blue heat signatures merged into one misshaped lump. The muted voices were now gone too, replaced by the muffled sounds of clothes being discarded and of bodies moving against each other.

De Angelis cradled a warm cup of coffee as he watched the screen with disinterest. They were parked on a ridge that overlooked the depression where Tess and Reilly had set up camp. The tailgate of the beige Land Cruiser was open, revealing two screens that glowed in the darkness. One was a laptop, from which a lead snaked out to a Raytheon Thermal-Eye infrared surveillance camera that sat on a tripod, dominating the landscape before it. A parabolic directional microphone nested on