Flu

Chapter 36

Making a bomb isn't going as smoothly as Luca hoped. He had no trouble finding the right fertilizer or an additive to convert it to an explosive. His problem is an ignition device. If he were planning on committing suicide, like some users of the website where he got his instructions, a simple firecracker would do it. Luca loves Dino but not enough to give his life for him. He needs something he can set off from a safe distance. With further dark web research, he locates a list of options. But he'll need another shopping trip, hopefully, a short one.

"Well," Rick declares, "the girls have gone to watch a group of surfers that arrived on our beach. We're all alone. Whatever will we do with ourselves?"

"I never did get my creamy goodness," Kate reminds him.

"Would you like to eat it in bed?" Rick inquires.

The tip of Kate's tongue samples her lips. "Just what I had in mind."

Moments later, lounging against a bolster, Rick looks on as Kate savors licking chocolate from the tips of her fingers. "Not completely sated, I hope?" he inquires.

"More like just getting started," she purrs, her kiss leaving its damp promise on the fabric of his jeans.

Rick lays back on the bed, his response to Kate more apparent by the second. "I see. Do you need another trip to the fridge, or are you in the mood for something warmer?"

"Definitely going for hot," she replies, her voice husky as she pulls at the snap at his waist. Kate thrusts her finger into her mouth before touching its moist tip to his emerging heat, the sound of steam, hissing through her lips. "Just the way I like it."

"Then," Rick invites, "what I have is yours for the tasting. Do with it as you will."

Arching as her mouth encircles his swelling flesh, Rick reaches for her, tugging her shorts and the silken shield beneath them out of the way. She surges against his palm, her hips churning. His thumb finds the pulse of her arousal, triggering a desperate explosion of need.

While the bedframe barely makes a murmur, squat glasses containing unlit candles, vibrate on a shelf behind the bed board, in time to the couple's increasingly frantic motion, clinking and ringing as the pair finds triumphant release. Alight in the afterglow, Kate snuggles into Rick's chest, the beating of his heart melding with the rhythm of her own.

It takes visits to an electronics store and a toy store for Luca to get the components he needs for his detonator, but putting them together will be a lot less complicated than making a soufflé. Hopefully, it will also be less prone to failure. Once he combines his detonator with his chemical components, he'll have a hell of a lot of destructive power in one package. To avoid sending himself up in flames, he plans to keep the two parts separated until the time comes to attach his bomb to the Castle propane tank. He can set off the device from a distance, but according to the specs of the remote control that he's repurposing, no more than 100 yards. Luca relishes being close enough to feel the heat radiating from the blast – as long as he doesn't feel too much of it. After years in the kitchen, getting just close enough to a flame has become his life's blood.

Jack presses his hand to the small of his back. He can remember spending days or weeks in nests like the one he constructed to watch Richard's beach house. The years remind him of their passage as time drags and his muscles protest. The tracks he found could have been from a curiosity seeker, maybe even one of Richard's overenthusiastic fans. But Jack doesn't believe that. A fan would have peeked in windows and possibly taken something for a souvenir. Richard's mystery visitor did neither. Whoever it was, made the familiar moves of a saboteur. Jack can put up with a few twinges to make sure his family remains safe, but he wishes he'd bought two of those deli sandwiches.

"Which guy do you think was cuter?" Paige asks as she and Alexis make their way up the private gated path to the beach house.

Alexis mulls the question. "We couldn't see their physiques that well in those shorty wetsuits. So I'd be going by faces and a little bit of their legs. From that, I'd say the one with the green and blue board, but if I saw them in swim trunks, I might change my mind."

Paige groans. "That's so analytical! Could you forget the lab for a second? Which one would make you feel all mushy inside?"

"None of them," Alexis admits. "They're all jocks. If you ask me to choose between a football champion and an Intel Scholarship winner, I'll take smarts every time. I mean, have you seen Ashley? His parents are economists, and he wants to be an economist too. He skipped a grade, and he's taken even more advanced classes than I have."

Paige rolls her eyes. "No one takes more advanced classes than you do, Alexis. You could probably get in the teen tournament on Jeopardy right now."

"I've thought about it. The science and history questions are easy, but with my forensics, I don't spend that much time with pop culture anymore. I'd miss those questions."

"Your dad wouldn't," Paige offers.

"Probably not," Alexis allows. "He has one of those weird memories. I think that's why he and Kate make such a great team. She has a passion for catching the bad guys, and he comes up with all the strange little factoids that help her do it. I hope I find someone I fit with like that someday."

Paige readjusts one of her flip-flops. "I don't know. I wouldn't mind someone like the guy with the blue and green board. His eyes are kind of dreamy."

"I guess they are," Alexis concedes. "But hey, I'm starving again. I hope there are some of those giant cookies left."

Paige picks up her pace. "Yeah, me too."

Luca remembers the solar-powered lights he saw while exploring the grounds at the Castle vacation retreat. If they're like the ones at most of the homes in the area, they activate at dusk, removing any advantage he might gain from sneaking in at night. Still, he can try to stay to the shadows as much as possible. He wishes he'd taken pictures, but if he recalls right, there's a light over the generator but none over the tank. The tank is what matters. He'll try getting up early, about three. He does it all the time when he has to bake. That way, he'll avoid most night owls and early risers. He can rig his target and find a sheltered place to set off the explosion. Castle and his wife will never have a chance, just like the cops never gave one to Dino.

"Caziques?" Kate asks skeptically as Rick triumphantly spells out the word on a Scrabble board.

"It's the plural for a kind of Oriole," Rick claims. "Feel free to look it up. And I get a bonus for using all my letters."

Alexis stares down at her rack of one-point vowels and turns to Paige. "There's no way I'm going to catch up, and I want to go beachcombing in the morning. I think I'll go to bed."

"Me too," Paige agrees. "Maybe the surfers will be out again, early."

As the girls disappear upstairs, Rick wiggles his eyebrows. "And here we are again. In the mood for some red wine and – whatever?"

Leaning over the game board, Kate palms his cheek. "Sounds perfect."