The Dying Breath: A Forensic Mystery

leave it alone.”
    “You don’t get it, do you?”
    “Just . . . stop.” Too many emotions crowded inside for her to make room for another lecture. She was too strung out for a fight, especially with Justin. In the past he’d always been the one to steady her and yet now he was making things worse. “I just want to forget about today,” she pleaded.
    “Right. Typical Cameryn Mahoney response. You shut things down when it gets hard. But not this time. Not when the stakes are this high.” When he looked at her the pain in his eyes was unconcealed. “Don’t you understand that I worry about you? All the time. Every minute of every day.”
    Cameryn swallowed, her throat suddenly so dry she wasn’t sure if she could make a sound come out. She felt a tilt inside that she tried to dismiss, because what she sensed might be happening was something she could not deal with any more than she could comprehend the meaning of Kyle’s I’ll love you until your dying breath . Shrugging, in what she hoped looked like nonchalance, she whispered, “I can take care of myself.”
    “That’s just the point—you can’t as long as he’s out there! Don’t you know I drive by your house every night, watching, trying to make sure you’re safe? All my free time’s gone to tracking this guy.” His voice broke, a sound like ice cracking. “You’re so young.”
    “What does my age have to do with any of this?”
    “Nothing. Everything.” Justin hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “Cameryn, I’m so crazy right now I can’t even think straight. Can you imagine what that monster would do to you if he got the chance? With that device of his? It could have been a trap. He could have used that thing on you.”
    Cameryn winced at the picture of Kyle and his klystron, a death machine of his own design. Microwaved flesh and a locker full of bones, stacked up like children’s blocks. These were the images she would never forget. She pressed her forehead into the cool glass, closing her eyes, trying to erase the images that burned behind her eyelids.
    “If anything ever happened to you . . .” He couldn’t finish the thought.
    She could see his reflection in the car’s windshield, a faint echo of the man who was driving too fast down Greene Street toward the mountains. Six months ago, when he’d left New York to become Silverton’s new deputy, Justin had burst into her world like a comet. But he was twenty-one to her seventeen, and in the end she’d walked away, mostly because he could pierce her soul in a way no one else could. Now there was a fierceness in him that belied the label they’d both accepted: friends. Hadn’t he agreed to that definition? And yet his face at that moment seemed anything but friendly. This wasn’t about just about Kyle.
    He turned west and followed the narrow switchback road in silence before he saw what he wanted. With a whiplike motion he swerved into a pullout, an arc of dirt cut into a crescent. The earth seemed to drop away into a sheer valley thick with pine. The car shuddered as he cut the engine and Cameryn realized how very quiet it was beneath the granite walls.
    The silence felt awkward. There was a charge in the atmosphere, neutrons bumping protons, making heat. To break the tension she touched his arm. “Look, I’m sorry I freaked you out but I’m okay. I promise. Quit worrying about me.”
    “That’s not going to happen.”
    In this close space she could smell him, the intoxicating fragrance of leather mixed with the scent of his skin. She was aware of his breathing, the in, the out. It was late, almost five o’clock, and the sky had darkened to a mountain twilight. A car drove by, throwing light, and she could see him more clearly for a moment, the dark halo of hair and his brows knotting together. The air they exhaled clouded the glass until the windshield turned the color of milk.
    “Justin, what are we doing here?”
    “We’re here because there are . . . things to say.”
    “Then say them. If I don’t get home soon my mammaw will call the FBI.”
    His face looked pained. “You make it sound easy.”
    “But you’ve always been able to talk to me.”
    He gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles jutted in small peaks. “You know, I’m not afraid to hunt down Kyle, but I’m actually scared to put this on the table. Bullets are easier. Easier than these words, anyway.” Ducking his head, he paused, and as the silence swelled, her