Read BAD DEEDS: A Dylan Hunter Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers) for Free Online Page A

associate arrange it, through intermediaries. So, tell me: What in hell did you think you were accomplishing?”
    He didn’t need this, not on top of the headache.
    “You know what we do. We’re a direct-action group. That was an action. ”
    “And I have always supported your past ‘actions.’ Generously, as you well know. But just what kind of action was that supposed to be—and in broad daylight, no less?”
    His teeth hurt, and he realized he was clenching them.
    “People who work for companies that despoil the planet can’t claim moral immunity, just because they’re low-level employees. If they learn that they will be held personally accountable for the harm their companies do, then perhaps—”
    “For God’s sake, a lot more is at stake than whatever a few paper-pushing clerks are doing! There are moral priorities here. We are after an entire industry that is doing tremendous environmental damage. We have to pick and choose our battles carefully. You are supposed to be a genius. Well, why didn’t you use that brain of yours?”
    He closed his eyes and leaned against the door. “My people were going stir-crazy, sitting on their hands. Besides, you agreed long ago that I should have operational autonomy.”
    “But you agreed long ago to keep me in the loop, so that we can coordinate our efforts. You seem to forget that. And you seem to forget that without my assistance years ago, you might well be rotting in a cell today.”
    He hadn’t forgotten. A flood of images from a decade before, during his campaign of corporate bombings, washed through his mind:
    How he’d used his physics and chemistry background and access to university labs to construct the bombs … The crazy risks he’d taken in transporting them to his targets … The composite eyewitness sketches of “the Technobomber,” as the FBI dubbed him, disguised with a hat and sunglasses, shown everywhere on TV and in the newspapers … The FBI news conferences hinting at solid leads and physical evidence … The many nerve-wracking nights lying awake, waiting for the sound of the footsteps outside his door from those coming to arrest him … And then the evening when the insane pressure finally got to him—when, in desperation, he broke down and went to the home of his old ally, to seek the help of a man whom he knew to be as ideologically driven as he … How, over bracing glasses of Jack Daniels, the man nodded sympathetically after listening to his long and rambling confession, and then rested his hand on Boggs’s shoulder and promised that he would see what he could do …
    In the weeks that followed, the man worked his magic, calling in favors from well-placed friends to concoct alibis for Boggs and divert police suspicion. Next, he helped Boggs devise a plan to plant explosives and other incriminating items in the Boston apartment of an MIT chemistry grad student—an anarchist notorious for violent rhetoric, and arrested repeatedly for fomenting anti-corporate riots. It was that kid who had been arrested, indicted, tried, and convicted, despite his tearful protestations of innocence.
    It was that kid who later hanged himself in his jail cell.
    As Boggs remembered it all, the man on the phone maintained a pointed silence. A silence meant to underscore just how much Boggs owed him. For his help had come at a price. That price was perpetual dependency. And so, over the years, Boggs did a number of favors for him, in return. Acts that the man had to have done, but was too fastidious to do himself.
    Boggs loathed being in anyone’s debt, let alone being under anyone’s control. But there was nothing he could do about it. At least, not for the time being …
    The man on the phone finally spoke again, this time his tone conciliatory.
    “Look, we have made a lot of progress over the years, you and I, by coordinating our activities. Right now, the media is on our side and the polls are trending our way. But this sort of juvenile, quixotic