With an Extreme Burning Read Online Free PDF

Commuter school, limited student housing, but the campus already covered more than fifty acres. Gray concrete buildings for the most part, institutional modern, purely functional—ugly. But the unlovely architecture was offset by parklike landscaping that included hundreds of shade trees. Good place to walk even on hot days. Relaxing.
    But not today.
    Down past the library, over by the Foundation Center and the Student Health Center, detour past the Hall of Sciences, veer left toward Guiterrez Hall, where he taught most of his classes and where his office was. Hurting inside. And disliking himself for that small nagging worm of doubt that seemed to have burrowed deep into his mind.
    Three months. A long time. There would have been little indicators to arouse his suspicions, but there hadn't been. Had there? Very little physical contact between them in those three months. Not tonight, dear, I'm really not in the mood. Once that he could remember; maybe twice. Part of the vague dissatisfaction they both felt: cooling passions. That was what he'd thought, when he thought about it at all.
    Another thing: She'd been withdrawn. Spent more time away from home than usual, and when she did stay in she'd preferred to be alone in the back bedroom she'd converted into a studio, working on one of her paintings.
    Katy, he thought, I was faithful to you the whole time we were married. Seventeen years. Mind-sin now and then, sure, I'm no better than Jimmy Carter or anybody else, but I never did anything about it. Never even came close. Wouldn't have hurt you that way, didn't think you'd hurt me that way either. Trust.
    I'm the man who was fucking your wife .
    It never happened. Not even once, let alone twice a week for more than three months. Couldn't have with somebody like that. Out of all the men in Los Alegres, not a vicious sociopath. But Katy might have had no idea of what he was because he'd kept it hidden, seemed outwardly normal. And if he was good-looking? And sympathetic, patient, reasonably intelligent, accomplished at seduction? And if the circumstances and the timing were just right?
    Dix was at the student union now. Closed on weekends, nobody around except for a young man in cutoff jeans reading on one of the outside benches. The angle of the sun was such that it turned the windows into mirrors: He saw himself walking past. The reflection was shimmery, oddly indistinct, as if all his molecules and atoms had begun to separate. Star Trek image: Beam me up, Scotty. He looked away, quickening his pace.
    Three months, three months … if it was true, then it hadn't just been a fling, it had been serious or had serious undertones. On Katy's part, at least. How long would it have gone on if the accident hadn't happened? A while, maybe, but not indefinitely. He may not have known Katy as well as he'd thought, but he'd known her that well: She hadn't been duplicitous by nature, hadn't gotten off on illicit intrigue. She had to have been under tremendous pressure. Caught and unable to make up her mind which way to go—
    Driven to a third alternative?
    Too much guilt, too much pressure? And suppose her lover had let his mask slip and she'd seen him as he really was?
    Dix stopped walking.
    What if it hadn't been an accident at all?
    What if she had missed that turn on Lone Mountain Road on purpose?
    The Brookside Park La Quinta Inn was just off the freeway, less than four miles from the university. Big place, three separate buildings, over a hundred rooms; visiting football teams put up there in the fall. Crowded on this late-summer Saturday: most of the parking slots were filled and twenty or thirty adults and children were making noise in the motel pool. Dix parked behind one of the shuttle vans near the lobby entrance. And sat there watching people go in and out.
    I don't want to do this, he thought.
    But he was there now, and the need to know was stronger than his fear of the truth. Get it over with. He prodded himself out of the