by Krista Holt
“Where to?” the cabbie asks.
“DCA. International arrivals.”
He starts driving toward Virginia, and I search my purse for my phone. Relentlessly, I call Nic. Time and again. Over and over. Not once does he pick up. Dread knots my stomach, and I can’t help but think that something is very, very wrong.
* * *
I pace the crowded sidewalk in front of Ronald Reagan National Airport, scanning the rows of waiting cars for Simmons. He finally arrives in a black Crown Victoria, police lights hidden in the roof and behind the front grill. Rolling down the passenger side window, he tells me to get in.
I hurriedly buckle my seatbelt before he steers the car back into traffic. “What is going on? Why did you need to see me in the middle of the night.”
“Because…” He checks the side mirror and switches lanes. “I need to take you into the Bureau, and I thought doing it at night might lessen the chance of you being seen.”
“Oh.” I sit back and pull the seatbelt away from my chest. “Why do you need to take me to the Bureau?”
“I need to show you some things, and…”
“And what?”
“And, it’s probably safer that you’re with me right now.”
My mouth turns dry as I stare at him. “What’s happened to Nic?”
“Nothing, yet.”
I ask him twenty more questions, but he assures me he’ll explain everything once we get to the FBI’s headquarters. So I fall silent, biting my lip in worry and checking my phone only to find that Nic hasn’t returned any of my calls.
A few minutes later, Simmons pulls into an unmarked underground garage. At the entrance booth, he leans out the window and scans a badge. The gate lifts, and he drives in. Traveling up the wide aisle, we pass unmarked police car after unmarked police car.
The knot in the pit of my stomach tightens, and I think I might be sick. After pulling into an empty parking spot, he turns the engine off. Numbly, I open the door and follow him to a set of glass doors with the FBI insignia etched into the clear glass.
We step inside, and my eyes find the intimidating camera mounted to the wall, recording my presence here. Simmons moves past me to swipe his badge at yet another station, this time using his thumbprint and a retinal scan to access the elevator. We ride in silence until it opens on the floor labeled Operations. The white hallway he gestures toward is filled with crushing silence. I pull my coat tighter around me and follow him down a hallway of closed office doors. The nameplates start to blur together until we pass one with a paper nameplate with Special Operations scrawled in thick handwriting.
“Whose office is that?”
A grunt comes from Simmons. “Some agent from the New York office. He’s been here off and on the last couple weeks. Working on a case none of us knows anything about, and he seems to prefer it that way. Nice guy, but he keeps everything very close to the vest.”
I quickly peer in between the cracks of the mini blinds covering the office window. But, like the others, it’s dark inside. I wonder…
“I’m here,” Simmons says, interrupting my thoughts, motioning to another office. “Have a seat. You want anything? Water? I might be able to scrounge up some coffee, but I have no idea how old it might be.”
“Simmons, I want to know why I’m here.” I press my hands to my legs as I lower myself into the flimsy folding chair in front of his desk.
“I’ll get to that, but first, have I ever told you why I took this case?”
I shake my head, not sure if I’m ready to hear this. Or worse, if I even want to hear it.
“It’s a long backstory. But it starts with a young agent back in the 80s, who was fresh out of training at Quantico. My first assignment was to the Organized Crime Taskforce. I packed up my life, along with my fiancée, and moved to New York City.”
My eyes drop to my lap. I can sense what is coming, and any relief I might have experienced in knowing I was right, in knowing that Simmons does have ulterior motives for coming after Nic, is ripped away. Because when I look back up, grief is lurking in his eyes.
“I went undercover, tried to infiltrate the Selvaggio Family. The Bureau always sends the rookies undercover, because they’re the fresh faces. The mob won’t recognize them, won’t figure out they’re working for the FBI right away. But, the problem with sending rookies in is that mistakes get made.”
He stops, closing his eyes briefly, pushing back a pain only he can feel. “I got sloppy. Forgot to swap out my real wallet for my made-up undercover one. As it so happens, that was the day someone went digging. Got a glimpse of my real address and found out all about my real life. My apartment, my fiancée…my employer.”
“They killed her,” he says, his voice rough with emotion. With devastation. “I didn’t find out until after her autopsy that she was pregnant.”
My hand covers my mouth, barely smothering a gasp.
He blinks a few times to rid the moisture from his eyes. “I don’t tell many people.” He clears his throat, his face hardening. “But, that was the day this all became personal.”
I nod, finally understanding him better. Finally grasping his obsession with this case, and his frustrations with me, with my constant insistence that there was more to Nic than he wanted to believe.
“Even sharing that, Reagan, this isn’t easy to show you.” He drops into his chair and bends down. There’s a rattle of keys as he unlocks a drawer and produces a plain manila folder. He holds it in his hands and stares at me. “You need to see this, but it isn’t something you’ll ever forget.”
I lean forward, perching myself on the edge of the chair as Simmons sets the folder down. He slowly opens it, and it takes my mind a minute to catch up. Pictures.
Simmons spreads them out one by one before me. My eyes go wide as I struggle to make sense of what’s staring me right in the face. My heart jumps around in my chest, beating against my ribcage. The contents of my stomach rise swiftly up my throat.
“Oh my God,” I gasp, clamping a hand over my mouth and frantically looking around the room.
Spotting a small trashcan in the far corner, I scramble to my feet. My knees hit the carpet right before I throw my head into the bin and vomit. It comes in waves, one after another. I close my eyes, trying to forget. But it does no good. I can still see the badly decomposed body. The bloated skin. The mangled neck. The bullet wounds to the chest.
Oh my—I heave again.
I sit back on my heels, holding my forehead in my hand. Taking the offered tissue from Simmons, I wipe my mouth, grimacing at the taste.
“Who is that?”
“Saul Marino.”
CHAPTER 17
I STARE BLANKLY UP AT him from my spot on the floor. “Who?”
“Saul Marino.” He holds a hand out and helps me up.
Weak limbed and shaky, I fall back into the folding chair. He produces a cold bottle of water from somewhere and hands it to me.
I take a small sip, relishing the cool liquid. “I don’t know who that is.”
“Maybe you remember him like this.” He pulls another photo out from the bottom of the stack. It’s a surveillance photo of a middle-aged man, thinning black hair and olive skin. He has a sneer on his face, like he detests whoever is taking the picture. His skin is marred with pockmarks, or scars, but my eyes zone in on the gold chain wrapped around his neck.
It’s braided, or corded, and there’s a small pendant with engraving around the edges hanging from the necklace. My eyes dart over the printed photo until I reach across the desk and pick it up, examining it closer.
There’s something familiar about it…
Simmons remains quiet, watching as he waits. I close my eyes, trying to recall where I’ve seen that necklace before.
Then it hits me. My hand flies to my neck, fingering the almost healed bruise. “It’s him.” I look up at Simmons, meeting his knowing expression. “It’s the man who choked me. It’s him.” My eyes drop to the face of Saul Marino one mo
re time. “He’s dead.”
He’s dead.
“Yes, he’s definitely deceased,” Simmons confirms. “New York City metro police found his body floating not too far from Battery Park a couple of days ago.”
I stare at the image, completely at a loss for how I feel right now. Relieved. Confused?
“Why are you showing this to me?”
“Because of this.” He produces another file and lays several more pages before me. Each one has a picture of Saul Marino and a list of charges. They’re booking photos.
“Assault. Bribery of a public official. Distribution with the intent to sell. Battery. Attempted murder. Assault, again.” He points to each photo as he lists the crimes allegedly committed.
I quickly glance at them, noting that in each one Marino is smirking like he has a secret. Perverse amusement shines through his eyes, and it’s echoed in his smug stance.
“I still don’t understand.”
“Every single one of those crimes was committed during his time with the Selvaggio Family. They span over a twenty-year period.”
“Okay…”
“The coroner estimates that his time of death was a few days after your kidnapping.” He pauses, and I know he’s hoping that I’ll connect the dots myself, that I’ll somehow make sense of this trail of bread crumbs he’s leading me down. But, I don’t get it.
“Reagan, he was killed right after he hurt you.”
“You don’t know that this has anything to do with me.” I point to the photographic history of this man’s transgressions. “It could have been related to anything, any one of those incidents. I’m sure he’s got a list of enemies that would put most common criminals to shame. This has nothing to do with me.”
Simmons cants his head to the side. “I can’t tell if you’re being intentionally naive or if you really believe that.” He gathers up the photos and holds them in his hands. “Every single one of these charges was either dismissed, or the witnesses later changed their minds and refused to testify. And it wasn’t because they had a change of heart. It had everything to do with who he was connected to. Because of his work for the Selvaggios. Do you honestly believe that someone this capable, this connected, just suddenly ends up dead without their say so?”
I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything. My stomach tightens, rebelling at the thought that this might have something to do with me. With Nic. Or that it’s somehow related to the night I can’t seem to stop replaying every time the sun sets and the lights go out.
“Let me answer that for you,” he says, shaking the pictures in his hand. “It doesn’t. This absolutely doesn’t happen without a reason, and certainly not without someone’s approval. Do you know what I think?”
I shake my head, trying to ignore how my skin stings like it’s on fire. Like my blood is superheated as it races through my veins, trying to keep pace with the rapid beat of my heart.
“I think it was Nic.”
“No!” The word erupts from my throat. “No, that’s not possible.”
I push to my feet, even though my legs barely hold me up. “I understand why you hate his family. And I’m sorry, I’m sorry for what you had to live through, for what happened to your fiancée, but Nic did not do this! He would not do this.”
I take a frantic breath. “Do you really hate his family so much that you’d be willing to pin this on him? Accuse him of something—it’s not possible—I know him. I know him. He wouldn’t do this. No. No!”
He shakes his head. “You don’t know him as well as you think you do.”
“Then where are his pictures?” I argue. “Where are his booking photos? Show them to me, prove to me that Nic’s as heinous as this man. Because I don’t believe you.”
“There aren’t any.”
“Exactly!” My voice rises. “He couldn’t do that.”
“No.” He slams the stack of photos down, and they scatter on his desk. “All it means is that he’s never been caught. It doesn’t prove his innocence.”
“It doesn’t prove he’s guilty either! This is insane. I can’t believe I let you drag me down here in the middle of the night for something so stupid. Jesus, Simmons, you need help. I understand wanting to make his family pay, I understand that you want justice. I get it, I really do. But this witch-hunt for Nic is so patently unfair. If you put this amount of effort into trying to build a case against his father, the one who’s really behind your pain, you’d probably have succeeded in shutting their family down.”
“And that’s really what you want, right? Nic, without the entanglements that come with his family. That way you can have your own little happily ever after?”
“What I want has never mattered to you. And really, it’s none of your business.” I storm toward the door and rip it open, looking back over my shoulder at him. “Threaten me, blackmail me, I don’t care. But leave me out of whatever score you’re trying to settle. I never wanted to be a part of any of this!”
“I know,” he says calmly, standing to his feet, his desk between us. “You agreed to help me because you thought you’d be able to prove me wrong. But, Reagan, all you did was prove me right.”
My body stalls halfway out the door. “What?”
“You proved me right. What you did with his phone…” My stomach drops to the floor, and my heart right along with it. “The program you installed didn’t just search for incriminating evidence, it copied everything from his phone. Texts, deleted messages, and all of his calls. It gave me everything I needed. Now, not only can I listen in on his conversations—the call he made to you a little while ago was quite dramatic, wasn’t it?
“But,” he continues, “it also gave me access to his movements, his GPS locations, past and present. And would you like to guess where he was around the estimated time of Mr. Marino’s death?” He pauses, his stare weighing heavily on me.
I let the door to his office close quietly as I turn around.
“Battery Park.”
“And…?”
“Well, when I saw that, I sent a team out to the park. Had them scour it for physical evidence. Any guesses as to what they found?”
I shake my head, holding my breath.
“Blood. The crime lab tested it, and it’s a match to Marino.”
My hands start to tremble. I cross my arms over my chest, trying to hide it. Trying to disguise the wave of unease as it rushes through me. Did Nic do this?
“That doesn’t prove anything,” I insist, not sure if I’m trying to convince Simmons or myself.
“Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t. But there were signs of a struggle, and it was enough for the New York City District Attorney to sign off on a warrant for the arrest of one Nicola Selvaggio.”
“You had him arrested?”
He glances at his watch. “No, not yet. But an FBI raid is on its way to his father’s compound now. I expect him to be in custody in a matter of minutes. And you know what the best part is?” He smirks, shaking his head. “Even though you know what’s going to happen—there’s no way you can warn him. It’s too late.”
My body crumbles into the nearest chair, unable to hold myself up any longer as reality comes crashing down on top of me.
“No.” I stare at the floor, struggling to process what he just explained. “No, Nic wouldn’t do this. You’re wrong.”
Even as I say it, my last night with Nic pours out of my memory. “What happened that night…you getting hurt…him touching you…that’s never going to happen again. I want you to know that. He is never going to hurt you again.”
My hand covers my mouth, strangling the sob that flies from my throat. Hot tears well up in my eyes and roll down my face. Nic, what did you do?
“What did you do?” I mumble to myself, over and over. “What did you do?”
“I upheld justice,” Simmons answers, as if I’d directed the question to him. “I’m ensuring justice is done for my fiancée, Amelia, and my unborn son. This is fair, Reagan. It’s a son for a son
.”
“No…no,” I cry out, fumbling for my purse. Through my tears, I search for my phone, wanting to call Nic. I want to talk to him one more time, to beg for his forgiveness. Because, this, Simmons’s twisted sense of justice, is not what I wanted to be a part of. I never wanted this to happen. I never thought it could happen.
Another cry strangles me as I tap his phone number, and then, my phone is ripped out of my hand. Simmons ends my call and tosses the device into his desk drawer.
“Give that back!” I shoot up from the chair. “You can’t take my phone! I don’t give a damn what agreement I signed for you.”
“I am not going to let you ruin this,” he thunders. “Years, Reagan, years. That’s how long I’ve spent trying to bring this man to justice. You can’t possibly understand what this feels like. To be so close.”
“Of course not,” I scream. “Because this doesn’t even make any sense, Simmons. You’re holding Nic responsible for something his father did when he was a little kid. It’s insane, it’s a predatory abuse of power!”
“I suspect Saul Marino’s widow and children would beg to differ. I’m sure they’d like to see their father’s murderer stand trial.”
“I don’t care about them!” The words surprise me, but I feel their truth in my bones. I don’t care. That’s horrible, I know. But, to me, those people are imaginary. They aren’t real, not like Nic is.
“I know you don’t care,” he says. “But I still have a job to do.”
“No, you have an agenda to push. This was never part of the plan. You told me you wanted to bring down the Selvaggios. I never agreed to hold Nic responsible for all their crimes! That’s not fair,” I scream.
My breathing is short and clipped. I can’t believe I trusted this man. I was so stupid and gullible.
“How could you do this?” I breathe.
“You’re mistaken, Reagan.” Simmons points a judgmental finger at me. “It’s not what I did, it’s what you did. This wouldn’t have even been possible without your help. Without you stealing his phone away and making a copy of it. We would have never had the power, the ability to get close to him, without you. Hate me as much as you want, but this is as much your sin as it is mine.”
