Last to Die r-10

by Tess Gerritsen

  Teddy looked up at Claire. “You told them! You ratted me out.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Claire shot back. “After what you did to us.”

  “You don’t understand who these people are!”

  “I know what you are, Teddy Clock.” Claire aimed a kick at him, but the woman grabbed her shoulder and dragged her into the corner. “Stay there,” she commanded, then turned to Teddy. “Where is he?”

  Teddy folded himself into a ball and shook his head.

  “What’s his plan? Tell me, Teddy.”

  “I don’t know,” the boy moaned.

  “Of course you do. You know him better than anyone. Just tell me, and everything will be fine.”

  “You’ll kill him. That’s why you’re here.”

  “And you don’t like to see people killed. Do you?”

  “No,” Teddy whispered.

  “Then you wouldn’t want to see this, either.” The woman spun around and pressed her gun to Claire’s forehead. Claire froze, too shocked to say a word. Teddy was stunned just as silent, his eyes wide in horror.

  “Tell me, Teddy,” the woman said. “Or I’ll just have to splatter your friend’s brains all over this nice sofa.”

  The woman’s partner looked just as shocked by this turn of events. “What the fuck are you doing, Justine?”

  “Trying to get some cooperation here. So, Teddy, what do you think? Do you want to see your friend die?”

  “I don’t know where he is!”

  “I’ll count to three.” The gun dug deeper into Claire’s forehead. “One …”

  “Why are you doing this?” Claire cried. “You’re supposed to be the good guys!”

  “Two.”

  “You said you were here to help us!”

  “Three.” The woman lifted the weapon and fired into the wall, sending a drizzle of plaster onto Claire’s head. With a snort of disgust, the woman turned back to Teddy.

  At once Claire scrambled away and dropped down behind the desk, trembling. Why is this happening? Why have they turned against us?

  “Since that didn’t work,” the woman said. “Maybe you really don’t know where he is. So we go to plan B.” She grabbed Teddy’s arm and dragged him toward the roof walk.

  Her partner said, “This is fucked up. These are just kids.”

  “It needs to be done.”

  “We came for Icarus.”

  “Our target is whoever I say it is.” She yanked off Teddy’s communications headset and dragged him out the door, onto the exposed roof walk. “Now we dangle some bait,” she said, and swung him over the railing.

  Teddy screamed, frantically scrambling for a toehold on the steep slate roof. All that kept him from plummeting to his death was the woman, gripping his arm.

  She spoke into the boy’s headset. “No, this isn’t Teddy talking to you. Guess who I’ve got hanging off the roof? Such a sweet boy, too. All I have to do is let go, and he’ll be nothing but a stain on the ground.”

  “The kid’s not part of this,” her partner protested.

  The woman ignored him and kept talking into Teddy’s com unit. “I know you’re on this frequency. And you know what’s happening. You also know how to stop it. I never liked children anyway, so it’s no big deal to me. And he’s getting heavy.”

  “This is way over the line,” the man said, moving toward her. “Pull the kid back.”

  “Stand down,” she ordered him. And she barked into Teddy’s microphone: “Thirty seconds! That’s all you’ve got! Show yourself or I let go!”

  “Justine,” the man said. “Pull the kid back. Now.”

  “Jesus Christ.” The woman yanked Teddy back over the railing and set him down. Then she aimed at her partner and fired.

  The force of the bullet sent him flying backward. He collapsed against the desk and slid off, his head thudding to the floor right next to where Claire was cowering. She stared down at the hole above his left eye. Saw blood streaming out, soaking into Dr. Welliver’s rose-colored rug.

  She killed him. She killed her own man.

  Justine bent down, scooped up her dead colleague’s weapon, and tucked it into her waistband. Then she tossed aside Teddy’s headset and spoke into her own com unit. “Where the fuck are you? The target’s on his way up to the turret. I need you here now.”

  Footsteps were moving up the stairs.

  Instantly the woman hauled Teddy to his feet and held him in front of her, a human shield against the man who now stepped through the doorway. The same man whom Claire had earlier thought was the enemy. But nothing made sense anymore, because Claire had thought this woman was their rescuer. And she’d thought this man who’d tied her up, with his black-smeared face and camouflage clothes, had come to kill them. Which one is my friend?

  The man advanced slowly, his weapon trained on the woman. But Teddy stood in the line of fire, pale-faced and trembling in the woman’s grip.

  “Let him go, Justine. This is between you and me,” he said.

  “I knew I could make you finally surface.”

  “These kids have nothing to do with it.”

  “They’re my trump card, and here you are. Still looking fit, I see. Although I liked your old face better.” She pressed the barrel of her gun harder against Teddy’s temple. “Now you know what to do, Nick.”

  “You’ll kill him anyway.”

  “But there’s always the chance I won’t. As opposed to a sure thing, which you’d have to watch.” She fired and Teddy screamed, blood trickling from his bullet-torn ear. “Next time,” she said, “it will be his chin. So drop it.”

  Teddy sobbed, “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry.”

  Dad?

  The man dropped his gun and now stood unarmed before her. “Do you really think I’d walk into this without a fail-safe, Justine? Kill me, and it all blows up in your face.”

  Claire stared at the man, searching for any resemblance to the Nicholas Clock she’d seen in the photo with her father. He had the same broad shoulders, the same blond hair, but this man’s nose and chin were different. Plastic surgery. Hadn’t Justine said it? I liked your old face better.

  “You’re supposed to be dead,” Claire murmured.

  “I thought for certain you’d show yourself after Ithaca,” said Justine. “That you’d make some move to save Olivia’s boy. But in the end, I guess it all came down to saving just your own flesh and blood.”

  Claire understood suddenly that this woman had ordered the murders of Bob and Barbara. She’d killed Will’s aunt and uncle, all to make Nicholas Clock come back from the dead. Now this woman would send him back to the dead. She’d send them all.

  Do something.

  Claire looked down at the man Justine had just shot. The woman had taken his gun, but he’d also had a knife. Claire remembered it dangling from his belt as she’d followed him up the stairs. Justine wasn’t watching her; her complete focus was on Clock.

  Claire leaned over the dead man’s belt. Tunneled her hand under his body, feeling for the knife.

  “If you kill me,” said Clock, “I guarantee you’ll go down. Every major news agency will find a video file in their in-box. All the evidence I’ve been collecting against you these past few years, Justine. Everything that Erskine and Olivia and I managed to pull together. The Company will shut you in a black hole so deep you’ll forget what the sky looks like.”

  Justine kept her grip on Teddy, the gun at his jaw, but uncertainty made her hesitate. By killing him, was she about to set off a disastrous chain of events?

  Claire gripped the knife handle. Tried to pull it from the belt, but the dead man’s weight pinned it against the floor.

  Nicholas Clock said quietly, reasonably: “You don’t have to do this. Let me take my boy. Let us both disappear.”

  “And I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering when you’ll pop up and start talking.”

  “The truth will certainly come out if I’m dead,” said Clock. “How you helped Icarus escape from pr
ison. How you raided his accounts. The only unanswered question is, Where did you dump his body after you tortured him for his access codes?”

  “You have no proof.”

  “I have enough to make it come crashing down on you. We finally put it together, the three of us. You killed your own people, Justine, all for the money. You know what happens next.”

  From the stairwell came the sound of running footsteps.

  Do it now. It’s your last chance.

  Claire yanked the knife free and lunged. Aimed for the closest target she could reach: the back of Justine’s thigh. The blade sliced straight through fabric and sank deep into flesh, almost to the hilt.

  Justine shrieked and staggered sideways, releasing Teddy. In an instant, Nicholas Clock was diving for the floor. For his fallen weapon.

  Justine fired first. Three pops. Blood misted the wall behind Clock, bright red spray exploding from a gunshot that sent him sprawling. He collapsed on his back, awareness already fading from his eyes.

  “Dad!” Teddy screamed. “Dad!”

  Face white with pain and fury, Justine turned to Claire, the girl who’d dared to fight back. The girl who’d twice cheated Death, only to meet Him now, here. Claire watched the silencer lift to her head. Saw Justine’s arms straighten as she steadied the weapon to fire. It was the last image Claire saw before she closed her eyes.

  The explosion rocked her back against the desk. Not a mere pop this time, it was a thunderclap that made her ears ring. She waited for the pain. For something to hurt, but all she registered was her own frantic breathing.

  And Teddy’s voice screaming in desperation: “Help him! Please, help my dad!” She opened her eyes and saw Detective Rizzoli crouched over Nicholas Clock. Saw Justine lying on her back, eyes open and staring, a pool of blood spreading beneath her head.

  “Frost!” Rizzoli yelled. “Get Maura up here! We have a man down.”

  “Daddy,” begged Teddy, pulling on Clock’s arm, oblivious to his own pain, his own blood, still dripping from his ripped ear. “You can’t die. Please don’t die.”

  Justine’s blood kept spreading, moving like an amoeba toward Claire, threatening to engulf her. With a shudder, Claire rose to her feet and stumbled to a corner, away from all the bodies. Away from the dead.

  More footsteps came racing up the stairs and Dr. Isles swept into the room.

  “It’s Teddy’s father,” said Rizzoli quietly.

  Dr. Isles dropped to her knees and pressed fingers to the man’s neck. Yanked open the shirt, revealing the Kevlar vest beneath it. But the bullet had sliced into flesh just above the vest, and Claire saw a river of blood streaming from the wound, forming a lake where Dr. Isles was kneeling.

  “You can save him,” Teddy screamed. “Please. Please …”

  He was still sobbing that word as the last gleam of consciousness faded from his father’s eyes.

  THIRTY-THREE

  NICHOLAS CLOCK DID NOT REGAIN CONSCIOUSNESS.

  The vascular surgeons at Eastern Maine Medical Center repaired his torn subclavian vein, evacuated the hemothorax from his lung, and deemed the operation a success, but Clock did not awaken from anesthesia. He was breathing on his own, and his vital signs remained stable, but with every passing day that he remained in a coma, Jane heard the deepening pessimism in the doctors’ voices. Severe blood loss with hypoperfusion of the brain. Permanent neurologic deficits. No longer were they talking of recovery; instead the discussion was of long-term care and nursing home transfer, of Foley catheters and feeding tubes and other products that Jane had glimpsed in the fake catalog of Leidecker Hospital Supplies.

  Comatose though he was, Nicholas Clock still found a way to tell the world the truth.

  Seven days after the shooting, the video surfaced. Al Jazeera was the first to broadcast it, launching it into the ether where it could never again be contained. Within another forty-eight hours, Nicholas Clock was on computer screens and televisions around the world, calmly and methodically recounting the events that took place sixteen years earlier in Italy. He described the surveillance and capture of a terrorist financier whose code name was Icarus, in a case of extraordinary rendition. He revealed the details of Icarus’s imprisonment and the enhanced interrogation methods they had used against him. And he spoke of Icarus’s escape from the high-security black site in North Africa, an escape aided by a rogue CIA operative named Justine McClellan. None of that should have surprised or impressed a world long turned cynical.

  But the murder of American families, on American soil, made the country take notice.

  In the conference room at Boston PD, the six detectives who had investigated the Ackerman slayings sat watching the CNN evening news, a broadcast that went a long way toward explaining what had really happened to the Ackermans. The family had not been murdered by a Colombian immigrant named Andres Zapata; they had been executed for the same reason the other two foster families were: to make Nicholas Clock believe his son, Teddy, was in imminent danger. To force Clock out of hiding.

  As long as Justine believed I was dead, Teddy was safe. She had no reason to attack him. If I took him and we ran, Justine would never stop hunting us. We’d always be looking over our shoulders. Teddy knows I’m alive. He understands why I’ve chosen to stay invisible. It’s for him; it’s all for him.

  But now everything has changed. Justine must have intercepted one of our messages, and she knows I’m alive. I don’t have much time. This may be my only chance to share the evidence I’ve been gathering these past two years. Evidence that Justine Elizabeth McClellan aided in the escape of the terrorist known as Icarus. That she almost certainly murdered Icarus, after obtaining his account numbers and passwords. That she, or her paid agents, were responsible for the murders of the Wards and the Yablonskis and my own family. Because we were asking questions about her sudden wealth. We’d started an investigation, and she had to stop us.

  Our families were merely innocent bystanders.

  These three surviving children—Claire and Will and Teddy—are now pawns in the hunt. Justine has gathered these children together as bait, to draw me out. She’s using all her resources, both official and unofficial, and she’s led the CIA to believe that Icarus is still alive. That he’s her target.

  But I’m the one she wants.

  If anyone is watching this video, it means that Justine has succeeded. It means I’m speaking to you from the grave. But the truth doesn’t die with me. And I, Nicholas Clock, swear that everything I’ve said here is, indeed, the truth …

  Jane looked around at the other detectives seated at the table. Crowe was tight-lipped and scowling and no wonder: His public triumph as lead investigator of the Ackerman case had just been smashed with a sledgehammer, and every crime reporter in Boston knew it. That rush to judgment against Andres Zapata would always blight his record. Crowe caught her looking at him, and the glare he returned could vaporize water.

  For Jane, it should have felt like a moment of victory, a vindication of her instincts, but this brought no smile to her lips. Nicholas Clock was now lying in a coma that could well be permanent, and Teddy was once again fatherless. She thought of how many people had died: the Clocks, the Yablonskis, the Wards. The Ackermans, the Temples, and the Buckleys. Dead, all dead, because one woman could not resist the lure of immeasurable wealth.

  The broadcast ended. As the other detectives rose to leave the room, Jane remained in her chair, thinking about justice. About how the dead never benefited from it. For them, it always comes too late.

  “That was good work, Rizzoli,” said Lieutenant Marquette.

  She looked up to see him standing in the doorway. “Thank you.”

  “So why do you look like your best friend just died?”

  “It’s just not satisfying, you know?”

  “You’re the one who brought down Justine McClellan. How can it get more satisfying than that?”

  “Maybe if I could bring back the dead?”

  “Above our pay
grade. We’re just the cleanup crew.” He scowled at his ringing cell phone. “Looks like the press is going bonkers. Which is a problem, because this story’s as sensitive as hell.”

  “Rogue agent? Dead Americans?” She snorted. “No kidding.”

  “The feds slapped a muzzle on us. So for now, it’s no comment, okay?” He cocked his head. “Now get outta here. Go home and have a beer. You deserve it.”

  That was the nicest thing Marquette had ever said to her. A beer did sound good. And she did deserve it. She gathered up her files, left them at her desk, and walked out of the station.

  But she did not go home.

  Instead she drove to Brookline, to the home of someone who’d be equally depressed by that broadcast. Someone who had no one else to turn to. When she arrived at the house, she was relieved to see that no TV vans had arrived yet, but the press would certainly be there soon. Every reporter in Boston knew where Dr. Maura Isles lived.

  The lights were on inside, and Jane heard classical music playing, the plaintive strains of a violin. She had to ring the bell twice before the door finally opened.

  “Hey,” said Jane. “Did you see it on TV? It’s all over the Internet!”

  Maura gave a weary nod. “The fun is just beginning.”

  “Which is why I came over. I figured you might need the company.”

  “I’m afraid my company’s not going to be much fun. But I’m glad you’re here.”

  Jane followed Maura into the living room, where she saw an open bottle of red wine and a nearly empty glass on the coffee table. “When you bring out the whole bottle, there’s some serious drinking planned.”

  “Would you like a glass?”

  “Can I get a beer out of your fridge instead?”

  “Be my guest. There should still be a bottle in there from your last visit.”

  Jane went into the kitchen and saw pristine countertops, with not a single dirty dish in sight. It looked clean enough in there to perform surgery, but that was Maura for you. Everything in its place. It suddenly struck Jane how bleak it all looked without clutter, without even a hint of disorder. As if no human really lived there. As if Maura had scrubbed her life so clean, she had sterilized the joy out of it.