140914383X

by Raymond Khoury

  Happier times, indeed.

  Tess had been beyond frustrated. She’d been working on her second book and had written herself into a corner. I had saved the day by shutting down the laptop before it was permanently retired and making Tess join me on a brisk walk.

  It was obvious that Tess could tell a story—the sales figures from her first book had made that clear—but the sea change from archaeologist-adventurer to desk-bound author had meant that Tess had some pent-up adrenaline to burn off. The bi-weekly Bikram yoga clearly wasn’t cutting it and sometimes cabin fever got the best of her. So I took her to the only trail I knew in the area and walked her from one end to the other and back again, something she now did every week on her “Zen walk,” occasionally alternating with other routes to keep things fresh.

  Am I a great partner, or what?

  The Leatherstocking Trail was a gorgeous haven of woods and wetlands, and the strip I was talking about, the southern section of the bigger, fifteen-mile-long Colonial Greenway loop, was where Tess let off steam instead of taking it out on a thousand bucks’ worth of MacBook.

  Several of the roads that ran roughly north-south through the east-west trail gave easy access to it, which meant that, overall, the trail was a flawless way to expose a tail or physical surveillance, being no more than two hundred feet wide in most places and giving no consistent cover. Even better, the overcast weather meant that drone coverage would be difficult to pull off unnoticed—assuming they even knew we were here—which, I hoped, wasn’t the case.

  Tess and I knew each other’s thought processes well enough for me to be pretty sure that she would hit the trail from somewhere near its eastern end, maybe at Fenimore, and walk west, while she would expect me to approach from the opposite end, which was exactly what I was about to do. If we needed to make a quick getaway, then either car would be an option.

  I had been waiting in the Caprice for about twenty minutes and was now as sure as I could be that I was alone. I grabbed the flashlight and one of the Glocks from Lendowski’s holdall—his or Deutsch’s, I had no way of knowing which—climbed out of the car, crossed Pinebrook, and struck out along the trail. After about a thousand yards, I passed the sign stating that I had crossed from New Rochelle into the town of Mamaroneck.

  There was just enough light for me to see my way without the flashlight, the combination of dull moonlight and light pollution from the town revealing islands of snow in a sea of thick foliage made up of ash, maple, oak and others trees that were beyond my limited knowledge of upstate flora. The only other thing I knew was that there was poison ivy dotted along the trail. Given how swimmingly everything had gone these last few days, I decided I wouldn’t be surprised if I fell face-first into some before the night was out.

  I figured it would take me no more than twenty minutes to pick my way to the center of the trail, which was where the Sheldrake River forked. This was the part of the trail farthest from an intersecting road, and therefore a perfect place to meet. I hoped Tess would think the same.

  With my line of sight constantly flicking between the ground and the trail, I continued eastwards.

  When I reached the only intersecting road between where I had left the car and the river, I checked in both directions before continuing on my way. Ten minutes later the trail opened out into its widest and most isolated area, where it crossed the easternmost of the two river forks.

  I slowly skirted the perimeter, eyes and ears alert for any sign of movement. Apart from assorted nocturnal creatures, I was alone. I concealed myself behind a cluster of trees on the north side of the area and waited.

  After another five minutes I heard the faint sound of someone approaching from the east. Less than a minute later, the sound resolved into clearer footfalls. Then Tess appeared. Alone and carrying what I recognized to be Kim’s denim backpack.

  She stopped and turned to look back the way she had come, ears straining for any sound behind her.

  There was nothing but silence around us.

  I watched as she moved into the clearing and waited, then I stepped out from behind the trees.

  “Tess.” As low as I could say it and still be heard.

  She swung her head, saw me, and walked around the edge of the clearing toward me, her pace picking up with each step.

  We closed the ground toward each other in seconds, then fell into each other’s arms, Tess having dropped the backpack to the ground.

  “Thank God,” she whispered.

  We stayed like that for a long time. The only thing either of us needed right then and there was the warmth of the other’s body.

  We finally broke apart.

  Her face flooded with concern. “You’re OK, right? The drug? You’re OK?”

  “It did the trick,” I said. “The jury’s still out on any long-term effects.” Then I looked her up and down, and the garb sank in. “You’re Kim?”

  She half smiled. “I may decide to stick with this look. What do you think?”

  “As long as you don’t go getting tats and piercings all over you, young lady,” I said, wagging my finger.

  “We should stop. This is getting creepy.”

  “Agreed.”

  I waved at her attire. “So Kim—she helped you with all this?”

  “She didn’t just help—she gave up a date with Giorgio for it.” My face obviously telegraphed my confusion, so Tess added, “He dropped me off.”

  I smiled. Kim—Tess’s mini-me—she was key to why we were standing here. I gazed at Tess’s eyes, which appeared dark in the bleak light, but which I knew to be exactly the same shade of green as Kim’s.

  “She’s everything that’s great about you.”

  She thought about this for a moment. “And Alex has none of your obsessive traits. Yet.”

  I nodded. She was right, of course. But none of that mattered. Right now, I was just so damn happy to see her. And I couldn’t have done it without Kim. Or without a silly dad-lesson I’d insisted on one rainy Sunday afternoon a couple of years back.

  I’d wanted her to learn Tess and my cell phone numbers, as well as our home number, by heart. I’d explained to her that just because no one knows anyone’s number any more didn’t mean that everyone has suddenly become immune to losing things. I mean, seriously, who remembers anyone’s number these days? Lose your phone when you’re out and it’s unlikely you’d know how to contact anyone because your phone now functions on behalf of—and often instead of—your brain.

  So as decreed by Kim, the three of us—we figured Alex was still too young for this—had memorized each other’s phone numbers, her flawless logic being that if she had to learn our numbers, then we should have to learn hers too, an argument she had won at the time by pouting till we agreed. And had just won again, uncontested, since I was able to send Tess the fake text message from a burner phone that didn’t have her number stored in it.

  It was the other message, though, that had led Tess here.

  I had decided to contact her indirectly, and thought of a couple of options. One was to go through Kurt, then something better dropped into my mind. I found an Internet café and created a fake Facebook account using some photos I’d cut and pasted off some of Kim’s friends profiles, then used that to post a comment on a recent photo of hers. The comment had to get through her rapid-fire fingers and her ruthless indifference filter, and it needed to tell her it was me, without announcing it to the guys in the Stingray van. So I’d used a name that was bound to get her attention.

  One of the first times I met Giorgio when he and Kim started dating, I lightheartedly referred to him as Georgie Boy, which went down like a lead balloon. I had intended it as a term of endearment, channeling a nickname Jerry used for George on “Seinfeld.” I mean, it wasn’t like I was calling him Boy George or cracking any lame Armani puns. I’d explained its origin and, given that I get a bit evangelical when it comes to the Seinfeld canon, I’d talked about George’s other nicknames, most notably T-Bone and my favorite, Art Vand
elay. Still, the resistance was noted, and “Georgie Boy” only rarely saw the light of day. I was still waiting for the day I’d be able to sit through box sets of the series with her, but there always seemed to be another Pretty Little Liars hogging any available viewing time she had.

  So “Georgie Boy” had put a “Like” on one of Kim’s photos, along with a comment that asked “How’s Stacy’s mom?”—a reference to a song we liked and joked about—with a winkie face. It had taken a couple of minutes, but when she’d replied—presumably after showing it to Tess—“She’s got it going on, Art!” with a laughing emoticon, I knew she’d got it. So I commented back, “I can’t mow her lawn! How about a quickie on the Zen walk instead?” with a tongue-out emoticon. She’d replied “8OK!” with two of the tongue-out faces.

  “‘A quickie on the Zen walk,’ Georgie Boy?” Tess smirked. “I dunno if Kim’s ever going to forgive you for that.”

  “Hey, it did the trick, didn’t it?”

  She nodded, then her expression darkened. “What’s going on, Sean? Where do we go from here?”

  “I’m going to find Corrigan and prove that his guy killed Kirby. It’s the only way.”

  She studied me, then just nodded. I guess she knew we were past the point of arguing about this. She gestured toward the ground. “I got what I could.”

  “Maybe you and the kids should go to the ranch—” I was referring to her aunt’s place in Arizona.

  “No way,” she cut me off. “You need me here. But your guys have the house under watch 24/7. Where are you going to stay?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Maybe with whoever’s been helping you?”

  A loaded question, by the looks of it. No point denying it now. “Nick tell you?”

  She nodded.

  Which reminded me of something I needed to know. “What else did he say? When you saw him?”

  “What, at the house?”

  “Yes, before the . . . before the accident?”

  “He said you wanted your laptop safe.”

  I nodded. “Where is it now?”

  “I brought it back to the house after the accident. I hid it in the loft. I figured the ERT guys had already gone through the house, so it was safe there. I mean, I didn’t know where else to put it. Should I have brought it?”

  “No, that’s fine. I just didn’t want them to have access to it to either track down the guy helping me out, or plant stuff on it. What else?”

  “He told me everything you told me at Federal Plaza. About Corrigan, your dad, Azorian.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s it. He just said he was going to do everything he could to help clear you. That with you in custody, he’d use the Bureau’s weight to get to the bottom of this with the CIA. Maybe even ask the president to help.” She studied me, then asked, “Why are you asking me this?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just . . . him dying, the timing if it.”

  He face scrunched up with concern. “You think he was murdered?”

  Before I could answer, we both heard it.

  The snap of a branch.

  Then silence again.

  Tess motioned for me to take Kim’s backpack. “Go. Just go.”

  “No.” I jabbed a finger at the trees to my right and hissed, low, “Hide. Quickly.”

  Tess sprinted away as I reached for the gun tucked in the small of my back—

  But before I had it fully out, a figure emerged out of the trees and came rushing at me, fast, with what looked like a gun in his hand. In a flash, he’d plowed into me, knocking us both to the ground, his left hand locked around my right forearm. Driving a knee into my gut, he levered himself upward and threw a couple of lightning jabs at my head with his gun hand, dazing me enough to let him force the gun from my hand.

  He picked up the gun I’d dropped and stood up, tucking it into his belt holster and pointing his weapon directly at me.

  “Get up, asshole,” Lendowski spat.

  I shook my head and tried to focus my eyes, but what I saw made no sense. For one thing, he was alone.

  “Where’s Deutsch?”

  His expression went all weird and wry. “She couldn’t make it.”

  And then all at once, disparate little observations fell into line. The call outside the bar. The gambling. The unusual levels of interest in my routine. His being here, without Deutsch.

  They’d got to him—and now he was going to do their bidding.

  “Len. Don’t.”

  He just shrugged. “Don’t what?”

  “Think about what you’re doing. They’ll never let you live.”

  “Shut up.” Beyond the tension and the anger in his voice, I detected some fear, like he wasn’t totally comfortable with what he was about to do.

  It was an opening, a vein to mine.

  “They’ll own you,” I pressed. “And when they don’t need you anymore, they’ll put you down. You know that, right?”

  He didn’t want to hear that. Instead, he shoved the gun in my face. “Enough. Call your bitch, get her back here.”

  “Len—”

  “Call her.”

  I held his glare for a second, then said, “Go screw yourself.”

  He grabbed my jacket and pulled me to my feet, looping his left arm around my neck, his right hand holding the gun to my head.

  “Tess!” he bellowed. “I know you can hear me. You have five seconds to join us.” He started counting down them down, loudly.

  I heard the faintest sound behind me. Lendowski was still counting, so I hoped he hadn’t heard it. Maybe Tess was working her way around us.

  I yelled as loud as I could to give her cover, “Don’t! He’ll kill us both, get out of here—”

  Then I heard the crunch of her feet, and Lendowski must have heard them too, and in the moment he tried to decide what to do, something slammed into the back of his head, a rock or a branch—I couldn’t tell. All I felt was the side of his skull bouncing off the back of mine, but he managed to stay on his feet. Down, but not out, he was already spinning around and taking aim at the trees, his left arm still choking me.

  I shouted, “Stay down!” as I drove my right elbow as hard as I could into Lendowski’s side, then wrapped my right leg around his and pushed him over, bringing us both down.

  As we hit the ground, his left arm loosened enough for me to roll to my right, trapping his right arm flat so that he couldn’t fire the gun.

  “Tess! Run! Now!”

  I thought I heard her take off as I balled up my left fist and slammed it against Lendowski’s right wrist. His grip on the gun loosened, and it fell away. I tried to grab the gun as I simultaneously rolled off him, but he landed a barrage of vicious blows to my midsection with his left before dragging me back from the gun, kicking me in the gut, and wrapping both hands around my neck.

  I knew he was far stronger than me and would probably be able to take anything I threw at him, especially with him knowing I was weakening by the second, so I put every ounce of strength I had left into forcing myself upright so Lendowski didn’t have gravity to help him.

  Kneeling on the frozen ground, Lendowski behind me, his thumbs digging into the back of my neck, I hoped that Tess was using the time to get back to her car and away.

  I could feel myself starting to slip into unconsciousness—a state I had spent far too much time skirting in the past few days. I had to fight it with the idea of needing to ensure Tess, Kim and Alex were safe. But I couldn’t. His grip was too strong, and I was helpless. As I started to fall into a deep ocean of inky blackness, I thought about my dad. Maybe I’d find him. Ask him face-to-face what drove him to take his own life, when every cell of my body still wanted to live.

  A loud sound reverberated through the dark water, turning everything upside down.

  Suddenly the water was thinner. Lighter.

  I was no longer sinking fast, but rushing toward the surface.

  I felt the cold air against my face as I burst back i
nto consciousness.

  Tess was standing over Lendowski, the gun in her right hand, her whole body shaking with shock.

  Lendowski lay on his side, stone cold dead. A big chunk was missing from the side of his skull. The blood oozing from the gaping hole appeared black against the dirty snow, spreading in slow motion as it seeped into it.

  I pulled myself to standing, covered the ground to him, and pulled his gun from its holster and tucked it into my pants. Then I moved to Tess, put an arm around her and gently eased the gun from her grasp. She was shaking, a lot, her faraway gaze locked on Lendowski.

  “Tess. Tess. Listen to me. It’s going to be OK.”

  She didn’t answer. She just nodded, nervously.

  “You weren’t here, all right? You were never here.” I leaned back a bit so I could look her squarely in the eyes. “Neither was Kim.”

  She looked down at Lendowski’s corpse, still shivering. “I’m glad I was.”

  I pulled her in and kissed her on the forehead, keeping her close, keeping my lips on her cold skin, feeling her veins throbbing away under my fingers. After a few long seconds, I pulled away and went back to his prone body. I fished through his pockets and pulled out his BlackBerry, which unsurprisingly was turned off. I stuffed both guns and his phone in the backpack.

  “You need to go home. Before anyone finds him. I’ll drive you into town.”

  “No. I’ll be fine. I’ll make my way back. You need to get out of here.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want you walking through the trail on your own. I’ll drop you where it’s safer. Then, just go home. They’ll be wondering where Lendowski is. Anyone asks, you went out for some air and a think. That’s it. You stick with that. You never saw me.”

  She didn’t move. “What are you going to do?”

  I looked down at Lendowski’s body. “Find the bastards who paid him to kill me.”

  She placed a hand on my arm—her eyes locked on mine, grasping at anything. “He tried to kill you. Doesn’t that prove something?”

  “They’ll just argue he was here to arrest me and I gunned him down.”