If You Were Here: A Novel of Suspense

by Alafair Burke

  “I know we joke, but that shit’s not funny, bro.”

  “I have a bullet hole in my neck, bro. You think I’m playing? It’s just you and me here. For now, at least. Didn’t you recognize the cop who searched you for weapons? Same guy who handled Susan’s missing persons case. But Susan’s back. And she knows you set her up. She’s going to the feds.”

  “Set her up for what? Seriously, man, they may need to cut you back on the morphine—”

  Scanlin looked at McKenna for an update. She shook her head. Nothing yet.

  “It took ten years, Adam, but you can’t keep a secret forever. Susan knows that her dad’s the one who got her out of the military. Free and clear. No active duty; she could walk away.”

  For the first time, Adam didn’t have a quippy response. That was good.

  “The general couldn’t bring himself to tell her. You were supposed to be the one. You didn’t exactly convey the message.”

  She and Patrick had pieced together the theory after McKenna had spoken to General Hauptmann’s nurse. If Susan had been under the mistaken impression that she was being called into active duty, it was because Adam hadn’t told her that her father’s intervention was successful. McKenna had been searching for a reason why Susan would have gotten involved in a smuggling operation at the piers; now they believed they’d found one.

  Patrick continued to push Adam for a response. “What did you do, tell her she could satisfy her deployment by doing something closer to home? Just a few little shipments at the port? She always was a good implementer. And why shouldn’t Susan have to sacrifice? She was the one who refused to save her dad’s firm—the firm you’d been working your ass off in Afghanistan for. Just when you were about to cash in, the old man went and got cancer. All Susan had to do was lend her name to the enterprise—a name you’d never have, no matter how hard you tried—and she couldn’t even do that.”

  “I don’t know why you’re doing this, Patrick, but I’m calling bullshit. Susan’s dead. Or in the wind. Never coming back.”

  “You don’t believe me?” Patrick asked. “Go check hospital security. She came when McKenna was out. Hospital security will have a tape of her coming in.”

  That was a mistake. If Adam took Patrick up on the suggestion, he’d go straight from the security office to the hospital exit, and they’d lose their shot at tripping him up. McKenna let herself breathe when she heard Adam respond. “Anyone who would disappear herself for ten years has obviously lost it. If she’s making claims about me, she’s got her own agenda.”

  Scanlin was looking at her more urgently. She shook her head again.

  “Look, of all people, I get it,” Patrick said. “Other guys post-9/11 were going back in, active duty, getting recommissioned—defend the homeland, get the bad guys. You know what I did? I quit the reserves. That’s right. Because I knew we needed to invade someone, no matter what. And once you invade in that part of the world? You were the one who saw it firsthand. The bad guys weren’t always bad. The good guys could be the most evil form of life on the planet. With the moral compass upside down, there were plenty of ways to rake in the money. And when the general got diagnosed with the big C, you realized your payday wasn’t going to come, and you devised another way. But duping Susan into helping you? Setting off a house bomb to kill her? Shooting a cop? Coming after me? Taking out the guy you hired to do your dirty work?”

  Despite his injuries, despite the painkillers, Patrick was yelling. In his anger, he was saying too much. They had speculated that Carl Buckner worked for Adam and then got scared off, but he also could be connected to Susan. They had wondered whether the Brentwood explosion was Adam’s attempt to kill Susan, but it could have been an accidental explosion by the environmental activists Susan had infiltrated.

  McKenna was sure Scanlin could see the worry on her face. Should she give the warning sign? Even without a weapon, there were ways Adam could hurt Patrick. The drip. The morphine drip. They should have asked the nurse whether it was tamper-proof.

  Patrick must have realized that if he got too loud, the hospital staff would intervene. His voice was quieter, almost pleading. “I mean, Adam, who are you?”

  “Pat, man, you’ve got to believe me. Yeah, okay, I got pretty screwed in the head in Afghanistan. And I got greedy. And I made—God, I made some horrible mistakes. But a house bomb? Shooting you? I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about. And if Susan’s telling you or the feds or anyone those kinds of things, she’s lying. Believe what you want, but I’m going to go.”

  McKenna was shaking her head again at Scanlin. He could listen for himself once the call was over, but she knew they didn’t have enough for probable cause. “I really am glad you’re okay, Patrick. I mean it, and I hope one day you’ll come to believe it.”

  They were screwed. She would have to play nicey-nice again while the man who shot her husband was allowed to walk away.

  But before she saw Adam turn the corner toward the hallway from Patrick’s room, she saw another familiar face. Susan’s.

  For days, McKenna had been convinced that Susan was alive, but she never really expected to see her again. And now here she was, twenty feet away, looking just as she had in the subway video.

  Susan obviously recognized Scanlin, because she started to duck back into the elevator. McKenna ran toward her. “No, please!” The elevator doors began to close and then reopened. Susan stood at the threshold. At least she was willing to hear McKenna out.

  “Adam Bayne is here but is about to leave,” McKenna explained. “I can stall him. Scanlin knows everything, Susan. Just tell him so we’ll have enough to arrest Adam right now.”

  Susan said nothing.

  “You’ve got to do this, Susan. Or Adam gets away with everything. He’ll keep coming after you for the rest of your life. And now that Patrick and I know, we’re in danger, too.”

  McKenna could see Susan weighing the options, and for a second, it was like they were roommates again, her friend’s face full of concentration as she balanced on a dining room chair to change the bulb in McKenna’s closet. She had come here, hadn’t she? She still cared. She was still protecting them.

  “Okay, stall him,” Susan said at last. “Do not let him leave. I have enough evidence to bury us both.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  McKenna caught Adam just before he hit the double doors from the patient recovery rooms.

  She put on her best tired smile. The loving wife who had spent the night next to her husband’s recovery bed. The oblivious wife who didn’t know yet that the hunt she’d begun for her missing friend was at an end. “Oh, no. You’re done with your visit already? He seemed like he was really looking forward to seeing you.”

  “It was good to see him, but he’s been through a lot. I don’t want to push him too hard. I’ll come back another time.” Adam was walking away; McKenna reached gently for his forearm.

  “You know, I wanted to say something. You were right—when I called you, I mean. About that old picture of Patrick and Susan. That was so many years ago, and it was stupid for me to call you that way. Something like this”—she gestured at Patrick’s room—“puts things into perspective.”

  “That’s good. I’m so happy he pulled through. I’d expect nothing less from a bruiser like your husband.”

  She let him hug her. The son of a bitch was actually hugging her. She didn’t know how much more she could take.

  She saw Scanlin entering the double doorways, a uniformed officer at his side. He gave her a nod. Whatever Susan had told him, he had enough.

  Confusion, followed by panic, registered on Adam’s face as law enforcement surrounded him. She’d never been so relieved to hear the reading of Miranda rights.

  As the uniformed officer walked Adam to the lobby in handcuffs, she spotted Susan sitting in the waiting room next to the other officer awaiting Scanlin’s order
s. Susan’s hands were in her lap, covered by a jacket.

  She was in cuffs, too.

  “What did you think was going to happen?” Scanlin said. “She gave it up, though. You were right. She was pregnant and had been called up to active duty again, this time for Iraq, and the army wouldn’t let her out. She could defer, but she’d still be a single mother leaving behind a newborn.”

  McKenna knew how jaded Susan had been after her first deployment to Afghanistan. By the time she was called back in, people had figured out that the mission wasn’t accomplished in Iraq. McKenna wondered if Susan had used the pregnancy as the excuse she’d never had to walk away from a life she’d taken on only for her father.

  “Adam told her things had gotten even worse in Afghanistan. The military was cutting deals with opium farmers just to keep the peace. Now the farmers were crossing the line into exporting directly into the United States. He told her it was a way she could get herself out of active duty for good.”

  “I can’t imagine she’d think that was okay.”

  “We didn’t have time to cover all the details. She knew about the cargo inspection program from Patrick. She knew from you that Mac was assigned to the program and had an immigration problem. She put two and two together. Adam told her he got a promise that Mac’s kid would be okay if he helped. It wasn’t until she got her father’s diary that she realized Adam had lied about the entire thing.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “The military could fly cargo in on its own, no questions asked. And how could Adam get INS cooperation if he was acting as a free agent?”

  “Again, details. We’ve got paper-thin probable cause based on her statements about the smuggling; plus, she says she’s got recordings of both Bayne and Macklin before he died. I’m going to bring in Agent Mercado to trace the money. My guess is she’ll find unexplained cash flowing to Bayne while he was in Afghanistan, not long after Susan’s father found out he had cancer. From there, we’ll get a search warrant for Bayne’s home and office. Hopefully we’ll find something tying him to Carl Buckner. Or proving that he was our shooter at Grand Central. Like I said, it’s really thin.”

  “I know. But as long as you hold on to him, we don’t have to worry about him coming after Patrick again. That’s enough for now.”

  This was the bargain they’d struck once she had summoned Adam to the hospital. They were rushing. They had no real evidence to tie Adam to Patrick’s shooting. They had to hope the police would find the gun in a search, or a drop of blood from Patrick or Carl Buckner. It was a risk she and Patrick had decided to take. If McKenna was right, Adam was so unhinged that his own Cleaner had defected, trying to turn to Patrick for help. More evidence might never come, but at least they were safe.

  Scanlin started to follow the uniforms to the elevator, and then he turned around. “You’re the one who made this happen. You want to come down to the precinct? Hear what your friend’s been up to for the past ten years? She gave herself up to nail Adam Bayne to the wall. She could probably use the support.”

  McKenna had been racing from place to place, from lead to lead, for a solid week. And now Susan was alive. After all these years, and all those nightmares, she was alive, and she was in custody. There hadn’t been time for a reunion, not even a handshake.

  McKenna nearly followed Scanlin on autopilot. Then another instinct kicked in. “No,” she said. Scanlin stopped walking, and she put a hand on his forearm. “I’m not sure I care anymore. And I mean this when I say it: I trust you to see it through. All I want is to stay here with Patrick.”

  The embrace Scanlin gave her was one of those big, strong hugs that certain kinds of men gave only to certain kinds of women. It was absolutely pure.

  “Oh, and one more thing, Jordan. Not that it matters, but Susan says she lost the baby a month after she left New York. I got the impression that you might want to know.”

  Words were spilling from her mouth when she walked into Patrick’s hospital room. “Scanlin got him. But Susan had to give herself up. But I can’t figure out—”

  “Shh,” he said. “Just come here.”

  She kept talking. “Adam told Susan they needed a domestic contact person for drug imports. Couldn’t they just fly everything in themselves through the military? And then Mac got a promise about his stepson. I don’t know how Adam could possibly deliver.”

  Patrick was smiling. He was exhausted, and nauseated from painkillers, but he was smiling. He held up his cell phone.

  She realized hers was in her pocket and that she’d never disconnected their call.

  “A little muffled,” he said, “but I got the gist. You did it, M. You did what I couldn’t do, and the NYPD couldn’t do, and the FBI couldn’t do. You did it all.”

  He patted the edge of the bed, and she managed to lie on her side next to him.

  “We’re going to be okay,” he whispered. He kissed the top of her head and squeezed her arm. “Thank you.”

  We’re going to be okay. She’d been trying to tell herself that for days, but for the first time, she actually believed it.

  PART V

  SUSAN

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  McKenna never would have thought that the best rest she’d had in a week would be on a narrow sliver of a hospital bed, listening to her husband talk between bouts of morphine-induced sleep.

  His reminiscing about Susan was hard to take at first. Through the entire course of Patrick and McKenna’s relationship, they had pretended—falsely, of course—that their romantic existences had begun and ended with each other. But once she got past the shock of imagining Patrick with another woman, his drug-addled memories of nights, weekends, sometimes even weeks—but never months—with Susan began to feel like period pieces. Vignettes from another time, featuring two familiar characters, but wholly unrelated to her own reality.

  It had started the beginning of their third year at West Point.

  Though McKenna had imagined the most passionate hypotheticals between her husband and Susan, she wanted to believe that any physical connection had been fleeting. Awkward. Meaningless.

  The first time had been two days after Patrick learned his father died from an aneurysm. The commandant had him pulled from noon formation, shook his hand, and gave him the news. He also gave him the choice of taking the day off or returning to lunch. Patrick was Patrick, so he opted for the latter, then didn’t say a word to anyone about the death of his father until two days later, when Susan cornered him after dinner and said she could tell he was feeling blue.

  Those were Patrick’s words. She could tell I was feeling blue. McKenna knew the Susan of ten years ago, who was only eight years older than the Susan who had been there to comfort Patrick when his father died. She had a preferred method for escaping the pains of the world, and that night she’d shared it with Patrick.

  At least from his perspective, it had never been a relationship. He was twenty years old, and by that time, Susan had convinced herself that wanting sex like a man—often and without strings—was a form of female empowerment. They were never what others perceived as an official couple.

  A year after graduation, Susan had taken a weekend leave from Fort Sill to find him at Fort Bragg, supposedly to escape the Oklahoma heat, though he suspected she was there for more. He told her then that he loved her as a friend, but—And she had cut him off. As if! Dude, that’s like incest. Except maybe not, since she still wanted to sleep with him. Only for the sex. Because other guys sucked.

  “We all chose to believe that was how she wanted it,” he said. “We were a bunch of macho kids who thought we could have a friend who was just like us, except she was a woman who would . . . be with us.” He brushed McKenna’s hair back from her face. She had always known that he’d adopted the move because she’d made it clear that she liked it. “I was such an idiot then.”

  She’d heard enough for now. �
�I thought the only woman you knew before me was Ally, the big-boned girl. Frizzy red hair. Freckles and moles. Dumb as a rock.”

  “A real doll,” he said, repeating the joke he’d made so many times when she was still trying to find out about his old girlfriends. “McKenna, I want you to know, however much—”

  She shook her head. “It was a long time ago. We started over so many times, even after she was gone. And then we finally got it right.” Maybe someday McKenna would press for details about the timing of the end to his hookups with Susan and the beginning of his relationship with her. Right now she didn’t want them.

  He saw her looking at the digital bedside clock. Susan was giving a complete videotaped debriefing this afternoon. Mercado and Scanlin had said they wanted McKenna there in case she could fill in any blanks. She suspected that Mercado was afraid she’d go public with the story if she weren’t kept in the loop.

  “I should go. I need to stop by the apartment first. I’ve been wearing the same clothes for two days straight.”

  “You’re gross.” He kissed the top of her head. “You sure you want to do this? You said they’d be fine without you.”

  “They would. But we’re never going to understand what Susan did if we don’t hear it straight from her. I’ll be back as soon as it’s over.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  McKenna was alone in their apartment, her first time home since she’d learned that Patrick had been shot. Susan’s belongings were still scattered across the living room floor. McKenna packed them back in the box that Adam had sent over and pushed it all in a corner behind Patrick’s bicycle. She didn’t want to see it.

  She stripped off her clothing, climbed into the hot shower, and turned her face up into the water stream. She felt the past week flow off of her. As the shampoo suds swirled into the drain beneath her, she imagined their problems carried away through the plumbing.