James Grippando - Need You Now

“Patrick?” said Connie.

I could hear the fear in her voice, but I knew Connie wasn’t the type to be beaten by fear.

Scully was back on the line. “Ask your question, Patrick. You got ten seconds.”

He was definitely timing the call. Andie gave me the stretch sign again, and I could see the angst in her expression. Triangulation wasn’t the answer. It was time to take things into my own hands, and the right question suddenly popped into my head. I was thinking of a conversation that Connie and I had once had about our mother, after her death. We’d talked about what a terrible mistake it is to get in the car when you know it’s a one-way ride. How you should kick, scream, pull hair, and gouge eyes-whatever it takes not to end up in the car.

And if the abductor still manages to force you inside the car, you do everything you can to crash it.

“Connie,” I asked, “what should Mom have done?”

Connie was staring straight ahead through the windshield. The snowflakes were huge, and they splattered against the glass on impact, making it virtually impossible to see more than one or two car lengths in front of their SUV. It was not a night to be out on the road in New England.

What should Mom have done?

Connie’s hands were tied behind her back. The side of her head was still throbbing from Scully’s backhanded slap. She was at his mercy, but Patrick’s question energized her. It gave her hope. It gave her a plan. She could hear the packed snow beating against the floorboard, drawn up from the road by the spinning tires. Scully was driving with one hand on the wheel, his right arm extended so that he could hold the cell phone to Connie’s ear.

What should Mom have done?

Connie opened her mouth, but no words came. She bit down on his hand, her jaws locking onto him, her teeth digging down to the bone.

Scully screamed like a wounded snow monkey.

Connie leaned to her right, refusing to let go, hanging on to her prey with the tenacity of a hungry pit bull. She pulled so hard that she dragged his upper body halfway across the console, nearly into her own seat. Connie was in control-but their SUV was completely out of control, spinning, whirling across the icy highway. It slammed into the guardrail with too much force and at precisely the wrong angle. It hopped the rail and rolled over once, then again, continuing to roll all the way down the steep, snowy embankment.

More rolls than Connie could count before she blacked out.

I waited outside the hospital room. Connie was inside. With my father.

Scully’s telephone had remained on through the crash, even after it. The FBI tech agents were able to triangulate the signal, and emergency personnel were there within minutes. Scully was pronounced dead at the scene. Connie was brought to Lemuel Shattuck. Her arm was broken, and she was pretty beat up. But she’d fought her way out of the ER to have a moment with Dad. Her own moment. I understood.

Andie sat in the hallway with me, waiting.

“How are the two corrections officers he shot?” I asked.

“The second one just got out of surgery and should recover. The first one…” She stopped, shaking her head slowly. “A wife, two kids in preschool. Horrible.”

She was right. The park ranger, Evan Hunt, and now a corrections officer. Their deaths were all horrible.

“This wasn’t done right,” she said. “We should have had snipers on the roof, more agents. The problem was that I was already supposed be back in Miami. It’s just impossible to pull together that kind of support when the plug has already been pulled, but I should have-”

“Andie,” I said, stopping her. “This was not your fault.”

I probably hadn’t convinced her, but she did seem to appreciate the sentiment.

We sat in silence for a moment. I was thinking about the ambulance ride with Connie. She’d recounted her conversation with Scully-how he’d cut a deal with Robledo, how he’d lied and told Dad that the CIA was behind the threats to expose his children if he didn’t confess to the murder of Gerry Collins. He’d made my father believe that he was just more collateral damage in the financial war on terrorism. Andie suspected that it was fear of charges of treason-or perhaps some lingering loyalty of an FBI agent to his country-that had kept Scully from telling Robledo what he’d managed to piece together about Operation BAQ.

Still, there were things that confused me.

“Why did you pick me to investigate Lilly?”

To Andie, the question had probably seemed to come out of left field. But for me the FBI investigation into Lilly Scanlon at BOS/Singapore was where it had all started. Knowing where it had finally led, it made no sense that Andie would have picked me. I simply didn’t believe in coincidences that big.

“This investigation was started before Scully retired,” she said. “He picked you.”

“Why?”

“The same reason he forced your father to confess: he didn’t get a dime until Robledo recovered the money that Collins had diverted from Cushman. After all he did to keep Robledo out of jail so that he could hunt down the money, the last thing he wanted was for the FBI to find it first. Clearly, he thought you were someone he could control.”

“What about you? You’re the one who signed me up. Why did you use me?”

“The operation was already approved by the time Scully was forced to retire. They brought me in from Miami to take over. I inherited his pick.”

“So it was just inertia?”

“You’d be amazed by the number of things that the bureau does for no other reason than that.”

I was feeling scammed yet again-not for myself, but for Lilly. “So Scully steered the FBI investigation toward Lilly so that it would go nowhere?”

“Nowhere,” said Andie. “You and I went there together, my friend.”

My head rolled back. “Lilly,” I said. “I don’t even know where to begin with her.”

“She’ll be okay,” said Andie. “We’ve been talking.”

I was aware of that. Lilly’s call from Connie’s bathroom had prompted Andie to contact me-which had sparked the formulation of Andie’s plan, the deathbed confession that had netted Mongoose and Barber.

“The question is whether Lilly will ever talk to me,” I said.

The door to my father’s room opened. Connie stepped out. Tears were in her eyes. My heart raced, as if knowing that it was about to be broken.

“What?” I asked.

She came to me, sat in the chair beside me, and took my hand. The expression on her face said it all, but she said it anyway.

“It’s time to say good-bye,” she said softly, pausing before she said my name, “Peter.”

The wedding was outdoors on a beautiful afternoon in April. At the Central Park Zoo.

Connie was a radiant bride dressed in an official scout leader uniform-dark blue skirt hemmed below the knee, yellow shirt with epaulets, and a Tiger Cub den leader neckerchief. Tom, undeniably her soul mate, wore khaki pants, a safari hat, and a Hawaiian shirt that was hard to look at without sunglasses. The snow monkeys watched from their rocky perch, their dark eyes seemingly filled with a mixture of confusion and amusement as the preacher pronounced them husband and wife, looked at Connie, and said, “You may kiss the groom.”

And, boy, did she.

For me, it was the first day since Dad’s funeral that thoughts of him hadn’t triggered pain or sadness. I felt as though he was watching, peering down at us from somewhere beyond one of the fluffy white clouds in the bright blue sky, happy for a daughter who deserved happiness.