Michael Palmer - The Last Surgeon

Reese shook his head in disbelief. “Who do you think? FBI? CIA? NSA? One of those agencies that doesn’t even bother with initials? You’re already in deep, my friend, and I’m not sure when all is said and done, I’ll have enough rope to pull you out.”

“Maybe they’re making new identities. I mean, it is a plastic surgery center,” Jillian suggested.

Nick appreciated her stepping in and breaking the escalating tension between him and Reese.

“Possible. But I’ve been able to access personal information about other people in federal witness protection before. Why not these guys?”

“Maybe they’re just bigger fish,” Nick said. “More difficult to hide.”

Reese continued searching the other IDs. Gauging by his expression, Nick figured something about the fifth patient ID might be different from the preceding four.

“Hey, look, this guy here seems to be a real person.”

“You got an address?”

“Forget the address, I got a name, a name we all know,” Reese exclaimed. “This Social Security number is registered to a Manuel Jimenez Ferris.”

“Manny! We were right, Nick.”

“Well, put away your party hats, folks. I looked up this Social when you asked me to search for the guy, but it was a dead end. I couldn’t track him after his last address in Richmond, Virginia.”

“We met him. He had found his way to his cousin’s place in D.C.”

“Did you see his ID?”

“No, but that wouldn’t have helped much. His face was badly scarred. We had a picture, though, and we’re both sure the man we saw working the men’s room at Billy Pearl’s gentleman’s club was him.”

“Billy Pearl’s,” Reese mused. “I know that place. Know of it, I should say. So why was your Manny Ferris’s face messed up? You think he had plastic surgery?”

“With that result, not by Paresh Singh he didn’t.”

“Unless Singh never finished the job.”

“Or that wasn’t the real Manny Ferris.”

“I don’t know what I think yet. Let’s see what this last record shows.”

Reese keyed in the patient ID of the sixth record in Nick’s stack. A few seconds passed, then Reese’s eyes widened and a look of amazement washed over his face.

“Another restricted file?” Nick asked.

The cop shook his head. “Nope. We got ourselves another hit.”

“Yeah? What’s the patient’s real name?”

“According to this database, that Social Security number is registered to Umberto Vasquez. Your missing friend, Nick.”

“So why didn’t they change his and Ferris’s Social Security numbers like all the others?” Nick said, his jaw now tense.

“I think you know the answer,” Reese said. “These guys don’t leave loose ends. They didn’t change the Socials because they didn’t need to. My bet is that neither of them were slated to survive.”

Nick knew he was shaking and bathed in sweat. His sheets and T-shirt were soaked. Still, his eyes refused to open. As had happened so many times, with so many different nightmares, release would not come. He was the helpless captive of the terrifying sequences of his dream.

Sarah. Once again he is kissing Sarah. He can taste her lips, intoxicating and familiar. Her eyes are the same emerald green that had possessed him the first night they met. With her arms around his neck, her body moves against his in a desperate, pleading rhythm, crying out for what they both desire.

Suddenly, Sarah pushes herself away, but now, it is Jillian who has been kissing him. Her face glows with an angelic light that grows brighter and brighter still, until Nick can no longer discern her features. But the glow is no longer human-it is a truck barreling toward them through the night. Jillian moves first, shoving Nick aside. He falls hard to the ground. Precious seconds are lost-seconds that he needs to reach her before the grille of the truck does. He scrambles to his feet and charges toward her, but it is too late. The sound of the impact as the vehicle slams into Jillian’s body echoes like a thunderclap in Nick’s mind.

Flames erupt all around him, and within them he sees the driver’s sharp silhouette applauding the carnage. Nick’s legs are on fire. The pain of his searing flesh is unlike any he has ever known. The man in the truck laughs at his agony. Through the billowing smoke, with the fire swelling around him, Nick sees the driver’s face and gasps. It is his own.

The alarm clock was Nick’s savior. He sat bolt upright, staring out his bedroom window at the gray dawn. Guilt. That was how his therapist had explained the recurring nightmares. Guilt for Sarah’s death. Guilt for the skill he had used to save so many other lives. Guilt that he had helped Zmarai earn a trusted status on the base. Guilt that Umberto, who had saved his life that morning, had surrendered his own life to the bottle, and then vanished.

The recurrent horrors were his punishment for not having done more.

Before this latest variation, it had usually been Sarah who died in his nightmares and Nick the one who drove the truck that killed her. Now Jillian was his victim too. It didn’t take a Freudian scholar to work out the significance of that change. He simply wasn’t ready to take a woman hostage in a relationship-probably never would be-even a woman as genuine and special as this one.

He was carrying too much baggage. True, Jillian was toting baggage of her own. No adult could make it this far in life without a goodly load. Perhaps having her entering his nightmare meant they were closing in on some truth. He just needed to find a way to relax and let things happen between them if they were to happen. The Freudian wouldn’t have worked up much of a sweat over that one either.

On his feet, Nick shook off the last vestiges of this latest trip to hell, stretched, and headed to the bathroom, reminding himself of Junie’s most constant teaching: Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.

The plan for the day was to meet Jillian at Shelby Stone and to try the Mole one more time. Thanks to Don Reese, the stakes were increasing. They had Paresh Singh dead to rights in terms of his counterfeit records, although given the illegality of the way Nick and Jillian had obtained the information, dead to wrongs was probably a more appropriate term.

But they needed more-specifically, the connection between Singh’s surgical satellite and the mother hospital. Somehow, Saul Mollender had to be convinced to try to search for medical records pertaining to Umberto, specifically any from four years ago. Jillian had attempted a search of her own, but was electronically denied access. Without the Mole’s help, they were at another dead end.

Nick hooked Second Chance to a short leash and headed to the park. He followed the mile walk with a half hour of intense EMDR work that helped get him from a SUD score of seven down to six. Then he showered and headed into the city.

Jillian met him in the Shelby Stone lobby, dressed in a pair of dark slacks cinched with a broad leather belt below a simple beige silk blouse. He kissed her gently on the cheek when they embraced and held her close a few seconds longer than might have been appropriate given their surroundings.

“Somebody missed me,” Jillian whispered in his ear. “I like that.”

“I like that you like it.”

For the briefest moment, he flashed on the dream and her face, afire in the headlights of the truck.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Fine,” he said dismissively. “I’m fine.”

It was then that Nick noticed the package tucked under her arm, wrapped in brown paper with a small white card taped to it.