Tess Gerritsen - Last to Die

“How long have you been living here?” said Jane.

Denzel struck a match and leaned over to light a candle. By the glowing flame, she saw a trash-strewn floor, the splintered remains of a broken chair. He planted himself beside the candle, a disheveled African American man in ragtag clothes. “Few months,” he said.

“How many?”

“Seven, eight. I guess.”

“Anyone else ever come by to check out the place?”

“Just the rats.”

“You live all alone here?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Denzel,” Jane said, and felt ridiculous just saying that name. “We’re trying to find out who really owns this building.”

“I told you. Me.”

“Not Jarvis and McCrane?”

“Who’s that?”

“What about Nicholas Clock? You ever heard that name? Ever met the man?”

Denzel suddenly turned and barked at Frost: “What are you doing over there? You trying to steal my stuff?”

“There’s nothing here to steal, man,” said Frost. “I’m just looking around. See a lot of iron shavings here on the floor. This must have been some old toolmaking factory …”

“Look, Denzel, we’re not here to hassle you,” said Jane. “We just want to know about the business that was here two, three years ago.”

“Wasn’t nothing here.”

“You knew the building back then?”

“This is my neighborhood. I got eyes.”

“You know a man named Nicholas Clock? Six foot two, blond hair, well built? About forty-five and good looking.”

“Why you asking me about good-looking guys?”

“I’m just asking if you’ve seen Nicholas Clock around. This address was listed as his place of business.”

Denzel snorted. “Must have been real successful.” His head swiveled toward Frost and he snapped: “You really don’t pay attention, do you? I told you to stop looking around my place.”

“What the fuck,” Frost said, staring out the broken window. “Someone’s in our car!”

“What?” Jane crossed to the window and looked down at her Subaru. Saw the passenger door was ajar. She reached for her weapon and snapped, “Let’s go!”

“No, you won’t,” Denzel said as a gun barrel suddenly pressed against the back of Jane’s head. “You are going to drop your weapons. Both of you.” His voice, no longer a careless drawl, was now cold and crisp.

Jane let her Glock fall to the floor.

“You, too, Detective Frost,” the man ordered.

He knows our names .

The second gun thudded to the floor. Denzel grabbed Jane’s jacket and shoved her down to her knees. The gun was still pressed to her skull, shoved so hard against her scalp that it felt like a drill bit about to punch a hole through bone. Who would find their bodies in this blighted building? It could be days, even weeks before anyone noticed her abandoned car. Before anyone thought to trace its owner.

Frost thumped down to his knees beside her. She heard the beeps of a cell phone being dialed, then Denzel said: “We’ve got a problem. You want me to finish it?”

She glanced sideways at Frost and saw terror in his eyes. If they were going to fight back, this was their last chance. Two of them against an armed man. One of them would almost certainly take a bullet, but the other might make it. Do it now, while he’s on the phone and distracted . Muscles tensing, she took a breath, maybe her last. Twist, grab, deflect …

Footsteps clanged on the stairway and the gun barrel suddenly lifted from her scalp as Denzel stepped away, beyond her reach. Beyond any hope of wrestling the weapon from him.

The footsteps ascended to the top of the stairs and moved toward them, heels clipping sharply against the wooden floor.

“Well, this is a problem,” said a shockingly familiar voice. A woman’s voice. “You can both get up, Detectives. I guess it’s time to drop all pretenses.”

Jane rose to her feet and turned to face Carole Mickey. But this was not the lacquered blonde who’d claimed to be Olivia Yablonski’s colleague at Leidecker Hospital Supplies. This woman wore sleek blue jeans and black boots, and instead of a matronly blond helmet shellacked with hairspray, her blond hair was gathered in a tight ponytail that emphasized a model’s jutting cheekbones. Once, she would have been a stunning beauty, but middle age was now etched in that face, in the creases fanning out from her eyes.

“I take it there’s no such company as Leidecker Hospital Supplies,” said Jane.

“Of course there is,” said Carole. “You saw our catalog. We carry the latest in wheelchairs and shower seats.”

“Sold by sales reps who never seem to be in the office. Do they actually exist, or are they all like Olivia Yablonski, running operations around the world for the CIA?”

Carole and Denzel glanced at each other.

“That’s a very big leap of logic, Detective,” Carole finally said, but that two-beat pause told Jane she’d hit the target.

“And your name isn’t really Carole, is it?” said Jane. “Because I know his isn’t Denzel.”

“Those names will do for now.”

Denzel said, “They asked me about Nicholas Clock.”

“Naturally. They’re not idiots.” Carole picked up the fallen weapons and offered them back to Jane and Frost. “That’s why I’ve decided it’s time we worked together. Don’t you think?”

Jane took back her Glock and considered, just for an instant, turning the gun on Carole and telling her to screw that working together crap. These people had drawn a gun on her, had forced her and Frost to kneel with the full expectation of death. That was not something you easily kissed and made up over. But she choked back her temper and shoved the gun in her holster. “How did you just happen to be here?”

“We knew you were headed this way. We’ve been keeping an eye on you.”

“This is like the Leidecker company,” said Frost. “Another fake business, this one used as Nicholas Clock’s cover.”

“And this is where they’d come looking for him,” said Carole.

“But Clock’s dead. He died aboard his yacht.”

“ They don’t know that. For weeks, we’ve been leaking rumors that Clock is alive, that his appearance has been altered by plastic surgery.”

“Who’s looking for him?” asked Jane.

Carole and Denzel exchanged looks. After a moment, she seemed to come to a decision and said to Denzel: “I need you outside to watch the street. Leave us.”

With a brisk nod, he left the room, and they heard his footsteps clanging down the stairs. Carole watched from the window and didn’t say a word until she spotted her associate outside.

She turned to Jane and Frost. “Boxes within boxes. That’s how the Company controls information. He knows what’s in his own little box, but nothing outside it. So now I’m going to give you a box, which belongs to just you two. Not to be shared. You understand?”

“And who knows it all?” asked Jane. “Who owns all the boxes?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“That’s not part of your box.”

“So we get no idea of where you stand in this hierarchy.”

“I know enough to run this operation. Enough to know that having you two mucking around in this threatens everything I’ve worked for.”

“The CIA’s not authorized to run operations on US soil,” pointed out Frost. “This is illegal.”

“It’s also necessary.”

“Why isn’t the FBI handling this?”

“This was not their mess. It was ours. We are simply cleaning up what should have been finished years ago.”

“In Rome,” Jane said, quietly.

Carole didn’t answer, but her sudden stillness confirmed what Jane believed. Rome was where it started. Where the lives of Nicholas and Olivia and Erskine had intersected in some catastrophic event that was still casting ripples in the lives of their children.