Tess Gerritsen - Last to Die

And Teddy’s voice screaming in desperation: “Help him! Please, help my dad!” She opened her eyes and saw Detective Rizzoli crouched over Nicholas Clock. Saw Justine lying on her back, eyes open and staring, a pool of blood spreading beneath her head.

“Frost!” Rizzoli yelled. “Get Maura up here! We have a man down.”

“Daddy,” begged Teddy, pulling on Clock’s arm, oblivious to his own pain, his own blood, still dripping from his ripped ear. “You can’t die. Please don’t die.”

Justine’s blood kept spreading, moving like an amoeba toward Claire, threatening to engulf her. With a shudder, Claire rose to her feet and stumbled to a corner, away from all the bodies. Away from the dead.

More footsteps came racing up the stairs and Dr. Isles swept into the room.

“It’s Teddy’s father,” said Rizzoli quietly.

Dr. Isles dropped to her knees and pressed fingers to the man’s neck. Yanked open the shirt, revealing the Kevlar vest beneath it. But the bullet had sliced into flesh just above the vest, and Claire saw a river of blood streaming from the wound, forming a lake where Dr. Isles was kneeling.

“You can save him,” Teddy screamed. “Please. Please …”

He was still sobbing that word as the last gleam of consciousness faded from his father’s eyes.

THIRTY-THREE

NICHOLAS CLOCK DID NOT REGAIN CONSCIOUSNESS.

The vascular surgeons at Eastern Maine Medical Center repaired his torn subclavian vein, evacuated the hemothorax from his lung, and deemed the operation a success, but Clock did not awaken from anesthesia. He was breathing on his own, and his vital signs remained stable, but with every passing day that he remained in a coma, Jane heard the deepening pessimism in the doctors’ voices. Severe blood loss with hypoperfusion of the brain. Permanent neurologic deficits . No longer were they talking of recovery; instead the discussion was of long-term care and nursing home transfer, of Foley catheters and feeding tubes and other products that Jane had glimpsed in the fake catalog of Leidecker Hospital Supplies.

Comatose though he was, Nicholas Clock still found a way to tell the world the truth.

Seven days after the shooting, the video surfaced. Al Jazeera was the first to broadcast it, launching it into the ether where it could never again be contained. Within another forty-eight hours, Nicholas Clock was on computer screens and televisions around the world, calmly and methodically recounting the events that took place sixteen years earlier in Italy. He described the surveillance and capture of a terrorist financier whose code name was Icarus, in a case of extraordinary rendition. He revealed the details of Icarus’s imprisonment and the enhanced interrogation methods they had used against him. And he spoke of Icarus’s escape from the high-security black site in North Africa, an escape aided by a rogue CIA operative named Justine McClellan. None of that should have surprised or impressed a world long turned cynical.

But the murder of American families, on American soil, made the country take notice.

In the conference room at Boston PD, the six detectives who had investigated the Ackerman slayings sat watching the CNN evening news, a broadcast that went a long way toward explaining what had really happened to the Ackermans. The family had not been murdered by a Colombian immigrant named Andres Zapata; they had been executed for the same reason the other two foster families were: to make Nicholas Clock believe his son, Teddy, was in imminent danger. To force Clock out of hiding.

As long as Justine believed I was dead, Teddy was safe. She had no reason to attack him. If I took him and we ran, Justine would never stop hunting us. We’d always be looking over our shoulders. Teddy knows I’m alive. He understands why I’ve chosen to stay invisible. It’s for him; it’s all for him .

But now everything has changed. Justine must have intercepted one of our messages, and she knows I’m alive. I don’t have much time. This may be my only chance to share the evidence I’ve been gathering these past two years. Evidence that Justine Elizabeth McClellan aided in the escape of the terrorist known as Icarus. That she almost certainly murdered Icarus, after obtaining his account numbers and passwords. That she, or her paid agents, were responsible for the murders of the Wards and the Yablonskis and my own family. Because we were asking questions about her sudden wealth. We’d started an investigation, and she had to stop us .

Our families were merely innocent bystanders .

These three surviving children—Claire and Will and Teddy—are now pawns in the hunt. Justine has gathered these children together as bait, to draw me out. She’s using all her resources, both official and unofficial, and she’s led the CIA to believe that Icarus is still alive. That he’s her target .

But I’m the one she wants .

If anyone is watching this video, it means that Justine has succeeded. It means I’m speaking to you from the grave. But the truth doesn’t die with me. And I, Nicholas Clock, swear that everything I’ve said here is, indeed, the truth …

Jane looked around at the other detectives seated at the table. Crowe was tight-lipped and scowling and no wonder: His public triumph as lead investigator of the Ackerman case had just been smashed with a sledgehammer, and every crime reporter in Boston knew it. That rush to judgment against Andres Zapata would always blight his record. Crowe caught her looking at him, and the glare he returned could vaporize water.

For Jane, it should have felt like a moment of victory, a vindication of her instincts, but this brought no smile to her lips. Nicholas Clock was now lying in a coma that could well be permanent, and Teddy was once again fatherless. She thought of how many people had died: the Clocks, the Yablonskis, the Wards. The Ackermans, the Temples, and the Buckleys. Dead, all dead, because one woman could not resist the lure of immeasurable wealth.

The broadcast ended. As the other detectives rose to leave the room, Jane remained in her chair, thinking about justice. About how the dead never benefited from it. For them, it always comes too late .

“That was good work, Rizzoli,” said Lieutenant Marquette.

She looked up to see him standing in the doorway. “Thank you.”

“So why do you look like your best friend just died?”

“It’s just not satisfying, you know?”

“You’re the one who brought down Justine McClellan. How can it get more satisfying than that?”

“Maybe if I could bring back the dead?”

“Above our pay grade. We’re just the cleanup crew.” He scowled at his ringing cell phone. “Looks like the press is going bonkers. Which is a problem, because this story’s as sensitive as hell.”

“Rogue agent? Dead Americans?” She snorted. “No kidding.”

“The feds slapped a muzzle on us. So for now, it’s no comment , okay?” He cocked his head. “Now get outta here. Go home and have a beer. You deserve it.”

That was the nicest thing Marquette had ever said to her. A beer did sound good. And she did deserve it. She gathered up her files, left them at her desk, and walked out of the station.

But she did not go home.

Instead she drove to Brookline, to the home of someone who’d be equally depressed by that broadcast. Someone who had no one else to turn to. When she arrived at the house, she was relieved to see that no TV vans had arrived yet, but the press would certainly be there soon. Every reporter in Boston knew where Dr. Maura Isles lived.