David Baldacci - Daylight

Holden-Bryant paused and seemed poised to lapse into a sea of old memories.

“Go on,” prompted Pine.

“There was one foot soldier who came to me for legal representation in connection with the string of RICO cases going on then. His name was Amadeo Bertelli. You can’t get more Italian than that, and the guy filled every awful stereotype of the Italian mobster. He was up to his elbows in blood. He was not a man I would have spent one minute with on a personal level. But he had a story to tell and I listened to that story. And the more I listened the more things started to make sense to me.

“He had a friend who had gotten embroiled in this whole thing. The friend had tried to do the right thing but had gotten screwed by someone. He’d already been arrested but had made bail for some reason. I met with this person.”

“Bruno Vincenzo,” said Pine. “The man you just denied ever hearing of?”

“Yes. Bruno Vincenzo,” she parroted bitterly. “He was even worse than Bertelli. Just being in the same room with the guy gave me the creeps. Anyway, Vincenzo told me everything. And I mean everything. He was hoping I could work a deal with the prosecutors to put him in WITSEC. But before any of that could happen his bail was revoked, and another lawyer took over the case. Bruno ended up going to prison. And I learned he was killed in there some time later.”

“And that should have been the end of it,” said Pine.

“Should have been but wasn’t,” said Holden-Bryant in a heavy voice.

“How did you find out where my family was being relocated?” asked Pine. “You said Jack never talked about his work.”

Holden-Bryant glanced up at her, her eyes slits through which tears were seeping.

“He didn’t always lock up his briefcase. He didn’t check to see if anyone was listening to his phone calls, meaning he didn’t check to see if I was listening to the phone calls he made from our apartment. I suppose he trusted me. And when he’d been drinking heavily, which was quite often back then, his lips got looser around me than they should have. It didn’t take me long to find out that the person Bruno said had screwed him over and Jack’s Amanda were one and the same.”

“And what did you do with that information?” asked Pine, keeping her gaze directly on the woman.

“I must have been mad with jealousy. I really must have.”

“You somehow got the information on our whereabouts, our new names, and other details to Bruno,” said Pine. “Didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I passed it to his attorney of record, who passed it to Bruno when he visited him in prison. Guards can’t mess with notes passed to prisoners from their attorneys.”

“And did this attorney know what the notes were about?”

“He never asked, and I never said.”

“We received a threatening letter, which caused us to be moved. Shortly after that two attempts were made to murder us, and then Jack got paranoid and pulled us from WITSEC. He moved us to Andersonville under the last name Pine. And he went down to personally watch over us.” She paused. “And then Ito Vincenzo, Bruno’s brother, came calling, shortly after his brother was killed. Because you also told Bruno about us moving to Georgia, didn’t you? Before he was killed in prison for being a snitch.”

Holden-Bryant wouldn’t look at her now, but she nodded her head. “When Jack finally broke it off with me and told me he was moving, I knew what was going on. I knew exactly what he was doing. He was following your mother, the woman he really loved. And leaving me . . . alone.”

“He wouldn’t have told you the details, surely,” said Blum. “How did you find out what you needed to tell Bruno?”

“Jack told me nothing. And he stopped drinking and stopped making calls from the apartment. I don’t think he ever suspected me, but he was just taking an abundance of caution. But he did make a big mistake. He had gotten a phone call that made him rush into his home office and check something in his safe. Our relationship was on the ropes, but we were still sharing the apartment, and I was trying to turn it around. Now, normally when I was there, he would shut and lock the door when he went into his office. But he was in such a hurry he left the door ajar. This allowed me to spy on him from the doorway when he was opening his wall safe, and I learned the combo. I checked it periodically while we were still living together. One day, when it was clear he was leaving town, I waited until he was gone, and then got into the safe and found a letter in there that had been sent to him by someone at his agency. It was all there. Andersonville, Georgia. Tim and Julia Pine and their two lovely daughters, Atlee and Mercy. I got that info to Bruno, and I guess he told his brother about it, because I suppose, by then, his mob connections had dried up. I believe he died shortly after he got that information.”

“But not before he got that info to his brother.” Pine paused. “Did you ever hear what happened to us back in the late 1980s?” she asked.

“I don’t really recall.”

“But you didn’t tell anyone what you had done?”

“And put myself in prison? No, I didn’t do that.”

“I read a letter that Bruno had written to his brother, Ito, complaining about his unfair treatment. As if a man who had killed scores of people had a right to complain. He basically guilt-tripped his law-abiding brother, Ito, to come after us. Ito almost killed me, and he took my sister and she’s never been seen since. My father killed himself, and my mother has vanished. I don’t know if she’s dead or not. So if your goal was to destroy my family, you succeeded. You wiped us out. As far as I know, I’m the only one left.”

Holden-Bryant put a hand to her face and sobbed quietly into it. She said shakily, “I’m sorry, Atlee. I never imagined—”

“Sure you did. You told a murderer where to find us. What exactly did you think was going to happen?”

Holden-Bryant dried her eyes on her sleeve and looked at Pine with a sober expression. “I guess, in a way, exactly what did happen. I guess it would be absurd and trivial and even cruel to say that I’m sorry for what happened, though I sincerely am.”

“Did you ever meet with Ito Vincenzo?” asked Pine.

“No, I never even knew he existed until you mentioned him.”

“You’re sure you never communicated with him?”

“Never.”

“When did you and Jack officially break up?”

“When he moved down to Georgia. There didn’t seem to be a point to continuing.”

Pine rose and handed her a card. “If anything else occurs to you, please call me.”

She took the card. “I know what you must think of me.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think of you. It’s far more important what you think of yourself.”

Holden-Bryant pulled a tissue from a box on the nightstand and sniffled into it. “Well, right now, I don’t think much of myself at all.”

“Okay.”

“Will Jack be all right?”

“It seems that he will, yes. He’s lucky to be alive, actually. As am I.”

“You really just found out about his being your father?”

“Yes.”

“It must have been a shock.”

“Everything about this has been a shock.”

“I hope you find your sister.”

Pine didn’t respond to this.

“Will . . . will you tell Jack about what I did?”

“Not unless I have to, no.”

“I appreciate that.”

Pine didn’t answer. She was already headed to the door. A moment later she was gone.

Holden-Bryant looked at Blum, who still stood next to the bed. “I guess love makes fools of us all,” she said.

“Oh, I think we do a pretty good job of that all by ourselves,” said Blum. She looked around. “Well, at least you have all this . . . to keep you happy. Aren’t you lucky?”