Goddammit, a voice in her head said. You are not going out like this.
Her hand closed around something else. Something heavy and squared off and long. In an instant, she knew it was the nail gun. Her fingers scrabbled over it, like a blind person feeling someone’s face, looking for something familiar. Then she felt a trigger. She knew what a trigger felt like. She slid her fingers beneath it, fitting her hand around it like it was her own gun. It was so heavy, so much heavier than her Glock. But it was all she had.
She brought it up, found soft flesh, and pulled the trigger. Pantalone’s body jerked, his hands loosening around her neck. She sucked in a deep breath, her chest burning, and pulled the trigger again. And again.
Then Davey Pantalone’s skull exploded, raining hot blood, bone and brain all over her. His body slumped to the side, and she kicked at it, up on her elbows, trying to get as far from it as she could. Through the red mist all around her, she saw Kevin.
He stood in a shooter’s stance, both arms extended, his brow drawn down in concentration. A thin coil of smoke rose from the barrel of his Glock. He wore a black Kevlar vest over top of his dress shirt. She hadn’t seen him in one of those in years. It was disconcerting. For a moment, he seemed frozen, suspended in time, like a still life. Or an apparition. Then he lowered his gun, holstered it, and walked toward her, stepping over the sawhorse, the level, and Pantalone’s body. He reached out a hand.
“Rush,” he said.
She took his hand and let him pull her to her feet. “Kevin?”
He smiled. “I told you. I got your back.”
She looked behind him. SWAT team members and EMTs began pouring into the room. A few feet away, two paramedics knelt and started working on Trent. Jocelyn felt a flood of relief as they strapped an oxygen mask to his face. That meant he was still alive.
“You didn’t—you didn’t identify yourself,” she said to Kevin in a quiet voice. “You didn’t give him a chance to surrender.”
Kevin leaned in. “Sure I did.” He winked and handed her a handkerchief. “You just didn’t hear me.”
She looked around until her eyes found her phone, discarded on the floor. “But the call,” she said. “You were listening.”
“Yes,” Kevin said. “Very smart. We were listening. Until I hung up.” He took her elbow and guided her toward the door. “Let’s go. Inez is downstairs, and I promised her I’d bring you out alive.”
Chapter 53
December 3, 2014
“Maybe for our next big case we don’t take a murder,” Anita said. She stood in a slant of sunlight streaming into their conference room as she pulled thumbtacks out of the wall and tossed evidence and notes into a box on the table. “Maybe for our next big case, we could do something like a missing cat.”
She looked over her shoulder and winked at Jocelyn. Jocelyn laughed and twisted the lid on her Dunkin Donuts coffee. She sat across from the seat Knox used to sit in, the untouched cup of coffee and the flirty photos of Sydney Adams fanned out before her.
“I think I could handle Fluffy the Cat,” she mused.
Anita moved down the wall, removing more items. In the space she just vacated, dust motes floated lazily. “I thought you said this case wasn’t going to beat you. Oh wait, you said you weren’t going to let it fuck with your head.”
Jocelyn picked up one of the photos of Sydney and put it back down. “I’m not,” she replied.
She didn’t need to look at Anita to know that her friend’s brow was severely arched. “Best drink that coffee then,” Anita told her. “Before it gets cold.”
Jocelyn felt a small tick of annoyance. Not at Anita. Her friend was right, she had said that she was going to start drinking coffee again. She had also said she wasn’t leaving the table until she did.
Because fuck Francine Rigo.
That woman had taken daughters away from their parents. She’d taken bright, accomplished young women with unlimited potential from a world sorely in need of brilliance. She’d taken Davey Pantalone’s free will and any chance he had at a normal life. She’d nearly killed Jocelyn—thrice if you counted the confrontation with Pantalone.
She wasn’t taking Jocelyn’s coffee.
“Go on,” Anita prodded.
Jocelyn pulled the lid all the way off. She’d watched the clerk at Dunkin Donuts prepare it. She knew it was just a coffee. She dipped a finger into the caramel-colored liquid. Lukewarm. She lifted the cup to her lips and chugged it until the foam cup was three-quarters empty. It tasted exactly like she remembered. From across the room, Anita gave her a slow clap.
They had taken the week of Thanksgiving off, and even though they’d been back in the office for two days, they hadn’t been able to face Sydney’s file until today. Just seeing Sydney’s photos brought back Knox’s death and the ugly clash with Pantalone. Jocelyn was lucky that she hadn’t broken any bones. She was scraped and bruised, and her shoulder still hurt like hell, but she would be fine. Except for the skull-exploding, red-mist nightmares. She could add those to her collection of Schoolteacher Attacker nightmares. It had taken hours of bathing at Caleb’s house to clean all the blood from her body. She hadn’t wanted to go home to Olivia looking like something out of a horror movie, and Caleb was all too happy to have her for the evening, so relieved that she was alive.
The ping of the door alarm snapped Jocelyn to attention. A moment later, Trent appeared in the doorway of the conference room. He still looked exhausted. His arm was in a sling and would be for some time, but he was finally out of the hospital. In his free hand, he held a padded manila envelope.
“Ladies,” he said.
Jocelyn pointed to the envelope. “Is that what I think it is?”
From behind her, Anita said, “Is that the tape?”
Trent’s expression was half scowl, half smile. “Yeah,” he said. “This is Davey Pantalone’s tape, all right. You guys got a VCR?”
They hadn’t yet returned Kevin’s VCR. “As a matter of fact, we do,” Jocelyn said.
“I have to put this into evidence as part of the investigation, but I figured you’d want to see it.”
Anita grimaced. “I don’t think Rush needs to see it. She’s already traumatized. How about you just tell us what’s on it?”
Jocelyn laughed. “I’m fine. Besides, what’s a little more trauma?”
“All right, let me start again,” Trent said. “I need you to watch this tape so I don’t have to be the only one carrying around this awful knowledge of it.”
Jocelyn and Anita exchanged a look. “Well,” Anita said sardonically. “Since you put it that way.”
They locked the front door, pulled the mini blinds down, and situated themselves around the conference room table. “Coffee?” Jocelyn asked Trent.
He glared at her. She downed the rest of her cold Dunkin Donuts coffee, feeling accomplished.
The footage was grainy, or maybe they’d all become so accustomed to seeing everything in high-definition that it made old, standard-definition videos look blurry. It opened on a large bed in a dimly lit room. Part of the frame was obscured by what looked like a bottle of perfume, as if someone had set the camera on a dresser and tried to hide it. The bedsheets were rumpled. On the nightstands, candles burned, casting flickering shadows over the room. Two women entered the frame, giggling, their bodies fused together in a passionate embrace. Jocelyn recognized a much younger, thinner Francine Rigo. The other woman was waiflike, pasty and exceptionally slender, with waist-length black hair. When she turned in the direction of the camera, Jocelyn could see how sunken her cheeks were.