“Put it through.”
Deutsch didn’t recognize the voice at first. It was a woman, and her tone was urgent. “I need to speak to Sean. This is Tess. Tess Chaykin. Something terrible’s happened. Please.”
Deutsch’s spine tightened. “Miss Chaykin, this is Agent Deutsch. What happened? Where are you?”
“I’m… I’m somewhere on I-95. We were on our way down to Federal Plaza, Nick and me, and-there was an accident. Nick, he’s-he’s dead.”
Deutsch felt the blood literally drain from her face and she just froze, the surreal words echoing inside her without finding purchase. After a moment, she barely managed to ask, “Nick’s dead?”
She could hear Tess’s voice break as her weak reply came back. “He’s dead. I’m right here next to him. He’s-he’s gone.”
It can’t be, Deutsch thought. It can’t-and yet, it was true. Just like that. It had to be. Tess was not a flake.
Aparo was gone.
“Jesus,” Deutsch managed, “but-how? I don’t-”
“He just-I don’t know, it’s like he had a heart attack or an embolism or something. He just went. Just like that. He was driving, and-we hit the barrier.”
“What about you-are you OK?”
“I’m all right. I wasn’t hurt. But I need to speak to Sean. Oh my God, Nick’s son. We need to tell Lisa.”
“Hang on.”
She looked up, and through eyes that seemed resolutely unwilling to focus clearly, she saw that Gallo and Lendowski were still locked in heavy discussion. She cupped the phone’s mouthpiece.
“Hey,” she called out to them, then shouted, angrily, “Hey.”
They both turned, visibly surprised by her outburst.
She sat there in silence for a moment, still processing it and not quite sure how to say it. When she spoke, her voice was so quiet it was almost inaudible.
“It’s about Aparo. He’s… he’s dead.”
She saw their expressions cloud up, gave them a second to let it sink in, then added, quickly, as she held up the phone, “I’ve got Tess Chaykin on the line. Reilly’s wife-his partner,” she corrected herself. “She was with him. They were in a car crash. She’s in shock and she needs to talk to Reilly.” She focused on Gallo. “OK if I take him the call?”
Gallo looked at her, confusion lining his face, as he steadied himself against Lendowski’s desk. Then he said, “Sure. Go ahead.”
She nodded, told the operator to transfer the call to her cell phone, and rushed toward the interview room.
She was at the keypad when her cell phone rang. She took the call as she keyed in the code, trying to keep her voice even, to stay professional. “Miss Chaykin? I’m passing him over to you, hang on.”
The doors slid open. Reilly-she still couldn’t get used to calling him Sean-was in his chair, scowling at the wall.
“I’ve got Tess. Something awful’s happened.”
Reilly rose to his feet and grabbed her cell phone. “Tess?”
Deutsch watched as he listened, his eyes filling with disbelief, then horror, then the unmistakable glistening of tears.
21
I felt like every muscle in my body was trying to rip its way out through my skin.
A raging, boiling centrifuge of blistering anger, bottomless grief and creeping dread had me unable to form a coherent thought beyond that brutal, soul-crushing realization, much less decide what to do next.
The doors slid open and Lendowski came in with a coffee and a sandwich.
“Gallo told me to bring you this,” he said. Because, of course, he’d never have done it without clear instruction from a superior. Like I didn’t know that.
He placed the coffee mug and sandwich down on the table.
I asked, “Any news on Nick?”
I could see him adjusting his attitude-partners were sacred, even if you had good reason to hate one half of said partnership. Plus he and Nick were gym buddies.
“Were”-not “are.”
Surreal.
“Still waiting on the postmortem,” he said, “but it sounds like he had a heart attack.”
I pulled the coffee toward me, tore off the lid and took a gulp, the burning sensation at the back of my throat dulling the deeper, more intractable pain, which had needle-sharp tentacles smothering every nerve ending.
I took another sip, fuming at the idea of his pointless death.
“He treats his body like a dumpster all these years, then, what, six months into this new gym routine and being more careful with his food, this happens?”
Lendowski shrugged. “When your time’s up, it’s up, right?”
I shook my head in disbelief. I’d heard about guys dropping dead after over-exerting themselves after years of doing nothing and it had always struck me as somewhat absurdly ironic. This was beyond absurd-it was just cruel.
Lendowski scratched his head. “You knew him much better than I did, but like you said, all that junk food, zero exercise and chasing tail, not to mention a high-stress job and a dick for a partner… It’ll catch up to you.”
He couldn’t resist the dig, and he smiled as he said it, unwilling to fight over Aparo’s corpse.
I wasn’t willing to do that either. “Not now, Len. All right?”
He seemed taken aback, then just said, “Sure.”
He turned to go, then turned back. “He was a good agent. The Bureau was built on guys like him.”
I nodded. “Yep.”
“There but for the grace of God, you know what I’m saying?”
I just shrugged and Lendowski keyed in the code and left the room.
I was hungry, not having eaten since the train ride down to DC, which was-how many hours ago? I’d lost track. Still, I couldn’t face that sandwich. Nick and I had been partners for more than ten years. Apart from all the life-and-death situations we’d been in, the times we’d saved each other’s lives, I’d also lived through some great times with him, lots of laughs, lots of long late-night chats, as well as suffering with him through his personal hardships-the problems in his marriage, the women, the divorce… and now it was all over, just like that. A friend, a partner, a vibrant man with a hearty appetite for life, a father, an eleven-year-old son’s dad, gone in the blink of an eye. Snuffed out.
Hard to accept.
I know, we’re all heading that way. The only question is when. I thought of Nick’s son, Lorenzo. Eleven years old. A year older than I was when my dad died. I knew what he’d be going through. I’d need to try to be there for him, when-if-I ever managed to get my life back on track. Lisa, his ex-wife, would need our help too. Despite everything, they’d still spent fifteen years together, twelve as husband and wife, eleven as parents, and that doesn’t go away, not unless there was a major hurt involved, and there wasn’t. She’d be hurting now, I was sure. It just made me angrier that I was in here, not there, with them, helping them through this.
Selfishly perhaps, it also made me think about Tess again. About our life together. About Alex and Kim. About whether or not I was really living the life I wanted.
The twister spinning inside me was throwing out all kinds of wild thoughts. What I couldn’t still get my head around was the timing of the shooter appearing in Arlington, as in: why kill me now? That had been their plan after all. Kirby was just collateral damage-fortunate collateral damage, at that. I mean, I’d been chasing after Corrigan for months, so why had it taken him this long to deal with me? Kurt and I had been treading water. No, something else must have forced Corrigan’s hand, and if that thing was mission critical enough to decide to send me to an early grave, it was unlikely anything would be allowed to screw with the plan-meaning they still needed me dead.
Even with Corrigan’s reach, his design was beyond the resource of one man. He had to have help beyond feet on the ground, someone inside the CIA. The question was, how many of them was I up against?