She sat down in the chair and Reilly did the same in his. Deutsch stayed standing, to one side.
“I’ll be home soon. We’re going to beat this,” Reilly said, his tone calm and reassuring.
“We need to get you a lawyer. A good one. Anyone specific you want to use?”
Reilly glanced at Deutsch, a finger pointing up at the cameras. “Did Gallo agree?” he asked.
Deutsch nodded. “Just while she’s in here, yes. They’re off.”
Reilly acknowledged her reply, then carried on talking to Tess. They talked about Aparo’s ex-wife, and Reilly told her he’d spoken to her, told her what had happened. He asked Tess how their own kids were doing, then he filled her in on what had happened since they’d parted at Union Station, told her what had preceded it, repeating his story yet again. They talked about how and what she would tell the kids, and what she’d say to her mom. And throughout it all, the one thought Tess couldn’t suppress was wondering about whether or not what Reilly was about to attempt was going to work-or whether he’d survive it.
She didn’t want to leave, because leaving meant he would go through with his plan. But after a while, she had to. They both knew it. But before she went, she had to take the role to its conclusion, for Deutsch’s benefit. The less they suspected something was going on, the more chances Reilly had to get away with it.
“You couldn’t let it be, could you?” she asked him.
“What, let the bastard get away with it?”
“He already has-don’t you see that? You’re the one who’s about to be charged with murder and he’s… he’s a ghost. A mirage.” She tried to fake anger, but it was sadness and fear that were now searing through her. “You still don’t even know his real name.”
She knew they were both walking a tightrope here. It was fortuitous that something they shared was exceptional self-control. Indeed, it was one of the things that first attracted her to Reilly-his immense self-discipline and single-mindedness. But unlike most other positive traits, it was one that could go catastrophically wrong.
His anger as real as hers, though, she knew, similarly controlled, Reilly slammed the table with both fists, but stayed seated.
“Everyone keeps saying leave the past behind, but it’s the past that defines us. It makes us who we are and shapes what we become. I don’t want my life controlled by the bad things that happened when I was a kid any more than I want Alex’s future affected the same way. But the only way to stop that happening is to confront it head on and deal with it before it does that.”
“Alex, and Kim… they need a father, not an avenging angel.”
“It’s not vengeance, Tess. It’s justice. They’re not the same thing.”
“Maybe not, but one often pretends to be the other. Especially when it’s the obsession of one man.”
Her eyes were flooding-with anger and hurt, but also with fear.
It was time to go.
She got up, looked over at Deutsch. The agent understood and nodded.
Tess turned to Reilly, bent down and hugged him again, burying her face in his neck.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” she whispered in his ear. “I need you with me. Always.”
“I’ll see you soon,” he replied. “Promise.”
“You’d better,” she said. Then she kissed him, hard and desperate, before tearing herself away and leaving the room.
23
I checked my watch-0300 hours.
They’d let me keep it, but only after humorless expressions in response to my joke about the timepiece’s frustrating lack of Bond-style garrotes or lasers. I’d be waving it goodbye once I was processed formally and once I was in the system that way, it would be much, much harder to get out.
I had to make my move tonight.
I was lucky to still be here, in a holding cell at Federal Plaza for the night. This wasn’t standard procedure, by any means, but by the time Gallo received the formal indictment, it was too late for me to be processed by the Marshal's Service, interviewed by the Pretrial Services Agency, and walked across to the new federal courthouse at 500 Pearl Street which loomed over the classic, hexagonal state courthouse on the east side of Foley Square for presentment before a federal magistrate judge. Best they could manage was to escort me up to the twenty-sixth floor to be photographed and fingerprinted before bringing me back down to the interview room. I needed to be lodged overnight before being taken to be arraigned in the morning. Normally, they would have shipped me over to the MCC, the Metropolitan Correctional Center just across the square, behind the courthouse. But the facility was perennially overpopulated, and whoever was pulling the strings would have ample opportunity to kill me while I awaited my arraignment, with a menu of wide-ranging options: false-flag terrorist, corrupt guard, white-power psychopath or just some poor schmo blackmailed into doing their bidding. I felt it would be much safer to be under this roof for the night, and Gallo grudgingly agreed to keep me there for the night. Everyone was too shaken up by Nick’s death anyway, so it was all put on hold until tomorrow. Which suited me fine.
I was moved to a holding cell and given a blanket and a pillow to soften up the hardwood bench.
Not that I cared about any of that.
My mind was totally elsewhere. Mostly thinking of Nick, of course. He was still there vividly inside my head, and I kept finding myself thinking I could ask him to help with this or that before reminding myself that he was gone. I guess it still hadn’t sunk in fully.
Mostly, though, it was in the context of what I was about to attempt.
I still had the two capsules in my hand, aware that every time I moved, the more likely it was to look like I was concealing something, even in the middle of the night.
Lendowski-I’d seen the agent through the open doors when Tess had left-was probably half-asleep in his chair, but I couldn’t risk being seen acting in any way that appeared suspicious. Protocol was to monitor the holding room’s audio and video, so even if Lendowski was dozing right now I knew he could easily be wide awake at any moment.
Tess knew where I’d hidden the small stainless steel vial I’d kept in my possession after that nightmare we all went through in Mexico last summer. We’d talked about it a lot, as she was-no surprise there-fascinated by what it contained, the only known sample of the raw, unprocessed drug that countless people had died fighting over, from the adventurer-chemist who had discovered it, to El Brujo, the drug baron who wanted to unleash it on the world.
Good times. Not.
In a tranquil space, the raw drug was supposed to bring about visions that were either genuine memories of that person’s past lives, or images at once so timelessly primal and so deeply personal that this was the only way to rationalize them, the alternative being an experience so unbelievably irrational and so threateningly surreal that the mind simply had no way to frame it.
I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure exactly where I stood on the matter. One thing I did know, though, was that taking the drug now, in my depleted and exhausted state, would wreak havoc on my body and my mind. I just couldn’t see any other way out.
Leaning back in the chair, I carefully took apart the capsules, then I moved both hands up to my face, palms level with my mouth, like someone trying to rub wakefulness into a head that was already more than half-asleep. I popped the capsules into my mouth then swallowed hard, barely managing to force the hard gelatin shells past my esophagus.
My guess was I’d just ingested about a gram of the drug. Thankfully I hadn’t tasted it much as I’d swallowed them fast, but what I did taste was vile, somewhere between burnt cabbage and a dog food concoction Purina had rejected. I quickly found myself fighting the urge to gag.
I sat perfectly still, trying to regulate my breathing, waiting for the effects to take hold.