“‘A quickie on the Zen walk,’ Georgie Boy?” Tess smirked. “I dunno if Kim’s ever going to forgive you for that.”
“Hey, it did the trick, didn’t it?”
She nodded, then her expression darkened. “What’s going on, Sean? Where do we go from here?”
“I’m going to find Corrigan and prove that his guy killed Kirby. It’s the only way.”
She studied me, then just nodded. I guess she knew we were past the point of arguing about this. She gestured toward the ground. “I got what I could.”
“Maybe you and the kids should go to the ranch-” I was referring to her aunt’s place in Arizona.
“No way,” she cut me off. “You need me here. But your guys have the house under watch 24/7. Where are you going to stay?”
“I have no idea.”
“Maybe with whoever’s been helping you?”
A loaded question, by the looks of it. No point denying it now. “Nick tell you?”
She nodded.
Which reminded me of something I needed to know. “What else did he say? When you saw him?”
“What, at the house?”
“Yes, before the… before the accident?”
“He said you wanted your laptop safe.”
I nodded. “Where is it now?”
“I brought it back to the house after the accident. I hid it in the loft. I figured the ERT guys had already gone through the house, so it was safe there. I mean, I didn’t know where else to put it. Should I have brought it?”
“No, that’s fine. I just didn’t want them to have access to it to either track down the guy helping me out, or plant stuff on it. What else?”
“He told me everything you told me at Federal Plaza. About Corrigan, your dad, Azorian.”
“What else?”
“That’s it. He just said he was going to do everything he could to help clear you. That with you in custody, he’d use the Bureau’s weight to get to the bottom of this with the CIA. Maybe even ask the president to help.” She studied me, then asked, “Why are you asking me this?”
“I don’t know. It’s just… him dying, the timing if it.”
He face scrunched up with concern. “You think he was murdered?”
Before I could answer, we both heard it.
The snap of a branch.
Then silence again.
Tess motioned for me to take Kim’s backpack. “Go. Just go.”
“No.” I jabbed a finger at the trees to my right and hissed, low, “Hide. Quickly.”
Tess sprinted away as I reached for the gun tucked in the small of my back-
But before I had it fully out, a figure emerged out of the trees and came rushing at me, fast, with what looked like a gun in his hand. In a flash, he’d plowed into me, knocking us both to the ground, his left hand locked around my right forearm. Driving a knee into my gut, he levered himself upward and threw a couple of lightning jabs at my head with his gun hand, dazing me enough to let him force the gun from my hand.
He picked up the gun I’d dropped and stood up, tucking it into his belt holster and pointing his weapon directly at me.
“Get up, asshole,” Lendowski spat.
I shook my head and tried to focus my eyes, but what I saw made no sense. For one thing, he was alone.
“Where’s Deutsch?”
His expression went all weird and wry. “She couldn’t make it.”
And then all at once, disparate little observations fell into line. The call outside the bar. The gambling. The unusual levels of interest in my routine. His being here, without Deutsch.
They’d got to him-and now he was going to do their bidding.
“Len. Don’t.”
He just shrugged. “Don’t what?”
“Think about what you’re doing. They’ll never let you live.”
“Shut up.” Beyond the tension and the anger in his voice, I detected some fear, like he wasn’t totally comfortable with what he was about to do.
It was an opening, a vein to mine.
“They’ll own you,” I pressed. “And when they don’t need you anymore, they’ll put you down. You know that, right?”
He didn’t want to hear that. Instead, he shoved the gun in my face. “Enough. Call your bitch, get her back here.”
“Len-”
“Call her.”
I held his glare for a second, then said, “Go screw yourself.”
He grabbed my jacket and pulled me to my feet, looping his left arm around my neck, his right hand holding the gun to my head.
“Tess!” he bellowed. “I know you can hear me. You have five seconds to join us.” He started counting down them down, loudly.
I heard the faintest sound behind me. Lendowski was still counting, so I hoped he hadn’t heard it. Maybe Tess was working her way around us.
I yelled as loud as I could to give her cover, “Don’t! He’ll kill us both, get out of here-”
Then I heard the crunch of her feet, and Lendowski must have heard them too, and in the moment he tried to decide what to do, something slammed into the back of his head, a rock or a branch-I couldn’t tell. All I felt was the side of his skull bouncing off the back of mine, but he managed to stay on his feet. Down, but not out, he was already spinning around and taking aim at the trees, his left arm still choking me.
I shouted, “Stay down!” as I drove my right elbow as hard as I could into Lendowski’s side, then wrapped my right leg around his and pushed him over, bringing us both down.
As we hit the ground, his left arm loosened enough for me to roll to my right, trapping his right arm flat so that he couldn’t fire the gun.
“Tess! Run! Now!”
I thought I heard her take off as I balled up my left fist and slammed it against Lendowski’s right wrist. His grip on the gun loosened, and it fell away. I tried to grab the gun as I simultaneously rolled off him, but he landed a barrage of vicious blows to my midsection with his left before dragging me back from the gun, kicking me in the gut, and wrapping both hands around my neck.
I knew he was far stronger than me and would probably be able to take anything I threw at him, especially with him knowing I was weakening by the second, so I put every ounce of strength I had left into forcing myself upright so Lendowski didn’t have gravity to help him.
Kneeling on the frozen ground, Lendowski behind me, his thumbs digging into the back of my neck, I hoped that Tess was using the time to get back to her car and away.
I could feel myself starting to slip into unconsciousness-a state I had spent far too much time skirting in the past few days. I had to fight it with the idea of needing to ensure Tess, Kim and Alex were safe. But I couldn’t. His grip was too strong, and I was helpless. As I started to fall into a deep ocean of inky blackness, I thought about my dad. Maybe I’d find him. Ask him face-to-face what drove him to take his own life, when every cell of my body still wanted to live.
A loud sound reverberated through the dark water, turning everything upside down.
Suddenly the water was thinner. Lighter.
I was no longer sinking fast, but rushing toward the surface.
I felt the cold air against my face as I burst back into consciousness.
Tess was standing over Lendowski, the gun in her right hand, her whole body shaking with shock.
Lendowski lay on his side, stone cold dead. A big chunk was missing from the side of his skull. The blood oozing from the gaping hole appeared black against the dirty snow, spreading in slow motion as it seeped into it.
I pulled myself to standing, covered the ground to him, and pulled his gun from its holster and tucked it into my pants. Then I moved to Tess, put an arm around her and gently eased the gun from her grasp. She was shaking, a lot, her faraway gaze locked on Lendowski.