The End Game (13 page)

19

The pit of Aparo’s stomach was yelling at him.

He hadn’t eaten since he’d shared a Chinese take-out delivery with his latest playmate, food they had burned off shortly afterwards by a couple of hours of mutual cardio workout. And much as he’d enjoyed that, much as he was looking forward to seeing her again, he was glad he’d turned down her offer to spend the night, as it meant he’d been there in his partner’s hour of need.

He turned to Tess. “I haven’t eaten since yesterday. Anywhere we can stop for me to grab a bite?”

“There’s a nice café just after the CVS up ahead. They do decent take-out sandwiches.”

A quarter of a mile later, Aparo pulled into a parking space.

“Can I get you anything?”

“I’m good,” Tess replied.

“Did you eat this morning? It’s probably going to be a long day.”

Tess shook her head. “I’m OK, thanks.”

“A coffee at least?”

She smiled. “No, mom.”

“O-kay.”

Aparo climbed out and walked toward the café.

He reached the door just ahead of a guy in a fedora and a heavy winter coat who was heading in too. Aparo nudged the door open behind him so it didn’t swing back into the man’s path.

The place was clearly popular. Many of the small tables were taken by singles or duos, several of them working at their laptops. Aparo went straight to the counter, where three people were ahead of him. He glanced at the list of offerings as he waited his turn, then ordered the special: sausage and tomato omelet in a baguette, with a large coffee, black.

“Double quick, please,” he said as he handed a ten dollar bill to the ponytail/goatee in the black T-shirt behind the counter. “And keep the change.”

He stepped aside to let the guy in the fedora order.

As he waited, he scrolled through his messages and emails. His inbox was heaving, but there was nothing there that couldn’t wait till he was at the office.

His attention was diverted by a waitress behind the counter who was holding out two brown-paper bags. “Bacon on rye . . . and an omelet baguette.”

Aparo reached for his order, but as he took it, the guy in the fedora reached across him, knocking Aparo’s bag to the floor.

“Oh Jeez, I’m sorry,” the man said, shaking his head with clear embarrassment. He stooped to pick it off the floor, fussing over it, muttering “I’m such a klutz sometimes,” as he brushed it down before turning to face Aparo and handing it back to him. “I’m really sorry. Let me buy you a replacement.”

Aparo glanced at it. The sandwich was longer than the bag, it’s edge poking out of it. It might have touched the floor, but barely. Also, time was an issue. He was in a rush to get to Federal Plaza. “No, it’s fine.”

“You sure?”

“Sure.”

The man relaxed a touch. “OK. Sorry, again.” He touched his hat in an old-school gesture of deference.

Aparo waved him off with a “No problemo,” took his coffee from the outstretched hand of the waitress, then left the café, bag already open and baguette on its way to being chowed down.

By the time he got back to the car, half the baguette was already in his belly.

Tess couldn’t resist sending her mother a text to see how the kids’ school run had gone.

The message was pointless and Tess knew it. She was just taking a momentary break from the bigger situation looming over her and finding a touch of solace in obsessing over the mundane. Her mom had, predictably, fired back one of her signature replies, informing Tess that everything was miraculously fine and that she was looking forward to a nice mug of coffee with her as soon as her circumstances allowed it. Her mom hadn’t used quote marks around circumstances. She hadn’t needed to. Tess saw them anyway.

She watched as Aparo climbed back into the Taurus with a coffee in one hand and an open sandwich bag in the other. He was wolfing it down.

“Hungry much?” she asked.

“Just what the doctor ordered,” he just about managed in between mouthfuls as he put the vehicle into drive.

They hopped onto I-95 and joined the stream of traffic heading south toward the city.

Tess’s mind was all over the place, exploring all kinds of scenarios about what awaited her and Reilly. She didn’t say much, and Aparo was busy polishing off the baguette and the coffee.

They’d been on the interstate for about ten minutes when Aparo winced. She’d noticed it after she spotted him scrunch up the bag and throw it over his shoulder onto the back seat. It was a habit she imagined was common to all FBI agents due to long hours spent on stake out but one she’d managed to talk Reilly out of, at least when it came to the family car.

Aparo grimaced with pain.

“You OK?” she asked.

“Heartburn.” He balled his fist and slammed it into his chest, moving his left shoulder up and down in an attempt to alleviate his discomfort. “I think I’ve got a bottle of water in the back somewhere, can you pass it over?”

“Sure.” She bent around and rummaged through the clutter on the back seat and found an half-empty bottle. She handed it over just as Aparo clutched at his chest with his left hand and gasped.

“Jesus! Are you all right?”

His right hand was still firmly on the wheel.

“Yeah. It’s nothing. Just zero sleep, an empty stomach, stuffing my face and—”

He moaned as his head lolled back against the headrest and his right arm went slack, sending the car swerving into the passing lane.

“Nick!”

Tess grabbed the wheel, fighting to steer the car back into the center lane. An SUV blew past to their left, barely missing them.

“Jesus! Nick! Wake up!”

She yanked the wheel too fast, causing the Taurus to bounce off a semi speeding past on the inside lane and hurtle across back toward the median divider. A cacophony of squealing brakes and panicked horns filled her ears as the car cut across a flatbed truck, clipped a compact and bounced off it.

Tess watched in horror as the compact careened back into the inside lane, slamming into a panel van that had swerved to avoid them.

There was no way she was going to reach the brake pedal. She swung the wheel away from her and the car flew across the lanes again and into the divider. Sparks flew from the screeching interface of car and metal, but the vehicle was still traveling too fast.

Glancing over her shoulder to see if the cars immediately behind her were anywhere close, she slammed the Taurus into neutral and pulled the handbrake.

The car fishtailed as it began to slow, noise and smoke filling her senses before it finally came to a stop about a hundred yards farther on.

Tess screwed up her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief, then turned to Aparo. He wasn’t breathing. The driver’s door was wedged against the divider. A trail of damaged cars and trucks littered the highway behind her, and to her right was a now-slow stream of traffic, all of it trying to avoid the pile up that was now blocking the inside lane. There was no way for her to get out of the car safely.

She reached over the prone agent and released the lever to throw his seat back, then clambered onto him and started CPR.

“Nick! Wake up! Do you hear me? Wake up!”

Aparo didn’t move.

She tried again.

Some air hissed from between his lips, but there was no gasp or cough to signal that he’d started breathing for himself again.

She raised her right first and hammered it down onto Aparo’s chest. Then again.

“Come on!” She pounded, again and again.

With no result.

20

Tess’s heart broke as the deepest of all primal instincts told her that the man sitting beside her was now gone, and never coming back.

She rolled off Aparo and fell back into her seat, her head throbbing from where it had slammed against something during the mayhem.

Up ahead, a grey sedan had pulled into the lane in front of her. Its driver, a man with short hair and a thick coat, was already walking back toward the Taurus. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but her mind was too flooded with stimuli to be any clearer than that. Within seconds, he was near by her door and looking in.

“Are you all right?”

She stared at him, still shaken and dazed, and didn’t answer at first.

“Miss? Are you all right?”

He yanked against the door handle, but the door was locked. He pointed at the inside of the panel.

“Can you unlock the door? Miss?” He was mouthing the words more clearly now, like he thought she couldn’t hear him. “You need to unlock the door.”

His words sank in and she pulled the door handle. The door creaked open.

The man helped her out. “What happened? Are you all right?”

“I don’t know,” she stuttered. “He just—he just stopped breathing.” She was on the brink of tears.

“Let me have a look,” he said, ushering her away from the door so he could climb inside the car.

Tess didn’t move. She was still in shock and couldn’t peel her eyes off Aparo’s still body. Then a thought cut through the haze and she pulled out her phone to dial 911.

“Miss,” the man was saying. “Can you step aside?”

She raised her gaze at him, his words at the edge of her consciousness—and she nodded. As she moved aside to let him past and her finger was about to hit the call button, she heard a siren behind her. A Highway Patrol car speeding down the empty passing lane toward them and pulling up just behind the mangled sedan, the lights on its roof rack still flashing.

She watched the uniform step out of his car, then noticed the man beside her step away from her and head back to his car. He turned to glance at her as he walked off, gave her a little knowing nod, then got in his car and drove off.

“You OK, miss?” the patrolman was asking.

She turned, nodded, and, still foggy-brained, called Federal Plaza.

Deutsch was listening to Gallo and Lendowski argue about Reilly’s gun and the prints report that had come in from the DC Field Office when her desk phone lit up.

It was the switchboard. “I’ve got a call here for Agent Reilly,” the operator said. “What are we doing with his calls?”

“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.