Читать книгу Andrew Gross 3-Book Thriller Collection 2: 15 Seconds, Killing Hour, The Blue Zone - Andrew Gross, Andrew Gross - Страница 71

The scene came back to Kate on the long train ride back to the city. Through the steady clattering of the Long Island Rail Road car, the blur of faceless passengers, Howard’s words burned like flaming wreckage in her head.

I was paid. By your father, Kate.

Paid to leak information to the FBI. To turn him in. Why? Why would her father want to destroy his own life, the lives of those he loved? Why would he want to be put in jail, to testify? To have to hide? How could Kate resurrect who he was, why he did this, what he was capable of, from the whole confounding puzzle of her life?

The voice came from deep inside her memory. A faraway scene she had not revisited since she was a child. Her mother’s voice—desperate and confused—over the rattle of the train, making Kate shudder and flinch, even now.

“You have to choose, Ben. Now!”

Why was it coming back to her here? All she wanted to do was make sense of what Howard had told her.

Why now?

Kate saw herself in the flashback. She was maybe four or five. It was back in the old house in Harrison. She had awakened during the night. She’d heard voices. Angry voices. She crept out of bed to the landing at the top of the stairs.

It was her parents. They were arguing, and it made her jump at every word. She was a little afraid. Her parents didn’t argue. Why were they so mad?

Kate sat down. She could make out their voices distinctly now. It all came back to her through the haze of years. Her parents were in the family room. Her mother was upset, fighting back tears. Her father was shouting. She’d never heard him like this before. She moved closer to the railing. It was clear now, in the train.

“Stay out of it!” her father shouted. “It doesn’t concern you. It’s none of your business, Sharon.”

“Then whose business is it, Ben?” Kate could hear the tears in her mother’s voice. “Tell me, whose?”

What were they talking about? Had she done something wrong?

Kate held on to the banister. She quietly slid down the stairs, one at a time. Their voices grew louder. And there was bitterness in them. She could see glimpses of them in the family room. Her father was in a white dress shirt with his tie undone. His face was younger. Her mother was pregnant. With Emily, of course. Kate didn’t know what was going on. Only that she’d never heard her parents argue like this before.

“You don’t tell me, Sharon. You don’t get to tell me that!”

Her mother, sniffling, reached for him. “Please, Ben, you’ll wake up Kate!”

He threw her off. “I don’t really care.”

Kate sat on the staircase, trembling. She couldn’t remember any more words. Only pieces, coming to her like images in a photographic flicker book. There was something totally different and foreign about him, about his eyes. This wasn’t her father. Her father wasn’t like this. He was soft and kind.

Her mother, standing up in front of him. “We’re your family, Ben, not them.” She shook her head, just inches away from him. “You have to choose, Ben. Now!”

Then her father did something, something Kate never saw him do again. Why was it coming back to her now? She turned her face away, just as she had done on the staircase maybe twenty years before. Before she buried it—the violence in his eyes, what he did—in the lifetime of happier memories that she thought were real.

He hit her mother in the face.

He wanted this.

That’s what Kate suddenly understood. Stepping off the train. Climbing up through Penn Station and onto the street. In a complete daze.

Her father wanted this.

That’s what Howard told her. He wanted to be exposed—his longtime dealings with the Mercados brought into the light. To testify against his friend. To go to jail. To put the family he supposedly loved above everything else at risk. Why? He’d engineered his comfortable, picture-perfect life to self-destruct.

And he was capable of it. That’s what scared Kate the most. That’s why the flashback on the train was so chilling. However buried this memory was, she had seen it in him before.

Kate walked against the crowd down to Fourteenth Street. She headed east, all the way to the Lower East Side.

Did the WITSEC people know any of this? About the photo she’d found, his past connection to Mercado? Did they know who he really was? What he was capable of? Those awful photos of Margaret Seymour. Had Mercado’s people ever really wanted to kill him after all?

Do they know he brought his own life crashing down?

Her cell phone rang. Kate saw that it was Greg calling. She didn’t answer. She just kept walking. She didn’t know what she could say.

All of a sudden, the whole of her life had to be rethought. Why would her father have wanted to harm Margaret Seymour? What information could he possibly have needed from her? Why would her father want to bring this on himself? How could he have wanted to hurt them all? Sharon, Emily, Justin. Kate herself.

It was like the coda from some discordant, symphonic finale crashing in Kate’s head.

All along, this was his plan.

Greg was on the couch watching a soccer match when she arrived back at the apartment.

“Where you been?” He spun around. “I tried to reach you.”

Kate sat across from him and told him about her meeting with Howard. She shook her head in disbelief and felt numb, uncomprehending.

“Dad set it up,” she said. “He set the whole thing up. He paid Howard a quarter of a million dollars to go to the FBI. He said he was closing the business and turning himself in. Howard needed the money. He had a son who was in bankruptcy. There never was any sting by the FBI. It was all my father. He did it himself.”

Greg sat up, his expression both incredulous and worried. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“I know. Why would he want to hurt us like this? Why would he want to bring this on himself? It was like it was all part of some kind of plan. I don’t know what to fucking believe anymore. My mom is dead. We’re hiding out like animals. I’m starting to think they’re right, the FBI. That he did kill that agent. I loved my father, Greg. He was everything to me. But I know now … he came home every goddamn night my entire life and he lied to us. Who the hell was my father, Greg?”

Greg came over and sat beside her. He cupped her face in his hands. “Why are you doing this, Kate?”

She shook her head, glassy-eyed. “Doing what?”

“Putting yourself right back in the middle of all this again. Sharon’s dead, baby. You’re just lucky as hell you weren’t killed yourself. These people are animals, Kate. They tried to kill you, too.”

“Because I have to know!” Kate shouted, pulling away. “Don’t you understand? I have to know why my mother died, Greg. What she was trying to tell me …?

“No one ever went to jail, Greg. Not Concerga, not Trujillo. None of the people my father testified against. No one except Harold, his stupid friend. They all got away—everyone the government really wanted. Doesn’t that seem strange to you? Then he just disappears after a couple of months and that woman agent ends up being horribly killed. He lied to us, Greg. For what? Wouldn’t you want to know?”

Greg put his arm around her shoulders and held her close. “We can’t just keep living with this hanging over our heads our whole lives. All that’s going to happen is you’ll get yourself killed. Please, Kate, let’s get back to our lives.”

“I can’t.…”

“And I can’t go there with you, Kate. Not like this. Not forever.” He lifted her face. “I tried to reach you a while ago. I have some news.”

“What?”

“New York – Presbyterian called. They offered me the position.” His face widened into a proud grin. “I got in!”

As an attending. In children’s orthopedics. The Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital was one of the best programs in the city. This was great news. A few months before, Kate would have leaped for joy. But now she just put her hand on his cheek and smiled. Now she wasn’t sure.

“We can stay in New York. We can start a life. I love you, baby, but I can’t do this every day and think of you putting yourself in danger. We have to set this aside. If we stay, we have to face the future. Both of us, Kate. They want to know if I’m taking it. Are we going to stay or leave, honey? Are we going to go forward and live our lives? It’s up to you, Kate. But I have to give them an answer soon.”