The club owner hesitated. Bunched his lips. “Well, you, ah, got a warrant?”
Keller glowered at him. “You really want me to get one? I might have to come back with a team of agents at, say, eleven tonight. Who knows what we’ll find.”
The owner held up his hands in retreat. “Look, I’d get his stuff if it was there,” he said. “But my bouncer, I let him take whatever’s left behind after closing.”
“Wonderful,” Agent Keller said, letting out a breath. “I need his name and address.”
“I’m not sure I have—”
“Name and address, or I’m back to us having a problem.”
“All right, all right. Give me a minute.”
Agent Keller nodded, and the owner disappeared inside. He returned with a Post-it note scrawled with the information. Keller plucked it from his hand, then lurched from the curb.
Twenty minutes later they were in front of a towering glass building in Tribeca. Keller turned into the mouth of a garage and stopped at a checkpoint. A guard examined her credentials then waved her inside.
“The bouncer lives here?” Matt asked as they circled down the basement lot. It was a high-end building in a high-end neighborhood, not somewhere you’d expect club muscle to live.
“No. I sent some agents to track him down.”
“So what’s here?”
Keller pulled the car into a spot next to a line of identical dark sedans. “Someone needs to tell your brother.”
“Wait, what?” Matt said. He tried to unpack what she was saying. Then: “No.”
There was a long pause while Keller searched his eyes. “I know this is a lot,” she said. “And I can’t pretend to know what you’re going through. But I spoke to your aunt and she said your parents would’ve wanted it to come from you.”
The hair on Matt’s arms rose.
“He’s here?” Matt asked, knowing that didn’t make sense.
“Not quite. We need to head up to the roof.”
* * *
The first helicopter ride of Matt’s life and he couldn’t tell if the floating in his gut was from being airborne or the surrealness of the day. The water of the Hudson was choppy, the sky a dreary gray. Agent Keller sat next to him with her back straight, her face expressionless.
She wasn’t chatty. And not one to multitask. There was no staring at her phone, no reading the newspaper. Her job was to escort him to Fishkill Correctional upstate, and that’s what she did. Matt never understood why Danny, convicted of killing his girlfriend in Nebraska, was incarcerated in New York. It was his third prison in seven years.
When the chopper hit a patch of rough air, Matt thought about Tommy. On family trips, while everyone else was white-knuckled gripping the airplane armrest with even the slightest bit of turbulence, his little brother would giggle with delight. Not an ounce of fear. He would’ve loved this ride.
Matt swallowed a sob, picturing Tommy on the plane to Mexico with no idea it would be the last flight of his life.
The helicopter touched down at a small airfield in a rural area. Matt removed his seat harness and headset and followed Agent Keller out. The propellers whirled, and he ducked down in a reflexive action he’d seen a million times in the movies. Keller walked upright.
She spoke to a man in a stiff suit next to a black SUV waiting for them at the edge of the tarmac. It wasn’t her partner from earlier, but they looked similar. Dark suit, sunglasses, blank expression. Neo from The Matrix. Keller and Matt climbed in back, and the vehicle made its way along country roads until the cement fortress came into view.
By now Matt’s palms were sweating, his head pounding. The reality was sinking in.
They’re really gone.
And soon he’d have to take away almost everything that his older brother had left in this world.
CHAPTER 3
EVAN PINE
BEFORE
“Evan, I’m so glad you made it.” Dr. Silverstein gestured for him to take a seat across from her on the leather couch.
Evan’s eyes drifted around the office. The framed diplomas, the neat desk, the grandfather clock that was out of place in the charmless no-frills office complex.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call last week,” Evan said. “You can charge me for missing our—”
“Don’t be silly. I saw the news about your son on TV. I’m so sorry, Evan.”
She kept saying his name. A trick of the trade, he presumed. He imagined a much younger Dr. Silverstein diligently taking notes in her psychology class. Repeat the patient’s name often to show you’re listening.