DAYBREAK: a gripping thriller full of suspense (Titan Trilogy Book 3) (7 page)

Brendan leaned back in his seat. He had to lift both hands, chained together by the metal bracelets, in order to rub one of his eyes.

Jennifer took another sip of her water. The pain was already cycling back. She needed another dose of the meds. “Brendan, I need something from you. I know I don’t deserve it. But you’ve got to give me something on XList. Anything. Any moment everyone’s going to be back in this room.”

He lowered his shackled hands and placed them on the table between them and looked at her. She searched his eyes. She found herself momentarily distracted by how bright and engaging they were. “I’ve told you the play; I keep doing exactly as I’m doing with the HTPU. Rascher is still my supervisor, only now he’s working the parallel Nonsystem sting. The task force becomes my cover. My work dovetails with the sting because of the connection between the two.”

He was silent a moment longer, and then shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. Not for you.”

“Excuse me?”

“You should back off. Tell them you can’t do this. You’re in too much pain.”

She flinched at this, as if struck. “I’m what?”

“What have they got you taking?”

She felt a flare of recalcitrance. What business was it of his what pain meds she was on? But she quickly realized her defensiveness had more to do with vanity; she didn’t want to seem vulnerable, and here Brendan was seeing through her bravado like it was nothing. She continued to gauge the situation, deciding her answer. Best not to alienate him now. She knew he had something for her. She could sense it.

“Tramadol,” she said.

“Tramadol? That’s usually prescribed for things like phantom limb pain. Or diabetic neuropathy.” He looked deeply into her eyes. She had never felt so clearly seen. It was both unnerving and pleasant. “Immediate release or sustained release?”

“I usually take it with acetaminophen. Immediate release.”

“Four hundred milligrams?”

She nodded. “Four times a day. I hate it.”

“You’ve got central neuropathic pain. Some complex polyneuropathy. Do you see any strange things? Bright lights? Visual tics or trails? How’s your sleep — lots of dreams?”

He had affected an affectionate bedside manner, and she could see him running through some medical calculus — thinking about her wellbeing, perhaps, more than just the clinical questions that he was asking. It was charming. It was . . . attractive.

“Brendan, I appreciate what you’re trying to do . . .”

“What am I trying to do?”

She looked at him, and felt a sudden, unexpected rush she hadn’t felt for anyone in so long she couldn’t remember.
You’re trying to protect me
, she thought, but the sentiment traveled no further than that. Instead she said, “I’m here, and I’m in it. End of story.”

“Alright,” he said. “So, you continue your work as special prosecutor with the HTPU, and, what? I help. How?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. When he was discussing her health, he was being genuine. But he danced around XList. He knew as well as she did that there was an overlap of the players — Heilshorn, Argon, Staryles. They had just sat together and put forward XList as a black market that fed Titan’s coffers. What was he holding back? Was he waiting for a deal?

“I’m counting on you to give me something,” she said. “And maybe, maybe if you do . . .” She was careful to lower her voice until it was barely audible. “Maybe then we see where else it all leads. You get me?”

“I don’t want that,” he said.

She sat up straighter and brought her voice back within normal range. She was empowered to make a deal with him. Maybe he was already negotiating — acting uninterested. “You’re in here for murder one, Brendan. Your trial is in three days. You start out with a second degree charge, reckless homicide, which carries some jail time with a conviction but not nearly as severe as murder-in-the-first. Yet, two days after you’re in, you give the cops a very convincing confession that shows the requisite intention to kill the deceased. Yet you say you didn’t know, upon entering Heilshorn’s office, that he had had anything to do with the death of your wife and child until that moment? That’s not usually what people do, Brendan, come to a place like this and then try and add to their time. You almost want to make it look like premeditation. I can offer you a lifeboat.”

“I haven’t been sentenced yet.”

“Brendan, has anyone been here to see you? Anyone besides Kendall from NYPD, or your lawyer?”

“No.”

“How about contact from the outside in any other way? Anyone? Anything at all?”

She watched him become still. He looked at the cup of water Jennifer had set down, looked at his own. But he wasn’t paying any attention to the water. He was elsewhere. She gave him the time he needed, just a few moments, watching him weigh the options. When he looked up, she read anxiety on his face for the first time since she’d been in there with him. Maybe not for himself, but someone else.

“You need to speak to Philip Largo,” he said at last.

“Former Assemblyman Largo?”

“I’d heard about him, but didn’t recall anything right away. No one pays attention to the state legislature.” His mouth curved into a wry smile, but the fear was treading water behind his eyes. The smile dissolved. “I came across his name while looking into Argon’s death. At first I thought, you know, Argon has this list going of crooked politicians. And he did. But Largo was different. Years ago, Largo was with an escort. But he didn’t know; or, that’s his claim, and has been his claim all this time — she was an XList pro.”

“How do you know this?”

“Just talk to him. Not everyone was cowed by Alexander Heilshorn, no matter how much influence he peddled.”

She felt a tiny electric pulse through her chest. “Tell me.”

“The escort was known as Danice,” he said. “Real name, Rebecca Heilshorn. That’s your way in.”

The key hit the lock to the interview room.

Jennifer’s heart tried to squeeze into her throat. The revelation about Largo was major, and had her ears ringing. She needed to know more. This wasn’t in the case files on Rebecca Heilshorn; how did Brendan know?

But there was no more time. She needed to scrap her plans for the day and scramble a meeting with Largo as soon as she could.

The corrections officer entered first, holding a cluster of keys. Grimm followed on his heels, his eyes suspicious, flicking little looks at Jennifer but offering Brendan a cold stare. John Rascher and FBI Agent Harlan Doherty came in next. Doherty had a bandage plastered across his nose. He jabbed a finger in the air, pointed at Brendan. His eyes were shining with fury above the swath of white gauze. “You’re fucked, Healy.”

“Okay . . .” Jennifer said, rising.

Doherty turned his high-beamed hate towards her. “Tell me you got something useful out of this shit bag.”

Jennifer ignored him and turned to Brendan. She could feel the eyes of the men boring holes in her back as she leaned towards Brendan. She knew Brendan hadn’t told her everything. She knew she needed more evidence to proceed. She knew she hated the men standing behind her now, breathing down her neck.

“Thank you,” she said to Brendan.

The CO got behind him and hoisted him to his feet. His manacles clacked together and the chains rattled.

He kept eye contact with her as they stood him up, the same way he’d looked at her when he first walked into the room. There was so much there to unpack, she thought. There was pain, there was resignation, but there was also resilience. Strange for these things to coexist, but somehow not strange, either. Somehow right. She suddenly realized that Brendan had a plan.

He shuffled away, passing by her, his eyes turning away. She stayed standing with her back to the rest of them for a moment. She overheard Grimm speak in a low tone to Brendan. Grimm told him that they would be dealing with the head-butting incident very soon.

She turned around quickly then, too quickly, and her back muscles seized, and she gritted her teeth against the pain. She wanted to tell Grimm to stand down, that Brendan was now a potential witness for the prosecution in a federal case, but bit her tongue. There was an appropriate venue for that; it would only inflame things here.

Doherty glared at Brendan as he left the room. She watched Brendan walk out the door, a large corrections officer filing through after him. She watched his stiff movements. She noticed again the faded bruise on his cheek, the scar that ran down the other side of his face. Between her pains and his bruises, she thought, they were ready for a vacation. Once it was over, they needed a break. Maybe forever.

The door closed.

Rascher was looking at her. Not in the empathetic way Brendan had, but like she was a liability. “You alright?”

“I’m fine.” She tried to keep her posture casual, though her lower back was mutinous, threatening collapse.

“Did he give you anything?”

Now Doherty drifted over to the two of them and hovered, listening.

“I need to see Philip Largo tomorrow morning.”

Doherty grunted and scowled behind his bandage. “Largo? What for?”

“Jennifer,” Rascher pressed, “did Brendan give you something we can use?”

She made an effort to raise her eyes to look at him. “Maybe.”

“Then let’s get you moving.”

He and Doherty stepped back as she walked out of the room. She’d been in there with Brendan for only eighty minutes, but it seemed like longer. It seemed like she’d shared a part of her life with him now. She needed to get outside. Out of these walls. Into the fresh air.

The first blow to his stomach knocked the wind out of him. The second and third, he barely felt. He got numb. Unable to breathe, unable to stand, but, numb.

Brendan dropped to his knees in front of Baker and Ephraim, the two COs. Grimm loomed behind them, darkening the doorway to the isolation cell.

“Far as I’m concerned you can rot in here until your trial,” Grimm said.

Brendan’s head hung forward, his chin resting on his chest. He closed his eyes. He pictured Sloane. Then there was a bright burst of light as one of the guards kicked him in the head.

When he came to, sometime later, he was lying on his side. He could see beneath his cot. The book was there. He reached out and pulled it to him. He rolled over onto his back, wincing at the pain in his abdomen, cramping the muscles, in his skull, cutting through his thoughts like saw blades. He held the book up over his face and looked at it.

It was
The Great Divorce
by C.S. Lewis.

He hadn’t been completely honest with Jennifer Aiken. He’d had some contact with the outside world since he’d been in here. Minimal, but some. A man he never expected to hear from again, Rudy Colinas. Colinas had been his partner on the Rebecca Heilshorn murder case. He’d blown the whistle on Brendan when Brendan had gone off on his own, and it had saved Brendan’s life. He’d helped him, too, while Brendan had investigated Argon’s death as a private citizen, and then he’d felt the need to stop, for fear of his career, his life, his family. But then after Brendan had been inside Rikers for two months, Colinas had sent this book and a short note.

Brendan took the note out now and read it for the hundredth time.

“Thought you’d like this,” Colinas wrote. “Remind you of the good old days. Ha ha.”

Another C.S. Lewis book,
The Screwtape Letters
, had been found at the scene of the Rebecca Heilshorn murder. It had helped Brendan to crack the case. Colinas was referring to that with his typical black humor.

“Check out page 98. That’s my favorite. Makes me think of you. Makes me think of the future. Keep your head down in there. Reject any marriage proposals. Hey, at least you’re ugly. That should help. Stay strong, my brother. — R.”

Brendan kept the note tucked into the passage Colinas had mentioned. Now he read the text highlighted in the book, as he did nearly every day.

“
Son,” he said, “Ye cannot, in your present state, understand eternity . . . That is what mortals misunderstand.

“They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.

The page shook; his hands were trembling. He dropped the book to the floor and covered his face. He let the anger pass through him, a sensation of flames licking the channels of his body, the belching heat of a furnace somewhere deep within.

Every day, he was grateful to Colinas for that book. He didn’t think Colinas could know the extent to which it would not only release a flood of feelings in Brendan, but grant him insights, too.

He related the passage to himself, to his own life. There was no doubt about that. He was haunted by what he had done wrong and he had to make things right. But he wasn’t alone. Philip Largo was another man, like him, who’d strayed from the path and suffered the enduring consequences. The two men were tied together by fate.