Freefall Read online

  The moment he saw the uniformed officer guarding Luna’s room, Reeves knew that something was very wrong. The man’s head was cocked at an awkward angle, his eyes staring blankly at the floor. He was dead. Reeves raced over and pressed his fingers to the young cop’s neck. The stillness and encroaching chill confirmed that he was gone.

  “Nurse!” Reeves yelled. “Somebody!”

  He heard the sound of distant footsteps skipping toward him, but he didn’t wait. Reeves opened the door to Luna’s room and stepped inside to find that the bed was empty: Alejandro Luna was gone.

  My boss, SAIC Parry, said Agent Ash needed to be brought to safety, so I volunteered.

  Reeves recalled Luna’s words. In another world, it might have been a coincidence, but Reeves didn’t believe they existed in this one. Luna hadn’t been chosen, he’d volunteered to collect Ash from Summersville. He’d volunteered because he planned to hand her over to the men who’d killed her.

  Reeling from the implications of his conjecture, Reeves produced his phone and called Harrell. The first task in the investigation of the murder of Senior Special Agent Christine Ash was to find Alejandro Luna.

  57

  Wallace was looking west along 50th Street, studying how the early morning sunlight caught the edges of the high buildings, wondering when he’d next have the opportunity to catch such a moment on camera.

  He’d hitched a ride with a trucker named Andy, who’d taken him from Summersville to a town called Charlottesville in Virginia. He’d missed the late train and been forced to stay in a seedy motel near the station. The following morning, he’d caught a train to New York and, arriving late in the afternoon, had taken a cab to the Fresh City, where he’d been given the same room. Wallace spent a restless night riddled with guilt over abandoning Ash. He almost phoned Reeves to find out whether he’d been able to secure her release from police custody, but paranoia prevented him from doing so. Alone, Wallace knew he had to take extra care to avoid being caught and couldn’t risk giving away his location. When he had eventually drifted off, he was tormented by nightmare images of Ash lying next to Connie, the two of them dying long, ugly deaths.

  Feeling exhausted by his restless night, he had risen before dawn, dressed in jeans, a blue sweatshirt, and black sneakers, and caught the subway up to 50th Street. He’d spent two hours watching Pavel’s building, stalking the streets, looking for any signs of surveillance. Satisfied there were no lingering pedestrians, out of place vans, or passing drones, he finally slipped into the building through the basement garage and rode the elevator up to the eighteenth floor, where he asked to see Pavel.

  He’d been waiting twenty minutes, studying the city from the vantage point of the eighteenth-floor windows, when his phone rang. He stepped away from Todd, who watched him from behind the reception desk with ill-disguised suspicion that bordered on hostility, and crossed the Kosinsky Data Services lobby to answer the call.

  “Hello?”

  “John, it’s Pat Bailey.”

  He was somewhere loud and busy, and Wallace could hear the garbled sound of a public broadcast.

  “Let me talk to Chris,” Bailey continued.

  “She’s not here,” Wallace replied. “She got arrested.”

  Bailey muttered something under his breath. “Where are you?”

  “With a friend. You?”

  “I’m also with a friend. We’re on the move,” Bailey replied.

  “We found something,” Wallace revealed. “Max Byrne was being helped by members of his unit. Mike Rosen, Ethan Moore, and Smokie, the guy who attacked me in Rikers, they were all in his platoon.”

  “I’ve found a blackmail plot tied to the International Online Security Act,” Bailey responded. “If you’re with a good friend, ask them to check out ‘Freefall,’ see what they can find.”

  Another indistinct announcement blared in the background, and Bailey said, “Gotta go. You be careful. I’ll call you soon.”

  Bailey hung up and Wallace pocketed the phone. He turned to see Pavel Kosinsky watching him from the other side of the lobby.

  “What are you doing here?” Pavel said, stepping forward aggressively. “How can you show your face?”

  Wallace had never seen the slim professional so agitated, and backed up, but Pavel kept closing and only stopped when he was inches away.

  “You don’t know, do you?” he observed, studying Wallace’s bewildered face. “Christine Ash is dead.”

  Wallace stumbled like a punch-drunk fighter as the world went mute and distant. He could hardly breathe, and felt his legs go, but gravity didn’t take him. He was caught by Pavel, who opened his mouth to bark something at Todd. Wallace could see the sinews on Pavel’s neck but heard no sound, as the young receptionist ran over. He grabbed one of Wallace’s arms, and he and Pavel bustled Wallace through the adjacent offices, past a man in uniform, into the secure area. The lights on the servers became incandescent streaks as Wallace’s vision failed, and the world morphed into a swirling mess of color, much like the oils on an artist’s palette. He only had the vaguest sense of where he was, who was with him, what was happening, before everything went white.

  Then came the slap.

  Another.

  And another.

  Reality flooded in as his senses rebooted. He was in the insulated, windowless room where he and Ash . . . he felt his stomach churn acid as he thought of her . . . where he and Ash had watched Pavel hack Pendulum’s email account. He was propped up against the wall and a concerned Pavel was watching him to see if his blows had snapped Wallace back to consciousness. Todd was nowhere to be seen.

  “How long was I out?” Wallace asked.

  “A few minutes,” Pavel told him, somewhat relieved.

  “What happened to . . .” Wallace trailed off, unable to say her name.

  Pavel’s chest swelled as he heaved a huge sigh. “I heard from a source in the Bureau. They found her body last night. Floating in the East River,” he said quietly. “It was badly disfigured. They believe she was tortured.”

  Wallace choked back a cry. He’d left Ash. He’d left her to face her death alone. She’d borne the horrors that had been meant for him. He’d abandoned her. Betrayed her. After Connie . . . He struggled to think rationally, his mind filling with images from his nightmares, the two women closest to him dying in anguish and agony.

  “The Bureau identified her from her dental records,” Pavel continued. His voice was hoarse and he struggled with each and every word. “They’re looking for you. They say you were the last person seen alive with her. They want to talk to you.”

  Pavel’s words marshaled Wallace’s mind around a single thought: revenge. He embraced the memory of Connie dying in his arms, forced himself to imagine the horrors Ash had endured, and as he pictured their ordeals, he felt a rage so pure and powerful that it scared him. He forced himself to his feet.

  “I would never hurt Chris,” he said flatly. “She was arrested in a place called Summersville. They must have taken her from the police.”

  “Who?” Pavel asked.

  Wallace produced the photograph he’d taken from Mike Rosen’s journal and showed it to Pavel.

  “That’s Max Byrne, Pendulum,” he said, pointing to the picture. “This is Mike Rosen, the man who tried to kill me in Afghanistan. Ethan Moore, the guy who posed as Max Byrne’s nurse. And the black guy in the middle is Smokie. He almost murdered me in Rikers. I don’t know if any of the others are involved, but Byrne’s military unit is at the heart of this.”

  “Can I make a copy?” Pavel asked.

  Wallace nodded and gave him the photo. Pavel took it to the computer terminal in the center of the room, and touched a panel to reveal an alcove that housed a scanner.

  “I can run a facial recognition program,” he explained as he activated the device. “It will identify everyone in the image, and we can pull up everything we can find on them. You can stay here in my office until—”

  “I need you to check a n
ame for me,” Wallace interrupted. “Pablo Matias. He’s twenty-six, maybe twenty-seven. He was in Rikers last year, charged with dealing meth.”

  Pavel was already at the terminal, his fingers tapping the keyboard.

  “He’s still there,” he revealed. “His trial date has been postponed twice. Why?”

  “I can’t stay here,” Wallace replied. “I’m the reason Chris was caught. I saw the police take her away and I did . . .” He choked on the admission.

  “I did nothing,” he said finally. “I watched them take her away.” Wallace felt tears flowing down his cheeks, but he didn’t wipe them away. He deserved far worse ignominy. “I watched them take her away and I did nothing.” A surge of self-loathing swept over him. “I’m not going to stay here doing nothing. There’s a chance Matias knows where Smokie is.”

  “You’re nuts!” Pavel countered. “You can’t go to Rikers. You’re on the FBI’s most wanted list.”

  Wallace shrugged. “And if they catch me? Am I going to get any less than I deserve?” He took out his phone and pressed the “Show Own Number” command. “Here’s my number. Call me if you find anything.”

  When Pavel had finished noting the number, Wallace moved toward the door and pulled the handle, but it didn’t budge.

  “You can’t blame yourself,” Pavel said.

  “Let me out,” Wallace growled, his anger bubbling to the surface. He thought of all the things he should have said to Ash. All the things he should have told her so that she would have known there was at least one person in the world who loved her before she died.

  Pavel shook his head sadly. The scanner had finished, so he gave Wallace the photograph, and ran a swipe card over a reader. The latch clicked and Wallace pulled the door open, but before he could leave, Pavel clasped his arm.

  “Christine wouldn’t want you to do this,” he cautioned.

  Wallace stared at him. Knowing that it would be impossible for this man to understand what he was going through, he didn’t waste the time or breath trying to explain. He freed himself from Pavel’s grip and set off through the server room, propelled by pure, white-hot rage.

  The rhythm of the city was unchanged. Traffic rolled along West 50th Street, and the sidewalks were crowded with the pounding feet of awestruck tourists and bustling locals. Nobody stopped to stare at the pale man who emerged from the skyscraper, the blood drained from his face, his eyes wide with shock and raw with grief. No one registered his loss, nor gave him so much as a second glance. Wallace was struggling with a storm of emotions—remorse and regret, demanding to know why he hadn’t insisted on going with Ash to Mike Rosen’s house, or tried to rescue her from the police. Rage, scorching him with anger at himself, at those who’d killed Ash, at the world for allowing such injustice. Shame, at the awareness that this wasn’t the first innocent person who’d died in his place. Guilt, eating away at his psyche with the knowledge that he’d set himself on this path, and that all the evil that had befallen those he loved could be justly laid at his feet.

  He tried to clear his head, to concentrate, but found himself unable to focus over the storm of emotions. Eventually he recovered the presence of mind to flag down a taxi. The city passed in a blur of buildings and faces, and Wallace lost track of how long he sat in the cab, watching everything but seeing nothing.

  “John Wallace is a coward.” He recalled Pendulum’s last words. “A weak man who could not live with the guilt of his cowardice.”

  He’d been right. John Wallace was a coward. He’d run from everything—the massacre at the Marwand compound, Connie’s death, Vosuruk, and now Ash. A better man would have protected them, or made their deaths mean something. He only seemed able to drag people into the turmoil that had upended his life, and watch them die as he did nothing.

  “Are you listening, man?”

  The voice intruded on Wallace’s dark reflections, and he realized that the taxi had stopped. They were in the huge parking lot on the south side of Rikers Island, near the Perry Control building. Wallace felt a jolt of nerves when he noticed the Eric M. Taylor Center on the other side of the lot. The block had been the scene of so much misery, and he began to feel that Pavel was right. He was tempting fate coming to New York City’s largest jail.

  “I ain’t got all day.”

  The cab driver’s heavy jowls quivered with irritation. He ran his hand over the stubble that flecked his head.

  “I’m sorry,” Wallace replied. “I was somewhere else.”

  “That’s thirty-six fifty,” the driver noted, checking the meter.

  Wallace handed him two twenties. “Keep the change.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it. You can get a bus back to the city,” the driver advised, indicating a small group of people standing at a stop near Perry Control.

  Wallace nodded his thanks and got out. He crossed the parking lot and presented himself at the visitors’ check-in, where his William Porter passport was scrutinized and his false details fed into a computer.

  Thirty minutes later, Wallace found himself being led into the Eric M. Taylor visitors’ room. He’d never seen it before. Ash was the only person who’d come to see him when he’d been incarcerated, and they’d met in a tiny interview room he could hardly remember. Another time she’d saved him from grave danger. He owed her so much and now he could never hope to . . . Wallace never finished the thought. If he carried on thinking about Ash, he would break down entirely, so he focused on his surroundings. The visitors’ room was huge. A long line of white PVC stools sprouted from the floor like rigid mushrooms. They stood in front of a partition that stretched the full width of the sixty-foot space. The partition was divided into carrels just wide enough for a single person, and there was a telephone receiver in each one. Visitors could see the inmates through panes of reinforced glass and speak to them via a paired receiver on the other side of the partition.

  Wallace passed men and women of all ages visiting the young men who were trapped on the other side of the room. As he walked the line, he heard sobs, harsh words, sweet nothings, tenderness, hostility, the full range of human emotions delivered in this least private of settings.

  “In here,” the guard gestured to a carrel halfway along the line.

  Wallace took a seat and nervously scanned the faces around him, looking for anyone, guard or inmate, that he recognized.

  There was movement on the other side of the carrel, and he turned to see Pablo Matias settling on the stool beyond the partition. If his former cellmate was surprised to see him, his face gave no inkling of the emotion; in fact, his eyes hardly seemed to register anything at all. Matias looked thinner than Wallace remembered, his cheekbones so pronounced that they threatened to tear through his craggy skin.

  Wallace reached for the receiver and Matias did likewise.

  “Hey, man,” his old cellmate said. “Thought you was dead.”

  “It was close. But I made it out.”

  “That’s good,” Matias observed, in a tone that suggested he couldn’t care. He stroked his chin and his eyes focused on some distant place.

  “How have you been?” Wallace asked.

  “Oh, you know. Survivin’,” Matias replied. “I found a connect. Makes the days easier.”

  Meth, Wallace thought, suddenly wondering whether Matias would even make it to his next court date.

  “You should be careful, Pablo,” he cautioned.

  “I know, man. Else the devils will chew my face off,” Matias sighed. “It’s life, homes. I gotta take the rough with the smooth, right? But sometimes I jus’ need a little something to help the craw go down. Warm my eyes, help ’em see that things ain’t all that dark.”

  Wallace stared awkwardly at the man who’d helped him survive Rikers, wondering what he could do to repay the kindnesses Matias had shown him.

  “Do you need anything?”

  Matias’s head drifted from side to side. “What I need, you ain’t got.”

  They sat in silence for a moment.


  “That it?” Matias asked finally.

  Wallace shook his head. “You remember Smokie?”

  Matias’s lips tightened into a strained smile. “Yeah, man. I remember him. He made bail right after you disappeared.”

  “Do you know his name? His real name?”

  Matias focused on Wallace, looking at him for the first time, his expression that of an alien species studying a primitive life form. “Smokie,” he said at last. “His name’s Smokie.”

  Matias replaced the receiver in its holster and heaved himself to his feet. Wallace watched him sway for a moment, his brow furrowed as though he was trying to recall a deep memory. He stepped away, but stopped suddenly and backtracked, reaching lazily for the receiver.

  “The Bunker. It’s a place in Harlem. They all hang out there,” Matias drawled.

  “Thanks,” Wallace replied gratefully.

  Matias nodded and then staggered toward the exit, which was flanked by two watchful guards. He didn’t even glance back.

  Wallace looked down at the chipped laminate that covered the carrel and tried to control his building fury. He hated himself. He loathed the cowardice that made him run from Ash instead of going to save her. He detested everything about what he’d become, and when it was all over, when he’d found the person who’d killed Ash and avenged her, he knew he’d put an end to his blighted life. The only question was whether he’d take the long road out, like Matias, or the short one, like Erin Byrne, the girl whose suicide had first made Wallace a target.

  It was eight-thirty by the time Wallace found the Bunker, a squat, rectangular building located on the corner of Tenth Avenue and 202nd Street. The gray structure stretched back almost two hundred feet and was fifty feet wide. It was situated in a run-down neighborhood, surrounded by convenience stores and places that encouraged people to trade gold for cash. As he clung to the shadows in the doorway of a boarded up shop across 202nd Street, Wallace watched a steady stream of people join a queue that snaked into the loud club. The building had hardly any windows, but even through the thick walls, the pounding bassline made the night air tremble.