Not Even Past (15 page)

“What the hell?” Martin started to run and caught a glimpse of Jeanne in the driver’s seat.

William was in the back.

By the time Martin got to the front yard, the car had disappeared down the road. He was getting slow.

Leonard came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Let her go,” he said.

“She’s not safe.”

Leonard squeezed. “She will be. Jeanne did this for six years. She’s got William now. It will be okay. I promise.”

Martin shook his head. His heart was pounding. “I’m not going to lose her again.”

K
ATE RANG
her father’s doorbell at seven the next morning.

The van had dropped her off at Jackson’s apartment about three hours earlier, and she had tried to lie down for a few hours. Sleep never came. Instead, she stared at the ceiling of the bedroom. She alternated between crying and praying for Jackson to make it through the night. Once the sun started peeking through the venetian blinds, she got up and made a pot of coffee. The ache in her stomach didn’t make it easy to drink, but she forced it down—fearing she’d fall asleep on the road if she didn’t.

She parked in front of her father’s Milltown house and trudged up the steps, her legs feeling like they were trapped in quicksand. He opened the door only seconds after she rang the bell. Once she saw him, unshaven, in a robe, reading glasses balanced on the edge of his nose, she fell into his arms and wept. Her shoulders shook against him, and tears soaked into the fabric of his robe. Dad pulled her in tight and rubbed her back.

Kate didn’t know how long they stood there. She didn’t care.

Finally, when no more tears would come, she pushed her self away from her father.

“Jackson?” her father asked.

She nodded.

“Come inside.”

Kate’s mother died four years ago of lung cancer. She had never smoked a day in her life. With each passing month, the home her father lived in unraveled, becoming more and more overrun with her dad’s case files. When she started to work for him after graduating Seton Hall Law, Kate made it a point to organize his files and keep them in the basement. She remembered how, before Sandy hit, she, her dad, and Jackson lugged all the boxes out of there before it flooded. The basement never flooded, but the boxes still sat in the living room. She noticed the Gunderson case—a hit and run lawsuit—had files pulled from it.

She had forgotten about work. About her dad making her promise not to call in sick.

Now he sat on the couch and waited. Kate sat next to him, her breath coming in short gasps. She looked at her dad and tried to smile. He turned red.

Kate had rolled it all over in her head, telling her father everything—about Jackson, the gunshots, the weird van ride—and letting him pick up the pieces. It was what she’d done as a kid, and her instinct was screaming her to do the same thing.

Dad will make it right.

Instead, she said, “Tell me about Henry Stern, Dad.”

Her dad sat back and looked at the ceiling. He rubbed his chin.

“How is that about Jackson?” he asked.

“I’m not talking about Jackson right now. Tell me about Stern.”

“You’ve known him for years. Did he call you like I asked?”

Kate rubbed her palms together. “He called.”

“Did he—can he help?”

The room smelled like an old book. All the files, the papers, the reports sitting in the office made it feel like a used bookstore. The pot of coffee her dad was percolating made the feeling stronger.

“I want to know about him, Dad. I don’t mean the political him.”

Her father straightened his glasses then rubbed his chin. Myron Ellison could look smart even in his pajamas.

“He was a military man. That’s how I met him. I was representing a case at Fort Dix and he was one of our witnesses. We become friends.”

“It’s all over the place that he was military. What happened next?”

“He went to Afghanistan for a year. Rumor had it he worked with the CIA trying to turn terrorists into informants. We lost touch for a while.”

“And when he came back?”

“Left the army. Got married. Got divorced. Twice. He went to work at Rutgers—taught some poli sci before running for the senate seat.”

Kate pulled out her phone and brought up the picture of the man who had driven the van. She handed it to her father.

“Do you know that guy?”

Her father took off his glasses and brought the phone close to his nose. Squinted. Kate’s stomach burned, and she could taste coffee in the back of her mouth.

Dad gave the phone back.

“Never seen him before.”

“Something bad is going on, Dad.” Kate put the phone back into her purse. She pulled out a band and tied her hair back into a ponytail.

“Did Jackson find his fiancée?”

The words shook Kate.
She
was his fiancée.

“I don’t know.”

“Why are you so upset? Where is he?”

The words didn’t come. The image of Jackson, bleeding, eyes wide, ran through her head. Jackson’s face morphed into her dad’s. Henry Stern had warned her to stay quiet, that he was going to take care of everything. The churning in her stomach turned into a fire.

“I’m sorry, Dad.” Kate stood up. “I’m not going to be able to work the Gunderson case. I need some time off.”

He stood up with her and put a hand on her forearm. “You can tell me.”

Kate’s eyes burned again, but she fought the tears back. “No,” she said. “I’ll take care of this.”

She shrugged his hand away. And went toward the door.

“Kate!” he called.

She turned back toward him. Dad stood in front of the couch, shoulders slumped, arms at his sides.

“I’m worried about you,” he said. “Let me help.”

“This is on me,” she said. “I can’t put this on anyone.”

“Tell me what you’re talking about.”

“Coming here was a mistake.”

“I’m your father.” His voice was soft, the same tone as when he told her Mom had died during the night.

Kate didn’t respond. She opened the door and walked out into the morning.

S
OMEONE BOUNCED
a basketball.

It thudded four times against the ground and stopped. A second later, a swish of the net. The dribbling started again. There were voices, muffled and out of breath. Another swish of the net.

Jackson Donne opened his eyes. The world blurred. He blinked it back into focus. His eyelids were dry and sticky.

He opened his mouth to speak, and his voice cracked. It felt like he’d been on a bender. His mouth was as dry as a saltine. His head throbbed behind his eyes.

He tried to sit up, but it felt like someone put an anvil on his chest. He put his hands beneath him and pushed. It felt like the skin against his chest was going to tear away. He screamed, but only a hiss of air escaped his mouth.

The ball stopped bouncing and someone said, “Hey, look who’s awake.”

Donne turned his head and realized he was in a church. It wasn’t an active church. All the pews had been pulled out and the tile floor was bare. Where the altar should have been was a portable basketball hoop, the kind kids had in their driveways.

His chest felt like it was about to explode. His shoulder was on fire as well. No matter how many muscles he tried to tense, Donne couldn’t get his body to stop shuddering. The beeping sound he heard earlier was loud now and the beeps were closer together.

A man put his hands on Donne’s shoulders and eased him back into a lying position. The mattress beneath him sagged.

“Calm down, buddy. You’re okay.”

Donne’s eyes were wide. He looked at a stained glass window, an image of Jesus passing fish out to the apostles.

“Here. Drink some water.”

Someone put a straw into his mouth, and a stream of water followed it. It was cold, and his tongue absorbed it, like a starved plant. He sucked some more. The cold felt good on the back of his throat.

“Slow down.”

Donne didn’t take the advice and took another big sip. The water caught at the back of his throat, triggering his gag reflex. He coughed hard, and the water spilled out over his chin and on to his chest. He gasped for air and coughed some more. The hacks twisted his whole body. The pains in his shoulder and chest contracted, and again Donne felt water form in his eyes.

“Slow, deep breaths.”

Donne closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose. It was a reflex from his days as a jogger. He could focus on something other than the pain. He could focus on the breathing.

His body stopped shuddering, and his aches lower their intensity. He opened his eyes again and looked up at the man helping him. He was wearing a white coat and wore plastic gloves. There was a silver plate clasped to his pocket, but Donne couldn’t read it. His eyes weren’t focusing correctly.

“Can you talk?” the man asked.

Donne moved his lips. At first it was just air, then he found it. “How long?” His voice was raspy and the words were broken up by phlegm.

The man shook his head. “Three days.”

Donne closed his eyes again. Seventy-two hours, more or less. A lot could happen in that amount of time. Jeanne could be dead. Or she could be with Martin.

“How bad?” He wanted to spit, but the moisture from the phlegm felt good on his tongue.

The man inserted the straw from the water bottle into Donne’s mouth again and squeezed. Donne took the water slower this time.

“You’ve been shot twice. Once in the right shoulder and once on the right side of your chest. You lost a substantial amount of blood. We had to remove the bullet from your chest before it migrated. The one in the shoulder tore right through. There was a third shot. The men found it embedded in a wall, about head high. Whoever shot you went for the kill and missed.”

Donne forced himself to breathe slowly. His mind was running too quickly, and if he let his thoughts take over, he’d have a panic attack. The air felt like it was getting caught somewhere in his throat, but he kept inhaling and exhaling. Jogging, he’d found, was like yoga. When you breathe correctly, the discomfort goes away.

“Who are you?” he said, finally. He wondered how long it was since he last spoke. It felt like only seconds, but it may have been longer. Time felt fluid.

“No matter. I’m your doctor, for now. We almost lost you two days ago.”

“The beeping.”

The doctor didn’t say anything.

“I remember the beeping, and then everything went away.”

“You didn’t take to surgery well.”

Donne sipped more water. The doctor’s face came into focus. He was older, with salt-and-pepper hair and wrinkles on his face. He wasn’t smiling, and his face was sallow.

“I’m not in a hospital,” Donne said. “I’m in a church.”

“You still have your powers of observation.” It wasn’t the doctor speaking this time.

No, it was the familiar voice he’d heard at the warehouse. Just after he’d been shot. Whoever it was stood on the other side of the bed. Donne turned his head, and more pain from his shoulder shot down his arm. It felt like an iron spike digging through his vein into his fingertips.

The man was younger than the doctor. He had brown hair pushed to the left. He wore a suit with an American flag on his lapel. He was smiling, and his teeth reflected ambient light.

Senator Henry Stern.

“Nice to see you again, Mr. Donne. I’m glad you’re not dead.”

He reached out his hand as if to shake Donne’s. It seemed to be a reflex. When he realized Donne could reach back, he pulled his hand away.

Donne sipped more water. The basketball started dribbling again. Donne craned his neck and saw two men in tank tops shooting hoops.

“He needs more rest, senator.”

Stern smiled again, the kind of smile that wins votes. “We’ll talk soon.”

Donne leaned back in the bed and took the doctor’s advice. He needed more rest. He closed his eyes.

As he started to doze off, he heard the someone say, “Why did you let the girl go?”

The senator’s voice came back hazy. “Someone would miss her.”

Then, fading, like the end of the song: “Would that be a bad thing?”