Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(31)

“No,” Jerry tells her desolately, thinking about Kristina.

“I’m sorry.”

He nods. He’s sorry, too. So sorry. He feels bad it has to be this way.

And that’s strange because Jamie’s the one who did the punishing. Not Jerry. And Jamie doesn’t feel bad at all.

“No one talks to you that way,” Jamie told Jerry this morning. “No one treats you that way, giving you the finger. No one makes you cry. She got what she deserved, after the way she treated you.”

Jamie is right, Jerry thinks as he threads the new light bulb into the socket.

Kristina got what she deserved. But Jerry is going to miss her.

He gives the bulb a final twist and suddenly, the hallway is illuminated.

He looks down to see Marianne still standing there. Wow—she’s pretty. Even prettier than he thought.

“So can you come down to my place after this?” Marianne asks, smiling up at him. She has a nice smile.

“Sure I can,” Jerry tells her, and pushes Kristina from his mind like a visitor who’s overstayed her welcome.

“Kitty?” Vic calls, stepping into the house. “Kitty, I’m home.”

He hears her running footsteps overhead. “Up here, Vic!”

She appears at the top of the stairs—beautiful, familiar Kitty. She’s wearing a navy sweat suit that bags on her slender frame, and glasses instead of contact lenses. Her short, dark hair could stand to be combed, and she’s makeup-free—unusual for the middle of a weekday afternoon.

It isn’t like his wife to look so thrown together. The last thirty hours have taken their toll.

She flies down the steps and into his arms.

Given everything he’s done and seen over the years, it takes a lot to break him down. But right now, as he holds his wife tightly against him, Vic is on the verge of tears. There’s a cannonball of an ache in his throat, and swallowing only makes it worse. He doesn’t dare try to speak just yet.

Kitty pulls back to look up at his face—damage assessment.

But of course he’s fine, physically. He was in his office at FBI headquarters nearly forty miles southwest of Washington—and the Pentagon in Arlington—when yesterday’s events unfolded.

“Have you eaten? Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“No, you haven’t eaten, or no, you aren’t hungry?”

“No to both.” He’s just spent a grueling twenty-four hours poring over flight manifests and working to create profiles of the hijackers. Food is the furthest thing from his mind—along with sleep. He has a feeling it’s going to be a while before he has time for either.

“I only have a minute,” he tells Kitty. “I just have to grab a couple of things, and I wanted to see you before I go.”

She nods. Though they’ve only spoken sporadically since yesterday—basically just long enough for her to assure him that she and all four of the kids are safely accounted for—she’s been an FBI spouse long enough to know that he won’t be hanging around Quantico—much less their townhouse—any time in the near future.

“Florida?” she asks, obviously having kept tabs on the investigation. They’ve tracked several of the hijackers to flight schools down south.

“New York.”

“New York.” She takes a deep breath, exhales through puffed cheeks. “Any word on John or Rocky?”

Vic shakes his head, tries to swallow past the cannonball in his throat. Rocky’s wife answered Vic’s e-mail yesterday afternoon saying that he was safe. But O’Neill was reportedly at his post in the World Trade Center when the building came crashing down.

“Rocky wasn’t down there, but John’s missing,” Vic tells Kitty thickly. “I talked to him on the phone Monday night. Did I tell you that?”

“No. What did he say?”

Vic thinks back to that last conversation; remembering how they talked about Vic having just turned fifty, and John facing the same milestone in just a few months.

He didn’t make it.

O’Neill’s death hasn’t been confirmed, and his body might never be found, but a telltale emptiness swept through Vic yesterday morning when he watched the towers fall. He knew in that moment that his friend was gone—and in the next, as the room full of FBI agents exploded into a fresh frenzy, that he couldn’t afford the luxury of grieving the loss.

The work has to come first right now. Hell, the work always comes first.

What if, God forbid, it had been his wife or his kids in those buildings or on those planes? Would he be expected to compartmentalize his feelings and carry on?

Probably.

And I’d do it.

Annabelle did.

No one had even been aware until yesterday that she had a fiancé. An army major who worked at the Pentagon, he’s now gravely injured at the Burn Center at Washington Hospital Center.

Annabelle has been stoic and efficient as always.

“Vic?” Kitty touches his sleeve, and he looks at her, caught off guard, again, by her uncharacteristic washed-out appearance.

They’ve been together for thirty years. Most of the time, he’s convinced she knows what he’s thinking. Sometimes, he hopes that she doesn’t.

“I have to go,” he tells her gruffly.