Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(83)

No, but maybe, if he hadn’t told her their marriage was over, she’d have somehow found a way out of that building. Maybe she’d have felt she had something to fight for, something to live for.

Tears stream unchecked down Mack’s cheeks as he walks uptown, past the barricades, past the policemen and soldiers, past other pedestrians. No one gives him a second glance; tonight, the bruised city is filled with publicly crying people. He’s just one more stricken face in the crowd; just another New Yorker whose life lies in ruins tonight.

Vic’s phone rings the moment his head hits the too-puffy—why the hell are they always so puffy?—hotel pillow.

As usual, he answers it immediately, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed, instantly prepared to bolt.

But this call isn’t about the terrorists he’s been tracking; it’s Rocky’s voice that greets him.

“What’s up?” Vic asks, lying down again, phone pressed to his ear, welcoming a call from a friend. New York is his hometown, but it’s never felt so foreign. He thinks longingly of Kitty, and home, but it’s going to be a long, long time before he’s back there.

It could be worse, though. Much worse.

Every time he remembers that last conversation with O’Neill—remembers how John said, “My business is always a pleasure,” remembers all the years, all the laughs they shared—Vic is seized by a renewed urgency to nail the bastards who murdered his friend.

Ah. If only it were that simple.

“I need help,” Rocky tells him. “Official help. Well, unofficial, because I don’t have time to jump through hoops right now and you guys are all about protocol, I know.”

You guys. Vic sighs inwardly. Us, and them.

“What’s going on?”

He listens carefully as Rocky fills him in on the case he’s working, concluding with “And this is where you come in.”

“Where? You lost me.”

“Brandewyne and I are overwhelmed here, Vic, and most of the squad is working the terrorist attack . . .”

Yeah, Vic thinks, who isn’t?

“Okay, so what do you need from me? I mean, I’ll help you if I can, but you know—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. First things first—we’ve got to find this guy Jerry.”

So now “you guys” have melded into “we.”

If things weren’t so grim, Vic might have to grin at that.

“I’m headed over to one of the other buildings Dale Reiss owned to see if I can track down Reiss somehow,” Rocky tells him, “but I know you’ve got access to computers that can find anything—and anyone—faster than I can ask a question.”

Vic hesitates. Rocky is right. But—

“Can you see if you can find this guy?”

“Reiss or Jerry?”

“Both. And the other thing I need,” Rocky continues without missing a beat, “is a rush on the DNA results.”

“That, I can’t do,” Vic says promptly. “Not now, of all times, Rock.”

“If it weren’t now, of all times, I wouldn’t have to ask.”

“Listen, I’ll do what I can with the computer records. I’ll make some calls and see what I can turn up. At least that’ll be a starting point for you.”

“Thanks, Vic. I owe you one.”

Vic snorts. “You owe me a lot more than one, pal. But don’t worry—I’ve been keeping count for years.”

“I’ll bet you have.” Rocky’s tone is light, but when he exhales, Vic can hear the weight of the world in his barely audible sigh.

“Listen, I’m on it.”

“Thanks, Vic. I mean that.”

“You’re welcome, Rock. What are friends for?”

Just off West Broadway, the only open bar in the immediate neighborhood is jammed with people looking for a reprieve. There are no open tables or bar stools, so Allison and Lynn MacKenna have spent the last hour leaning against the back wall and talking, sipping Amstel Light from cold brown bottles.

When Allison first went downstairs to meet Mack’s sister—an attractive woman with a long brown ponytail and Mack’s light green eyes—at the front door of the building, she fully intended to send her on her way without giving her any information. She had no idea how much Lynn knew, and she didn’t want to be the one to deliver the bad news.

But she took one look at the woman’s tearstained face and realized she must already have heard about Carrie.

She was right; Lynn said Mack had told her over the phone earlier.

“I got my ex-husband over to watch the kids, jumped into my car, and drove into the city,” she said, adding that she’d been forced to leave her car uptown.

“How did you get down past Union Square without a local address?” Allison asked.

“I just showed them my Jersey license and said I was going to help my brother whose wife worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. They let me go.”

“I’m surprised.”

“Why? Do I look like a terrorist to you?”

Allison didn’t respond to that; didn’t tell her that looks can be deceiving.

Lynn was a frazzled wreck by the time she’d walked down to her brother’s apartment, only to find him gone.