Every Last Fear(58)
“Hell-o,” Kala said, snapping her fingers in front of Matt’s face.
Matt was about to explain when his cell phone chimed. Agent Keller’s number. He swiped the device.
“Matt, it’s Sarah Keller.” She said something else he couldn’t make out. The connection was fuzzy, and the bar was loud again.
“I’m having a hard time hearing you. Hold on one second.” Matt plugged an ear with his finger and pushed through the crowd.
“Can you hear me?” Keller asked.
Matt stepped outside the bar. He made his way past two men smoking near the front door, and to the parking lot, which was lit by a single streetlight. It was good to be out of the stale air of the bar. “Yeah, sorry about that.”
“No worries. I heard you had some problems in Mexico,” Keller said.
“You can say that.”
“Carlita Escobar said you had a run-in with the local police. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just a long-ass day.”
“I can imagine.” She paused. “I hoped we could catch up tomorrow. You have time to meet?”
“Yeah, but I’m not in New York. I changed my flight and came to Nebraska.”
“I know, so did I. Could we meet in the morning? I saw a diner on the main road, so maybe we could get some breakfast?”
“Sure, but I don’t understand why you came all the way here to—”
“I’ll fill you in on everything tomorrow. But right now I have a question for you, and it’s not something I want to ask.”
Matt waited.
“We’d like to conduct autopsies.”
“Autopsies?” Matt processed this. “I thought—the gas leak—the Mexican cop said they closed their investigation. I don’t under—”
“I promise you, Matt, I’ll explain everything tomorrow, but I have to tell the Lincoln field office if they need to have someone available.”
“I don’t understand.” Matt’s mind was racing. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would—”
“Matt, there’s no easy way to say this, but there’s evidence of possible foul play.”
Matt felt his knees buckle a little, the air stripped from his lungs.
“Are you there?” Keller said. “Matt?”
“Yes. Okay, you have my consent.”
“Thank you. We understand your aunt plans to have the funeral on Sunday. So the medical team will be done by tomorrow. It’s been given top priority.”
Matt just held the phone, still trying to process. Trying not to think of his family dissected on cold stainless-steel tables.
“And, Matt,” Keller said.
Matt still didn’t reply.
“I’m really sorry.”
Matt severed the connection. He stood there outside the old bar, the sound of music leaking from cracks in the walls. For whatever reason, his thoughts drifted to Kala and Jordan Peele and M. Night Shyamalan and destiny.
And then it hit him. Maybe that was it. Maybe this was why he’d survived.
To find out what really happened to his family.
CHAPTER 36
OLIVIA PINE
BEFORE
“Do you miss your mommy?” Tommy asked.
Liv gave a fleeting smile. She looked at her mother’s white marble headstone in the back half of the cemetery, remembering the day when she was ten years old—a cold winter morning, the wind biting her wet cheeks as she watched them lower the casket into the ground. Today the sun was shining and the family plot didn’t look so dreary. Old trees gave plenty of shade, tiny American flags and flowers adorned graves, and the grounds were well maintained. Were it not for the hundreds of dead underfoot, it would be a nice spot for a picnic. Her great-great-grandparents had purchased this serene family plot more than one hundred years ago.
“I miss her every day.” Liv eyed the vacant spot next to her mother’s grave. Sadness flitted through her chest as Liv realized that it wouldn’t be long before Dad joined her.
“I’d miss you if you died,” Tommy said.
Liv crouched down. She looked at him with those beautiful gray-blue eyes. “You don’t have to worry about me dying.”
“Promise?”
Liv hesitated. Visiting her mother’s grave had obviously scared Tommy, and she wanted to comfort him. But she couldn’t promise him she would never die.
“I’ll be an old gray-haired woman”—she stood and stooped her back and feigned a stagger—“and you’ll have to help me walk.”
Tommy giggled. “I almost died once, right, Mommy?”
Ugh, more with the death. It served her right for bringing him here. “Nope. Your silly appendix just decided it was time to come out.” She tickled his tummy.
In truth, the pediatrician had missed the signs, mistaking Tommy’s stomachache for constipation. When his appendix ruptured, it was life-threatening, compounded by the hospital not having enough of Tommy’s rare blood type on hand. She remembered the terror—Evan running into the hospital, panicked—and them both thinking, but not saying, Why us?
Tommy rubbed the scar on the lower right side of his abdomen. Then came the barrage of questions. Where do you go when you die? Why do we bury dead people? Do worms eat your body? When would I die? How about Daddy or Maggie or Matt? Liv noticed he didn’t ask about Danny. It shouldn’t have surprised her. After all, he’d never met Danny in person. Her oldest son had forbidden any of his siblings from visiting him in prison. Tommy had seen photos of Danny, and knew he was in jail for something he didn’t do. But his big brother was like a storybook character, a fable, a superhero, a legend fueled by Evan Pine.