seven, Lucy’s sister Nelia had stopped speaking to her. Though she’d come back to the family, Nelia still avoided Lucy for reasons Lucy didn’t understand. While her psychologist mind told her Nelia grieved for Justin and unconsciously wished Lucy had died instead of her own son, Lucy didn’t understand why even now Nelia couldn’t overcome the pain. Guilt for her feelings? Pain when she saw Lucy?
What if that was how Peter had been treated? What if his parents looked at him and he thought they’d rather have had him die than their daughter? If his parents blamed him in some way, verbally or not, a young boy would pick up on unspoken accusations born from grief and guilt.
It was hard to assess the parents based on what she’d read, instead of watching them at each point in the investigation, but it was clear that they’d stymied the investigation and then come clean. What if they turned that self-loathing against their son? Blaming him for not speaking out at three in the morning? Had he harbored that pain all these years? What was he like today?
Lucy had always had the nagging feeling that if only she’d done something different, Justin would still be alive. She’d often spent the night with her nephew, or when his parents worked late he came over to her house. But that week, she’d been sick. She didn’t remember why, but she hadn’t gone to school for three days. She wanted Justin to come and play with her because she was bored, but Nelia said no, she didn’t want Justin getting sick.
Lucy’s cell phone rang and she grabbed it. It was Tony. “I’m in my office,” he said. “Are you done?”
“Yes. I’ll be right there.”
She grabbed the McMahon file and left.
Several new agents were in the downstairs lounge watching different baseball games on the two televisions—one showed a game with the San Diego Padres, Lucy’s home team.
Carter and Eddie were studying in the corner, one eye on the game. Carter whistled. “Kincaid! I thought you were a diehard fan.”
“I had work to do.”
“So do we.” Carter held up his book.
“It’s only the bottom of the fourth; I’ll be back before the seventh inning.”
“You say that now.”
She looked at the screen. Tied at 1. “Okay, I’ll try.” Lucy liked baseball, but mostly because her family were diehard Padres fans, particularly Patrick and Carina. They could talk baseball with the best of them. Patrick had played baseball in college and could have had a shot at the majors if he’d stuck with it. But then Justin was killed and Patrick ended up becoming a cop.
Tragedy changes everyone it touches.
Lucy waved to Carter and Eddie and went down the hall to the staircase that led to the basement. She waved her ID in front of the security panel and it clicked open.
No one was working this late, and the offices were quiet. She knocked on Tony’s door. He didn’t respond. She looked at her cell phone—no bars, so she couldn’t call him to see where he was. He’d said he was in his office, he could be on the phone.
She stepped in. As soon as the door opened, she saw Tony slumped in his chair, his face pasty, eyes closed, and mouth open.
“Oh, God.” She dropped the file on the table by the door and rushed to his side to check his pulse, shouting, “Medics! I need a medic, stat!” Then she realized that no one else was in the basement; it was nearly ten at night. She put Tony’s desk phone on speaker and pressed “0.”
“Security.”
“It’s Lucy Kincaid. I need a medic and gurney in Agent Presidio’s office stat. He’s unconscious.”
At first she thought he was dead, but she finally felt his pulse—slow and weak.
“Dispatched,” Security said. “Stay on the phone.”
In times of crisis, relying on training kept Lucy sane. “I’m checking for external injuries—I don’t see any.”
“Did you check his vitals?”
“He had a pulse when I came in, but now I can’t feel anything.”
“Do you know CPR?”
“Yes.”
She pulled Tony out of his chair. His bottle of Glenlivit Scotch teetered but didn’t fall over. She laid him as carefully as she could on the floor.
“Kincaid, you there?” Security said over the speaker.
“Administering CPR.”
“Is he breathing?”
She checked. “His pulse is thready. Skin pasty. He’s unresponsive. Starting second set of chest compressions.”
Tony, please, don’t die.
The staff doctor and a medic rushed in. “We’ll take over. Security, you there?”
“Yes.”
“Call the Quantico Medical Center and have them dispatch a helicopter to fly Agent