The Next Accident - Lisa Gardner [140]
Quincy went over to her. He took his injured daughter into his arms, feeling the tremors rocking her slender body. He cradled her against his chest, holding her as gently as he had when she was a newborn. Oh God, she was infinitely precious to him. He had saved her, but he had also hurt her, and he knew it would take them both years to sort out the difference between the two. All he could do was try. Isolation was not protection. No amount of distance kept you safe in the end.
His gaze went to Rainie, now bent over Andrews.
“He’s dead,” Rainie said quietly.
Kimberly clutched his shoulders more tightly. And then she began to cry. Quincy rocked his daughter against him. He stroked her blood-splattered hair.
“It’s over,” he said to Kimberly, to Rainie. And then more firmly, to all of them, “The game is over.”
A loud knocking on the door. “Hotel security,” a voice barked.
And the aftermath began.
Epilogue
Pearl District, Portland
Six weeks later, Rainie Conner sat hunched over her desk in her downtown loft, ostensibly trying to make her budget love her, but really eyeing the phone. Damn thing wasn’t making a sound. Hadn’t made a sound for days. She was really starting to hate that.
She picked up the receiver. “Well, what do you know, dial tone.”
She set down the receiver. She went back to studying her Quicken file. It didn’t do a thing to improve her mood.
Quincy had paid her. She’d yelled and screamed and put up a fuss. When they were both satisfied that she’d made all the appropriate noise, she’d accepted his check. A girl had to eat, and all those cross-country plane tickets had just showed up on her AmEx card. Conner Investigations got to have a profit. For about seven days. Then she started flying to Virginia again. She kept telling herself it was all for good reason.
First she had to join Quincy to finish picking Albert Montgomery’s brain. The agent had finally admitted that the esteemed Dr. Marcus Andrews had approached him two and a half years ago. Andrews had wanted revenge against Quincy. His wife, Emily, had hired Quincy as an expert witness in the bitter child-custody hearing between her and her ex-husband. Quincy’s testimony had been pivotal in the judge’s decision to deny Andrews access to his children permanently. While the case had been important at the time, Quincy hadn’t thought about it now in years and the name Andrews had been too common to make Quincy think twice when Kimberly began talking about her highly respected professor.
Funny how Bethie had always thought it was his career at the Bureau that would put Quincy’s family in jeopardy. None of them had considered that mental health professionals also faced dangers in the form of unbalanced patients and disgruntled families.
Andrews had interviewed Miguel Sanchez as part of his prison research study. As he became familiar with the killing spree and the officers involved in the Sanchez investigation, he’d identified Montgomery’s role and realized here was someone else who probably hated Quincy as much as Andrews did. Dr. Andrews tracked down Montgomery in Virginia, introduced his cause over dinner, and a few beers later, had enlisted Montgomery in a joint quest for revenge.
Montgomery had been playing the inside man ever since. First he helped Andrews understand how the Bureau worked. What would happen if an agent seemed in jeopardy? What if an agent’s family was in jeopardy? How fast could the Bureau review past case files? What if an agent was suspected of a crime? From there, Montgomery had simply sunk in deeper. From introducing Mandy to Andrews to confiscating Quincy’s stationery to attacking Glenda because his hatred had festered and grown that insane.
Nine months ago, Montgomery had searched the Oregon corrections department data banks to find a good candidate for Rainie’s father. Yes, Ronnie Dawson existed. He went to jail at the right time, he was paroled at the right time. And upon personal investigation, he was