Last to Die

sobbing that word as the last gleam of consciousness faded from his father’s eyes.

NICHOLAS CLOCK DID not regain consciousness.
    The vascular surgeons at Eastern Maine Medical Center repaired his torn subclavian vein, evacuated the hemothorax from his lung, and deemed the operation a success, but Clock did not awaken from anesthesia. He was breathing on his own, and his vital signs remained stable, but with every passing day that he remained in a coma, Jane heard the deepening pessimism in the doctors’ voices.
Severe blood loss with hypoperfusion of the brain. Permanent neurologic deficits
. No longer were they talking of recovery; instead the discussion was of long-term care and nursing home transfer, of Foley catheters and feeding tubes and other products that Jane had glimpsed in the fake catalog of Leidecker Hospital Supplies.
    Comatose though he was, Nicholas Clock still found a way to tell the world the truth.
    Seven days after the shooting, the video surfaced. Al Jazeera was the first to broadcast it, launching it into the ether where it could never again be contained. Within another forty-eight hours, Nicholas Clock was on computer screens and televisions around the world , calmly and methodically recounting the events that took place sixteen years earlier in Italy. He described the surveillance and capture of a terrorist financier whose code name was Icarus, in a case of extraordinary rendition. He revealed the details of Icarus’s imprisonment and the enhanced interrogation methods they had used against him. And he spoke of Icarus’s escape from the high-security black site in North Africa, an escape aided by a rogue CIA operative named Justine McClellan. None of that should have surprised or impressed a world long turned cynical.
    But the murder of American families, on American soil, made the country take notice.
    In the conference room at Boston PD, the six detectives who had investigated the Ackerman slayings sat watching the CNN evening news, a broadcast that went a long way toward explaining what had really happened to the Ackermans. The family had not been murdered by a Colombian immigrant named Andres Zapata; they had been executed for the same reason the other two foster families were: to make Nicholas Clock believe his son, Teddy, was in imminent danger. To force Clock out of hiding.
    As long as Justine believed I was dead, Teddy was safe. She had no reason to attack him. If I took him and we ran, Justine would never stop hunting us. We’d always be looking over our shoulders. Teddy knows I’m alive. He understands why I’ve chosen to stay invisible. It’s for him; it’s all for him
.
    But now everything has changed. Justine must have intercepted one of our messages, and she knows I’m alive. I don’t have much time. This may be my only chance to share the evidence I’ve been gathering these past two years. Evidence that Justine Elizabeth McClellan aided in the escape of the terrorist known as Icarus. That she almost certainly murdered Icarus, after obtaining his account numbers and passwords. That she, or her paid agents, were responsible for the murders of the Wards and the Yablonskis and my own family . Because we were asking questions about her sudden wealth. We’d started an investigation, and she had to stop us. Our families were merely innocent bystanders
.
    These three surviving children—Claire and Will and Teddy—are now pawns in the hunt. Justine has gathered these children together as bait, to draw me out. She’s using all her resources, both official and unofficial, and she’s led the CIA to believe that Icarus is still alive. That he’s her target
.
    But I’m the one she wants
.
    If anyone is watching this video, it means that Justine has succeeded. It means I’m speaking to you from the grave. But the truth doesn’t die with me. And I, Nicholas Clock, swear that everything I’ve said here is, indeed, the truth …
    Jane looked around at the other detectives seated at the table. Crowe was tight-lipped and scowling and no wonder: His public triumph as lead investigator of the Ackerman case had just been smashed with a sledgehammer, and every crime reporter in Boston knew it. That rush to judgment against Andres Zapata would always blight his record. Crowe caught her looking at him, and the glare he returned could vaporize water.
    For Jane, it should have felt like a moment of victory, a vindication of her instincts, but this brought no smile to her lips.