Need You Now

62

A pair of headlights pierced the night as the white SUV rental headed down the highway toward Providence. Connie rode in the passenger seat, her hands tied behind her back. Scully drove. The dashboard rattled with the tinny sound of an overworked defroster struggling to clear the windshield. The whump-whump of the wipers pushed the falling snow from one side to the other.

“We trusted you, Scully,” Connie said.

His eyes narrowed. Some idiot driver in an approaching car had his high beams on, nearly blinding him. Scully flashed him back.

“Dad trusted you,” she said.

“Shut your trap, Connie. Your father was no Boy Scout.”

“He changed.”

“No, he didn’t. Your father lost everything in a Ponzi scheme, so he asked me for the name of another victim who would take Collins for a one-way car ride if they knew he was a fraud. I gave him Robledo’s name.”

“It wasn’t a crime for Dad to give Evan Hunt’s report to Robledo.”

“Robledo wasn’t given anything. I sold it to him.”

“My father wouldn’t have taken money from a man like Robledo. Not after everything he gave up.”

“You’re right. All your old man cared about was getting even with Collins for stealing his nest egg. But that report gave Robledo something that no one else in the world got. Robledo got a heads-up on Cushman’s fraud, and the chance to recover his money. Why shouldn’t I get a cut?”

“A cut of what ? The money was already gone.”

He shot her a quick glance, and for an instant, Connie thought she almost saw the old Scully-a man who surely understood that Connie would never agree with what he’d done, but who didn’t want her to think he was evil. “There’s my dilemma, Connie.”

“Dilemma?”

His gaze returned to the icy road, but he kept talking. “One percent of two billion dollars is a lot of money. But I got one percent of nothing if Robledo couldn’t track down his money. It didn’t take a genius to see that Robledo would never recover a dime if he went to prison for killing Gerry Collins.”

Connie knew exactly what he was saying. “You pig! You forced my father to confess!”

“Your father was already sick with cancer. It wasn’t like he was going to be locked up forever.”

“You bastard! You used his kids against him, didn’t you? You were our handler. How could you threaten to out Patrick and me unless he confessed to something he didn’t do?”

He slapped her with the back of his hand. It landed with so much force that Connie’s head slammed against the passenger’s-side window.

“Connie! Oh, my God, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

She blinked hard, trying to shake off the blow and take the blur out of her vision. Scully’s apology left her equally dazed. Clearly he was at war with himself over his betrayal, the FBI version of an abusive spouse who returns home with a bouquet of flowers after pushing his wife down the stairs. The salty taste of her own blood trickled from her mouth as she spoke.

“That’s what Dad wanted to tell Patrick today, isn’t it?” she said. “That Scully is dirty.”

Scully was no longer smiling. His audience of one was spitting the vitriol of an angry mob. He focused on his driving, the tires humming on the snow-covered highway.

“I still don’t hear a denial,” Connie said.

“He doesn’t know.”

“What?”

“If it’s any comfort to you, your father never knew I stabbed him in the back. When I got Treasury to pay him some money for agreeing to sit on the Cushman report, I told him that it was compensation from the CIA for his confession-that if he didn’t take the deal, and that if he ever claimed he was framed, it was the CIA who would hand his kids over to the Santucci family. As far as he knew, the CIA had to keep Robledo out of prison for Operation BAQ to work. To this day, he thinks I was just the messenger.”

“You’re even worse than I thought you were.”

“Hey, at least I let him have the money.”

“Yeah, money he couldn’t even use to pay for his own cancer treatment once he was in prison.”

Scully kept one hand on the wheel and dialed his cell.

“Who are you calling?” asked Connie.

“Your dumbass brother,” he said. “Be still and behave yourself. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”