Last to Die

Temples’ farmhouse, blown up with Semtex.” He paused. “Now you’re here. And I’m just waiting for the vans to show up again.”

“You have any idea who’s sending them?”

“I don’t want to know.” He slumped back against the seat. “I’m sixty-four. Should’ve retired two years ago, but I need the income to help out my daughter. This is my job, but it’s not my life, you know?”

“The trouble is,” said Jane, “there may be other lives at stake here. Neil and Olivia’s son, for one.”

“That’d make no sense, to go after a fourteen-year-old boy.”

“Makes no sense to go after two other kids, either.”

Parris frowned. “What kids?”

“During your investigation, did you ever come across the names Nicholas and Annabelle Clock?”

“No.”

“What about Erskine and Isabel Ward?”

“No. Who are these people?”

“Other victims. Other families who were murdered the same week Neil and Olivia died. In each of those families, a child survived. And now those three kids have been attacked again.”

Parris stared at her. “Those other names never came up in my investigation. This is the first I’ve heard of them.”

“The parallels are eerie, aren’t they?”

“Is there a connection with NASA? Can you tie them together that way?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“So what do you have linking these kids?”

“That’s what we hoped you could tell us. What the connection is.”

He sat back, eyeing them over his empty dinner plate, now pooled with blood. “You know as much as I do now, about the Yablonskis. So tell me about the Wards.”

“They were shot to death in a London alley, appeared to be a mugging gone awry. He was an American diplomat, she was a homemaker. Their eleven-year-old daughter was shot as well, but managed to survive.”

“Ward was a diplomat, Yablonski a NASA scientist. What’s the connection? I mean, astrobiology isn’t exactly a hot diplomatic issue.”

Frost suddenly sat up straight. “If ET’s intelligent, we’d have to establish diplomatic relations, wouldn’t we?”

Jane sighed. “No more Star Trek for you.”

“No, think about it! Neil Yablonski and Brian Temple are about to fly to Rome, to meet with Vatican scientists. Erskine Ward was once assigned to Rome, so he had connections there, at the embassy. He probably spoke fluent Italian.”

“What about the Clock family?” said Parris. “You haven’t told me about them. Do they have a link to any of this?”

“Nicholas Clock was a financial consultant in Providence, Rhode Island,” said Jane. “He and his wife, Annabelle, were killed aboard their yacht off Saint Thomas.”

Parris shook his head. “I’m not seeing any connection with the Yablonskis or the Wards. Nothing that ties these three families together.”

Only that their children are all in the same school. A fact that Jane didn’t reveal, because it made her uneasy. A killer needed only to track them down to Evensong, and it would be one-stop slaughter.

“I don’t know what any of this means,” said Parris. “All I can say is, this scares the hell out of me. RDX brought down the Yablonskis’ plane. Semtex blew up the Temple farmhouse in New Hampshire. These are not amateurs. Killers like that, they don’t give a damn that we’re cops. They’re operating on a whole different level, with special training and access to defense-grade explosives. You and me, we’re just cockroaches to them. Remember that.” He drained his martini and set down the glass. “And that’s about all I have to tell you.” He waved to the waitress. “Check, please!”

“We’ll take care of dinner,” said Jane.

Parris nodded. “Much appreciated.”

“Thanks for meeting with us.”

“Not that I could add much,” he said, rising from the chair. Despite the three martinis, he seemed perfectly steady on his feet. “In fact, I should thank you.”

“Why?”

The look he gave her was one of sympathy. “This gets me off the hook. Now they’ll be watching you.”

JANE TOOK A HOT shower and flopped onto her motel bed to stare up at the darkness. The cup of coffee with dinner had been a mistake. Caffeine, plus the day’s events, kept her wide awake, mind churning over what she and Frost had learned, and what it all meant. When at last she fell asleep, the turmoil followed her straight into her dreams.

It was a clear, clear night. She was holding Regina as she stood amid a crowd, gazing up at the sky where stars glittered. Some of those stars began to move like fireflies, and she heard the crowd murmur in wonder as those stars grew brighter, traveling across the heavens in geometric formation.

They weren’t stars.

In horror, she realized what those lights really meant, and she pushed her way through the crowd, desperately searching for a place to hide. A place where the alien lights could not find her. They are coming for us.

She lurched awake, her heart slamming so hard she thought it might leap out of her chest. She lay sweating as the terror of the nightmare slowly faded. This was what happened when you had dinner with a paranoid cop, she thought. You dreamed about alien invasions. Not friendly ETs, but monsters with spaceships and death rays. And why wouldn’t aliens come to earth as conquerors? They would probably be as bloodthirsty as we are.

She sat up on the side of the bed, her throat parched, the sweat cooling her skin. The motel’s bedside clock glowed two fourteen A.M. In only four hours, they had to check out and catch their flight back to Boston. She rose in darkness and felt her way toward the bathroom to get a drink of water. As she passed the window, a pinpoint beam of light flickered through the curtain and vanished.

She moved to the window and nudged aside the drape to peer out at the unlit parking lot. The motel was completely booked, every parking stall filled. She searched the darkness, wondering where that flashlight beam had come from, and was about to let the curtain fall shut again when a dome light suddenly went on inside one of the vehicles.

That’s our rental car.

She hadn’t packed a weapon for this trip; neither had Frost. They were unarmed, without backup, against what? She snatched up her cell phone and hit speed dial. A few rings later, Frost answered, voice still groggy with sleep.

“Someone’s screwing around with our car,” she whispered as she pulled on her blue jeans. “I’m going out there.”

“What? Wait!”

She zipped up her fly. “Thirty seconds and I’m out the door.”

“Hold on, hold on! I’m coming.”

She grabbed her flashlight and keycard and stepped barefoot into the hallway, just as Frost emerged from his room next door. No wonder he’d managed such a quick exit; he was still wearing his pajamas. Red-and-white- striped PJs that hadn’t been in fashion since Clark Gable.

He saw her staring at him, and said: “What?”

“Those make my eyes hurt. You’re like walking neon,” she muttered as they headed for the side exit at the end of the hall.

“What’s the plan?”

“We find out who’s in our car.”