Gone Before Goodbye, page 30
“If that’s true—”
“It is.”
“Then Trace lied to you.”
Nadia takes a moment and then says, “In the end, Trace saw the situation for what it was.”
“What was it?”
“Either him or Marc. Marc was going to tell. It would have been bad for him and Maggie—but for Trace, it would have been the end. He was the one who harvested organs. He’d spend the rest of his life in prison. He tried to make Marc see that. He tried to make Marc see that what they were doing was actually good—it could change the world. Their work saved lives. They were on the cusp of making organ donation simpler and safer and more readily available. How, Trace kept asking himself, did Marc not see that? And still—still—I think Trace would have done the right thing. But then the massacre happened at TriPoint, and Trace went back. He said he wanted to save his friend. He said that an experience like this may make Marc see the light. So I didn’t know. Not for sure. It wasn’t premeditated. It was, I don’t know, a crime of opportunity.”
Nadia looks at Maggie.
“Doesn’t make my husband less dead,” Maggie says to her.
Nadia has nothing to say to that. No one does. For a while, they just stand there. No one talks. No one moves. Maggie turns away from them and stares out over the vineyard. The sun dips lower, bruising the sky a spiraling purple and orange. She finally has the answers. The truth will set you free, they say, but right now it feels as though it will forever hold Maggie captive. She hears Porkchop calling her name, but even he feels far away, unable to reach her. She doesn’t want to hear. She doesn’t want to reply. She doesn’t want to think or process or assess or consider the repercussions.
Not right now.
Right now, she just wants to stare at the spiraling purple and orange and wish the world away.
EPILOGUE
Three days after Maggie gets back to Baltimore, she calls Vipers and asks to speak to Porkchop. She hasn’t seen him since that last day in the vineyard.
The woman who answers the payphone says he’s unreachable.
“Tell him it’s Maggie.”
“Porkchop is off the grid.”
“So you don’t know where he is?”
“No one does.”
“Suppose I really needed him.”
“He’s off the grid,” she says, “but we can put him back on it if there’s an emergency.” Then she adds in a kinder voice: “Give him time, Maggie.”
A week goes by. She calls Vipers again. The woman tells her the same thing. Another week passes. Same thing.
No sign of Porkchop.
Three weeks after that last day in France, Pinky answers the payphone when she calls.
“Porkchop is still incommunicado.”
“Tell him I know,” Maggie says. “Tell him I know, and I don’t care.”
There is a long pause on the other end of the line. Then Pinky says, “You think you know. But you don’t.”
Then he hangs up.
Two days later, Charles Lockwood calls her. “Oleg is in a coma. But that heart is still beating in his chest.”
BEAT… BEAT… BEAT…
“Thanks for letting me know.”
“Also The Vineyard—the whole operation—has been shut down.”
“Good.”
“No great loss,” Charles says. “Oleg never kept the best scientists and researchers in the end. The best scientists and researchers may complain about the rules and protocols, but they understand why they’re there. They want to work in the sunlight, not cut corners in the dark. That’s the part Oleg never understood.”
“I appreciate the call,” Maggie says. “Take care of yourself, Charles.”
“Let’s stay in touch,” he says.
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” she replies, but he’s already ended the call.
Maggie’s phone rings again. The caller ID tells her it’s the payphone at Vipers.
“Porkchop is back,” Pinky says.
“I’ll come up tomorrow.”
She disconnects the call and steps outside into the crisp night air. She takes a deep breath. This time of the year, the neighborhood always smells of freshly cut grass and backyard barbecues. The Burroughs family—Mom, Dad, Son, Daughter—sit on their front lawn. They all wave at Maggie. Maggie forces up a smile and waves back. Someone across the street is blasting a surprisingly touching Nick Cave ballad. His voice is raw and vulnerable as he repeatedly reminds a loved one that he’s waiting for them.
Maggie blinks, swallows, and lifts her phone into view. With a shaking finger, she clicks on the griefbot icon. The app comes to life.
Marc’s face appears. He smiles at her.
“Oh man, Mags, it’s good to see you.”
She stares at the screen. Nick Cave is singing to that same loved one to sleep now, sleep now, take as long as you need. Maggie closes her eyes and makes herself listen to the rest of the lyrics. When the song is over, she takes one last deep breath and heads back inside. When she enters the kitchen, Sharon looks up at her.
“We need to delete this,” Maggie says, pointing at the app. “For good.”
The train pulls into Penn Station.
Pinky waits for her out on 33rd Street. They drive in silence to Vipers for Bikers. It’s closed. Pinky unlocks the door and lets her in. And there, pacing in the room alone, is Porkchop. No Zen-like patience today. He doesn’t have his sunglasses on. He turns and looks at her with shattered eyes.
“You told Pinky you know,” he says.
Maggie nods.
“Tell me.”
“I saw your passport.”
Porkchop takes a deep breath. “When?”
“Right before Nadia showed up.”
They both stop.
Nadia.
“I had to let her go,” Porkchop says.
“I know.”
“Even if I’ll have to look over my shoulder.”
“It was the right call.”
“What else could I do?”
No need to answer that. Porkchop had pointed the gun at Nadia, his finger twitching on the trigger, his face twisted in anguish. But he didn’t pull the trigger. Instead, he muttered, “It stays with you,” and told Nadia to go.
“What made you check my passport?” he asks.
“Your clothes were already in your room, and then Florence asked you if you’d been enjoying your stay—even though we just arrived. Why would she ask that? Then I looked at the flight schedules. There was nothing from JFK to Dubai stopping in London until later in the day. So I started thinking about it. After I called Trace to come home, he broke into Apollo Longevity. He wouldn’t do that just to get phenobarbital and clonazepam. He stole the THUMPR7 and the assisting equipment. Those would be his get-out-of-jail-free card. My guess is, he planned to put it in the Wells Fargo bank. But he never got the chance because, well, you killed him. That means you had the THUMPR7. How am I doing so far?”
“Pretty well.”
“So what was the deal you made, Porkchop?”
“I contacted Ivan Brovski via Barlow. I told him I had the artificial heart they’d been looking for. I would bring it to him. I would get you to France and help convince you to do the surgery. In return, they would pay us an extravagant amount of money and promise to leave us alone. That was the key—you and I would be out. I already knew who killed Marc. I already knew what happened to Trace—”
“But I didn’t.”
“You knew enough.”
“No, sorry, you don’t have the right to make that decision for me.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“Yeah, look how well that worked out for Marc.”
Porkchop winces. “I know. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
“No more secrets.”
“No more secrets,” Porkchop says.
There is something troubling in his tone.
“You have more?”
He gestures at her with his chin. “Why don’t you go first?”
Maggie says nothing.
“Do you want to tell me about your father’s gun, Maggie?”
Everything goes still, as if the very room were holding its breath.
Porkchop takes a step toward her. “You went down into your basement. That’s where your father hid his old thirty-eight. Sharon saw you. She was worried, so she called me.” He tilts his head. “What were you planning on doing with his gun?”
She says nothing.
“Trace was supposed to show up the next day. He killed Marc—and he was going to get away with it. You knew that. So tell me, Maggie, what did you plan on doing with your father’s thirty-eight?”
Tears run down her cheeks.
“When you kill a man,” Porkchop says, “it stays with you.”
“It stays with you…”
“And,” Maggie says, “you didn’t want that for me.”
“I didn’t want that for you.”
“And that’s why—”
“I wasn’t lying. We followed Trace. He planned on killing you.”
“And if he hadn’t been?”
“There’s no point in talking hypotheticals.”
“I love you,” she says.
Porkchop nods, his eyes now wet with tears too. “I love you too.”
She runs toward him then. She wraps her arms around him and pulls him close. She puts her head on his shoulder. Maggie’s eyes look to the left, to the center of the room, searching and finding that motorcycle, and for a moment, she is certain that Marc is right there, riding it, giving her that smile that always reached into her chest and gently twisted her heart.
It’s over.
“No more secrets,” she whispers again.
But she feels his body stiffen.
“Porkchop?”
He pulls away.
“What is it?”
“The deal I made with Ragoravich.”
“What about it?”
“I didn’t just bring him the medical equipment.”
She waits.
Porkchop looks at her, blinks, then turns to the side. He too is staring at the vintage bike he’d gifted Marc.
“He murdered my boy,” he says.
“I know.”
“He murdered my boy. And there he is, running his mouth, handing me all the same bullshit he told Nadia about how he’d wanted more organ transplants.”
The temperature in the room drops ten degrees. “What did you do, Porkchop?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“What?”
“I gave him his final wish.”
“What wish?”
He meets her gaze. “More organ transplants.”
His eyes grow cold now, distant.
And then Maggie sees it.
“Porkchop?”
“First, he donated his corneas. Restored someone’s vision.”
Maggie starts to shake her head.
“Then he donated a kidney. Probably saved a life. It’s what he believed in, right? It’s what he killed my boy for. Then he donated part of his lung—not too much or he’d die. I didn’t want that. Not yet anyway. Same with his liver. And then his pancreas. I don’t remember what else.” Porkchop swallows, but his voice stays steady. “And then in the end, when I realized Oleg Ragoravich would do anything to get hold of a beating heart…”
He doesn’t say more. He doesn’t have to.
They stand there. Together. Maggie has no idea for how long. Eventually someone unlocks the door. They come into the bar. Then someone else. Someone says hi. More people come in. Maggie and Porkchop break apart, greet people, accept hugs, but all Maggie can hear is the same sound she heard when she was leaving the operating room.
BEAT… BEAT… BEAT…
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOR GONE BEFORE GOODBYE
First, I would like to thank my mother and father, Betty and John Witherspoon, who served in the Tennessee Air National Guard and US Air Force, respectively. Their forty years of service in military hospitals and then private health care were the background of this novel. Living on military bases as a child, surrounded by medical military families, I learned about the connectedness of communities dedicated to risking their own lives to help others. Every dinner table conversation about surgery and patient care, filled with thrilling stories of harrowing medical experiences, influenced me to write about Maggie and Marc’s passion for health care. My childhood visits to hospitals and military bases instilled in me a powerful lesson that a life of service to others is the most noble life to lead. Mom and Dad, I love you.
Thank you to Reza, Kevin, Steven, Dasha, Nader, and many others who helped me build out details of locations and worlds I could only imagine visiting one day. You added truth and humor to every story you shared with me. Thank you.
Thank you to Ben Sevier, Lyssa Keusch, and the whole team at Grand Central Publishing for believing in this idea from Day One. Your enthusiasm was the wind at my back during this whole experience.
Thank you to my book agent, Cait Hoyt, who never fails to be my biggest champion, especially when I am past deadline and feeling so nervous I could crumble. You always help put me back on track and convince me I am writing something truly original. That’s the biggest compliment I could ever hope for!
Thank you to Kate Childs-Jones, Meredith O’Sullivan, Chelsea Thomas, Maha Dakhil, Gretchen Rush, Rick Yorn, Josh Dembling, and my entire team, who always make sure I am endlessly supported in every creative project. Your hard work and encouragement made writing my first novel feel a little less daunting—notice, I only said “a little.”
Thank you to Hillary, Beatrice, Jenna, and Jeff, who keep my life in order and make me look much more pulled together than I am! Your organization, attention to detail, and deep loyalty mean the world to me.
Thank you to Rachel Bati, who has kept the many different crazy trains in my life running on time for over (gulp!) thirty years. The three hundred emails, five hundred phone calls, and at least seven pep talks a day have made space for my creativity to flourish and grow in every way. I will be forever grateful for all the little ways you motivate me, including lots of funny stories about your hair and my favorite surprise cheer-me-up cookies during long days at work. I love you!
I would like to thank Harlan Coben for agreeing to jump in and become my partner on this amazing journey. I have no idea how I managed to convince a writer of your esteem to agree to coauthor with me for the first time, but I will be forever grateful to you for taking my seed of an idea and building out this fascinating world. A novel filled with global medical intrigue and massive corruption, all centered around a woman whose superpower is her surgical prowess, seemed like a far-fetched dream. You brought Maggie McCabe to life with your ability to shape an idea into a fully fleshed-out, page-turning thriller. And you made the whole process so fun! I am enormously proud of our collaboration and the deep humanity inside it. Thank you for being the best partner in the whole world.
Thank you to all my favorite writers, including all my Reese’s Book Club authors, readers, and booksellers who inspire me to explore the edges of my imagination and dream of more stories to tell.
Finally, to my wonderful children and family, there aren’t enough pages in this book to tell you how much your love means to me. I am so blessed to have the most encouraging family in the world.
—Reese Witherspoon
Ditto what Reese said.
Let me list a bunch of people who contributed to this book in no particular order: Ben Sevier, David Shelley, Lyssa Keusch, Danielle Thomas, Beth de Guzman, Karen Kosztolnyik, Colin Dickerman, Jonathan Valuckas, Matthew Ballast, Quinne Rogers, Lauren Sum, Staci Burt, Tiffany Porcelli, Andrew Duncan, Taylor Parker-Means, Alexis Gilbert, Joseph Benincase, Albert Tang, Liz Connor, Rena Kornbluh, Rebecca Holland, Mari C. Okuda, Jennifer Tordy, Ana Maria Allessi, Nita Basu, Laura Essex, Melanie Schmidt, Venetia Butterfield, Selina Walker, Charlotte Bush, Olivia Thomas, Rebecca Ikin, Lucy Hall, Alice Gomer, Anna Curvis, Meredith Benson, Mary Karayel, Diane Discepolo, Jamie Megargee, Lisa Erbach Vance, Samantha Reiter, and Anne Armstrong-Coben, MD.
A very special shout-out to the genius that is Robert Silich, MD, FACS. Reese and I had a lot of help on the medical front from many physicians and scientists, but Rob really took the extra step and came up with some fun, clever, and twisted research for us. Thanks, my friend.
And of course, what can I say about my partner and friend Reese Witherspoon? I keep getting asked if Reese is as cool, kind, and smart as she seems—and the honest answer is no, she’s even cooler, kinder, and smarter than you imagine. Taking this journey with you was an honor and a hoot. You are a generous, compassionate, insightful, and brilliant partner.
—Harlan Coben
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Reese Witherspoon is an award-winning actress, producer, New York Times bestselling author, and founder. In 2016, she established the media brand Hello Sunshine, which puts women at the center of every story across all platforms—from scripted and unscripted television, feature films, animated series, podcasts, audio storytelling, and digital series. Hello Sunshine is also home to Reese’s Book Club, a community propelled by meaningful connections with stories, authors, and fellow members. Witherspoon is best known for her roles in feature films like Walk the Line, Wild, Election, and Legally Blonde, as well as Emmy Award–winning TV series Big Little Lies, Little Fires Everywhere, and The Morning Show.
Harlan Coben is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and one of the world’s leading storytellers. His suspense novels are published in forty-six languages and have been number one bestsellers in more than a dozen countries, with ninety million books in print worldwide. His Myron Bolitar series has earned the Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony Awards. Coben is also the creator and executive producer of many television shows, including adaptations on Netflix of the #1 global hits Missing You and Fool Me Once, Stay Close, The Stranger, The Innocent, Gone for Good, Hold Tight, and The Woods. His forthcoming TV series include Run Away, I Will Find You, and Lazarus.
