Gray saw stars, but forced himself to do it again. This time he saw black. When he came to, Vincent was still. But then he saw Vincent’s hand, feeling for the knife.
Vincent continued to feel about, finger painting in blood, trying to locate the blade. Gray tried to move, but he was exhausted, muscles aching, head fuzzy. Vincent’s fingertips were on the knife’s handle now. And then he had the knife again, firmly in his grasp. He jolted up, and made eye contact with Gray.
Then came the explosion of shattered glass, and Vincent collapsed. Arturo was on his knees, the neck of a broken decanter in his hand. Vincent staggered to his feet, the fire radiating behind him. His hair a mess, eyes wild, and clothes drenched in alcohol, he looked like a madman. Vincent clutched the blade, a look of resolve on his face. Arturo then charged Vincent. He crashed into him, sending Vincent flying toward the flames. When Vincent hit the floor of the hallway, there was a bright flash of yellow and orange. Vincent then screamed in agony as the alcohol on his clothes accelerated the blaze that now consumed him. It was a small eternity until he stopped moving, as Gray gagged on the smell of burning flesh.
Arturo crawled to Gray. He retrieved Vincent’s knife from the floor and slid the blade under the plastic tie securing Gray’s wrist, cutting it away. From there Gray cut through the rest of the bindings. Gray saw a folded sheet of paper on the floor. The list Lauren had made for Vincent must have fallen out during the struggle. He scooped it up and jammed it in his pocket. There was no time to untie the justices. Gray dragged the chair constraining Douglas, while Arturo pulled Cutler to safety outside. It was clear that Justice Wall was gone. Maybe they could make it back in for his body before the fire ravaged the rest of the place.
Police lights now illuminated the front gate. “Sam, where’s Sam?” Gray said desperately.
Gray looked at Cutler’s home, which was ablaze. He turned to the groan of the iron gates of the estate that opened and a band of agents rushed onto the grounds, guns drawn. He saw Agent Milstein and her partner. Milstein ran to him.
“It was Lauren Hart,” Gray said, his voice in rasps, “and a man named Vincent, or John, her brother. They—”
“We know, Grayson,” Milstein said. “Where are they?”
“He’s dead, but Lauren escaped.” But he cared little about them now. “We need to find Sam!”
“The woman?” Justice Cutler said. Her face was smeared with blood and soot. “She was in the house. When they brought you in, she was unconscious. The man carried her to the back.”
Gray started to run toward the blaze, but two agents grabbed him by the arms restraining him. He struggled to tug free, but he was weak. Every part of him ached. That’s when he saw a figure already at the front of the house running into the blaze.
Gray tried again to break free, but Milstein gently placed a hand on his shoulder. Her partner kept hold of Gray’s arm, sorrow in his eyes.
An explosion shook the earth, and the mansion’s windows shattered, smoke billowing out.
Tears streamed down Gray’s face as the roof collapsed. The loud wail of a fire truck filled the air.
His best friends, the three amigos.
Then he saw it.
The figure, a silhouette against the flames, came staggering from the house. And he was carrying someone.
CHAPTER 84
Beating Gray there, a paramedic took Sam from Arturo’s arms, racing her away from the fire that roared close and hot. Gray reached Arturo, who had collapsed on the ground.
He cradled his old friend in his lap. “You’re gonna be okay. Help is here. You’re gonna be okay.” Gray screamed for another medic.
“No, I’m not,” Arturo said. He gave a contemplative look. Then a faint smile. “A fire—like the book,” he said, a hint of amusement. A scene from The Outsiders. Gray stared at his friend. Arturo’s tough and weary face morphed into his fourteen-year-old one, sitting in group therapy, refusing to answer questions about the book, everyone in the room seeing the pain in his eyes. Then, a sad ten-year-old on Christmas Eve.
Arturo coughed, and blood shot out of his mouth over his cheek. Gray wiped it away.
“Hey, Ponyboy,” Arturo struggled to get it out. “I need to say something to you.”
Gray said, “I swear, if you say ‘stay golden’”—the famous line from The Outsiders—“I’m going to kill you myself.”
Arturo let out a breathy laugh. Before his eyes rolled to the back of his head, he crammed something into Gray’s hand. Paramedics pulled Gray away, and he looked on in shock as they maneuvered Arturo onto a stretcher and whisked him away.
Gray looked at the item in his hand.
It was a battered old Pokémon card.
CHAPTER 85
Gray ran to the gurney where Sam was stretched out with an oxygen mask over her face. She reached for his arm.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I should have never brought you into this.”
Sam said something, but he couldn’t make it out. Then she slowly pulled down the oxygen mask. “Stop being a pussy, and go get that bitch.”
At that, Gray remembered Vincent’s list, the instructions Lauren had given her brother. Gray pulled the paper from his pocket and unfolded it. It included a numbered list. Step-by-step instructions. About going to Cutler’s house to force her to call Chief Justice Douglas to lure him to the estate. Then the same for Wall. Subdue the justices one at a time. Gray realized that if the justices had seen the envelope, it would have meant nothing to them. Lauren must’ve originally come up with the game to frame or taunt the chief justice, then used it against Gray.
When the chief arrived first at Cutler’s house, John Whitlock overpowered him, then Lauren must have taken his car. The list also gave instructions about killing each of them. Matter-of-fact murder. The last item on the list: “If they haven’t found me by Friday, make an anonymous call from the phone I gave you and tell them to look for me at U Store It on River Road.” Gray recalled what Lauren said to Vincent: I’ll be at the storage unit.
Gray took in a deep breath and collected himself. He ran to the side gate and found the motorcycles where they’d hidden them. A fury was burning in his chest now. As he climbed on the bike, he saw Milstein running toward him.
“What are you doing?” she shouted over the roar of the bike and commotion of the army of federal agents and fire fighters on Justice Cutler’s estate.
“I know where she is.” Gray stuffed Vincent’s list in Milstein’s hand, pulled back on the throttle, and sped off to find Lauren Hart.
CHAPTER 86
The wind lashed Gray’s face as he weaved around cars, horns blaring after him, but he didn’t let up until he saw it. A large, faded fiberglass sign: U STORE IT. A self-storage place. It was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. There was a keypad near an automatic gate so customers could come and go to the small metal cells where they kept the leftovers from their lives.
He parked the bike near the front gate and considered how he’d get inside. He could climb the fence, but the razor wire would tear him to shreds. He could wait for someone to visit a storage unit and trail after them, but that could take hours. Then he saw the Dumpster, lodged next to the fence, overflowing with cardboard boxes. He ran to the container and began scaling the trash spilling out of it.
At the top, he balanced precariously on a large cardboard box. His body ached from the car crash and violence with John Whitlock. He was running on pure rage. He estimated the distance from the Dumpster over the barbwire. He thought of one of his father’s rules. No fear.
And he made the leap.
He cleared the fence, but landed hard, a clumsy stumble, skinning his knees. Gray ran though the facility, which had two large buildings. One structure had a single door, which Gray presumed led to small interior storage units. The other building had several exterior doors, units accessible from outside. He saw the chief justice’s silver Audi, the loaner Gray had used during the term, parked in front of one of the exterior doors. The car
Lauren or John Whitlock had used to run down Dora Baxter. He ran over and stopped in front of the unit. He took in a breath, then turned the handle on the door. It was unlocked.
Inside was dark, but a section in the back was lit by weak fluorescents. He stepped quietly toward a radio that was crackling. A police scanner, he realized. He thought he heard the dispatcher say “U Store It.” The agents were on the way. On top of the scanner, five feather quill pens. The signatures Lauren and Vincent had left at the crime scenes. Under the pens, a receipt for the storage unit. What caught his eye was the name at the top of the papers. Gray’s name. She must’ve rented it online with his credit card. She’d thought of everything.
Gray hoped he’d find Lauren handcuffed, the poor victim waiting to be saved, but he didn’t see her. He lost his breath at the sight of an axe that was leaning against the corner. He thought of the couple from Union Station. It reminded him that he wasn’t dealing with Lauren Hart, brilliant young law clerk. He was confronting a vengeful, twisted killer.
That’s when he felt the presence behind him.
Gray’s body then convulsed as thousands of volts shot through him. Temporarily paralyzed, his neck snapped violently back with the force of a sheet of plastic yanked over his face. He sucked in and the bag nearly touched the back of his throat. He weakly clawed at the plastic, but felt another jolt of lightning in his side.
He was being pulled to the ground, the bag tight around his face. He fought it, gasping for oxygen. Things were starting to blur. His body and mind retreating.
He thought of Arturo and Sam and their bravery tonight, and then his father. He willed himself to find the strength to not give up. Launching backward, he felt the break of cartilage as his head slammed into her face. The grip on the plastic loosened, and he lashed his head back again, then ripped the plastic away.
In the shadows he saw her, hands red as she moved them from her face. Sirens were in the distance.
“It’s over, Lauren.”
She just stared at him. A long silence. Then her expression turned remorseful. She spoke softly. “It was in a storage unit like this that he did it. We were so young, we didn’t even understand what he was doing. I still smell him on me.”
She looked off at nothing. Gray decided to just let her get it out. He needed to keep her there until Milstein and the troops arrived.
“We were just running to the store,” she said. “Our big brother was with us, so nothing to worry about, right?” She sobbed, her face awash in blood and tears. “He said he had candy in the storeroom. Then he hit Johnny with a brick.”
“But you got through it. You survived, you’ve been so successful. Wouldn’t your parents want you to—”
“My parents,” she spat. “My birth mother took a fistful of pills after Justice Douglas let him go free. She left me. I was five years old. Of course, a cute little girl had no problem getting adopted. But Johnny…”
Gray needed to stall, the agents would be there soon. “Why now, after all this time?”
She stared at him with an intensity he couldn’t describe. “Because I didn’t think any of it was real. My adoptive parents, in all of their affluent overprivileged wisdom, made me think it was all in my imagination. Years of shrinks and meds, and they let me think it wasn’t real. They thought a high IQ and money could solve all my problems, everything would be just fine. Didn’t even tell me I had a brother. They said the sweet boy who I dreamed about was a figment of my imagination.” She let the stun gun fall to the floor and began sobbing again. “But when they died when I was in law school, I went through their papers, and I learned the truth. And I found Johnny.”
She was a killer. Probably a sociopath. She’d hurt so many people, but he had the urge to comfort her.
Gray saw strobes through the cracks in the walls now. It would be over soon.
“You didn’t deserve what happened. And your parents should have told you the truth. But those people you hurt, they were innocent, just like you.”
“I’m sorry, Grayson.” More tears. “I’m sick.” She fell into his arms and held him tight. He remembered how this felt before. Her body shuddered as she cried.
“They’ll get you help,” he said.
The door burst open and flashlight beams and red lasers filled the aluminum storage unit. Gray pulled away from Lauren’s embrace. He then stepped in front of her, raising his hands, trying to prevent the agents from coming in guns blazing. He felt her hand briefly on his back. He was then blinded a moment by the lights. He kept his hands raised high.
Then the shots rang out.
Pop, pop, pop.
Gray braced himself, but he wasn’t hit. He twisted around and saw Lauren, an expression of shock on her face. The axe in her hand. She collapsed to the cement.
Gray stared at Agent Milstein, whose arm was still extended from taking the shots.
EPILOGUE
Grayson Hernandez walked up to the lectern in the well of the U.S. Supreme Court. He wasn’t intimidated by the marble columns that encased the room or the elevated mahogany bench where The Nine had been known to skewer even the most experienced advocates. It had been two years since he left his clerkship and already he had made a name for himself. He’d joined a public interest firm where he represented the poor and needy in impact cases. He glanced at Justice Cutler, who was now in the center seat, confirmed after Edgar Douglas had retired in the wake of his abduction and the death of his best friend. Cutler’s scowl seemed to grow even more pronounced after the attack, but she held the hint of a smile for Gray under that harsh stare.
Gray turned briefly to the spectator section. His parents were in the reserved seats. Next to Mom and Dad, Miranda was holding Emilio’s arm as if to keep him from wiggling. And there was Sam.
He was about to turn back to the bench when someone in the gallery called out, “Kick some ass, Ponyboy.” It prompted tittering from the spectators, and Gray saw Arturo getting a lecture from an officer.
The press had made much of Gray’s first oral argument—feature stories in every major newspaper—so he was only half surprised to see other familiar faces in the wings. Keir gave him a nod, Mike a thumbs up, and Praveen an admiring gaze. Even Agent Milstein and her partner, Cartwright, were there.
Gray collected himself, then turned back to the justices and began his argument.
“Madam Chief Justice and may it please the court. Some may think that the tenants of Stonewalk Gardens should be happy that the government took their land, paid them to leave the so-called blighted area; that they should take the relocation money offered and never look back. But it shouldn’t be the government who decides where these good people live. This is their home. And no one has the right, good-intentioned or not, to force them to move away from the place they love, the people they love. No one has the right to make them outsiders…”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To my wife, Tracy—my rock, my life, since I was sixteen years old.
To my children, Jake, Emma, and Aiden, the other joys of my life, who keep their dad on his toes. (And, Em, you finally got the serial killer you wanted in this book.)
To my agent, Lisa Erbach Vance, and the team at the Aaron Priest Literary Agency. Lisa, I continue to marvel at your literary insights, sound judgment, and the best representation an author could ever hope for.
To my editors, Pete Wolverton and Jennifer Donovan, for making The Outsider the best it could be. It’s an honor to be guided by such able hands. Also thanks to the many hardworking professionals at St. Martin’s Press, including Joseph Brosnan, Paul Hochman, Justin Velella, Bill Warhop, and Allison Ziegler.
To my law firm, Arnold & Porter. I’ve spent most of my adult life at the firm and am the better for it. My days largely are spent with our tight-knit Supreme Court and Appellate team—including Lisa Blatt, Stanton Jones, Reeves Anderson, Elisabeth Theodore, and Sally Pei—whose legal acumen, creativity, zealous advocacy, and sense of humor always inspire. Thanks also go to my other longtime frie
nds from the firm: Deb Carpenter, Kat Lindsay, John Massaro, Evie Norwinski, Sheila Scheuerman, and Rob Weiner, who have supported my writing from the start.
To my writer pal Barry Lancet, as well as the other great friends I’ve made through the International Thriller Writers organization.
To you, readers. I never forget that you are giving me and my stories precious hours of your life, and I do my best to live up to that privilege.
ABOUT AUTHENTICITY
This is the part in my books where I separate fact from fiction, somewhat.
The Supreme Court is indeed like a small town. The high court employs not only The Nine, but more than four hundred others whose office is a marble palace located just behind the Capitol dome at One First Street, Northeast, Washington, D.C. As I note in the novel, beyond the courtroom and justices’ chambers, the building houses a full police force, a marshal’s office, a clerk’s office, a curator, a press office, a public cafeteria, a gift shop, and a breathtaking library. I should note, however, that there is no marshal’s “cube farm” filled with messengers like Grayson Hernandez, though there are marshal’s aides who perform various tasks, including sitting behind the bench to fetch things for the justices during oral arguments.
It is true that every summer thirty-six law clerks (give or take) embark on what most will consider a highlight of their legal careers. And the one-year clerkship is truly an entry ticket to the nation’s most prestigious legal jobs. Three of the current justices were law clerks themselves. The $400,000 law firm signing bonus for clerks I mention is not accurate; it’s actually around $300,000, but the enticement is sure to tick up. My research included interviewing former clerks as well as reading books, articles, and first-person accounts of the job. I drew substantially on the work of the leading scholars in the area, Professors Todd Peppers and Artemus Ward, as well as Edward Lazarus’s Closed Chambers, a somewhat controversial account of Lazarus’s year as a law clerk.
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