Nicholas stood over him, breathing hard, hands still fists, until he realized Scarface was definitely not getting up. Don’t let him be dead, Zachery will skin me alive.
Nicholas flipped him over on his stomach. As he snapped cuffs on him, he heard Mike scream his name.
He thought she’d been close, he’d heard her running footsteps before the fight with Scarface.
He whipped around to see his worst nightmare.
Another man, big, older, built like a boxer, had an arm around Mike’s neck, and a pistol pressed to her temple. His mouth was stretched wide, a rictus of a smile, and Nicholas saw blood smeared over his mouth. Mike had smashed him in the face before he’d managed to grab her. He licked away the blood, the terrifying smile still on his mouth. He said nothing at all. His finger began to move on the trigger.
Nicholas didn’t think, his gun was in his hand, coming up smoothly, and he squeezed the trigger and blood blossomed out of the man’s forehead a heartbeat later.
Mike went down, under him. Oh, God, he’d hit her, he’d hit her. But no, she was yelling his name and he saw her pushing and shoving, fighting to push the man off her. Nicholas realized he was frozen in position, chest heaving, arm still locked straight in front of him, his finger still in the Glock’s trigger guard. He dropped his arm and holstered his gun and ran to Mike. He pushed the man’s body the rest of the way off her, yanked her to her feet, ran his hands over her arms, her chest, touching her face. “Are you okay, are you okay?”
He was shouting and she flinched. The gunshot had come so close to her, and it had hurt her eardrums, but she nodded, forcing herself to breathe deeply, in and out, to calm herself.
Nicholas pulled her tight to his chest, eyes shut, the breath gone from him again. It was too damn close, he’d nearly lost her.
And the sirens began to wail behind them.
30
Nicholas held a chemical ice pack against his cheek, tapping away one-handed on a laptop they’d found thrown behind the sofa in Allie McGee’s living room, and wondered, yet again, what in the bloody hell they’d gotten themselves into. In the course of a single day, three dead, one in cuffs, Mike nearly shot, him Tasered, beaten, shot, and flash-bombed. It wasn’t even dark yet. And no Adam Pearce. But Allie McGee was dead. He hated it. He felt stiff, sore from the blows he’d taken and the jarring jump from the fire escape, his chest burned from the bullet in his vest, his clothes were ripped, actually quite ruined, and Nigel would not be happy, but, on the other hand, he was alive, he could see and hear again and he was trying to do something useful with the computer.
His life was becoming some sort of exceptionally violent country-and-western song, the kind his uncle Bo liked to listen to. Tase me, shoot me, knock me down . . .
He laughed to himself. You’re punchy, Nicholas, it’s all the adrenaline, and yes, the deep and abiding fear you felt at the very idea of losing Mike.
The image of the second thug with the gun to her temple, blood running down his face, that madman’s smile, like it had been painted on and Mike’s mouth moving silently. Now he realized she hadn’t been silent at all, she’d been screaming “Shoot him, shoot him.” He’d never even heard her.
NYPD was on the scene along with Ben and three more FBI agents, dealing with the aftermath of the battle in the alley. He’d answered about a thousand questions from the NYPD, and Ben told both of them they had to leave the crime scene now, and that meant this one and Allie McGee’s apartment. He’d relented only when Nicholas agreed to go back upstairs. “Stay out of the way, both of you know the drill. Don’t get us all in trouble.”
He and Mike had trudged back to Allie McGee’s apartment, waiting on the identification of the men who’d broken in and killed her.
The place was a wreck. The flash bang had thankfully not caught anything on fire, but Nicholas and Mike’s mad scramble across the room to the window had resulted in an overturned table and chair, tampering with the initial crime scene.
But Allie McGee was the worst part of all.
Mike watched Louisa Barry carefully process Allie McGee’s body for evidence. It hurt too much to keep looking, so she turned to watch Nicholas typing. She was still shaking, only inside now, and it was understandable, she supposed, given that if Nicholas had shot just two inches to the left, her head would have splattered all over the wall of Allie McGee’s building. He’d seen the man was going to shoot her brains out and he’d acted, hadn’t hesitated. She’d seen determination, wild fear, and something else before he’d fired. It was certainty, that was it. She was very glad he was on her side.
Nicholas never looked up from the computer. Mike finally made herself go to Louisa, who met her eyes, read the unasked question. “Yes, before they shot her, they did a number on her.”
“They were trying to get information.”
“Looks that way. I don’t know if she helped or not. We’ll need the ME to give us a certain time of death, but she’s not in rigor yet. You interrupted them, Mike, you and Nicholas.”
“We may have gotten her killed, you mean.”
Louisa shook her head. “No, she was dead before you arrived. They’d already torn this place apart. Now it’s going to take the rest of the day for me to put this all together. Your shirt, Mike, you’re a mess. There’s a lot of blood.”
“Thankfully not mine. Keep me posted.” She turned to go, and Louisa said in a hard, flat voice, “She didn’t have a chance, Mike, you know that. She was only a kid, against very well-trained professionals. I’m very glad Nicholas killed one of them. As for the other, I hope he rots forever in Attica.”
“He will.”
“This has gotten to you, Mike, I can see that. You’ve got to try to keep some distance, some altitude. It will all come together. It always does.”
And with that, Louisa kneeled back down next to the body of a young girl who should have been at school when those men came looking for Adam, looking for something to show them where he was.
Don’t blame yourself. But she did, because she’d failed to get the information about this apartment and Allie McGee from Sophie Pearce in time. She felt a raw burst of anger toward Sophie Pearce, but remembered Lia telling her about all her phone calls, trying to locate him. So she didn’t know where her brother rested his head when he was in the city. Still, if she’d only told them sooner, they’d have been able to get here faster, and Allie McGee wouldn’t be dead.
There were pictures of Allie all around the apartment, some of her alone, some with her family—she had a younger sister and an older brother and two blond smiling parents whose lives were about to be ruined—but the majority were photographs of her with Adam Pearce.
She crossed the room to sit on the arm of Nicholas’s chair.
“How’s it coming?”
A few more clicks. “This computer is shot to hell,” Nicholas said. “The hard drive’s been wiped, and I can’t get it back. Maybe Gray can harvest something off the chip, but from everything I can see, there’s bugger all there.”
“Adam Pearce is a hacker, so he has backups, right?”
“Yes, but we need to get our hands on him first. Bloody hell, Mike.”
“My thought exactly. At least we know Adam is still alive.”
“We think he’s alive. We hope he’s alive. And all he’s left behind is his dead girlfriend and a broken computer.”
“And he didn’t kill her. I find that comforting.”
“Nor did he crash his hard drive. You’re right, he had nothing to do with this.”
Nicholas closed the lid on the ruined computer. “There is something, we’ve got one extra power cord here, to a Sony Vaio. That means there’s a laptop missing.”
She felt a spurt of energy, or hope. “It had to be Adam’s. He was here, but then he left.”
Nicholas’s cop eyes got cold and hard. “Whatever he knows, whatever happene
d, he’s now out in the cold, no friends, no father, no girlfriend. Only his sister, and we’re watching her, and he’s got to know that, and so she’s off-limits. Which means there’s no one to help him, and no way to predict exactly what he might do next.”
Nicholas’s mobile rang, and the screen showed Zachery’s number. And he knew what it was about. He’d left another dead body. On his first day.
It was Maryann, Zachery’s assistant, who was a longtime fixture in the New York Criminal Investigative Division. She’d seen it all, heard it all. And her voice said it all.
“Agent Drummond, the SAC would like to see you in his office.”
“Would you please tell him I’ll be back downtown as soon as we’re through here? I am not involved, I am only observing.”
“I’m sorry, Agent Drummond, but he’s requested you return to Federal Plaza immediately. With Agent Caine. We’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”
That was official. He was in trouble.
31
What’s wrong now?” Mike asked.
“Zachery wants us back now.”
She sighed. “I was afraid of that. He finds out everything so quickly. You know we’re breaking protocol as it is by even being here. Don’t worry, though, maybe he only wants to hear what happened firsthand.”
“Three dead bodies, Mike.” He glanced over at Allie McGee. “Make that four.”
“Not your fault. It will be all right, you’ll see. You did nothing wrong. Let me tell Louisa we’re leaving. The traffic will be a nightmare, we’ll put the siren on. Drive real fast. That should make you feel better.”
He didn’t think speed would help anything. He nodded. “I’ll see you in the lobby.”
He took the elevator down, replaying the fight, the shooting. He didn’t see he’d had any other choice in the matter; another moment and the second thug would have shot Mike through the temple. He made a quick decision, pulled out his mobile, and punched in a number he knew by heart.
“Nick, good to hear from you. I was hoping you’d call and check in. How’s the first day treating you? I wish I could have been there to see you walk through the doors.”
“I wish you had too, Uncle Bo. Because you might have been happier to see me this afternoon than Milo Zachery is about to be.”
Instant flatline. “Tell me what happened.”
Nicholas gave him a quick rundown of the day. Bo whistled, long and low. “You do manage to step in it, don’t you, Nick?”
“I wonder where I may have learned that. Do you have any advice?”
“Tell Milo the absolute truth. You already knew there was going to be a lot of interest in you, and with the deaths, and the shooting, there will have to be a formal inquiry. But you’ve done nothing wrong. Every action has been according to policy. So go in with your head high, my boy, and don’t worry.”
Nicholas saw Mike come out of the elevator. Her hair was falling out of the ponytail, her sleeve was torn, and there was all that damned blood on her shirt. He swallowed. “Thank you, Uncle Bo. I’ll let you know what they say.”
“You do that. And come for dinner this weekend. Bring Mike. We’d love to catch up.”
“I will, and I’ll extend the invitation, thank you.” He hung up, and stuck his mobile in his pocket.
“Ready?” Mike asked.
“To face the executioner, you mean? As I’ll ever be.”
26 Federal Plaza
6:30 p.m.
Zachery was standing by the window, looking out onto the New Jersey skyline.
“Sit,” he said brusquely when they came in. He didn’t turn around.
They sat. Finally, he turned to face them, hands in the pockets of his suit pants. “We’ve identified the man who killed Jonathan Pearce this morning, as well as the two men you brought down on Avenue A an hour ago. All three are German nationals, all three have lengthy criminal records.”
He nodded to the file folders on the coffee table, waited for them to open the files, then said, “You’ll see the first man, Mr. Olympic you called him, is Jochen Foer. As you know, he had the brain implant—his sheet is long and varied, but almost all his warrants are for murder. The man you shot in the head in the alley is Siegmund Brasch, and Heiner Veblen is the one you managed not to kill but arrest. Both are wanted by Interpol for trafficking and murder.”
“Hired assassins, then?”
“Seem to be. And Heiner Veblen, the gentleman you beat to a pulp, is currently in a coma at Bellevue Hospital. Ben is there, in case he comes to and decides he wants to have a come-to-Jesus talk. Though the doctors don’t think that’s likely, since he suffered a brain bleed.”
Zachery met Nicholas’s eye. “Did you have to put the man in a coma, Drummond?”
“One look at me and you’ll see he was a vicious fighter, and tried to kill me. Fortunately, I’m a good fighter as well. I didn’t hit his head, sir, everywhere else, but not his head. He fell down hard on that last kick, and his head smacked hard against the asphalt.”
Zachery studied Nicholas’s battered face, the swelling, the blood splatter on his shirt. He looked at Mike, imagined her with a gun to her head, and saw the aftermath, the man’s blood speckled on her white shirt. He’d chew their butts tomorrow about having a team with them at all times, even if they were visiting an old man in a nursing home. They’d believed they were going to pick up a boy, nothing more. Well, so much for that fine analysis. It had been too close. Would a team have made a difference? He didn’t know. He said, “Drummond, you do realize this is an all-time record for a junior agent?”
Nicholas went stiff. Mike didn’t know if it was Zachery’s tone or him calling Nicholas a junior agent. Or both. She said, without hesitation, “Sir, Nicholas did everything right, everything by the book. You would have done the same thing if you’d been there. You know these guys were pros, not some lowlife drug dealers. The German, Siegmund Brasch, he would have killed me if Nicholas hadn’t acted. I’d be good and dead, my head blown off.” She swallowed, seeing it. “He saved my life, sir. And Mr. Olympic, that was a fluke, Dr. Janovich surely told you it was. Nicholas did nothing wrong. Because of him, I’m alive.”
Zachery gave her a long look. “And I expect you to say exactly that tomorrow morning, Agent Caine, when the Shooting Incident Review Team from Headquarters arrives for the inquiry. I believe both of you acted exactly right, but I have to make the call because I have no choice. Drummond, you are suspended, pending the results of the SIRT hearing. I need your gun, and your creds.”
Zachery said nothing more, held out his hand. “Per regulation, another weapon will be assigned to you. You need to collect it, then head on home for the night. We’ll sort all this out in the morning.”
Without a word, Nicholas put his weapon and his freshly laminated credentials on the coffee table. He wondered what his former boss, Hamish Penderley of New Scotland Yard, would have said in Zachery’s position. He probably would have grabbed one of his prized antique foils and run him through.
Zachery nodded briefly. “The SIRT hearing will be at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. Neither of you be late.”
Nicholas saw Mike was about to blow. He caught her arm, shook his head.
“We’ll be there, sir. Thank you. Is that all?”
“I’m glad you’re not fighting me on this.”
Nicholas shrugged. “Rules are rules, especially when it comes to the FBI. I knew that when I signed up. As a brand-new junior agent, I’m on probation for ninety days, and there are no special favors to be given because exceptions were made for me to join the FBI. I understand, and I will be back in the morning to explain my side of things.”
“Good. Now go home, clean yourselves up, eat something, go to bed. As I said, we’ll get it all sorted out in the morning.”
Nicholas nodded, turned to leave.
Mike said, “But, sir, we can’t afford to
lose the time. Adam Pearce is on the run. He’s in danger, and we have to find him. We think he’s the key to what’s happening.”
Zachery narrowed his eyes at her. “There’s a team in place working on this, Agent Caine. You’re to see Agent Drummond home, do you understand me? And get a good night’s sleep yourself.”
Her back was ramrod straight. “Am I being disciplined as well, sir?”
He shut his eyes, shook his head and gave an exasperated sigh. “Mike, you’re being protected by getting your ass out of this building for the night. Read me?”
“Loud and clear, sir.”
“Good. You two, out of here, now.”
32
Mike called Ben while Nicholas went to get his replacement weapon.
“Please tell me the German is out of the coma and talking.”
“Nope, the lights are still out. There’s swelling, they put in a stent, so hopefully it will help things. He’s pretty messed up, Mike. Nicholas did a real number on him.”
“Thank goodness, otherwise it might have been Nicholas in the damned coma.” She’d been there. She’d seen the fight, hands and fists flying, kicks and punches, the guy finally down, then in a flash, Nicholas facing her, firing point-blank, fast and unquestioning, and she wondered for the hundredth time exactly what kind of spy work he’d done for Britain’s Foreign Office.
She refocused, shook it off. “Any chance they found an implant in the dead guy’s noggin?”
“No. Clean as a whistle. Janovich did an X-ray first thing, no implant.”
“All three are German, but probably only the one has an implant? That’s interesting. Listen, Ben, call me if anything changes there at the hospital.” She wasn’t going to tell him about the inquiry tomorrow, but of course he’d find out soon enough.