Truth Or Die Part 18

New York drivers have a well-earned rep for impatience, but even they know when to lay off their horns. You honk at a cop and you're likely to see some real impatience, and that old Buick LeSabre blocking traffic was an unmarked police car, as far as everyone could tell.

Everyone, that is, except the guy at the wheel four cars back who wanted me dead.

Quickly, I made my way behind a Prius parked along the curb. The angle was wrong, though. I couldn't see well enough up the street.

So much for the gift of silence, too. The line of cars now stretched all the way down the block, well beyond sight of the flashing red and blue. Any driver bringing up the rear had no idea why he was stopped. The horns began kicking in, one louder than the last.

Fine by me. I was banking on the confusion.

As fast as I got to the curb was how slowly I began moving alongside the parked cars, peering over the hoods until I had a clean line. But it wasn't happening. The headrest of a seat, a side-view mirror-something was always in the way.

I should've been able to spot him by now.

Finally, there came a good angle. I was maybe twenty feet away, sidled up next to the back tire of a MINI Cooper. Looking through the gla.s.s of the rear hatch, I had the perfect view.

Of nothing.

I could see the Jeep, but the driver's seat was empty. The engine was running, and I couldn't suppress the immediate thought that maybe I should've been, too.

Gripping my pistol with both hands, I was whipping it around like a pointer. Where are you? Over here? Over there?

I didn't know whether to move or stay put. People were starting to get out of their cars. Some were yelling, others walking ahead for a closer look. No one knew what was happening. Including me.

Then, with one glance to the left, I saw him.

He poked his head out from behind the Prius back where I'd started. I'd gone to him; he'd come to me. We'd missed each other. He had no intention of letting that happen again.

Like a bull out of the gate he came at me, running with his arm raised. His first shot caromed off the sidewalk mere inches to my left, the sound setting off screams up and down the block. People were scattering everywhere as I bolted around the next car at the curb, just barely eluding the second shot. Had the MINI Cooper been any less mini, I would've been nailed in the back for sure.

Three-point-eight billion years of evolution tucked away in your DNA ...

Immediately, I spun around with my arms locked, the inside of my index finger flush against the trigger. Once again, I had the perfect view.

And once again, it was of nothing.

The sidewalk was empty. He wasn't there.

But he was far from gone.

CHAPTER 56.

I'VE NEVER cracked the cover of Sun Tzu's The Art of War. It's never even made the to-read pile next to my bed. But I had to believe that somewhere buried in the book was a rule that said if the enemy knows where you are but you don't know where the enemy is ... move.

As fast and low as I could, I zigzagged across the street, stopping only when I saw some bald guy in a suit halfway out of his shiny red Cadillac. He was crouched, looking through the window with his entire head exposed as if he'd somehow missed that physics cla.s.s in high school explaining the effect of a speeding bullet on a piece of gla.s.s. This just in, pal, the bullet wins....

"Hey," I tried whispering, which was pretty much a lost cause given the cacophony of horns still blaring. The entire street had become a parking lot, an exceedingly angry one at that.

"Hey!" I tried again, louder.

Finally, he turned around and I motioned with both hands for him to get down. That immediately got me a look suggesting I should mind my own effin' business. Then he saw the gun in my right hand. That did the trick. He ducked back into his seat so fast he literally banged his bald head on the top of the car.

Any other time, any other place, that would've been funny.

I wasn't laughing.

All I could do was keep looking left and right as I approached the other sidewalk, my head on a swivel. Forget my trigger finger, the slightest movement anywhere in front of me had my entire body twitching. Throw in some self-doubt, and I was close to drowning in my own sweat. Did I really need to go after a trained CIA field agent head-on?

Too late.

It was like lightning before the thunder. I first saw a flash in the corner of my eye. I turned quickly to look, squinting for focus, and heard a booming voice right behind it.

The voice was saying something. He was saying something. But he was too far away; I couldn't make out the words.

The voice, though ... I knew the voice. It was familiar.

It was Owen.

He was sprinting toward me on the sidewalk, his cell phone lit up with one of those flashlight apps. d.a.m.n, those things are bright. He was close enough now, the words beginning to come together.

"You!" he was screaming. "Find you!"

Find me? No.

Behind me!

I spun around, hands out front, my eyes blowing up wide with panic as I looked out over the barrel of my pistol to see another gun already lined up with my chest. Somehow he'd gotten behind me.

Now he was right in front of me, dead center. All Gordon's partner had to do was pull the trigger. But he suddenly had a problem ...

He couldn't see me.

The light from Owen's phone hit his face so fast I could practically see his pupils snap shut. He raised his arm to shield his eyes, but it was the other arm I was watching. The one with the gun. He was swinging it right at Owen.

There was no thought, no planning, no decision. Just instinct. And maybe a little trace memory thrown in for good measure in case he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

In other words, I aimed a little bit higher.

I got off two shots. I couldn't tell if the first one hit him, but there was no doubt about the second. Let's just say it was going to be a closed-casket funeral, and leave it at that.

"C'mon," said Owen. "Let's go."

That was all he said. Or maybe that was all I heard.

For sure, it was more than I was able to say, which was nothing. I could barely breathe, let alone talk. But I was keenly aware. The kid came back for me.

Later, I would thank him. The heart rate would slow; the thoughts and words would come. I'd point out that this was the second time he'd saved my life. I'd even crack that I'd never been so happy to have someone ignore what I asked him to do. If Owen had fled back to the hotel from Lamont's car as I'd asked-as he'd told me he would-I would've been the one lying on the pavement in a pool of blood.

But he hadn't. So I wasn't.

Yes. Later, I would do all this. When there was time to think and sort things out. But the moment after I pulled the trigger was no different than the moment right before.

No thought, no planning, no decision. Just instinct. The same instinct Owen had.

Let's go.

CHAPTER 57.

I WENT to sleep having killed a man. I woke up thinking I'd at least find out who he was.

It didn't matter if he wasn't carrying ID. There were other ways. So many other ways. Fingerprints. Dental records. Facial recognition software. If ever there was a job for CrackerJack ...

"What time is it?" I asked Owen with my one good eye open off the pillow. My head was killing me. The rest of me wasn't faring much better.

Owen was sitting on the edge of the other queen bed in our two-room bunker at the Stonington staring intently at the television and the start of the local morning news. He could've been a statue if it hadn't been for his hands. They were doing that dry wash thing again. What's the deal with that?

"It's six," he answered.

That explained the hint of daylight along the perimeter of the drawn curtains, not to mention why I still felt so tired. It was barely dawn, and I'd only been asleep for a couple of hours. Longer than Owen, though, apparently.

There's one exception to the age-old maxim about news reporting-if it bleeds, it leads-and that's the early-morning broadcast. At the start of the day, one thing trumps everything else. The weather. Short of an apocalypse, that's what people want to hear about first. The eternal question? It's not the meaning of life. It's Will I need an umbrella?

According to the far-too-chipper weatherman pointing out some incoming clouds on the Doppler radar, the answer was a definite maybe. There was a forty percent chance of showers in the afternoon.

Of course, there was a hundred percent chance of two shooting deaths overnight in the Chelsea section of Manhattan.

The weatherman, still grinning, sent it back to the anchor, who did her best to segue into a more somber tone as the words DETECTIVE DEATH appeared on-screen. Next to them was a picture of Lamont. He must have fallen to the ground a thousand times in my mind before I'd finally been able to drift off to sleep.

Now tell us who the G.o.dd.a.m.n son of a b.i.t.c.h was who killed him. Tell us about "Gordon's partner."

As if he could read my mind, Owen stopped rubbing his hands and glanced back over his shoulder at me.

"They're not going to know," he said softly.

The second he said it, I knew he was right. Even if the police did know, they wouldn't be quick to release the name to the press. It would raise more questions than answers.

"At this time, the ident.i.ty of the second victim, who is believed to be the man responsible for Detective Lamont's murder, is unknown," said the anchor, so keyed to her teleprompter that she didn't seem to even grasp how twisted that sounded.

Even more so because there wasn't even a mention of the other triggerman. Me.

Was there really no one who saw me shoot him?

The anchor moved on to a fire in a Queens tenement building, prompting Owen to shut off the television. As soon as he turned to me, I knew the question coming, and it certainly wasn't about how I'd slept.

"How do you want to do this?" he asked.

That was the part we hadn't discussed after returning to the hotel. The how. Our focus had been the what, as in What do we do now? The night had changed everything.

Detective Lamont was dead, and we knew why. We owed it to him, his family, and everyone he worked with to come forward. Maybe Owen was right. Maybe justice wouldn't be served in the end. But it no longer seemed like our call to make.

"Lamont's precinct," I said. "I think that's where we begin."

Owen nodded. "Do you want to call ahead?"

"No. Let's just show-"

Before I could get the word up out of my mouth, Owen's phone lit up on top of his backpack by the TV. I thought it was an incoming call at first, but there was no ring, no buzzing or vibrating.

"That's strange," said Owen, going over to check it.

"What is?" I asked.

"It's an e-mail."

"So?"

"I shouldn't be getting any," he said. "The account uses an ent.i.ty authentication mechanism I designed myself. It's way beyond the X.509 system."

I stared at him blankly. "Okay, now in English," I said.

"It means that for me to get an e-mail it has to be piggybacked on one I already sent. But I only set up the account yesterday. I haven't sent an e-mail to anyone."

No sooner did he say it than we both realized he was wrong. He had sent an e-mail to someone. From Lamont's car.

"What's it say?" I asked, watching him read.

Owen tossed me the phone so I could see for myself. It was more than an e-mail. It was hope.

Underneath a screen grab from one of the interrogation videos were a name and an address in Washington, DC. Georgetown, to be exact.

My partner always believed in what he was doing, McGeary added. I hope you do, too.