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Her vision fragmented into gray, shiny dots and there was a scream out in the world or maybe that was the nerves in her ears going haywire. She began to convulse, and she hit the icy sidewalk hard, her arms and legs twitching. For a few forevers, everything shorted out. Then as she swam back, her head began to throb.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought.
It took her a while to wrap her right hand around the grip of her revolver and get to her feet. Her left ankle hurt worse than her head. Bad sprain.
The car was long gone, but Esposito was two blocks ahead of her, dragging Sauvage on foot down the street. She was shrieking and batting at him. Esposito didn’t pay her the slightest attention. Neither did the solitary man staggering drunkenly past them in a pair of earmuffs over a do-rag and a black Mets jacket.
Izzy shouted, “Stop! Police! Torres! Torres, get out here!”
Esposito was hustling out of her kill zone—too far away to shoot. And she might hit Sauvage or Mets.
She was surprised that Esposito had taken Sauvage.
Why didn’t he drag her into the truck and tell his wheelman to take off? Obviously, he wants me to follow him.
Great.
Her best bet was to sic her uninjured partner on him. The mom-and-pop loomed across the street like a journey of a thousand miles. It took her a supreme effort to walk, but she put her pain on hold as she started across the street. She was still holding her gun, but she let her arm drop to her side, concealing it from view.
A bell on the front door of the shop tinkled as she rushed inside. The store smelled of tobacco and floor cleaner, and the clerk, a short Asian man, leaned over the counter at the front and pointed toward the opposite end of the store.
He said, “He go into the alley.”
“Did he use your phone?” she asked, as she made her way down an aisle of canned lychee nuts and Japanese rice crackers. She spread her thumb and forefinger and held them against the side of her face like a phone. “Did he call the police?”
“No call,” the man informed her, shaking his head. “No working.” He held up his white portable unit as if to corroborate his testimony, and shrugged apologetically.
Why aren’t the phones working? What is going on?
“Try again. Call 911! Tell them officers are in pursuit, on foot. Perp armed and dangerous. And tell ’em all the radios are jammed up down here.”
“It no working,” the man insisted.
“Keep trying!” she bellowed.
She burst through the back door into the alley. There were Dumpsters and trash cans, but no Torres.
She whirled in a circle, shouting, “Torres! Damn it! Where are you?”
There was no answer.
Figuring he’d circled back around, she flew back through the store and burst outside again.
No Torres there, either.
Damn it, she thought.
Esposito had put a lot of distance between himself and her. Alone, without backup, she hobbled through East Harlem, one of the more impoverished neighborhoods in all of New York City. Fifth Avenue to the East River, Ninety-Sixth to One Hundred and Fifteenth Street. Night was a heavy lead weight slung across her shoulders, a sudden dumping of snow flurries slowing her pace as surely as the pain freezing up her ankle.
Esposito maintained at least a fifty-yard lead, despite the fact that he was dragging Sauvage and she was fighting him every step. The young goth’s black combat boots kept scooting out from underneath her on the icy sidewalk; now he was screaming at her over his shoulder and brandishing his gun. Izzy wondered how long Sauvage would be able to struggle. Beneath her pea coat, her black-and-red bustier must be constricting her breathing, and her skirts were wrapped around her legs like a shroud.
A handful of curious street people—“skels” in police parlance—materialized on door stoops and alley entrances to watch the excitement. She wondered if she should tell one of them to call for help. Probably the better course was for them not to know that she needed help.
She kept going.
Then a voice inside her head said, You need to hustle. You’re on point. She’s going to die.
And you’ll be next .
Izzy jerked, hard, and nearly fell. She knew that voice. It had whispered to her in her nightmares for over a decade, speaking in riddles, promising death. She’d gone to see a shrink about it; her father wanted her to talk to their priest.
But I’m awake, she thought. I’m awake and I’m hearing it.
She took her attention off Esposito and looked all around herself—at shadows and the icy falling snow.
“Who’s there?” she called.
Allez, vite, it told her. French, which she did not speak. But which she seemed to understand, if her dreams were any indication of her linguistic abilities. For the voice often spoke to her in French. And sometimes she woke herself up, responding aloud, also in French.
Hurry. Stop him. Or they’ll die. And it will be your fault .
Then a gun went off. Izzy ducked behind a row of newspaper dispensers. She felt no compression of air, heard no impact, no telltale ping of a casing. Had someone taken a potshot at her? More important, would they take another? Was that the deal—Esposito would lure her into the line of fire and someone else would gun her down?
She inched cautiously around the dispensers and started back up the street. Her mother’s gold filigree crucifix was wedged between her breasts, flattened by her brand-new Kevlar bulletproof vest. The facing on her polyester shirt itched against her sensitive skin. She was uncomfortable and she was scared and she was mad as hell.
She had no idea how she crossed the next block without being hit by oncoming traffic, but she did it. Then she saw Esposito and Sauvage at the end of the block, racing catty-corner to a high-rise tenement. On the upper floors, flames shot from blown-out windows, licking and curling at the pitted exterior. Smoke billowed like wavy hair from the roof.
Esposito darted inside.
She got to the curb and raced into the building, yelling “Fire!” She limp-ran past the long row of tenants’ brown metal mailboxes and raced down the carpeted hall. There was no smoke yet, and she smelled garbage, marijuana and urine.
“Fire! Call 911!” she bellowed, pounding her fist on the nearest door. She lurched past the cracked, peeling wall to the next door. “Fire! Get out now! Leave the building! The building’s on fire!”
Through an open door to her right, watery light blinked above a wooden staircase topped with an Art Deco rail. She stopped, cocking her head, and detected a distant shuffling noise—rapid footfalls on wood.
She gripped the rail with her left hand and pulled herself up the stairs, her Medusa pointed toward the ceiling. Her ankle screamed in protest.
At the second-story landing, she tried the doorknob that led into the hallway. It was locked. She didn’t know if that meant Esposito had gone in that way and locked it after himself, and she debated for an instant—force the door open, or go up another story?
She decided to stick with the stairway. If he wanted her to follow him, he wouldn’t throw obstacles in her path. He’d make it easy for her.
Just like Torres made it easy for him to attack me. Is he in on it? Where is he now?
Maybe Esposito’s objective was to make sure she died in the fire. Something about that tugged at her. Dying by fire. Dying in fire. That had something to do with her. With her heritage.
What heritage? I’m a second-generation cop and my brains have been scrambled by a stun gun, she thought. I don’t know anyone who’s died in a fire. I don’t even know any firefighters.
As she climbed, she heard people screaming, and she smelled thick, oily smoke. The fire was traveling rapidly to the lower floors.
On the third floor, the hallway door hung ajar. Beyond it, the hall lights were dim, smoke curling around the sconce directly across from her. Then she looked down and noticed a three-inch piece of black lace—from Sauvage’s skirt?—draped across the transom.
Izzy painfully bent down, picked it up and examined it. Had to be. The more important question was, was it Sauvage or Esposito who had left it there for her to find? Maybe Esposito was hiding behind that open door right now, waiting to blow her head off.
Her scalp prickled. Extending her Medusa with both hands, she kicked open the door and darted into the hallway, sweeping a circle. The hallway was filling with smoke. Apartment doors slammed open as the frightened occupants spilled out of their homes. They began running toward the front of the building—toward an elevator, Izzy feared—a very, very bad thing to do in a fire.
Breaking whatever cover she had left, Izzy shouted, “Stairs! Here!” and made broad gestures to get their attention. The three or four closest to her hurried over, and she waggled the flashlight toward the stairs, bellowing, “Move it! Get out now! Go down the stairs and go across the street! Call 911 when you get outside!”
If their phones would work.
She lurched toward the back. As the terrified civilians swarmed past her, she yelled, “This is the police! Stay calm! Walk to the stairs!”
As she moved in deeper, curls of smoke rolled toward her in waves. She snatched off her hat with her left hand and waved it in front of herself, trying to keep her vision clear. A tiny, wizened man with walnut-hued skin ran past her with a barking Chihuahua in his arms.
“Po-lice!” he yelled, smiling at Izzy. “Po-lice done come! Hallelujah!”
“Take the stairs,” she told him, gesturing behind herself. “Don’t take the elevator.”
He gave her a wink and said, “Oui, ma guardienne. Merci. ”
Izzy jerked. What the hell? That seemed familiar too, being called ma guardienne . Part of her life.
She realized with a start that she had seen this hallway before, too. She looked to the left and spotted the fire extinguisher, just as she’d expected to see it in that location. There was the deep, jagged crack in the wall.
Her heart skipped beats as she remembered when and where she had seen it before:
In her vision in the restaurant.
At lunch she had watched her father as if by remote camera, only it was all in her mind. He was on a detail, walking along this exact same corridor—also during a fire. She had been sitting in a deli blocks away, but she had seen him as clearly as if she’d been there with him. She had known someone in the hall was raising a gun and taking aim, and she had shouted, “Hit the floor! ”
In her head.
And Big Vince had heard her in his head, and obeyed. The shooter had missed, and her father had lived to tell the tale, labeling it a miracle from heaven.
Big Vince wasn’t here now, but if the rest of the vision held true, there was a perp hiding at a hallway intersection off to her right, his gun pointed at her skull—and she was certain now that it had been Esposito, and that he had lured her here so he could enact the same ritual execution he’d planned for her father.
She dove to the floor and rolled onto her side, aiming her gun at the appropriate angle, aware that there was no safety on a revolver, and the last thing she wanted to do was shoot an innocent bystander.
There! She saw movement…seconds before the sconce in the wall above her head went out. Now the intersection plunged into darkness, but she still knew there was definitely someone there.
She drew another breath, keeping her arms outstretched. Her muscles began to quiver with fatigue. Her Medusa was heavy, fully loaded with six cartridges in the cylinder…
No, there are five , the voice said in her head. You used it, remember?
She blinked. She hadn’t used it. If she had, she’d be facing hours of paperwork and at least a couple of Internal Affairs interviews. Discharging a weapon while on duty was a huge deal.
Despite the darkness, she glanced downward, in the direction of her gun. Her eyes widened and her lips parted in sheer terror as little sparks wicked off her hands.
I’m on fire! she thought, as she rolled over on her side. But she wasn’t in any pain. The sparks multiplied. She was glowing .
Then the light vanished, and she wondered if she had imagined the whole thing. Maybe it was some kind of taser aftereffect.
A voice called, “Iz?” as a tall, rangy figure stepped from the smoke and shadows, into the light of the central corridor.
It was Pat. He was holding both a flashlight and a gun—a .357 Magnum. His deep-green eyes glittered in the soft yellow light that burnished the planes and hollows of his face.
“Jesus, Iz.” He set down the flashlight as he gathered her up with his left arm. “When I heard it was Esposito…”
“I’m okay,” she said as he laced his fingers through hers, easing her to her feet as he swept the area with his gun. “I don’t know where Torres is. Did he call it in?”
“Must have,” he said. “Captain Clancy told me to get my butt over here. She didn’t need to tell me twice.”
Her leg buckled as she put weight on her injured ankle, and he kept her from falling, his face creasing with concern.
“I’m okay,” she said again, then realized that she had to be honest about her injury. They were on a mission. She confessed, “My ankle’s sprained. It hurts.”
“You stay here, then,” he ordered her as he retrieved his flashlight and clicked it off—a wise precaution, one she would have taken herself.
“No way,” she insisted, coughing as the smoke seeped back into her lungs. “I think he took her toward the back.”
He gazed at her and shook his head. “Don’t go all Jane Wayne on me, Officer. I’m getting you out of here.”
“He wants me to follow him. If I don’t take the bait, he might shoot her,” she argued.
With the stern expression of a detective who could make hardened gangbangers break down and cry after ten minutes in an interview room, Pat said, “You’re out, Iz. I’m on it.”
Coughing harder, she fanned the smoke away from them both with her hat.
“She’s on my watch,” Izzy insisted. “I’m thinking the fire escape. Let’s go.”
As she stepped forward, there was a loud ripping noise overhead. She gazed up, just as an enormous section of the ceiling dislodged and crashed to the floor. The impact threw her into Pat’s arms and he dragged her along the hallway as another section cracked free and smashed inches from her back.
An illuminated Exit sign buzzed and winked about ten feet ahead of them. Pat reached it first and pressed his hand on the metal door beneath it.
“It’s cool,” he reported. Meaning that there was no fire on the other side. Then he yanked it open.
Their feet clanged on metal; they had reached the fire escape, a metal rectangle from which ladderlike stairs angled upward and downward. Reflexively, they both looked up. Far above them, flames danced on the roof.
Then an eerie purplish-black light bloomed from below and streaked toward them like a missile. They both dropped to the floor of the fire escape; as it bobbed dangerously, the black light exploded against the open door and tore it off its hinges.
Bricks broke and flew outward; Pat threw himself on top of Izzy and bellowed, “Cover your head!”
A fragment of brick pelted her forearm. She heard a shower of pieces ringing against the metal floor. Pat grunted.
“Are you hurt?” she cried.
“No, I’m okay.” He gripped her shoulders. “Stay down. Here comes another one.”
“What’s going on?” she demanded, trying to jerk up her head. But Pat was in the way.
