скачать книгу бесплатно
“It’s your chi, ” Yolanda opined. “It’s out of whack. What she does is like feng shui, only for people. Psychic chiropractic. You need to get readjusted.”
“Does your priest know about this?” Izzy gibed.
“This is not funny. You are psychically ill.”
She indicated Izzy’s untouched barbecue-beef sandwich. “When’s the last time you ate a decent meal?” She gazed hard at Izzy. “Are you pregnant?”
Izzy burst out laughing. “Please. There’s only been one Immaculate Conception.”
“I didn’t think you were.” Yolanda stabbed her finger at the card. “But—”
Flames. Heat, smoke. Lungs…searing…
The image of her father’s red, sweaty face filled her mind.
She heard him gasping, coughing. “Izzy…Gino…”
“Oh, my God!” Izzy cried. She jumped to her feet. Her chair clattered to the tile floor. “My father’s in danger!”
“What?” Yolanda said, reaching out to her as she rose from her chair. “Izzy, wait!”
Izzy bolted and ran outside. A black cloud of thick, oily smoke billowed on the horizon. In her mind she saw her father, saw a hallway, saw rats and shapes moving in the flames.
I’m not asleep, she thought as she ran. I’m awake, and Big Vince is in that.
She flew toward the smoke, picking up speed until her feet were barely touching the ground. Her lungs burned but she kept going, weaving around pedestrians who yelled and jumped out of her way like missed targets in a shooting simulation. It was as if someone else was operating her body and she herself had no choice but to propel herself forward.
Images roared into her mind.
Flames…rats screeching down the halls. Shapes moving in the smoke. Officer Vincenzo DeMarco. Detective John Cratty.
And a semiauto pistol—a .9 mm Glock—in a closeup that filled her field of vision.
Pointed straight at her father’s head.
A voice. “Filthy cop, you’re gonna die; no one shakes me down.”
“Hit the floor!” she screamed out loud.
Then abruptly and without warning, her astonishing burst of energy left her. She staggered forward, swaying wildly left, then right; she smacked against the side of a brick-faced building and slid down it, pitching painfully onto her side.
She was dimly aware of people crowding around her, asking her if she was all right. Should they call an ambulance?
“Hey!” Yolanda caught up with her. She was carrying Izzy’s coat and purse. “Hijo de puta, did someone mug you?”
“I’m okay.” Izzy ground the words out. Yolanda put her arm around her waist, helping her to her feet.
“Are you loca? ” Yolanda said. She whistled and waved as a cab approached. The cab swerved to the curb.
“Come on, Iz,” Yolanda said, helping her to the cab.
The cabbie peered at them and frowned as his window rolled down.
“Go toward 108th,” Izzy told him as they got in. To Yolanda, she ordered, “Get my cell phone, and call my father. Number one on my speed dial.”
The cabbie shook his head. “No way. See that smoke? The cops have got it blocked off.”
“You have to go there!” Izzy yelled.
Yolanda squeezed Izzy’s hand as she opened up Izzy’s hobo bag with her other hand and dug around. “Easy, mi amor. We don’t know your father is in that building.”
“You need a cab or not?” the driver snapped.
Ignoring him, Yolanda found Izzy’s cell phone and pressed a couple of buttons. She put the phone to Izzy’s ear.
“Cratty, ten,” came a raspy, hoarse voice. “Ten” was the same as saying “over” on a police radio phone.
“This is Izzy,” Izzy announced, confused.
“It’s John, Izzy. We’re in an ambulance. Smoke inhalation. They’ve got him sucking some oxygen but it’s just a precaution. We’re going to the Metropolitan.”
“He wasn’t shot?” she asked, her voice shrill. “Tell me if he was shot!”
“No, Iz. No. Just smoke.” He sounded a little off. “Meet us at the Met.”
Located on First, it was the nearest hospital. It was where Pat had taken his Aided last night.
And her father was with the guy she had seen in visions, beating people and skimming drugs. Why was he with him? Had he tried to shoot him?
Izzy said neutrally, “Thanks. Tell him we’ll be there.”
Disconnecting, she said to the cabbie, “Take us to the Metropolitan.”
“You got it.” He screeched into the traffic.
She said to Yolanda. “Call in and explain. You’re taking me in because I’m injured.”
“Works for me, mi’jita, ” Yolanda said, biting her lower lip as she smoothed Izzy’s hair away from her wound. “Especially because it’s true.”
Izzy and Yolanda both knew the way to the ER entrance of the Metropolitan Medical Center. Anyone who worked for the NYPD in this part of town eventually found him or herself here, if not for a perp or a personal injury, then for someone close to them.
She half crawled out of the cab while Yolanda paid the driver. An ambulance sat in the dock as two men in scrubs burst out from the ER double doors, a gurney rattling between them.
John Cratty got out of the ambulance, appearing from behind the open back door of the rig. He was wearing kicker boots, jeans, a T-shirt, and a heavy dark brown leather jacket. His face was covered with soot, but he was walking under his own steam. He motioned to the two men, pointing back into the ambulance.
Within seconds, Izzy’s father was loaded onto the gurney.
“Big Vince!” Izzy cried, hurrying toward them while Yolanda worked to stay up with her.
Izzy saw the portable O2 bottle propped against his shoulder, the mask over his face. There were saline bags and a defib machine on the gurney with him—oh, God, had he had a heart attack?
As Izzy approached, Cratty put his arms around her, giving her a tight hug. She stiffened, but he didn’t notice.
He said, “Your father’s in good shape.”
“The defib—”
“Wasn’t used. But what the hell happened to you? ”
“Just a fall,” she said as she pushed past him and ran up to her father’s gurney.
His eyes were closed.
“Daddy!” she cried. “Daddy!”
The orderlies pushed the gurney through the double doors, Izzy holding Big Vince’s limp fingers. Yolanda and Cratty brought up the rear.
Inside the building, a short man in dark blue scrubs barked orders at the two men, then said to Izzy, “We’re taking him in.” He held up a restraining hand. “You can’t go with him. Let us do our job. Besides, you look like you need help.”
“No,” she protested, but Cratty took her arm.
“You know the routine,” he reminded her. “They need their space.”
The gurney zoomed on past her as the trio hung a left and disappeared down a corridor.
“You two were in a building?” Yolanda asked him as she led Izzy to the left, through a door marked Emergency Waiting Room. “The one on fire?”
“We got the hell out of there as soon as the real firemen showed up,” he concurred, puffing air out of his cheeks. “Had a couple of rough moments.”
“What were you doing in there?” Izzy asked sharply. All her alarm bells were going off at once, and at full volume.
“We were on a detail,” he said, locking gazes with her. “Confidential.”
She didn’t know what to say. They kept walking, past people sprawled in rows and rows of orange-plastic chairs, looking pale and sick and tired of waiting.
Cratty flashed his badge and the three passed through to a second security door to the curtained sections filled with ER cases. Her father was lying on his gurney with a sooty face and bloodshot eyes barely visible above an oxygen mask covering his nose and mouth. When he saw Izzy, his eyebrows met over his nose and he tried to take off the mask.
She knew he was staring at her injury. “It’s nothing, Big Vince,” she insisted, touching her cut.
The dark-haired nurse who had just wheeled a blood pressure monitor to the side of the gurney said, “We’ll look at that.”
“It’s fine,” Izzy repeated. But the truth was, her vision was blurring and she was dizzy. “Maybe I’ll just sit down.”
And then she fainted.
Chapter 5
I t’s the gun. They will shoot him with the gun. It will stop his heart.
Izzy woke up in a softly lit room.
Pat was bending over her, the tan lines across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes softened by the dim illumination. But the worry on his face was evident, and she was touched.
“You passed out,” he said by way of greeting. He had on a sweatshirt that read Dallas Cowboys and a pair of jeans. Off-duty attire, since he wasn’t undercover. He looked sexy…and worried. “They’re keeping you under observation.”
“My father…”
Pat chuckled softly. “He’s awake, alert, and ready to leave. They want to keep him overnight, but frankly, I fear for their lives.”
She smiled at that. “Where’s Cratty? And Yolanda?”
“Back in the world. Yolanda’s very worried about you.”
“That’s so sweet,” she said.
An IV had been inserted into the back of her hand. Her gaze trailed up the clear plastic tubing to the bag hanging from a metal carrousel.
“Your electrolytes were out of whack.” He smoothed her hair away from her forehead. His fingers were calloused, but his touch was gentle. “They’re running some tests. Just as a precaution.”
His voice was low and steady. She felt calmed by his air of quiet authority.
“What happened, Izzy?” he asked her, stroking her cheek with his thumb. “Yolanda said you freaked out in the restaurant.”
“I…” She didn’t want to try to explain it to him. It was all beginning to fade. She had seen her father, hadn’t she? “I had a funny feeling…” She trailed off.
He urged a cup with a straw to her lips again. “It’s okay, darlin’. You don’t have to talk if you’re too tired.”
They sat in stillness for a moment—or what passed for stillness in a busy hospital. Doors opened, shut. The PA system paged a doctor. Machines beeped.
After a few moments Pat said, “I had a funny feeling like that, once.”
She looked up at him. He nodded calmly, but she could see the sorrow etched in his face. She assumed he was talking about his wife. She waited for him to go on, but he didn’t.
“Do you need anything?” he asked.
She said, “Is my father very upset? About me? He knows I’ve been admitted, right?”
He nodded. “Yes, he knows. And he’s upset. Bombastic is more appropriate, I’d say. But that’s because he loves you.”
She sighed heavily. “If he’s upset now, it’ll be nothing compared to telling him I want to go the Academy.” She considered. “If I can still get in. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Neurologically,” she elaborated.
“Don’t go looking for trouble,” he chided her gently.
“Why was John Cratty partnering with him?” she asked him. She debated about telling him about all the weirdness in the Prop room. But if she was wrong, she could bring a man down for nothing.
“Can’t rightly say.” Pat’s face was blank. She got it: private Department business, some kind of organized raid, something he wasn’t at liberty to discuss.
Maybe she wasn’t the only one who had felt a twinge of wrong around Cratty lately. That decided her.
