Malcolm and Reynolds had the neighborhood around 77th and Amsterdam buttoned down by
the time Detective Heat and the others arrived. Surveillance teams and extra
manpower for pursuit covered all front and back access, including both ends of the
alley. They had alerted School Police, who put nearby PS 87 on precautionary
lockdown and cleared Tecumseh Park on the corner of nannies and their charges, as
well as a few day sleepers and one pair of trysters. Uniformed officers patrolled
the rooftop of Windsor’s building; others waited in the stairwell near his second-
floor apartment and on the fire escape outside his bedroom window. For good measure,
an NYPD sharpshooter had taken position atop the Equinox gym building across the
avenue.
An ESU truck pulled up at 78th, behind Heat and her group, dispersing a black-suited
SWAT unit. Nikki reflected that she had been seeing a lot of those brave folks
lately.
A surveillance team with high-powered scopes, hidden across Amsterdam, reported no
movement or activity in the locksmith shop. The plywood sheeting over one of the
storefront windows Heat and Ochoa had busted out in their faux rescue of Windsor
limited the field of view, but after thirty minutes, nothing had moved and nobody
had gone in or out. The apartment building super, territorial and nosy, said he had
seen Windsor leave his place first thing that morning and he had not come back. Just
for drill, Heat asked Rhymer to dial the number of the shop. It rang out and dumped
to voice mail.
“What’s the play, Coach?” asked Malcolm.
Heat put on her bulletproof vest. “Roach, take Rhymer and Feller upstairs with you
and hit the apartment on my green. The rest of you follow me. We’re taking the
store.”
They took ready positions and when Heat radioed the green light, they moved on the
double to the front door. Flanked by a pair of ESU tactical officers, Nikki took the
lead. With about five critical seconds of window exposure, she raced to the glass
door and pulled it open.
And her heart stopped.
A hand grenade dropped from the inside door handle and rolled on the linoleum at her
feet.
Heat shouted, “Grenade!” and dove backward onto the sidewalk, where her two
armored SWAT companions threw themselves over her body. In the eternity she waited
for the blast, Heat replayed the heavy metal clonk on the floor and pictured the
green thatched oval spinning before her in slow motion. While it spun, Nikki
processed the deaths of Rainbow’s prior detective victims, all of whom had been
lured and ambushed. The iPad suddenly made sense.
Time started moving again without a detonation.
The emergency services unit quickly deployed handheld blast shields, and Heat and
the others retreated behind them.
Still no explosion.
The bomb squad arrived with men in heavy suits and an armored disposal truck. They
sent in a robot to retrieve the grenade. After much examination it was deemed a
souvenir prop, the kind you’d see in a joke shop or on a type-A manager’s desk as
a paperweight.
The Roach team had cleared Glen Windsor’s apartment with no drama and no Glen
Windsor. After the bomb squad had swept the locksmith shop with dogs and sensors,
Heat and her crew went in, with the obvious knowledge that they’d not find Rainbow
in there, either.
Heat did find something left for her on the glass display counter beside the cash
register: the hard drive to her apartment’s disabled lipstick cam. It was tied in a
bow of string with all the colors of the rainbow.