The porcelain cup exploded in Nikki’s hand. She immediately dropped for cover behind the planter beside her chair and reached for her gun. When she did, she found the cup handle still in her fingers and let it fall to the pavement. Her shirt front was warm and wet. She felt for a wound, but the liquid was latte, not blood. She wondered, How did he miss with a laser sight?
The answer came when she turned to make sure nobody behind her had taken the slug. Patrons inside the cafe were oblivious to her but were reacting to something else: An aftershock large enough to make the overhead lamps sway and send the stacked glassware behind the espresso bar crashing onto the back counter. Also large enough to throw off the aim of a sniper.
Heat popped up for a fast recon. As soon as she did, the red dot traced across the planter toward her, and she gophered down just as the shot rang out and the bullet kicked up a spray of potting soil. But she had seen the source of the laser.
“Man, did you feel that?” asked the waiter as he stepped out the door.
“Get inside,” she shouted. His smile dropped when he saw the Sig Sauer in her hand. “Get everyone down. Away from this window.” He started to back up. “And call 911. Tell them, sniper on the High Line, shots fired. Officer needs help.” He hesitated. “Now.”
She chanced another peek and saw a dark form break from his position in the tall grasses and run north on the elevated path. Heat vaulted the planter to the sidewalk and dodged traffic across Tenth to go after him.
As she ran, Nikki kept an eye upward to make sure he didn’t stop to take another shot at her. She raced along the sidewalk past an hourly-rate parking lot and came to the public staircase leading up to the High Line at 18th Street. She powered up the four zigzag flights and emerged topside, crouching, panting, gun braced.
Then she spotted him in the distance.
Her sniper had a good head start and was already crossing over West 19th. A strange familiarity came over Heat as she followed him—the night chase, the rifle he cradled—it all took her right back to her pursuit of Don’s killer. She kicked up her speed, sprinting, all-out, so this one wouldn’t get away.
Nikki lost a step dodging a couple standing in the path beside a park bench. When she blew past, the woman said to her boyfriend, “What’s going on? She has a gun, too.” Heat told them to call 911, hoping Dispatch could track her progress. Maybe backup would be there to cut the shooter off where the High Line terminated in one block, and he’d come down the stairs.
But he didn’t take them.
When Nikki rounded a bend in the path, she caught his silhouette climbing over the top of the chain link fence to the construction zone for the park’s extension. The perp spotted her, too. He dropped to the ground, setting up for a shot. But unslinging the rifle took time. She stopped and braced against a light post to take aim.
He rolled in the dirt behind a pile of gravel and disappeared. Seconds later she spotted him. With his rifle slung across his back, he blasted through an opening in a debris curtain that hung from a crane.
Following him through that drape made her too vulnerable. If he was waiting for her on the other side, she’d be a big target. So when Heat got over the fence, she opted to lose a few seconds to pick her way around to the side of it rather than roll through the partition in the middle.
She crept through at the edge and paused. Where was he?
Then Nikki heard feet running away on crushed cinder.
Even in daytime, the work zone for the High Line’s new segment would have been challenging—an obstacle course of uneven dirt, piles of rebar, and stacks of old wooden crossties that had been ripped up and tossed aside for removal. But at night, it was plain treacherous. The only light in that section bled up from the street below. Everything on top where she ran became shadow and form, darkness and outline—including her perp.