When her eyes became better adjusted, Nikki pressed her speed but paid for it. She whiffed a massive pothole in the concrete and stepped right into it. Only a small crosshatch of rebar on one side of the hole kept Heat from falling right through it to the street below.
Nikki hated backing off her speed but resigned herself to a more careful pace and eased her sprint to a jog. Weaving around loose rocks and sharp metal, she approached the new section’s termination at 30th Street, the end of the line. Heat cranked it down to a walk. That’s when she saw the red dot cross the sawhorse beside her, then rise up her pant leg.
She dove behind a large plastic tub stenciled as “Clean Soil” and waited for the shot. It never came.
Heat rolled in the dirt. On the other side of the container, she came up in a brace. She spotted her sniper.
He was too far away to get an accurate shot. Plus he wasn’t aiming at her anymore. He back-slung his rifle again, vaulted the ornate deco railing, and balanced his heels on the edge.
She started for him. “NYPD, freeze!”
He turned and stared right at her, then looked down—and dove.
Nikki reached the spot where he had leaped and looked in amazement. Immediately below her stood the Trapeze School of New York, housed in a giant, inflatable white dome. Her perp had soft landed on it like it was a kid’s bouncy castle.
And fled.
Heat swung a leg over to follow but stopped when she saw him disappearing into a taxi across the street. She tried to get the medallion number, but it was too far away and it sped off too quickly.
Back at the sniper’s hide overlooking Cafe Gretchen, the tech from Evidence Collection knelt to show Heat the compressed earth and trampled grasses where he had fired at her. “Get the best casts you can of those footprints,” she said, thinking back to the work boot of whoever had ransacked Nicole Bernardin’s apartment. “See if they’re size eleven.”
She stood up and arched her back. “You OK?” asked Detective Ochoa.
“Yeah, just a little sore. Took an unexpected step into a pothole up there during the chase.”
“You’re lucky that’s all that’s sore.” Ochoa held up two plastic evidence bags, each containing a shell casing. “No shortage of stopping power here.”
Heat curled her right hand to form a circular hollow in her palm and closed one eye to peer through it like a sniper’s scope down at the cafe. Another ECU tech was busy inside the yellow tape excavating a slug from the planter beside her chair. Nikki felt a chill and turned back to Ochoa. “I don’t want the same thing to happen with this brass that happened to the glove.”
“Already with you. I’m taking these to the print lab myself and sitting with them all night, if I have to.” He started to go but took a step back. “No more close calls, OK?”
“I’ll try. Meanwhile, I’ll never complain about an earthquake again.”
Back down at street level, Heat found her waiter in the back of the cafe. When she handed him the money for her latte and tipped him, he said, “You’re kidding, right?” And then he looked at her and saw that she wasn’t.
A gleaming black Crown Victoria pulled up to the curb when she stepped back out front. Rook rolled out of the passenger seat and hugged her. “Now that I know you’re alive, thank you for interrupting my dinner. Seriously. Bless you.”
Wally Irons hauled himself from behind the wheel and ambled around the car to the sidewalk. “Heat, you’re going to give me a heart attack.”
“No, I think the mud pie will get you first, Captain,” said Rook.
Irons chuckled and said to her, “Jamie’s been like this all night. What a kidder.” Then he frowned. “In all seriousness, Detective, in light of recent events that I shouldn’t need to remind you of, what the hell are you doing exposing yourself to such a risky meet, alone and at night?”
“I appreciate your concern, sir, but I am working a case, and that’s not going to stop at sundown. Plus, my meeting was with someone I knew, who happens to be an ex-cop, so it didn’t seem like a risk to me.”
“Now what does it seem like?” asked Rook.
“A setup.”
“Who’s the ex-cop?” asked Irons.