Ten seconds lost.
Ten seconds until the three shooters rounded the bend and saw her.
The engine of the SUV stopped revving and purred. It was coming her way. Nikki was caught in a classic pincer movement.
Even if she were able to climb the ice-glazed rocks, there was no way to do it in ten seconds. With no opportunity to act upon, she made her own. In a split second of computing odds and physics, Detective Heat created what her training officers called a SWAG plan—acronym for Scientific Wild Ass Guess. She drew her weapon and started running toward the SUV.
The driver would be looking for her, so she had to come at him unexpectedly enough to startle and quick enough not to be a target. The midday overcast was so gloomy that she could see his headlight beams stabbing through the falling sleet and snow. Charging fast around the bend, Nikki dropped and rolled out right into the SUV’s path, putting two rounds into the windshield and then stretching lengthwise between the front wheels, letting it drive right over her. By the time he braked, her head was under its rear bumper. She scrambled out from underneath and started running back toward Fifth Avenue.
Heat knew there was no room for the SUV to turn around, which was the core of her SWAG plan, to charge past instead of run from it. What she hadn’t expected was for the driver to jam it in reverse and floor it to pursue her. The engine banshee whined and wheels threw slush as the rear end closed in on her. Losing a step of critical speed, Nikki turned and fired on the run at a rear tire. The shot missed and punctured the fender. She got off one more and the tire burst. The vehicle swayed wildly. The driver overcorrected, sending himself into a skid. His tires whirled uselessly in the slush and he smacked the rear end into the wall. Nikki kept moving, but when she heard the door unlatch, she turned, braced, and pumped four bullets into the driver’s side window, shattering it. A head in a ski mask slumped against the windowsill, motionless.
Around the bend came the sound of feet slapping the wet road on the double. Heat would be a sitting duck if she made a run toward the entrance on Fifth. Once again she reversed field, moving toward her attackers, but stopped at the SUV. Nikki holstered, grabbed the roof rack, and climbed up on top of it. From that height, she was able to take hold of the bare branch of a shrub sagging down from the park. She pulled herself up the wall, hoisting the upper half of her body over it, the rocky ledge digging into her waist as her legs dangled.
A bullet hit the rock beside her left foot and sent out a spray of jagged chips. Nikki almost lost her grip on the shrub but held on, hooking her knee on the ledge. When she hauled herself up and over, she heard something hard strike the roof of the SUV with a resonant bong. She reached for her holster. It was empty.
Below, a protest of air wheezed from a shock absorber, and Nikki heard the thump of multiple boot soles on sheet metal. They were climbing up after her.
She got up and ran full speed. Her legs fought through waist-high shrubbery turned leafless and sharp by winter. The branches stung her thighs and whipped behind her as she plowed east paralleling the Transverse. A panic swell rose when she reflected on the sound back there. Boots on metal. They hadn’t even paused to talk or check the driver, they just came. Fifth Avenue, if she could just get to Fifth Avenue.