Frustrated and completely confused, she made herself lie down. To her amazement, she immediately began to doze, even with the noise.
As she felt herself fading, she realized, to her dismay, that she could sleep because she felt safe.
Why this sudden need to feel safe? She’d lived in the city her whole life. She loved her job, the pub and having her own apartment.
But that was before someone had tried her apartment door, before she’d felt she was being stalked by a man in a hoodie and a girl had ended up on the subway tracks moments later.
The next thing she knew, she was waking groggily with special agent Craig Frasier knocking at the bedroom door, telling her that it was 5:00 a.m.
*
Craig went in to work early—ridiculously early—after he dropped off his guests and stopped by a diner for breakfast.
He pulled out the reports he’d been working on, sheets and sheets of eye-witness statements and forensics from the diamond thefts. Glancing at the clock impatiently, he rose at last and headed for the tech department. To his surprise and pleasure, he found that Wally O’Neill was in his office, or rather, his cubicle.
“Hey,” Wally said, after nearly dropping his coffee cup, startled by Craig’s appearance so early in the day. “I was looking forward to seeing you. You can tell the bosses that you were right. They were in too much of a hurry to put a bad situation behind them.”
“Tell me more,” Craig said.
“I’ve finished my analysis, and there are definitely two sets of jewelry thieves out there. To be fair, I’m not surprised you and Miss Finnegan were the only ones who saw the differences because they’re not obvious. The guys you caught are five-nine, five-ten, six foot even and six foot one. The guys from the Jersey tapes are six even, six-one, six-one and six-two.”
“Great work, thanks,” Craig said. He wasn’t pleased or relieved; he wished he’d been wrong. At least he’d saved innocent men from a murder charge, but that meant the killers were still out there. “Have you sent the info up to Eagan yet?”
“Emailed it to him...marked urgent. If he’s in, I’m sure he’s seen it.”
“Are you analyzing the video surveillance from the subway last night?”
“Not officially—NYPD are handling that. But Eagan managed to get it to me.”
“May I see?”
“Sure. And in my opinion? That kid was pushed.”
“Show me,” Craig said. He dragged a chair from the next cubicle to join Wally at his computer.
The footage was grainy and only caught so much.
“I backed up pretty far before the incident,” Wally said. “I was looking for that guy in a hoodie from the Finnegan woman’s police report and several of the witness statements.”
“And?”
“I found twenty guys who could be him.”
“Great,” Craig muttered.
“Wait, wait—I’m not your go-to man for nothing,” Wally assured him. He paused the footage. “Guy in a hoodie here, guy in a hoodie there. But they look up, they look around, they look at their phones. Now...” He unfroze the frame and images went by. Then he stopped the film again. “Guy in a hoodie here. Head down all the time. Dark hoodie, either black or dark gray. Watch him—never looks up once.”
Craig studied the man as he paced the platform, then found a place by a pillar and lounged against it.
He was in a position where he could watch the stairs, see who was coming down. And still, it was impossible to see his face.
“There’s Miss Finnegan,” Wally said, pointing.
Craig looked, and there was Kieran, coming down the stairs in her work suit. She smiled and apologized to someone as they brushed shoulders, then merged into the crowd. He saw her look around and frown and then take out her phone.
He saw the people on the platform, teens, uniformed schoolgirls, a rabbi, several Muslim women, everyone waiting, some patiently, some less so, edging forward.
Everyone edging forward.
Kieran looked up from her phone and appeared to be searching for someone.
The guy in the dark hoodie had shifted. He’d joined the throng, moving in more and more closely, filtering his way between people until he was directly behind Kieran. And as if she sensed someone there, she moved away from the edge and closer to the rabbi.
And then the girl fell.
Had the guy in the hoodie pushed her?
Or had he, like those around him, just surged forward?
He saw the chaos that ensued, the girl on the tracks and Kieran—right above her—reaching out. The girl scrambled up with the aid of Kieran’s hand, almost leaping onto the platform as if her life depended on it.
Which it did.
After that it looked as if all the pins in a bowling alley had been struck, with people falling here, there and everywhere. They’d all been pushing to get on the train, and then some had tried to help Kieran, while others had apparently gotten caught in the crush.
“Looks like our Miss Finnegan is a true hero,” Wally said. “What are the odds on that? The same woman who came in here to help winds up saving a life a few days later.”
What were the odds?