The dead man had been wearing a hoodie, but the hood had fallen away as he fell, and Craig gasped.
He knew that face.
No time to worry about that now. He hunkered down to feel for a pulse, while Mike called in the shooting.
No pulse. The man was dead. He’d bled out from the hole in his heart.
It occurred to Craig suddenly that it had all gone down by the book. He regretted the fact that he’d had to kill the man.
Because he knew him. He’d seen him before. Several times. At Finnegan’s. With Jimmy.
It seemed obvious. He’d been at the pharmacy to kill Bailey Headley before she could give anyone a description of the woman who had purchased the phone.
The sound of sirens filled the air.
He hung his head. It would be hours now before he could leave. Hours before he could get to Finnegan’s.
And he had never before felt such an urgency to be there.
* * *
Kieran didn’t have to wait for the news to hear about the shooting.
Marty filled her in.
He was proud to be on duty all night, watching over her and the pub. Although, as he was quick to assure her, he wasn’t alone.
Detective Mayo had sent in several officers, two in uniform and two in plain clothes. The two in uniform were there to be imposing. The two in plain clothes were there for backup.
She had to admit she was worried, though also hugely relieved that Craig and Mike were all right. But, she reminded herself, she had promised to steal a cell phone.
Even with the place filled with cops and Marty there watching her, stealing Jimmy’s phone was, as she had promised Craig, a piece of cake.
She sat at the table with Jimmy for a few minutes while he told her about stocks and bonds.
She didn’t know much about either one and had no real idea what he was talking about, but she pretended to pay attention.
His phone was sitting on the table. She was easily able to lean toward him on an elbow as if fascinated by what he had to say, and ease it off onto her lap.
She could always say she had found it on the floor, but she doubted it was ever going to come to that. People lost phones at Finnegan’s all the time. She was pretty sure that Jimmy had left his on the bar more than once.
But after Jimmy had left and with his phone tucked safely in her pocket, they all stopped to watch the news and suddenly it all seemed so much more immediate and terrifying than when Marty had told her about it.
She found herself shaking with relief when the reporter on the scene emphasized that no one other than the shooter, who had died at the scene, had even been injured.
“Live by the sword, die by the sword,” a customer at the bar murmured.
Others echoed the sentiment. If a guy was shooting at innocent people in a pharmacy, it was probably a damned good thing that he’d gotten shot instead.
A lot of people left after that, and it turned into a quiet night. Kieran didn’t want to leave, so she decided to take advantage of all the empty tables to start scrubbing them down with the special polish they used to protect the wood.
She was on the third table when she found scratches that annoyed her. She tried to polish them out at first, then realized that they went too deep, that someone had written on a piece of paper and pressed down so hard that the impression had gone through to the wood.
“Idiots,” she murmured to herself. “Would they do something like this at home? I don’t think so.”
But just as she realized that they were going to have to sand the table to even out the surface, she paused. She’d seen Jimmy here the other night along with Gary and the two unknown men—the dark guy and the Nordic-looking guy.
She hesitated, then headed back to the office and found paper, a pencil and a heavy jade paperweight, before returning to the table. The impression was so faint that she hoped the paperweight would give her the pressure she needed to make it readable.
She almost crashed into Marty; she’d forgotten that he was there, watching over her.
“Please don’t go off without telling me,” he asked her.
“I’m sorry. I just needed something from the office.”
“Just tell me when you’re going to disappear, okay?”
“I’ll tell you next time, I promise.”
Marty nodded, apparently appeased, and she hurried back to the table. She realized that he was watching her closely and tried to appear nonchalant about what she was doing.
It was trickier than stealing a phone, but she managed to make it appear that she was trying to remove a spot, when in reality she was rubbing the paper into the indentations with the paperweight. A faint impression began to emerge on the paper, and she began to use the pencil to capture what had been written.
She almost couldn’t believe her eyes when something legible began to appear.
It was an address, but she couldn’t quite make it out. At first she thought it said Forty-Second Street.
The Theater District?
Then she realized that the number was a forty-seven. The address was on Forthy-Seventh Street near Fifth Avenue.
The Diamond District. And to the best of her knowledge, it was a store that hadn’t been hit as yet, not by the water-gun-wielding thieves—or by the killers.
She fumbled, reaching into her pocket for her phone. She dialed Craig, but the call went straight to voice mail.
The same thing happened when she tried Mike’s phone.
She knew there were at least four policemen and one FBI agent in the pub, but still...
As she sat there, Declan came over and told her to go home. “Have your agent take you—and make sure he stays with you.”
She looked at her brother. “Declan, this is getting too scary. What about you and Danny and Kevin? I’m beginning to be afraid for all of us.”
Should she tell him what she’d just found?
That could put him in danger, too.
Or it could mean nothing. Maybe some idiot had been writing down the address of a place to buy a ring for his fiancée.
Somehow she doubted that.
“Don’t worry. Debbie’s already gone, and the rest of us are going home soon. Danny, Kevin, myself and Mary Kathleen, the four of us will go to my place. We’ll be a little tight, but we’ll be fine,” he assured her.
“How long?” she murmured. “How long can we do this? How can you run a business when you’re worried all the time that something awful’s going to happen?”
“Something has to give. And,” he reminded her, “I’m good at taking care of myself.”
It was true, she knew. When they’d been kids, Declan had been able to win them all the toys they wanted at every street fair. Even then, he could shoot with precision. And nowadays he had both a gun permit and the gun to go with it.
She nodded.
He grinned. “I’d make you come, too, except I think you’re in even better hands.”
“Marty Salinger?” she asked him, surprised.
“The FBI,” he said, smiling.
She knew he meant Craig. And that he assumed Craig himself would join her as soon as possible.
So much for brothers being overprotective. All three of hers seemed to think that whatever was going on between her and Craig was fine and dandy. They liked him. Really liked him.
What wasn’t to like?
Still...
She found it a little perplexing that they’d never once so much as questioned his intentions.
“Okay,” she said. “Maybe I should go to the hospital. Julie might want to go home.”
“No need. She’s settled in there for the night,” he told her.
“How do you know?”
“She called Danny.”
> “Oh,” Kieran murmured. She rose to go, but Declan took her arm to stop her.
“Whatever that kid tells you, do it, okay? He had to go through some pretty major training to be where he is, so you listen to him, okay? Stay safe, Kieran. Please.”
“Of course,” she said.
She collected everything from the table, glad that Declan was too distracted to notice what she’d really been doing. She tucked the rubbing into her pocket, then found Marty and asked to go home. As they passed the table where she’d been sitting with Jimmy, she bent down and pretended to find his phone on the floor.
“Someone will be missing that,” Marty said.
“Yeah, but at least I know this guy. I’ll get it back to him tomorrow. He’s in almost every day.”
Marty just nodded.
She took a deep breath and said, “I can’t reach Craig.”
“He’s going through a lot, I imagine. He shot a man. That’s a lot of red tape,” Marty said.
“I really need to reach him,” she said.
“What is it? Can you tell me?” he asked. “I’m not Craig, but I am FBI.”
She hesitated, then told him what she’d found and how scared she was starting to feel. He nodded and pulled out his phone. The next thing she knew, she was talking to assistant director Eagan.
Eagan thanked her and told her to go home. “I’ll send men to that address, and we’ll see if anything is going on.”
“Better?” Marty asked her when she hung up and handed him back his phone.
“Much.”
“Give me a minute. I want to take a look at the street,” he said. “Stay inside. That’s a cop in the corner there. I’ll come back in for you in a minute or two.”
She agreed, and a minute later, as promised, Marty was back. He told her to follow him, then did his best to shield her with his own body as they went to the car.
He was equally careful when they got out in front of her apartment.
The minute they hit the sidewalk, the karaoke club bombarded them with an Adele number sung slightly too high.
He grinned at her. “Karaoke! I love it. What a cool place to live.”
“Thanks.”
He followed her into her apartment and watched as she secured both the bolts. She turned and asked him if he wanted anything.
He shook his head. “Get some sleep,” he told her. “I promise, I’m better than a German shepherd. I’ll be on the sofa, watching the door.”
In her room, Kieran donned her pajamas, though she knew she was never going to sleep.
But she would lie down.
And wait.
* * *
It was well past 1:00 a.m. when Craig was finally free of the red tape that came with any shooting and, pending final review, cleared of any charges, in large part because Eagan had stepped in and called on every friend he had. Luckily, there had also been a number of witnesses able to testify to the shooter’s rampant disregard for life.
While the engines to clear Craig of the shooting had revved into gear, the dead man had been taken to the morgue. An ID and a twenty-dollar bill had been found in his wallet.
The ID had been proved to be bogus. According to his fake driver’s license, he had been one David Thoreau.
As it turned out, his fingerprints told another story. He was really Dean Thiessen, an out-of-work computer expert. He lived alone in Hell’s Kitchen—or Clinton, as the area was now called—and had no known family. His prints were in the system because he’d once been arrested on a robbery charge, though the case had been dismissed for lack of evidence.
His gun was sent to the lab, where it proved to be the weapon that had killed Maria Antonescu.
Craig hadn’t been able to call Kieran or even Marty, though Eagan had let him know that Marty had filled Kieran in, and then that she’d asked Marty to pass along an address.
The NYPD had staked out the store, but nothing had happened.
Was that because one of the killers was now dead himself?
Craig had recognized the man because he’d seen him sitting in Finnegan’s, talking with Jimmy.
Just before Eagan had arrived to give him the all clear, he’d been sitting morosely in the quiet FBI offices when Mike walked in.
“What’s that face for?” Mike asked. “You saved my life tonight. Shouldn’t you be smiling?”
“Someone’s dead, Mike. And I killed him.”
“It was either him or me or you. I rather like the way it turned out.”
“But if I’d just winged him...”
“We shoot to kill when we’re being shot at. You know that,” Mike said.
Craig nodded.
“Idiot, thinking he could gun down two agents like that,” Mike said.
Craig looked at him with surprise. “What?”
“He came after us.”
Craig shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I think he came after Bailey Headley. I think he was trying to stop her from talking to us.”
“Could be,” Mike agreed thoughtfully. “Wonder if he knew she’d already told us everything she knew?”
“She have any protection assigned to her, do you know?” Craig asked.
Mike nodded. “Mr. Rowe brought her here as soon as the coast was clear, and an agent escorted her home. There are teams watching her apartment 24/7. I don’t know how long we’re going to be able to watch so many people,” he said with a sigh.
“We’re close—we’re so damned close. Do we have that sketch yet?” Craig asked Mike.
“Yes. And we were right.”
“Sylvia Mannerly. Who’d have thought it?” Craig asked.
Mike nodded. “The police went out to bring her in, but she’s not at home or the office. She’s implicated in this somehow, Craig. I just wish I knew how. Whether she’s been supplying information, setting people up—or committing the crimes herself—she’s guilty somehow.”
“And in the wind,” Craig said. “We need to put out an all-points bull—”
“It’s been taken care of,” Mike assured him. “We’re lead on this case, but we’re not the only ones working it. Mayo has cops out scouring the city for her.”
“So the shooter tried to save her ass,” Craig murmured.
“You think she was actually at the robberies?” Mike asked.
Craig shrugged. “I think it’s possible. She’s tall enough—especially if she was wearing boots with lifts. I think that the man I killed tonight was definitely one of the killers.”
“We need to speak with Jimmy McManus, too,” Mike said. “They can’t find him, either.”
“What?”
“He was at the pub tonight, but he left early. Mayo sent officers to his apartment, but he’s a no-show, too.”
Eagan poked his head into the office. “You still here, too, Mike? Go home. Both of you. You can pick this up again tomorrow. We have people watching for Sylvia Mannerly—if that’s her real name—and Jimmy. Go on, get out of here.”
“So I’m cleared to go?” Craig asked him.
“You’re as clean as a newborn babe. You should sleep. I can get someone else to relieve the kid and watch over Miss Finnegan.”
Craig shook his head. “I’ll relieve Marty,” he said.
“Yeah, I figured,” Eagan said, studying him.
Craig tried to keep looking directly into the director’s eyes. It was a struggle. “Good night, sir,” he said.
“Good night.”
Craig drove straight to Kieran’s. He parked the car and hurried down the street, almost forgetting to watch out for himself. Then something stirred the hair on the back of his neck and he paused, suddenly certain someone was following him.
He turned but didn’t see anyone, so he retraced his steps
, checking out the entryways along both sides of the street. No one.
He hurried back to Kieran’s place and headed up the stairs.
The karaoke club was going late. How the hell did anyone sleep around here?
He paused outside Kieran’s door then hurried back downstairs.
Monday night, after 1:00 a.m., and the club was still crowded. He walked inside and looked around. All he saw were groups of college students, a lot of them wearing sweatshirts identifying them as NYU students.
He headed back to the door. It wasn’t that the killer couldn’t be there and wearing a college shirt.
It was just that he had no way of knowing who might have just slipped in and who’d been there all night.
Back at Kieran’s place, he knocked.
Marty opened the door just as Kieran came out of her bedroom wearing panda pajamas. Her eyes were big and blue as they settled on him questioningly, and her auburn hair tumbled around her shoulders in disarray.
At that moment he didn’t think he’d ever seen a woman—or an outfit—that was more seductive.
He managed to get Marty out the door quickly, promising to explain everything in the morning, and then he turned to Kieran.
“Craig—”
“Not now,” he told her softly. “Not now.”
He folded her into his arms, and she seemed to understand instinctively that this was a time for action, not words.
She kissed him hard and moved seductively against him.
They stumbled together back into her bedroom, where they made love. And then they made love again.
And somehow that eased all the tension from him and brought on the exhaustion.
When he opened his eyes again it was morning and she was straddling him, smiling.
“I have a present for you,” she said.
He managed a sleepy grin at that.
“I think you gave me the best present in the world last night. Are you telling me you’re ready for more?”
“Not yet,” she said. “It’s a cell phone.”
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
KIERAN SHOWERED, THEN started coffee and bagels while Craig studied Jimmy McManus’s phone. He made a few calls, then joined her.