LITMIR.BIZ

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stupid, stupid, she thought.

      It took her a while to wrap her right hand around the grip of her revolver and get to her feet. Her left ankle hurt worse than her head. Bad sprain.

      The car was long gone, but Esposito was two blocks ahead of her, dragging Sauvage on foot down the street. She was shrieking and batting at him. Esposito didn’t pay her the slightest attention. Neither did the solitary man staggering drunkenly past them in a pair of earmuffs over a do-rag and a black Mets jacket.

      Izzy shouted, “Stop! Police! Torres! Torres, get out here!”

      Esposito was hustling out of her kill zone—too far away to shoot. And she might hit Sauvage or Mets.

      She was surprised that Esposito had taken Sauvage.

      Why didn’t he drag her into the truck and tell his wheelman to take off? Obviously, he wants me to follow him.

      Great.

      Her best bet was to sic her uninjured partner on him. The mom-and-pop loomed across the street like a journey of a thousand miles. It took her a supreme effort to walk, but she put her pain on hold as she started across the street. She was still holding her gun, but she let her arm drop to her side, concealing it from view.

      A bell on the front door of the shop tinkled as she rushed inside. The store smelled of tobacco and floor cleaner, and the clerk, a short Asian man, leaned over the counter at the front and pointed toward the opposite end of the store.

      He said, “He go into the alley.”

      “Did he use your phone?” she asked, as she made her way down an aisle of canned lychee nuts and Japanese rice crackers. She spread her thumb and forefinger and held them against the side of her face like a phone. “Did he call the police?”

      “No call,” the man informed her, shaking his head. “No working.” He held up his white portable unit as if to corroborate his testimony, and shrugged apologetically.

      Why aren’t the phones working? What is going on?

      “Try again. Call 911! Tell them officers are in pursuit, on foot. Perp armed and dangerous. And tell ’em all the radios are jammed up down here.”

      “It no working,” the man insisted.

      “Keep trying!” she bellowed.

      She burst through the back door into the alley. There were Dumpsters and trash cans, but no Torres.

      She whirled in a circle, shouting, “Torres! Damn it! Where are you?”

      There was no answer.

      Figuring he’d circled back around, she flew back through the store and burst outside again.

      No Torres there, either.

      Damn it, she thought.

      Esposito had put a lot of distance between himself and her. Alone, without backup, she hobbled through East Harlem, one of the more impoverished neighborhoods in all of New York City. Fifth Avenue to the East River, Ninety-Sixth to One Hundred and Fifteenth Street. Night was a heavy lead weight slung across her shoulders, a sudden dumping of snow flurries slowing her pace as surely as the pain freezing up her ankle.

      Esposito maintained at least a fifty-yard lead, despite the fact that he was dragging Sauvage and she was fighting him every step. The young goth’s black combat boots kept scooting out from underneath her on the icy sidewalk; now he was screaming at her over his shoulder and brandishing his gun. Izzy wondered how long Sauvage would be able to struggle. Beneath her pea coat, her black-and-red bustier must be constricting her breathing, and her skirts were wrapped around her legs like a shroud.

      A handful of curious street people—“skels” in police parlance—materialized on door stoops and alley entrances to watch the excitement. She wondered if she should tell one of them to call for help. Probably the better course was for them not to know that she needed help.

      She kept going.

      Then a voice inside her head said, You need to hustle. You’re on point. She’s going to die.

      And you’ll be next .

      Izzy jerked, hard, and nearly fell. She knew that voice. It had whispered to her in her nightmares for over a decade, speaking in riddles, promising death. She’d gone to see a shrink about it; her father wanted her to talk to their priest.

      But I’m awake, she thought. I’m awake and I’m hearing it.

      She took her attention off Esposito and looked all around herself—at shadows and the icy falling snow.

      “Who’s there?” she called.

      Allez, vite, it told her. French, which she did not speak. But which she seemed to understand, if her dreams were any indication of her linguistic abilities. For the voice often spoke to her in French. And sometimes she woke herself up, responding aloud, also in French.

      Hurry. Stop him. Or they’ll die. And it will be your fault .

      Then a gun went off. Izzy ducked behind a row of newspaper dispensers. She felt no compression of air, heard no impact, no telltale ping of a casing. Had someone taken a potshot at her? More important, would they take another? Was that the deal—Esposito would lure her into the line of fire and someone else would gun her down?

      She inched cautiously around the dispensers and started back up the street. Her mother’s gold filigree crucifix was wedged between her breasts, flattened by her brand-new Kevlar bulletproof vest. The facing on her polyester shirt itched against her sensitive skin. She was uncomfortable and she was scared and she was mad as hell.

      She had no idea how she crossed the next block without being hit by oncoming traffic, but she did it. Then she saw Esposito and Sauvage at the end of the block, racing catty-corner to a high-rise tenement. On the upper floors, flames shot from blown-out windows, licking and curling at the pitted exterior. Smoke billowed like wavy hair from the roof.

      Esposito darted inside.

      She got to the curb and raced into the building, yelling “Fire!” She limp-ran past the long row of tenants’ brown metal mailboxes and raced down the carpeted hall. There was no smoke yet, and she smelled garbage, marijuana and urine.

      “Fire! Call 911!” she bellowed, pounding her fist on the nearest door. She lurched past the cracked, peeling wall to the next door. “Fire! Get out now! Leave the building! The building’s on fire!”

      Through an open door to her right, watery light blinked above a wooden staircase topped with an Art Deco rail. She stopped, cocking her head, and detected a distant shuffling noise—rapid footfalls on wood.

      She gripped the rail with her left hand and pulled herself up the stairs, her Medusa pointed toward the ceiling. Her ankle screamed in protest.

      At the second-story landing, she tried the doorknob that led into the hallway. It was locked. She didn’t know if that meant Esposito had gone in that way and locked it after himself, and she debated for an instant—force the door open, or go up another story?

      She decided to stick with the stairway. If he wanted her to follow him, he wouldn’t throw obstacles in her path. He’d make it easy for her.

      Just like Torres made it easy for him to attack me. Is he in on it? Where is he now?

      Maybe Esposito’s objective was to make sure she died in the fire. Something about that tugged at her. Dying by fire. Dying in fire. That had something to do with her. With her heritage.

      What heritage? I’m a second-generation cop and my brains have been scrambled by a stun gun, she thought. I don’t know anyone who’s died in a fire. I don’t even know any firefighters.

      As she climbed, she heard people screaming, and she smelled thick, oily smoke. The fire was traveling rapidly to the lower floors.

      On the third floor, the hallway door hung ajar. Beyond it, the hall lights were dim, smoke curling around the sconce directly

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