by Nancy Holder
And to think we trusted him after his beast side died, Vincent thought in disgust. And Cat had done more than trust him…
Adrenaline rushed through Vincent’s body and he forced his mind off the track it was taking before he beasted out. Caught in a romantic triangle, Cat had ultimately chosen him over Gabe. But for a while, she had shared her bed—if not her heart—with the ADA. There had actually been a time when Vincent himself had considered the other Muirfield refugee to be the better choice for Cat. But now Vincent finally had his beast side under control, tamed by his love for Catherine and his need to be a man whom she could love in return. To be someone whose existence and efforts made the world a better place, whether he remained a beast forever or could one day become fully human again.
A car horn blared and dubstep thumped on a tricked-out set of speakers in a passing Chevy Camaro lowrider. A head hung out the opened car window and Vincent kept his own head bowed but his shoulders straight. He had no interest in appearing as some cowering target for a gang of street toughs.
The horn honked again and he ignored it. The car slunk on.
On the sidewalk up ahead, the criminal duo Vincent had been trailing seemed to lose interest in sizing up prey and fell to arguing about football instead.
Vincent’s path took him more deeply into Greenwich Village. Windows flickered with light. Bodies moved along the sidewalk in silhouette from the car traffic. There were a lot of vehicles on the road, especially considering the time of night and that this was Greenwich Village, not busy midtown Manhattan.
He approached an alley partially blocked by an especially fragrant Dumpster. Years of training as a soldier urged him to caution; it was the perfect hiding place for a potential mugger.
Then, through the street noise, he detected a snick from across the street in the alley opposite to this one. He sent blood to his auditory system, enhancing his hearing.
Zing!
His ears picked up the sound of a bullet rocketing straight at him. His reflexes kicked in and he dove behind the Dumpster, flattening on the ground and covering his head.
The projectile slammed into the Dumpster, rolling it on its wheels toward Vincent. He rose cautiously to his feet and crabbed backwards against the shadowed brick wall. He focused quickly down his alley in both directions, ensuring that no one was headed his way. Threatened, his beast side began to emerge; he didn’t rein it in fully but he also took care to remain concealed. For all he knew, someone had taken a potshot at him just to see if they had the right man.
The right beast.
For years, he had been unable to prevent himself from beasting out whenever his safety had been jeopardized. But then Catherine had come into his life and he had learned to subdue it, if not entirely control it. If someone was trying to unmask him, this was a damned dangerous way to go about it.
There were no more shots. He eased around into the narrow space between the other side of the Dumpster and the wall, and squinted in the direction of the shooter. He spent a couple of seconds recreating the scene as only a beast could do. In his mind’s eye he saw a single shooter in a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and boots—looking much like Vincent himself, actually—standing in the alley across the street holding a pistol. As soon as the man had loosed the shot, he had run.
Vincent took off with a burst of speed. He could run faster than any human alive. But once he crossed the street and leaped over trashcans and wooden pallets into the alley, he found nothing, and he couldn’t track his quarry any farther. Able to see in the dark, he looked up toward the fire escape, then higher up at the rooftop. He raced through the alleys of the next three streets, hearing only his own footsteps.
He blurred west, then east, doubling back, then slowed and settled into predator mode once more. Centering himself, he allowed his beast side to collect more evidence: smells and visual clues his human side would never uncover. The man had been wiry, and none too clean. He used heroin. Vincent mentally saw the man fire off a round from a .40 caliber handgun, run, then climb into a car that was rolling along. The car was old. He couldn’t tell much about the vehicle except that it had recently had an oil change.
He returned to the Dumpster and ran his fingers along the grimy exterior facing the street, seeking the bullet. It had torn through the thick metal and lodged in the other side, causing a dimple. He decided that before he went Dumpster diving to retrieve the cartridge, he’d see if he could find the shell casing. He crossed back into the shooter’s alley and searched.
There was no casing, or it could simply be that Vincent missed the tiny object. That could be a telling detail. A random shooter would have left evidence behind, being either too ignorant or uncaring to bother retrieving it. A pro would have been more diligent. So the question remained: was this someone who had intended to shoot him?
He was just about to climb into the Dumpster to pry out the bullet when the crack-crack-crack of splintering wood caught his attention. He heard a shout laced with fear. Someone’s apartment or business was being invaded. He cautioned himself not to blur again. As he often reminded Catherine, he wasn’t some superhero. Tonight he would do what he could to protect lives and property, but unfortunately there would be a limit. Just as there was for every other person on the planet. That was part of being human. For people like him—and Catherine—that was a limitation that was difficult to accept.
CHAPTER FOUR
2.45 A.M.
The streets of New York City were as tangled as a jumble of rusty necklaces in a forgotten jewelry box. The anticipated crime wave had commenced, and citizens afraid to be in their homes had taken to their cars, trying to outdrive the darkness. The gumball lights of Cat and Tess’s squad car illuminated throngs of looters hopping in and out of broken storefront windows. Gleeful men, women, and even children staggered down sidewalks and alleys carrying toaster ovens, cameras, and laptop computers. They knew that unless the police officers abandoned their vehicle, thereby worsening the gridlock, no one was going to stop them.
Tess had called in and backup was on the way in the form of a van carrying a dozen unis. But Captain Ward had warned Tess and Cat that the resources of the 125th were fully deployed. He simply had no more officers to send out. The fire department and neighboring police precincts had their hands full, too. The mayor was talking about calling out the National Guard. It all depended on how long the blackout lasted.
“It was good of Captain Ward to let us keep DeMarco,” Tess said as they crawled along impatiently. “He could have put us on looter duty.”
“Vincent’s patrolling the Village.” Cat pictured various neighbors she had befriended, some of whom were frail and elderly. They would be vulnerable, afraid. “Remember when they used to call him the Vigilante? Tonight he actually is one.” “J.T.’s probably going crazy without his electricity,” Tess said. “I hope all his batteries were charged.”
Cat suppressed a grin and avoided the obvious double entendre about J.T.’s batteries. Beside her, Tess huffed and muttered, “Oh, my God, how old are you?”
“I didn’t say a word,” Cat protested. “Hey, innocent until proven guilty.” She waited a beat and then she added impishly. “Anyway, I knew you were talking about his lap. Top.”
“You are twelve.”
“I have the patience of a twelve-year-old right now,” Cat said. “Let’s hope Angelo DeMarco’s kidnappers are as hampered by the blackout as we are.”
“If they caused it, they’ve made plans for dealing with it,” Tess countered. “Don’t you think it’s weird that two people have gone missing during this blackout? Both their cases coming under FBI jurisdiction? I have to think they’re connected.” Tess toyed with her phone. “In the old days we could ask Gabe to check it out.”
“Don’t even say his name,” Cat grumped.
She looked out the window at the dead skyscrapers, then up at the obsidian sky, wondering where her father was. She remembered the three months of hell he had put her through when he had captured Vin
cent. Three months of searching. And heartbreak. And nightmares. It was ironic to her that a search for her father was underway. She would have nightmares until he was found, but her heart would never break for him.
“We’ll find him,” Tess said. “Hey, you know, maybe we should have asked for looter duty. We’d have more freedom to start searching.”
Tess was right. There were other detectives who could work the DeMarco kidnapping, but no one would be more invested in finding her father… except for Vincent. Any searching she did would have to be off the books, as always. Although she had been the arresting officer who brought her own father to justice, as a rule NYPD did not allow officers to work cases involving family members—the same as a doctor would not operate on a relative. But what was done was done. They had made the request before Captain Ward had told them about Cat’s father, and they couldn’t exactly back out of a case to spend time doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing. Besides, staying in the field was one way to assure Internal Affairs that she hadn’t skipped town to reunite with her father.
“I can’t believe IA would actually believe I had anything to do with his disappearance. Anyone with half a brain would know the last thing I would do is try to free that man from prison.”
“Not everyone knows you hate your father’s guts,” Tess said reasonably. “And you know the FBI thinks you’re sketchy because your ‘ex-boyfriend’ is New York’s most wanted.” She smiled wryly. “Crazy huh? Go figure.”
Cat gave her horn a sharp, long honk, more out of frustration than the expectation that it would do any good. “We took Muirfield down and that secret society retreated back into hiding. Who else would want Special Agent Reynolds?”
“He knows more about beasts than anyone else,” Tess pointed out. “Maybe a beast we don’t know about snagged him. Maybe those masked invaders didn’t rescue him from Rikers. Maybe they took him out so they could, you know, take him out.”
As in kill him. Cat didn’t let herself say what she was thinking: that the world would be a better place without her biological father in it. Better for her, and far better for Vincent. Every time she and Vincent thought the past was behind them and that they could build a future, her father launched some new scheme to destroy Vincent. To keep her safe, Reynolds claimed. He insisted that no matter how hard Vincent fought to keep his human side in command of his beast side, the beast would win out. He also said that beasts never got better, they only got worse, and that Vincent would one day kill Cat, of that he had no doubt.
The deaths of innocents who had crossed his path hadn’t mattered in the least to Bob Reynolds. Anyone who got caught in the crosshairs was collateral damage. Those deaths had only started to bother Reynolds when they had piled up so high they couldn’t be covered up or explained away, when all his wrongs had caught up with him, and by extension, his own daughter.
He had assured Cat that he had had nothing to do with her mother’s murder. She wanted to believe him, but in her heart?
I’m still glad I stopped Vincent from killing him, she told herself. Not for her father’s sake, but for Vincent’s. He would have lost his humanity forever.
Tess shook her out of her reverie.
“I swear, this is the worst traffic jam in the history of New York. And that’s saying something.”
“It so weird to see the city so dark. It’s like the zombie apocalypse,” Cat said. “So what do you think happened?” “Somebody hit the off switch with their elbow?” Tess shrugged. “I mean, one borough, maybe, but all five?”
“New York definitely doesn’t need any more disasters,” Cat said. “I’m sure Counter-Terrorism is all over it. FBI, too.”
“Well, I hope we get the lights on soon. Look at that.”
Tess gestured toward a trio of teenagers running up to a car in the middle of the traffic. They started yelling at the driver and pounding on the windows. The driver honked. The kids laughed and moved onto the next car, and then the next.
Cat began to roll down her car window to yell at them but that would just be an exercise in futility. They wouldn’t hear her in the din of blaring car horns. They were being malicious but they weren’t physically harming anyone. It wasn’t worth getting out of the car and chasing them down because that would worsen the gridlock. No one was paying their flashing lights and siren any mind. Two taxis, a bus, and a truck had boxed them in, and there was nowhere to go to make way for the cops.
Suddenly the sky overhead became dotted with pinpricks of light that expanded and became helicopters. They aimed their searchlights along the streets, illuminating looters, some of whom dropped their treasures and ran, while others just jeered at the choppers without missing a beat.
Then the traffic lurched forward but the bus waited, giving Cat a tiny space to pass. Exhibiting nerves of steel, she edged her way past the bus so closely that she almost scraped paint, and kept moving.
“And why would anyone frame me for my father’s disappearance?” Cat said. “That’s just inviting more scrutiny on the real perps.”
“What kind of evidence do you think they planted in his cell to implicate you?”
Cat rolled her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. Probably something subtle like some strands of my hair and one of my business cards with a signed confession on the back.”
“Plus a selfie of your father holding a thank-you card. They must not be taking it all that seriously or they would have grounded you tonight.”
“Maybe this zombie apocalypse has held up the paperwork,” Cat said. “Or better yet, the zombies have devoured IA.”
“Zombies would never attack IA. Zombies eat brains.”
“We are both twelve,” Cat said.
At the next intersection, a cluster of cops was directing traffic. They spotted Cat and Tess’s squad car and facilitated their tortured progress through the intersection and around a corner.
“Whoa,” Tess murmured as they came within sight of the lavish DeMarco Plaza, a towering edifice of marble, ebony, and gold. Powerful searchlights running off generators illuminated the front of the building. Embossed golden lions with their maned heads held in noble majesty flanked the DeMarco name in six-foot-high golden letters. “I haven’t been by here in forever. I forgot how, well, I guess the right word is gaudy, the DeMarco building is.”
“They do like the bling,” Cat said. She spotted the uni in front of the vast complex and managed to pull over into the empty spot at the curb he had been reserving for them. She got out and Tess did too.
Flashing her badge at the NYPD foot soldier, she said, “Thanks for saving us a seat.”
He gestured to the squad car. “I’ll keep an eye on it for you, Detective.”
Cat gave him a nod and she and Tess headed toward the dim lobby entrance. On the other side of a glass wall were four more unis and a dozen private security guards wearing earphones and carrying SIG Sauer P226s and .357 Magnums, by the looks of the gun butts poking out of various holsters. Cat and Tess were both armed but there was no need to draw their weapons as they showed their badges.
One of the private security guards, a burly bald man with very small, piggish eyes, unlocked the door and stood back to give them room as they entered. The dimly lit room was crowded with bodies and chatter.
“I’m Detective Chandler and this is Detective Vargas,” Cat said. “We’re from the one-twenty-fifth. We’re assisting on the kidnap.”
“Lizzani. Sorry to inform you that our elevators are down,” he said. “Mr. DeMarco is waiting for you in the penthouse. Sixty floors up.”
Cat and Tess exchanged looks. Cat said, “No problem,” and the man broke into a trademark “Yeah, right” NewYork grin and opened the door with a flourish. Cat pulled out a flashlight, to reveal steep concrete stairs.
“Officers,” he said.
Sixty floors.
Straight up.
“Remind me again why we wanted this case,” Cat said, and Tess moaned.
They began to climb.
CHAPTER FIVE
2.32 A.M.
Fully awake despite the hour, Gabriel Lowan stood inside former agent Bob Reynolds’ cell at Rikers as the FBI Evidence Recovery Unit completed processing the crime scene. The two-person team had already paused once to call in the item that incriminated Catherine: a hand-drawn map of Reynolds’ cell block on the back of a envelope for some junk mail addressed to her, complete with a penciled note that had already been favorably compared to her handwriting: Have him ready.
Gabe had been permitted to view the envelope through a sealed plastic collection bag. It was laughably amateurish because it was so clearly intended to implicate her. No one in their right mind, especially not a police detective, would have created such a document in the first place. That it was false evidence was as obvious as sixth-grader’s attempt to write his own absence note to his teacher.
However, the handwriting did resemble hers. He felt a pang, remembering many scrawled notes she had left for him: Gone for coffee, back soon. XO Cat. And I’ ll get us some takeout. Red or white wine? All those little intimacies you built through notes, texts, quick calls. That you take sugar in your coffee. That you prefer red wine.
That her favorite way to sleep with you is spooning.
Gabe brought himself back from memory lane to focus on the situation. Law enforcement was dealing with the citywide crisis caused by the blackout. Captain Ward had informed Gabe that Agent Brian Hendricks of Internal Affairs had checked in to see if he could help with looter duty, and the second he had heard about Reynolds and the ridiculous envelope, he had been ready to come down to the one-two-five and interrogate her. In Hendricks’s opinion, Detective First Grade Catherine Chandler had escaped justice once before, when the bullet he was certain had been discharged from her service weapon during her father’s arrest had come back as a mismatch. Not from her weapon, in other words. Hendricks had been floored, and his apparent blunder had only confirmed what most cops thought about IA: that they were bumbling incompetents who got in the way of real cops doing actual police work.
