by Tom Barber
But for these sons of bitches however, it was going to be the last.
As the second man she’d shot fell back to the ground, she crunched another shell into the chamber as the shocked kids huddled down on the floor in the sitting room, Beth scrambling through to them from the kitchen. Stepping forward just as what was left of the door fell off its hinges, Melissa saw the other man throw himself behind the porch and she fired again, just missing him, the wooden post half-obliterated by the shell.
Racking the pump again, she took aim, intending to blast him through the woodwork when he suddenly reappeared, holding his sub-machine gun to her son’s head, the boy’s eyes wide with fear. He was still dressed in his soccer gear and dropped his bag as the gunman pushed him forward, jamming the suppressor of his sub-machine gun behind Jack’s ear.
‘Drop the weapon, bitch!’ the gunman screamed at her in a strong foreign accent. ‘Drop it or I kill your boy!’
The stock of the shotgun buried in her shoulder, her face expressionless Melissa didn’t move, Jack staring at her with wide fearful eyes, the stranger’s gun to his head.
‘Drop it!’ the gunman screamed again.
Suddenly there was the screech of tyres on tarmac from the street behind the man. He instinctively snapped his head towards the noise as a blue and white squad car appeared, lights flashing, closely followed by another, the NYPD arriving at the scene.
Keeping his eyes on his mother, Jack Hendricks suddenly dropped like a stone, right out of the gunman’s grip.
Shepherd and Hendricks had just been beaten to it by two NYPD squad cars responding to Marquez’ emergency call to Department dispatch. As the Ford carrying Hendricks and Shepherd screeched around the corner, they saw Melissa fire, blasting a man off his feet as he took a shell to the chest, Jack Hendricks hitting the ground just in front of him as the gunman fell.
Before they could slam to a halt, Hendricks pushed open his door and jumped out while the car was still moving, running towards his wife.
Suddenly however, a door to a 4x4 twenty feet away was thrown back and a man holding a silenced sub-machine gun in one hand staggered out, his other hand clutching his right shoulder with blood over his hand and wrist.
‘Jake!’ Shepherd shouted in warning, reaching for his Sig.
However, before he could fire Melissa swung and blasted the gunman from the front step, knocking him back into the vehicle. As that last shot echoed in the night, two of the officers ran forward and kicked the man’s weapon away before flipping him over and handcuffing him as he bled out, still alive but probably not for much longer.
Up ahead, Beth Shepherd peered round the damaged doorframe then ran forward as she saw her husband. Hendricks had just arrived by his wife and taking the shotgun from her hands, held her and Jack.
‘You both OK?’ he asked them.
They nodded, staring at the dead men littering their front lawn.
‘Who the hell are they, Jake?’ Melissa asked her husband quietly, trembling from reaction now the situation was over.
Hendricks looked at the three dead gunmen then glanced over at the fourth man who’d been cuffed and was slumped against the 4x4.
‘I have no idea.’
On the 1st floor of the Covenant Housing project in Midtown, the female employee from the front desk walked up to the bedroom door and pushed it open, holding the rolled up bag of food she’d just bought from the Times Square McDonalds down the street.
‘Here we are-’ she started with a smile.
Then she paused.
The room was empty.
Confused, she looked around then down the corridor. The slender frightened man was nowhere to be seen.
‘Michael?’
A floor above, his eyes full of frustrated anger, the man stared at the red-headed woman for a long moment then turned and walked off without a word, leaving the bedroom door to swing shut behind him.
Alone again, the girl stepped back then sat down hard on the bed as her legs gave out, shaking with fear from the sudden encounter with the armed stranger.
Once again, she heard laughter echo down the hallway but it didn’t have the same effect as before.
Forget introducing herself.
She was staying put.
TWENTY FOUR
Pushing down the bar to the fire exit, the slender man walked out onto 41st Street and headed towards his partner waiting in the van. Crossing the road, he pulled open the door, tossed his jacket into the back of the vehicle, then climbed in and tucked his silenced pistol into his belt.
‘She wasn’t there,’ he said as he closed his door.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Positive. Thought I’d found her in the last room but it wasn’t her. Just some other bitch with red hair.’
The bigger man swore as he checked his watch. ‘We’ve got to make the most of this window. The cop heat isn’t going to be off us for much longer and we’ve got a lot of shit left to do.’
As the smaller man stayed quiet, cupping his hands and blowing warm air into them, the big guy thought for a moment. He had an open file in his hand, one of the pile he’d instructed Goya and Santiago to keep on all the girls. It had April Evans’ details inside, her vitals, address and clients.
‘You think she saw you and Nina at her place earlier?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe Nina. She was downstairs and watched her enter the building.’
‘Well she split so she knows someone’s after her. It’s cold at night, so she’ll be needing to be indoors or she’ll freeze her ass off.’
‘Subway?’
‘Maybe. But which station? We don’t exactly have time to check each one.’
‘She could have gone to the cops.’
‘Doubt it. They wouldn’t give a shit. And until they find a body, who’s going to believe her?’
‘What about her clients?’ the smaller man asked, looking at the page. ‘Did she have regulars?’
‘No-one she’d run to or who would listen. Only possible is a judge.’ The big guy tapped a man’s name with his finger. ‘He’s been good for almost a hundred k since we started working him. I doubt he’d want to help her.’
‘Where’d she meet him?’
The larger man nodded. ‘Upper East Side. And other clients. In a bar up there, according to this.’
‘Which one?’
‘West 82nd and Park.’
‘Screw it, it’s worth a shot,’ the smaller man said. ‘We got nothing else.’
The big man nodded, starting the engine just as his cell phone buzzed in his pocket from an incoming message.
Standing on Josh’s porch on West 78th, Archer watched as the street was closed off and the scene of the shootout investigated by detectives from the local Precinct. The ambulance with Michelle inside had just left, Josh going with her, officers who’d recently arrived cordoning off the street in preparation for a Forensics team who’d be here any minute.
Rather than go to the hospital with their parents, Josh’s kids and Isabel had been taken back to the Counter-Terrorism Bureau. Not knowing who these men were and why they were being targeted, Archer wanted to get the youngsters somewhere where their safety was guaranteed. Officers in an NYPD squad car had also been ordered to act as security for Josh and Michelle at the hospital for as long as they were needed. She was going straight into surgery and Josh was understandably focused solely on her, needing someone to watch his back in case this wasn’t the last attack on him or his family tonight.
Isabel had been reluctant to leave, not wanting to be parted from Archer, but he’d promised he’d join her soon; because he was suspended, technically he wasn’t allowed back into the Bureau but after what had just happened as well as his little sojourn in Rikers, he didn’t think that would be an issue. He’d be happy to debate it with anyone who objected.
He watched officers taking statements from frightened neighbours as he thought about what had just happened. When he’d seen the addresses on the phone Marquez h
ad given him, he’d tried to call Shepherd to warn both him and Hendricks but Shepherd’s cell had been engaged. When he’d finally got through, it turned out Marquez had beaten him to it, the two sergeants speeding to Hendricks’ house where their families were apparently having dinner together.
The cold wind coming from the Hudson River slightly numbed his face and neck as he frowned. The reason for the addresses on the wounded gunman’s phone was confusing; gangs and criminals with half a brain avoided targeting police officers. They knew the heat that would provoke, yet the injured man and his colleagues had been deliberately going after the Counter-Terrorism Bureau detectives.
But why?
Were the gunmen involved in Leann Casey’s death?
He dismissed that thought almost as soon as it crossed his mind. He’d stake his life on the fact that the men they’d just encountered weren’t in any way connected with Goya or Santiago. They just didn’t fit together, neither racially nor in terms of how they operated. Archer was familiar with the habits of the higher-level gang activity in the city and knew the one thing organised crime did was keep to themselves, not wanting to attract any police attention; they were pretty intelligent in that regard and had learnt hard lessons from the past.
Whatever the reason, for the moment it didn’t matter that they had his address; right now he, Vargas and Isabel were safe where they were. Alice was downtown at a hospital with two cops watching her room, Isabel was with the police and he was standing here on the street.
As he tried to make sense of it, his phone started ringing, the display telling him it was the Bureau.
‘Archer,’ he said.
‘Arch, it’s Ethan. I need to talk to you. I tried Shepherd and Hendricks but no one’s picking up.’
‘There’s a situation right now. What’s going on?’
‘Shepherd told me earlier to ring round all the girls listed as associates on Leann Casey’s case file but none of them are answering. I requested some blue and whites check out a couple of the residences, but they said no-one was home.’
‘OK.’
‘Leann’s closest contact in the group seemed to be a woman called April Evans. Apparently she picked Leann up in a taxi from the rehab clinic out on Long Island the day she died. Shepherd just sent me her number from Leann’s phone, so I’ve been trying to trace it and therefore her.’
‘Any luck?’
‘Afraid not; it’s switched off. But using the Bureau’s clout I got a warrant with Verizon, who allowed me access to Leann’s cell records. She had a voice message on there from April; nothing important, but I took a voice print and ran it over their network, in case she calls someone.’
‘And?’
‘She just did twenty minutes ago.’
‘Who?’
‘Karen Casey, Leann’s mother. Listen to this.’
‘Karen, it’s me,’ a woman suddenly said, her voice shaky with fear, her accent from somewhere else, not New York. ‘I’m so sorry, but I didn’t know who else to call. Someone’s after me. It started yesterday. A few hours ago they tried to get me at my apartment. All the other girls have disappeared; I don’t know what’s going on but it’s bad. I think someone’s running us down one at a time.’
Standing there on Josh’s porch, Archer suddenly forgot all about the activity on the street around him, completely focused on the recorded phone message.
‘I’m getting out before they find me,’ April’s voice continued. ‘I’m laying low but I need somewhere to stay tonight. My cell’s about to die but I’ll call back from a payphone in an hour. Please be there. I really need your help and I didn’t know who else to ask.’
Then the message ended.
‘Can you trace it?’ Archer asked, running what she’d said through his mind.
‘Afraid not,’ Ethan replied, his quiet, deep tone an immediate contrast to April’s shaky voice. ‘But she said all the girls have disappeared, Arch. The other women who worked with Leann Casey.’
‘And none of them can be contacted?’
‘Shit, right now we can’t even locate any of them. I’ll try to isolate the background noises and figure out if there’s anything there that could tell us where she is.’
Archer started to reply but then stopped , thinking back to April’s call, replaying it in his mind.
‘Arch? Still there?’
‘Send back-up to the Upper East Side right now!’ Archer suddenly said, turning and running into Josh’s house.
‘What? Where?’
‘West 86th Street. I know where she is!’
Ending the call, Archer moved past some detectives and took the stairs two at a time. The Mossberg Hendricks had given him earlier was still leaning against the bed in Isabel’s room but he ignored it. Instead, he ran into Josh and Michelle’s bedroom and opened up the wardrobe, taking Josh’s home defence pistol from its place on the top shelf.
Loading the Beretta, he tucked it into the back of his belt then ran down the stairs and out of the house, heading east.
Ducking under the police tape blocking off the scene of the shootout, he sprinted down the road and when he reached Central Park West he didn’t stop, weaving his way between two passing cars and running into the Park.
Ethan didn’t need to isolate the background noise; it had caught Archer’s attention during the call anyway. There had been a combination of two sounds that he’d heard before on several occasions.
And they meant he knew where April Evans was.
TWENTY FIVE
Inside the bar of the hotel on East 86th Street and Park Avenue, April Evans was sitting facing the entrance, keeping her eyes on the payphone outside and doing her best to stop her hands from shaking. Since her narrow escape at her apartment, she’d meandered her way uptown trying to work out what to do, constantly checking around her, and had ended up here after taking a detour on the subway.
As she sat there, she tried to make sense of what was happening. This had all started the night Leann was killed; Carlos, their pimp, had always had an unpredictable and violent temper but he’d made a big mistake when he shot the two cops as well as Leann. Alex had been the driver that night and not the trigger-man so he’d decided not to leave but lay low in the city instead; however April hadn’t seen Carlos now for a while and guessed he’d run. She wasn’t too sad about that.
The day after Leann died, Alex had warned the girls that if any of them talked to the cops they’d be next. Shocked and frightened by Leann’s sudden, violent death, the eleven remaining women knew it was no empty threat but had hoped that despite their lack of co-operation, the police would figure it out for themselves. Some detectives and a social worker had come round two weeks ago asking questions but they hadn’t hung around. April had kept her answers as short as possible, just like the other girls, Santiago’s threat ringing in their ears, but had hoped that even without their help the cops would catch a break and find Carlos. Right now she had no idea what was going on with the investigation.
Nervous and worried for each other’s safety in case Alex decided they might have talked and carry out his threat, the girls had started to ring round every so often to make sure everyone was OK. Until yesterday, they all were. However, almost thirty six hours ago three of them had stopped answering their phones. When April had gone round to their apartments to check, there’d been no-one home. When that number had increased to five, it became alarming. By the seventh and eighth before midnight she’d been extremely frightened and concerned. She was pretty sure none of the girls would have talked and certainly not eight of them, so what would Alex and Carlos gain by hurting them?
This morning, there’d only been two other women still answering their phones, Kelly and Cece. Any suspicions April may have had that the other girls were hiding out or had left town were dismissed when she’d been on the line with Cece earlier this afternoon.
She’d heard the moment her friend had been attacked, their conversation suddenly interrupted, Cece’s scream abruptly cut of
f and the sounds of muffled activity coming down the phone.
Frozen in horror, April had heard what sounded like the phone being picked up.
She’d kept listening, the sound of breathing coming down the line from the other end.
Then it’d gone dead.
Closing her eyes, April swallowed. Her cell was in her jacket pocket but it was out of battery and she couldn’t charge it without going home. Her remaining money was at the apartment too and she didn’t have enough cash on her to get out of the city, so her options were slim and right now she didn’t trust anyone, including the cops. Her last shot was Karen Casey, who she’d never met but whose number she’d entered into her phone after Leann had died. She was the only person left April could think to call who might be sympathetic and listen.
She had a quick flashback to the two people who’d come running out of her apartment building dressed in white overalls. Maybe it was Alex and Carlos, figuring the girls might have talked or protecting their backs and taking them out just in case. But despite the fact that they’d be cutting off their only source of income, why the white overalls and ball caps? That wasn’t their style; they’d just shoot them like they did Leann. It couldn’t have been them.
So who the hell were these people? And why were they doing this?
April was getting tired thinking about it, the same thoughts whirling around her head as they’d done ever since she dropped off the fire escape ladder and run for her life those few hours ago. Whatever the reason and whoever these people in the overalls were, April knew one thing for sure.
She was the last girl from the group left.
And they were after her as well.
She glanced at the people sitting either side of her at the bar, all of whom were engaged in conversations. She could feel the occasional gaze settling on her and knew she looked out of place; normally she’d have come here all dressed up just like the women around her, but she was in the clothes she’d run in, an old red dress, leather jacket and black boots.
