“I couldn’t do it,” Andrew said. He sniffed wetly and wiped his arm over his face. “I couldn’t fucking kill her, okay? Please. Please. I tried. I’ll give the rest of the money. You can have it. Just don’t hurt my boys too. I killed them for you already, I told them, I deserved it. Just… kill me.”
He pulled something out of his pocket, clenched the weight and glitter of metal in his fist, and went for Javi again. The punch was a wild haymaker. If it connected, it would have taken Javi’s jaw off, but there wasn’t much chance of that.
Javi sidestepped the punch and moved forward to jab a short, hard punch in under Andrew’s ribs. There was no flesh to absorb the punch, just bone and wiry muscle. The breath whoofed out of Andrew on a sour grunt, and he doubled over with a retch. Javi grabbed the back of his shirt and shoved him facedown onto the hood of the car. Tears and snot smeared over the paintwork as Andrew wailed in brutal despair.
“She’s here,” Javi said. He wiped sweat off his lips onto his shoulder and leaned down to brace his arm against Andrew’s bony shoulders. The smell that came off Andrew was thick, sour-liquor sweat and old dirt. “Andrew, listen to me. She’s here. You can see her. If you calm down and listen to me.”
Galloway had crawled away from the fight. She sat a few cars down, back braced against the high wall of a Land Rover tire. Her arm was folded tight across her stomach, with her fingers digging down into the meat of her hip. She looked pale, but in the dimly lit garage, Javi couldn’t tell if it was more than usual.
“I don’t think he can,” she said, her voice still eerily calm. “His eyes are dilated, his pulse is elevated, and he shouldn’t have been able to use that arm. He took something before he came here, to work up the courage to kill me.”
Andrew thumped his head against the hood of the car to make it ring like a bell. He kicked at Javi’s legs. “I didn’t want to,” he said. “They called me. They told me what I had to do. Same number. Same voice. Same number. Same lies. Send the money, kill the doctor, save your kids. Save your Jessie.”
Javi reluctantly cuffed him—the plastic strips dug into dirty, swollen wrists—and pulled him off the car. Once he sobered up, maybe he could talk.
The stairwell door flew open, and five armed deputies burst into the garage. Tancredi took in the scene with a quick look and lowered her gun.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “What happened?”
“I’m not quite sure,” Javi said. “But we’re going to find out.”
Javi handed Macintosh over in Tancredi’s custody and went to check on Galloway. The ER doctors would have come to her, but she grimaced at the idea and insisted on being helped off the floor.
“I’ll need stitches,” she said as Javi put his arm around her waist to help support her. “If he were serious about hurting me, I’d need a transfusion. Agent Merlo, was that Andrew Macintosh?”
“I think so,” Javi said. “Heseemed to think so.”
Ahead of them, Tancredi pushed the stumbling Andrew up the ramp. He dragged his feet, and the manic intensity of earlier had dulled into a sort of dour placidity that weighed him down.
Galloway stopped and turned to wave down one of the deputies. “The evidence box by my car, it’s relevant to a current case, so make sure it doesn’t leave your sight. I donotwant chain of custody broken any more than it already has been.” The deputy nodded and ran to get the box. Meanwhile Galloway wiped the blood off her neck with the cuff of her shirt and looked up at Javi. “You were wrong.”
That wasn’t what Javi wanted to hear. He frowned. “About what?”
“I compared samples. That girl is not Tommy Macintosh,” she said. Her body listed into Javi’s as she squinted into the light at the top of the ramp. “I was going to recheck with a fresh sample from Janet, but I doubt the results would have changed. But if it was a wild goose chase, why would anyone try to….”
Javi was still half-blind from the glare when the shot rang out, so he didn’t see so much as hear the brittle ping of the bullet against concrete. He swore and dragged Galloway back down into the garage. Ahead of them Tancredi cried out, startled more than hurt. Then she staggered and went down. Macintosh stumbled back but stayed on his feet.
“Hold your fire!” Frome yelled, his voice cracked with anger. The press was yelling into cameras as they covered it, cameras twisted between the tableau on the ramp and the surrounding buildings. “Hold your goddamn fire.”
“Shit.”
Javi shoved Galloway at one of the deputies despite her protest and ran up the ramp to Tancredi. Blood poured out of a deep, jagged gash in her arm and puddled on the ramp under her. It wasn’t a bullet wound. Macintosh had a spray of blood up over his chest and across his face. He staggered backward and then turned to run into the garage, through the deputies who raced up to protect Tancredi.
“What happened?” one of them demanded.
Javi dragged off his tie and twisted the silk around Tancredi’s arm as a hurried, inadequate bandage. It soaked through quickly. “Was she shot?” another one asked. He scanned the road, gun up and steady in his hands. “Do we have a shooter?”
In Javi’s ear Frome rattled off the same questions, almost verbatim.
It was Tancredi who answered them. Her voice was thin and her lips colorless. She had the shocked, gray cast of someone who’d never been hurt badly before, at least not on purpose. “I don’t know.”
On the concrete where Macintosh had stood lay a cheap orange utility knife in a puddle of blood. His hands had been free when he darted away.
“Where’s Galloway?” Javi asked as he scrambled up.
The deputy jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “She’s safe. We’re taking her straight up into the hospital—”
Javi cursed under his breath. He pushed himself to his feet, drew his gun, and ran back into the garage. The deputy spluttered behind him, too distracted by the shot fired to realize what was happening.
