On a gurney in the back, Salazar panted through a contraction while an EMT named Phoebe Cartwright put a fetal monitor on her belly. Bree sat on the opposite side, holding the detective’s hand.

  “Oh God,” Salazar groaned. “There it is.”

  “There what is?” Bree asked.

  “Just like last time.”

  Cartwright, the EMT, said, “Like what last time?”

  “Fast.” She gasped. “My labor. The contractions, they come—”

  A contraction doubled her up. She squeezed Bree’s hand so hard, Bree thought bones might break.

  The fetal monitor beeped quicker and quicker.

  From the front, the driver yelled, “How are we doing?”

  Cartwright said, “This baby’s coming fast. And could be in some distress. I’m seeing a nonreassuring pattern on the monitor here.”

  “Inbound to Mount Sinai Beth Israel. ETA six minutes.”

  The contraction ended. Salazar panted and then yelled, “Negative on Mount Sinai! My doc is at NYU. That’s where she and my family are headed!”

  Cartwright said, “I don’t know if we’ll get to NYU.”

  “We’ll get there if I have to tie my legs shut,” Salazar said.

  “How do your doc and family know?” Bree asked.

  “App on my phone. First contraction, I knew. I just pressed a button, and they were all texted and—”

  Another contraction began. Salazar surfed the pain like a pro for that contraction and the six that followed as the ambulance weaved through evening traffic south and east toward NYU Medical Center.

  An accident at Third and Thirty-Fourth slowed them.

  Salazar moaned. “Are we there yet?”

  “ETA two minutes,” the driver said, finally getting around the smashed cars.

  “Hold on a little longer, Rosella,” Bree said.

  “That’s out of my control, Chief.” She grunted. “Just like with his sister. Once my kids start coming, there’s no stopping them.”

  “You’re not fully dilated yet,” Cartwright said.

  “Gimme a minute, maybe two,” Salazar said. Another contraction hit.

  Just as that contraction subsided, they pulled up in front of the emergency department. Four people were standing outside the ambulance when its doors opened.

  “Rosella!” cried a rugged and worried man dressed in denim.

  “He’s coming, Debo!” Salazar said, beaming. “Our boy is coming!”

  Two nurses appeared. Bree climbed out. The nurses got in to manage the various monitors attached to the detective while the driver and Cartwright lifted Salazar and her gurney from the ambulance.

  A fit older woman in yoga tights and a hoodie stepped up, fingered Salazar’s gown, and looked at the sneakers. “This is how you dress to have a child, Rosella?”

  “Latest birthing style, Mama,” Salazar shot back.

  A much younger woman in jeans, a leather jacket, and too much makeup said, “How’d you afford a dress like that? You on the take now?”

  As the nurses and EMTs moved Salazar, she pointed at Bree and said, “She’ll tell you, wiseass.”

  Then the detective moaned and the beeping of the fetal monitor quickened again. The EMTs hurried her through the double doors with her husband beside her.

  “Who are you?” Too Much Makeup asked. “Cop?”

  “Used to be. You’re her sister?”

  She nodded. “Lucinda.”

  “Rosella was working undercover, Lucinda. A friend of mine made the dress for her and this one for me so we’d fit in. Now I have to go see a doctor about this arm.”

  “What happened to you?” Salazar’s mother asked.

  “Gunshot wound,” Bree said and walked into the hospital.

  The triage nurse brought her straight back to the ER. While she waited to see a doctor, she called Alex and filled him in.

  “But you’re sure you’re all right?” he said.

  “I’m going to have a sore arm for a while, but yes, I’m fine. Listen, Salazar identified one of the shooters. The one I wounded. He’s a Russian named Volkov.”

  “Volkov! As in Tull’s Volkov?”

  “One and the same.”

  “But he’s alive?”

  “Last time I saw him, but he was in rough shape. I creased the left side of his head with a nine-millimeter round.”

  “Hang on,” Alex said. She heard the drone of news anchors and Alex picked up the phone again. “Wow, the story’s on CNN. They’re calling you and Salazar heroes.”

  “She’s my hero. She saved my life, Alex.”

  “I can’t wait to meet her and thank her. I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “So am I,” she said and yawned. “I just want to get stitched up and out of here.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “I can go online and get you a hotel room.”

  “I’ll do it,” she said. “I have my phone and nothing else to do.”

  “So it was some kind of Russian mob thing, huh? The hits at Paula Watkins’s home and then finishing off the job with Duchaine?”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “But why?”

  “I’m thinking it has something to do with Watkins and Duchaine elbowing in on the high-end-prostitution racket.”

  A doctor appeared and looked at her phone. “No cells in here.”

  “Sorry, doc’s here and I got to go,” Bree said. “Love you.”

  “Love you too,” Alex said and hung up.

  It wasn’t until after Bree’s arm had been stitched up and she’d been released with prescriptions for antibiotics and painkillers that she realized she still had no place to stay for the night. She figured she’d sit down with her phone somewhere and try to find something.

  But when she reached the lobby, she found Phillip Henry Luster waiting.

  “I was told they’d brought you here,” he said. “I’ve got a car, and a stiff drink and a warm bed await you at my house.”

  “Thank you, Phillip. You’re a lifesaver.”

  “From what I hear, it’s the other way around.”

  Chapter

  93

  Alexandria, Virginia

  At three on Monday afternoon, Sampson and I walked into the federal holding facility in Alexandria and met Lindy York, Thomas Tull’s defense attorney, who looked more sour than usual.

  Seeing a copy of that morning’s Wall Street Journal sticking out of her leather bag, I said, “Does Tull know yet?”

  “No. He’s being held in isolation for his own safety. There was an attack on him last evening. Seems there are a lot of family men incarcerated here.”

  After we’d gone through security, we went to a room set aside for attorneys to meet with clients. Twenty minutes later, led by two corrections officers, Tull shuffled in. The writer’s jaw was swollen. His right hand was in a cast.

  York was horrified. She shouted at the guards, “This is outrageous! My client needs medical attention!”

  “He’s had it,” one of the guards shot back, sitting Tull down. “All night.”

  “I’m aw wight,” Tull said thickly. “Been through worse, and they got me on oxy.”

  His attorney rolled her eyes. “Not exactly the way you want to be talking to law enforcement, Thomas.”

  “No choice,” he said. “What’s happened? Why are you here?”

  York and I exchanged glances. “After you, Counselor.”

  The attorney gave me an unhappy nod and retrieved the Wall Street Journal from her bag. She unfolded it and slid it across the table.

  The writer looked at it, puzzled at first. Then his stare hardened on the headline.

  Publisher Drops Bestselling Author Indicted for Murders

  “I’ll sue,” he growled when he looked up. “I want to talk to my agent. Now!”

  “You’re not exactly in a position to be making demands,” Sampson said.

  “They can’t do this! I’ve done nothing wrong!”

  York said, “Your new publishers say they can, Thomas. There was a morality clause in the deal memo governing your next book. They’re exercising it, and they say you now owe them the four-million-dollar signing bonus they gave you.”

  “Not a chance! I will sue. I didn’t do this! I am not the Family Man, Lindy!” he shouted. He winced and glanced at me. “Volkov. Find Volkov, Cross, and you’ll know I was framed.”

  “We did find him,” I said. “Or NYPD did. He was one of three shooters who gunned down Frances Duchaine and her two bodyguards last night. Officers on the scene returned fire, killing two and wounding the third.”

  “Volkov?” he said.

  “Shot multiple times.”

  “Tell me he’s alive.”

  Sampson said, “Your alibi’s in a medically induced coma, hanging on by a thread.”

  The writer gaped at us for several moments as if suddenly overwhelmed by this newest twist in his predicament.

  He shook his head, said, “I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.”

  Chapter

  94

  Manhattan

  On Monday afternoon, Bree climbed out of a taxi in front of NYU Medical Center. She’d slept fitfully at Phillip Henry Luster’s place but had felt well enough that morning to go to Salazar’s precinct and make a detailed statement about the previous evening’s events to the detectives there, including Rosella’s partner, Simon Thompson.

  Thompson, who’d been cold to her before, had taken her aside and thanked her for saving Salazar’s life. Bree was still feeling good about that when she exited the elevator on the maternity ward and asked the nurses where she could find Rosella.

  Room 302, she was told. “She’s having a party in there,” the nurse said.

  Bree went to room 302 and found Salazar in bed, an IV in her arm and a newborn in a pink blanket on her lap. She was surrounded by family: her four-year-old daughter, her husband, her sister, her mother, and two men who turned out to be the detective’s brothers.

  They were all bantering in Spanish when Bree knocked on the open door.

  “Chief Stone,” Salazar called, sounding weak but smiling. “Come in, come in.”

  “I’m not interrupting?”

  “Never,” she said. “You’re family now.” She introduced the people around the bed.

  One of her brothers stared at Bree suspiciously and said something sharp in Spanish.

  The detective’s brows knit. “Because she saved my life, fool!” Salazar looked back at Bree and grinned. “Come, come see my little one.”

  Bree smiled as she went to the bed, and the family made room for her.

  “A baby girl?”

  “I’m as surprised as you are,” Salazar said. “I was sure it was a boy. And you know how they were worried that the baby was in distress? Turns out that her head was in the wrong position and she almost got wedged in the birth canal.”

  “Wow. She’s tough!”

  “She is,” Salazar’s mother said. “With a little help from the doctors, they got her out, and she’s fine now.”

  Salazar said, “Better than fine. Six pounds, six ounces of pure beauty.”

  “What’s her name?”

  Salazar’s older daughter, Elaina, said proudly, “Analisa Bree Salazar!”

  “What?” Bree said, looking at the detective in wonder. “That’s so sweet.”

  “You saved my life.”

  “You saved mine first.”

  “I still owe you.”

  Bree grinned so wide it hurt. “Well, I’m honored, Rosella and Debo. When do you get out of here?”

  “Tomorrow,” Salazar’s mother said. “Rosella was running a fever earlier and they want to make sure she and the baby are okay.”

  The nurse who’d directed Bree to the room entered and shook her head. “Too many people. Someone’s got to go.”

  “I will,” Bree said. “I just wanted to stop in to say hi and meet Analisa.”

  “When are you going back to DC?” Salazar asked.

  “In a couple of hours, if I’m lucky,” Bree said. “If not, tomorrow.”

  “Text me,” Salazar said, and after saying goodbye to everyone, Bree left.

  She returned to Luster’s apartment and was gathering her things to head to Penn Station and the Acela train south to Washington when her cell rang. She looked at caller ID and saw a 212 area code and a number she did not recognize.

  “This is Bree Stone,” she said.

  “Bree,” a woman said. “This is Addie Wells. We met last night before…” Her voice trailed off.

  “I remember you, Addie,” Bree said. “How are you?”

  “I’m peachy, but I heard you were part of the gunfight with the Russians after they killed Frances Duchaine.”

  Bree sighed. “You heard correct.”

  “Well, I’m thrilled you’re alive.”

  “I’m pretty happy about it too.”

  Wells laughed. “You really impressed me last night, Bree. Even before the shooting started.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  There was a pause. “I’d love to talk to you about writing a book for me someday.”

  “Me?”

  “Why not? I specialize in true crime and until yesterday I was Thomas Tull’s new editor. Did I mention that?”

  “I don’t think so. I should tell you that my husband is working the Family Man case.”

  “I figured that out last night after I got home,” Wells said. “Which is also part of why I called you. Does Dr. Cross know that Suzanne Liu is representing some unknown writer and shopping a book proposal about the Family Man murders and Thomas Tull?”

  That came out of left field. “I doubt it. How do you know that?”

  “Suzanne sent me a teaser e-mail about the project an hour ago. Claims to have the inside story. She says it’s destined to be a classic and that it will never leave the bestseller list. The actual proposal is coming in an hour. I have thirty-six hours to decide whether to buy or not. Auction, best bid, nine a.m., day after tomorrow.”

  “Who’s the unknown writer?”

  “Uh, let me see,” she said and paused. “Lisa Moore—do you know her?”

  Chapter

  95

  Washington, DC

  When Bree’s call came in, Sampson and I were driving across the Fourteenth Street Bridge reviewing our chat with Thomas Tull, who’d gone back to his cell looking as trapped as a man could be.

  Over the Bluetooth connection, Bree’s voice filled the car. “Did you know Lisa Moore is writing a book about the Family Man killings and Thomas Tull?”

  “What? No.”

  Bree explained about meeting Tull’s editor the evening before and then hearing from her about Moore’s proposal, which was about to be submitted to publishing houses with Suzanne Liu as agent.

  When she finished, I said, “Moore certainly never mentioned to us that she was writing a book. She claimed Liu was her lover and alibi, and that was pretty much it.”

  “I think there’s more to it,” Bree said. “I mean, how long ago did you arrest Tull?”

  “Four days ago.”

  “Not a lot of time to put together a book proposal from an unknown writer.”

  “It is fast,” Sampson said. “No doubt about it.”

  I said, “Any chance we can see that proposal as soon as it lands?”

  “I think I can make that happen,” Bree said. “I’ll call you back.”

  She hung up.

  Sampson and I glanced at each other, the ramifications of the book proposal beginning to sink in.

  “Tull did think Moore was framing him,” John said. “And he did threaten Liu after selling his book to someone else. There could be bad, bad blood between them.”

  “Could be. I’m getting suspicious now.”

  “Highly. I feel like we should be turning around and going back to Alexandria, but Willow’s ballet debut is in two hours.”

  “You’re going to that recital,” I said. “We’ll look at Moore’s proposal tonight and then see what Tull thinks of it in the morning.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” John said, looking relieved.

  “Willow has to come first,” I said. “Always.”

  “Glad to be reminded, Alex.”

  Sampson’s phone rang. He answered, listened, frowned, said, “Black Porsche? And he says we’ve met? I’ve never heard of the guy. Can you send over a photo of his driver’s license? Thanks.”

  He hung up as we left the bridge and headed toward my house. “Some guy got arrested last night speeding in a black Porsche on the Rock Creek Parkway. He’s got four outstanding warrants in Texas.”

  “Same guy who raced Tull?”

  “Dunno, but he says he knows things we should know about Tull.”

  We were almost to my home on Fifth when Sampson’s phone buzzed with a text.

  He opened it, used two fingers to magnify the screen, stared, and, after a moment, said, “Son of a bitch.”

  I glanced over at a Texas driver’s license with a grainy picture of a bald guy in his forties. “James Kenilworth? Who’s that?”

  Chapter

  96

  After calling Addie Wells and asking the editor to forward the book proposal to both her and Alex, Bree tried to convince herself it was time to head to the train station and home. But she’d had only a few hours of sleep the night before and events had been moving so fast, she was suddenly and overwhelmingly tired.

  She lay down on her bed in Luster’s guest room, told herself she’d nap for an hour and then regroup.

  When her phone began to ring, Bree felt dragged from an almost drugged state, sure that she’d been asleep less than fifteen minutes. When she picked up the phone, however, she saw two full hours had passed.

  “Hello?” she said, aware of how groggy she sounded.

  “Chief Stone? This is Simon Thompson.”

  “Oh, hi, Detective,” she said. “How are you?”

  “Like I said earlier, happy my partner’s alive,” Thompson said. “Listen, Rosella wanted me to call you. You asked about a company named Paladin doing work for the hedge fund that invested in Duchaine.”