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Mac considered the options. None of them were good. This was going to get really ugly — and Naomi didn’t deserve that. He started forward, but Stan saw him and shook his head slightly. Mac stopped. Then, something else occurred to him, and instead of going out to the confrontation at the front door, Mac went down the stairs to the basement instead.
He’d never been down here, no reason to, and now he looked around curiously. It looked like a large den from a ‘80s sit-com. A couch and an arm chair with a coffee table anchored the center. Two desks and chairs were off to one side. Four doors led off the large space — bedrooms, Mac guessed. And probably a bathroom — maybe a laundry? He had a hazy impression that when the boarding house was full, Tim and another guy had lived down here. Just Tim was down here this summer, apparently.
Tim had Mac’s laptop set up on one of the desks, with Daniel’s phone attached. Rand was talking to Maiah about something off to one side, and Angie was sitting on the couch with her video camera out, reviewing what she’d filmed that day. Daniel sat next to her. The Burmese agent stood awkwardly in the center of the room, watching everyone. Mac wondered what he thought about all of this. He snorted. More moving parts.
He pulled out his cell phone and checked the time: 2:30 a.m. There was no way Sgt. McBride should still be on shift, and Mac thought that was true of the officers McBride had with him. Had they gone completely rogue? Over Daniel? That didn’t make sense.
He paged through his contacts and grimaced. He didn’t have Sherry Grant’s phone number. Mac looked at Angie. “Do you have Sherry’s phone number in your phone?”
She nodded and read it off to him. He punched it in.
“Officer Grant?” Mac said politely to her suspicious hello. “This is Mac Davis. I’m at that location the university police wanted city backup for earlier this evening. Is there a reason why Sgt. McBride should be here now? Threatening to come inside using ‘hot pursuit’ as his justification?”
Everyone in the room stopped to listen. Mac rolled his eyes, and with a moment’s hesitation as he looked at the Burmese agent — what was his name anyway? — he put it on speaker phone.
“Acting Sergeant Grant,” Sherry corrected, and that said a lot right there. He could hear the smile in her voice. “We’ve got a hell of a problem here, Mac. Captain Abrams is here. I’m going to put you on speakerphone.”
“So about Sgt. McBride? Shouldn’t there have been a shift change by now? Is he authorized to be in hot pursuit?” Mac prompted.
“There has been a shift change,” Sherry agreed. “I needed to wait for it before I could act, actually. So here’s the situation.”
After dropping Mac off at his car, Sherry had gone into the office. She told the officers hanging around that she’d come to check on something — not an uncommon thing, although it was pretty late for her. From there, she’d called Captain Abrams and told him the situation. By the time Abrams came in, McBride was there. Abrams called him into his office, but he’d left the door open — they all could hear. Mac could tell how amazing she thought that was — dressing down your sergeant in front of his men? Yeah, he conceded that wasn’t proper procedure.
Sherry said Abrams asked McBride what the hell he thought he was doing. McBride erupted, Sherry said. The two men were still arguing when McBride took a call.
Mac figured it must have been the call from Daniel.
“McBride lost it,” Sherry said. “I thought he was going to punch the captain when Captain Abrams questioned him about the call. He stormed out of the captain’s office, grabbed a bunch of the men who are known to be his private guard, and headed out. Captain put him on an administrative leave with pay — called him in front of me and told him that. Told McBride to stand down, go home, and cool off. He is supposed to come into the office at 10 a.m. to discuss things. McBride told him to fuck off — that Abrams could expect a call from a union rep — and an attorney.”
McBride had hung up on the captain, and Captain Abrams followed procedure — of course he did, Mac thought with a sigh — to put McBride on administrative leave. He emailed McBride a written order to return to the precinct and turn in his gun and badge. So far McBride hadn’t done that.
No, shit, Mac thought with a glance upstairs. A commitment to procedure was one thing, but was the man completely clueless?
Captain Abrams had put Sherry in charge of the incoming shift, a shift Sherry wasn’t sure she could trust. “McBride’s handpicked men are on the evening shift,” she explained. “And those of us who are either too ethical or too clueless to know what is going on are assigned the day shift. The swing shift has a mix, I think, but I don’t know who is a McBride sympathizer and who isn’t. Then we get a call from the Boar’s Head. McBride and his men are there, and they’re tearing up the place, and I quote ‘getting aggressive with some of our customers.’”
Mac snorted. “Who called? The woman bartender? Or the owner?”
Sherry was silent for a moment. “Tell me you know where Daniel is,” she said urgently.
“I know where Daniel is,” Mac agreed. “You sound like you know him? A friend of yours?”
“His wife is,” Sherry said. Daniel nodded in agreement.
“Is he safe?” she asked.
“For the moment,” Mac said. “But McBride is upstairs threatening to arrest him — and me — for fleeing arrest.” He thought that was what McBride was claiming anyway. “Also upstairs, however, is Captain Lorde and Lieutenant Rodriguez from Internal Affairs. You might have Abrams reach out to them about McBride’s administrative leave. If he needs a cell number, I have it.”
“Of course you do,” she muttered. “How many of McBride’s men are there?”
“He’s got three squad cars and an unmarked,” Mac said. “I’m guessing that means seven men plus him?”
“Half the shift,” she said. “That tallies with what I saw at the reservoir.”
“There were two unmarked cars at the reservoir,” Angie said.
Sherry sighed. “You’ve got me on speaker, too?” she asked. “Hiya, Angie.”
“Sorry, should have told you,” Mac apologized, without meaning it. He was ready to ditch all the rules.
“So I told Abrams that McBride planned to kill you, but Abrams pointed out it is just your word against McBride’s, and it’s well known you have a grudge against the man,” Sherry continued. “I think you should swear out a complaint anyway. He pulled his weapon on you, correct?”
“Correct,” Mac said. He hesitated, and then admitted, “I have it all recorded.”
“Not legally,” Sherry warned. “You might not want to tell anyone — that’s a felony. There’s no way McBride would have allowed you to record it!”
“No, it’s legal — well most of it is,” Mac assured her. He explained Shorty’s role in the recording. “So essentially I was wearing a wire — if somewhat ad hoc. I did record the conversation McBride had with his men at the reservoir on my own phone — but I was pissed — he’d pulled a damned gun on me — and Shorty was trying to raise someone to help, so he wasn’t on the line anymore.”
Which reminded him — where the hell was Joe Dunbar? He looked at Angie, and mouthed Joe’s name. She nodded and pulled out her own phone.
“You have him threatening you on tape?” Sherry said slowly with increasing glee. “And it’s legal? What made you think of that?”
Mac shrugged. “Read about the idea, and filed it away,” he said. “When McBride inserted himself into my ride-along, it made me nervous. So I called a techie friend of mine, and he set it up to record. He wasn’t particularly happy with me when everything went to shit, and he was sitting there, helplessly listening. But that’s how Angie knew to come looking — and got you involved.”
“All right then,” Sherry said with growing confidence. “I need to update the captain and get him to call Lorde or Rodriguez. Give me the cell numbers just in case — we might only have office numbers.”
Mac looked them up and read them off. If the two of them didn’t like it, he’d apologize later.
“Do you know why McBride was after Daniel Garvey?” Sherry asked.
Mac hesitated. “I suppose because he was talking to me,” he said. True, if not all of the story. Daniel looked relieved. Mac felt a moment of pity — Daniel’s life as he knew it was over. It just hadn’t sunk in yet.
Rand made a cutting gesture across his throat. Mac nodded. “Got to go, Sherry,” he said. “Get a hold of Rodriguez — call him yourself if you have to.”
Sherry agreed, although Mac wasn’t sure she would actually go that far. He was finding that people who lived by the rules sometimes had a hard time dealing with situations not covered in the rulebook.
He raised an eyebrow at Rand who pointed upstairs. “Someone knocked. Called your name,” he said.
Mac considered that. He itched about being trapped down here without knowing what was going on. He thought about Stan’s response to Rand and laughed. Janet would probably tell him the same thing. But still, he didn’t like being a mushroom, he thought, amused by the old joke — what is kept in the dark and fed bullshit? He looked at Tim. “So how goes it? You about got that backed up?”
Tim nodded. “Just about.”
Mac handed him his phone. “Can you pull off a recording from mine?”
“Not until this is done.”
“Email it to me,” Angie ordered. “I’ll get it onto the laptop when the photos are done downloading.”
Mac fumbled a bit, but he got the email sent off, and shoved his phone back into his pocket. He blew out a long breath of air. He didn’t have a good feeling about any of this. He got up to the landing, when Angie caught up with him.
“I’m worried about all of this,” Angie said, and she wrapped her arms around him. He widened his stance and pulled her up close into the V of his legs and held her tight. Damn, it felt good.
He didn’t argue with her — how could he? — he just held her. “I think I might end up downtown with Rodriguez,” Mac said quietly. “I have to back his play, Angie.”
She nodded.
“If that happens, take the laptop to Shorty,” he continued. “Have him make a backup copy of what he taped earlier and add it to the laptop. Two copies, actually, because I promised one to Stan, and then take the laptop to Janet.”
“Mac,” Angie began. Mac shook his head.
“I’ll be fine,” Mac said gently. “But they’re going to want Daniel, and if he goes downtown, he might not survive it. And I gave him my word.”
She nodded, then she reached up and kissed him. Mac deepened the kiss for a moment, savoring the taste of her. Then he pulled away. “You are amazing,” he said sincerely. “You came to back me up. You film an assailant on a rooftop and back up an FBI agent taking him down. I have never known anyone with your spirit.” He hesitated, and then added, “And I love you.”
Angie stared at him, and tears welled up in her eyes. He looked at her with alarm, and that made her laugh. “Damn you, Mac Davis. You come back to me, you hear? And you can say that again to me, and I’ll give it the response it deserves.” She grinned at him. “Can’t scare the children.”
He laughed and hugged her again. “Holding you to it.”
As he got to the top of the stairs, behind him he heard her say softly, “I love you, too.”
Mac eased open the door, listening for a moment. He could hear an argument — McBride’s voice was loud and out of control. He could hear Lorde, but he thought he might be on the phone — with Abrams, he hoped. And that left Rodriguez blocking McBride’s entrance. He didn’t know where Naomi and Janet were, and that bothered him. Well, both of them had been through enough in the last few years that they could be counted on to duck.
He moved quietly into the kitchen where Stan was standing, watching the situation in the entry unfold. “What’s going on?” Mac asked softly.
“I don’t see how I can take Daniel into protective custody,” Stan murmured. “He’s going to have to go with Lorde and Rodriguez. McBride’s presence here has everyone backed into a corner.”
Mac told him what he’d learned from Sherry Grant. “So he’s actually acting as a police officer while on administrative leave,” Mac said. “Does that change things?”
“It will in the inquiry,” Stan agreed. He was watching the front and not looking at Mac. “But even if Rodriguez can push him out of here, he’s going to call down to lockup and check to see if Daniel is there. And then he’s going to start filing protests and complaints, and countercomplaints. He’ll muddy the waters. And really, the only reason Daniel would be in FBI care is because Lorde agrees that his own jail cells and safe houses aren’t safe. That would make Lorde a bigger target than he already is. And don’t think the police union wouldn’t make an issue of it. He’d probably not survive the uproar.”
Mac thought Stan meant Trevor Lorde wouldn’t politically survive, but after this last year, he wasn’t sure. Wasn’t that a hell of a note?
Stan was right. Lorde was going to have to take custody of Daniel as a material witness. And he was going to have to hold him in downtown lockup. Mac took a deep breath. And the way Mac saw it, that meant he was going to have to go there too.
He hated that place. He’d been in and out of juvie, but the night he and his cousin stole a car and got busted for it, he went in with adults. Forty-eight hours, and he had been grimly determined he was not ever going to allow anyone to put him back in a cell again. Then, two years ago, Howard Parker planted some false evidence, and Mac had gone back to jail, courtesy of Nick Rodriguez, as a matter of fact. Not for long. Janet had bailed him out. She’d used her house for collateral when the paper had dithered, and he would always owe her for that statement of faith in him.
And jail was still no place he wanted to be. But he wasn’t 17 years old, full of anger and bluster, and trying to hide how scared he really was. He shook his head at the memory of the boy who thought he was tough.
“He’ll have to take me too,” Mac said steadily. He was pretty sure Stan knew how hard that was for him to say. Stan Warren had been lurking around that whole fiasco with Howard Parker, orchestrating a lot of it, really. “I can connect the dots. Lorde can say he’s doing it until he can sort it out later — when I have an attorney present.”
“Buyable,” Stan allowed. “Are you sure? Lorde isn’t going to let anything happen to Daniel if he can help it — if for no other reason than it makes his case.”
Mac did think Lorde was honorable. And he trusted Rodriguez — they’d been through a lot together since Rodriguez once arrested him for attempted murder. But the key phrase was ‘if he can help it.’ Unless Lorde or Rodriguez was right in the room with Daniel, Daniel would be dead before either of them could get there in time. Killing someone in a jail was appallingly easy. Bunch of criminals in there, after all, he thought, suddenly amused. Although, in this case, it wasn’t the criminals Mac was worried about, it was the crooked cops. And they had keys to those jail cells.
Truth was cops didn’t talk about how many deaths actually occurred in a jail. Mac had seen different statistics about it. Most jail deaths were ruled suicide.
Of course, so had the deaths of the people dumped around the north precinct.
But Mac did know that if someone wanted you dead, sitting in a jail cell made you an easy target. And there were a lot of people who would want Daniel dead — not just the cops, but when the word got out, every one of those people who had gone through Josh Hill to get on a look-away list with McBride was going to want him dead too.
And Josh, for that matter. He started to say something to Stan about that but stopped. This night had too many moving parts as it was. He wasn’t going to complicate it more. But he moved Josh Hill high on his list of people he was going to hunt down as soon as he got Daniel Garvey to a safe place.
If there was a safe place for him. Mac shook his head. What had possessed the man to keep the photos? Mac was glad he had, but damn, the man had no survival instincts at all.
“Wish me luck,” Mac said wryly. He squared his shoulders and put a swagger to his walk as he stepped around the corner to the entryway. A good part of controlling any situation was theater. Act like you’re the one in control, and you became the one in control.
The entry was full of people, angry people, glaring at each other. Impasse. Mac put an annoying half-smile on his face. “Captain Lorde, you’re here. You ready to go? We’ve got lots to talk about.”
There was silence. Mac noted Janet’s raised eyebrow, but she didn’t say anything. Even McBride was caught open-mouthed and flat-footed.
“You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that,” Lorde muttered under his breath. Mac snorted.
“Just about,” Lorde agreed. “Just as soon as Sgt. McBride and I clear up a few details.”
Mac looked at McBride, his smile fading. “Captain Abrams is looking for you,” he said. “Something about needing your weapon and your badge? You were put on administrative leave hours ago — what are you even doing here?”
“None of your damned business,” McBride blustered. “Taking him downtown, are you?” he said to Lorde. “I’ll be along to check.”
“Not with your badge and gun,” Lorde said. “As the man said, you’re on administrative leave. Give Lt. Rodriguez your badge and gun, McBride. We’ll see to it that they get back up to the north precinct building. You can claim them when the inquiry is over.” Lorde looked at the other two cops standing on the porch. “And you all are on leave too,” he said. “Pending an inquiry as to why you’re here after your shift has ended and with a cop you know is supposed to be on leave. I’ll open up the inquiry with your Captain on Monday. In the meantime, go home.”
McBride snorted. “And how is the precinct going to cover the shifts without my men?”
Mac thought the ‘my men’ was telling. He saw Lorde’s eyes narrow at the phrase.
“Not your problem, is it?” Lorde said calmly. “Get out of here, McBride. You’ve caused me a lot of paperwork, and I want to get it done so I can go home.”
“You do that,” McBride said, and he backed out of the entryway, continuing his stare-down with the director of internal affairs. “I’ll be watching.”
“All right,” Lorde said quietly, as McBride hit the sidewalk. There was some discussion down there, but Mac couldn’t hear what was going on. “Where is this man we need to talk to?”
“I’ll get him,” Mac said. “But Captain? Where he goes, I go. He’s my confidential source. And the only way I see him making it to Monday is if I’m standing at his side.”
Lorde shook his head briefly. “Got a real crusader attitude going, don’t you?”
“Goes with the territory,” Rodriguez said. “All reporters get that way. And Marines? They aren’t much better. May be the first time I’ve had to deal with a crusading Marine reporter though.”
Lorde snorted with amusement and relaxed a bit. “Well get him, then, and let’s go downtown and talk about it. And maybe we can all get some sleep.”
Mac nodded and opened the door to the basement. Daniel was standing there, waiting. “Got your phone?” Mac asked. Daniel held it up.
“Let’s go, then,” Mac said. Rodriguez led the way out the door, Daniel followed him, Mac at his side. Lorde brought up the rear. Mac thought Stan — or maybe Rand — had come to the porch behind them.
There was a young uniform cop standing at the foot of the porch steps. Mac recognized him — the man in the woods. Mac slowed a bit. Beyond him, McBride was arguing with one of the officers by the cars they’d come in. Damn. Three patrol cars, and an unmarked? For a firecracker call? Mac snickered.
But Angie had said she thought there were two unmarked cars out at the reservoir, and he’d take her abilities for observation over anyone’s. So where was the other unmarked? Mac frowned, looking up and down the street.
McBride saw them leave the house. He turned away from his argument to glare at Rodriguez. And the Mac saw him smile a bit, and he reached up to reset his uniform hat.
“Down!” Mac yelled, and he shoved Daniel to the ground before laying Rodriguez out as well. Rodriguez was using his cane, and Mac winced as the two of them went down. Rodriguez was going to hurt from this. Better hurt than dead, however.
He heard the shot, and then a scream. Mac crouched, looking around. The cops had scattered, except for McBride who was laughing. Mac almost went for him, consequences be damned, when he realized it was the young cop who had been hit.
Mac scrambled toward him, as he lay on the sidewalk. The shot had taken him through the shoulder blade. Mac pulled off his own shirt and used it as a compress, putting pressure to stop the bleeding.
“Man down!” he called out. “Someone call 911. Anyone got more medic experience than I do?”
“Calling,” Janet said. Someone scrambled into place next to him. Mac looked — Joe Dunbar? When did he get here?
“About time you showed up,” Mac grumbled. “Ready?”
Joe nodded, and they shifted places. “Heard you were throwing a party, but my invitation got lost in the mail,” Joe said. He pressed down tightly on the man’s wound. “You hanging in there, bro?” he asked the cop.
“Yeah,” the cop said. “Fucking hurts.”
Joe nodded. “It does,” he said. He looked at Mac. “Go.”
The shot had come from across the street. Mac nodded and scrambled across the street, running fast and low, in a random zigzag to prevent becoming a second casualty.
Mac knew where the sniper blind was. He’d been up there after the Army of God had used it. It was an old Victorian house with a widow’s walk at the top — a small fenced place where women watched for their men to come home from war, he’d been told. The house was a rental, and usually occupied by six or seven college students, who used the space as a sleep porch on nights too hot to stay inside a house built before air-conditioning.
The problem was that all the old Victorians around here had fire escapes — ladders attached to exterior walls. Mac had almost pulled that one down, but these old houses were fire traps. And what were the odds?
Apparently good odds, if you knew him, Mac thought grimly. Well, really it had been Tim’s fault the first time. And this time? Maiah brought the trouble to the Fairchild doorstep. It wasn’t his fault. He grinned at that and ran between the two houses across the street from Fairchild’s, and then a zag down the alley, and up that godforsaken ladder.
Mac felt old reflexes kick in. It had been seven years since he got out of the Marines. Almost twice as long as he was in. But he would never lose the reflexes. He hoped not, anyway — they’d saved his life more than once.
It was as if his senses expanded. It was dark, a moonless night, but there were streetlights of course. And for the U District it was quiet — the bars had closed, and everyone had staggered home for the night. He wondered if there were still university police on Greek Row, and what they’d thought when they heard a shot?
There hadn’t been a second one. Mac thought the sniper was still up there, waiting for another shot at whoever he’d been aiming at. He didn’t think that young cop was the target, but you never knew. He might have been waiting to talk to Lorde. In fact, Mac was sure that he had been. But no sharpshooter was good enough to tell that from this distance — and that hat tipoff by McBride had been prearranged. No, the sniper missed his target.
Mac just wondered who the original target was.
He was going to find out if he had to beat it out of the man up here. He hit the top of the ladder and saw the man lining up another shot. Mac pulled his pistol from his ankle holster and launched himself at the sniper, landing on his back and jarring him away from his shot.
The man rolled, and Mac grabbed the rifle, tossing it aside as he pointed his Glock at the sniper’s gut. “Go ahead,” Mac said softly. “Give me a reason.”
It was Janet’s influence that he was even waiting for a reason, Mac thought sourly. Shorty had said he was going to get him one of those Christian bracelets that said WWJD? Only for him, it should stand for What Would Janet Do? And he could hear Janet asking, Vigilante? Or journalist?
It was a damned sight harder to do it this way. Left to his own devices, he could just shoot the bastard, and walk away.
Well, he’d have to tell someone there was a dead body up here, he conceded. And then there would be questions....
He saw the man’s eyes shift, just slightly. Always watch the face — that’s where the tells were. Mac jerked his gun away from the sniper’s gut, rolled and fired at a different man. At the last minute he again thought WWJD? He pulled the shot just enough that it hit the man’s calf instead of his chest.
The man didn’t stop — he launched himself at Mac. A man who had been shot before, Mac thought. The second time you knew it was just pain, and you focused on getting the job done anyway.
Well, it was just pain or you were dead. Pain was good, actually.
Mac rolled out of way and popped up onto his feet. He pointed his pistol at the second man. So, the sniper had a spotter. He should have thought of that.
“Un-uh,” Mac chided him. He reached down and picked up the sniper’s rifle. He whistled soundlessly. “Nice piece,” he approved. “And just in case you think you can take me since there are two of you, and one of me, I might remind you I was Marine recon. I think I remember how one of these things work.” He smiled at them, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You want to take that bet?”
“Davis,” the sniper said.
“That’s right,” Mac said, when he didn’t say anything more. “That’s me.” He looked at the rifle again, shrugged, and hurled it off the roof to the alley below. He patted the two men down, found another hand gun on the spotter. He checked it, and then put that one in his back waistband.
“Who were you aiming at?” Mac asked conversationally.
“Aiming? Not me,” the sniper said with a shrug. “Do you see a gun? I don’t.”
“And what will prints tell us on that rifle in the alley? I imagine a crime scene team will find enough residue on your hands to tell them what they need know,” Mac observed. “Not my problem. I’d just as soon shoot you, myself. But my boss disapproves of that.”
The man glanced at Mac’s face when he said that and then looked away. That’s right asshole, I’m not joking, Mac thought coldly. He wanted to kill this man so badly he could taste it.
He was fucking tired of this shit. He could talk about letting the system take the time it needed to do the job right, but really, something had to be done when the system’s guardians were the problem.
Who guards the guardians, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Janet had answered that question with, ‘we do,’ once. He’d never forgotten it.
But reporters did a piss-poor job of it sometimes. They were over-worked, under-paid, and usually lacked the knowledge it took to hold someone at the height of their profession accountable. Mac knew he didn’t know as much as he should to be the kind of cop reporter this city needed.
I wanted to be a sportswriter, he thought with a mental shake of his head.
Mac studied the street scene, illuminated by the flashing lights of an ambulance, street lights and the Fairchild House. It looked like some of the cop cars had left — had McBride really left the scene?
“Looks like your sergeant left,” Mac said. “Left you all holding the bag, once again. Too bad, so sad.”
Neither man said anything.
“And the man you shot? He’s a cop,” Mac continued. “That’s not going to play well, now is it?”
He watched until he saw Rodriguez. He’d hit the man pretty hard, taking him down. But he thought Nick was still a target for the assholes out on bail. He was an important part of the case.
“Who were you aiming at?” Mac repeated his question softly. He pulled his pistol up so that it aimed at the man’s jaw instead of his gut. “Answer, or you can talk through a voice box for the rest of your life.”
The sniper looked at him, and decided Mac wasn’t joking. He shrugged. “There was a signal,” he said.
“The hat,” Mac said. “Trite. And it was all the warning I needed. But you hit a cop — was he who you intended to hit?”
“No,” the sniper said. “I was sighted in on the sidewalk — at man-height. I was to fire at the man who stepped onto the sidewalk when the sergeant re-set his hat. To be honest, I didn’t know who. Just watched for the sergeant’s signal.”
Mac visualized where people were when McBride touched his hat. The young officer was standing on the sidewalk — he imagined that the sniper had actually used him to home in on where his target would be. Mac had still been on the steps down from the porch. They’d been moving slow as Nick still needed to take his time on stairs.
That thought sent another wave of rage through him. Nick would always pay the price because of the corruption in this department. His finger itched.
Nick had stepped onto the sidewalk. He’d taken two steps toward where they were parked. Mac urged Daniel after him. Mac replayed McBride in his mind, though. McBride had looked at him when he reached for his hat.
McBride had wanted him dead.
Not Daniel Garvey — which was what Mac would have predicted. Not Rodriguez or even Lorde for revenge. McBride had been aiming at him.
“Did McBride tell you who you might be shooting at? Or why?”
The sniper snorted. “McBride gives orders. You do what you’re told, or you....”
“Shut up, Benson,” the spotter growled. The first words out of his mouth. “You’ve already said more than you should’ve.”
The sniper shrugged. “It’s over, Terrell,” he said. “The moment we agreed to come up here, this was the way it was going to end. We’re going to prison.” He turned to Mac. “He said the man was a known drug dealer with too many ties to downtown and he was going to walk. I didn’t believe a word of it. Word has it, that he agreed to a hit for a drug cartel and botched it. And this was his chance to fix that.”
Mac chewed on his lip, and then ordered himself to stop that.
The spotter shook his head. “No one’s gone to prison yet,” he observed. “Sarge has been right about that.”
That was the problem with slow justice. It didn’t work as a deterrence. Bad guys didn’t think long-term. They got away with it yesterday, they’ll do it again today. Tomorrow? Well, if no one stopped them, they’d try it again too. Bad guys were bad guys. Didn’t matter if you were a teenager stealing cars, or a cop on the take. Mac studied the man. “How did a Black man get into this shit with all these racists?” he asked.
The spotter — Terrell? — snorted. “You don’t say no to the man, Marine,” he said. “Not if you want to work in north precinct. I got a family to feed, you know?”
“Others managed.”
He shrugged. “They don’t work the night shift which is where you need to be if you want overtime. If you aren’t one of McBride’s men, you can kiss goodbye any overtime, security gigs, commendations, advancement... McBride controls it all, man.”
“And now you’re going to lose it all,” Mack said with a shake of his head. “That Black man down there, Trevor Lorde? You better sidle up to him and volunteer to turn state’s evidence if you want to see your kids graduate from school.”
Terrell glanced out at the street scene below, but he didn’t say anything. Mac shrugged. Not his problem. “Down you go,” he said.
Terrell gestured to his leg. “Bullet in my leg?” he said wryly.
Mac shrugged. “I can just give you a quick push, and let you slide down,” he suggested. “Move.”
The spotter moved. “And now you,” Mac said to the sniper. “And just remember, I’m right above you. I have the high ground here. You or your buddy try anything — anything — and I’ll shoot you first. And I won’t pull the shot a second time.”
The sniper nodded. He waited until his partner’s head disappeared over the edge of the roof, and he started down too.
Mac turned to toward the house and gave a sharp whistle. And then he watched his two captives slowly navigate three levels of ladder. Rand was waiting for them at the bottom. “There’s a rifle around there somewhere,” Mac called down, and then he rapidly went down the ladder.