Triple Cross (Alex Cross #30)(81)

Part of the gunman’s head erupted and he died on the spot.

Bree tried to push herself up, but it was too painful; she saw Salazar passing in that odd waddle, her gun up as she stepped over the dead man. The last shooter was at the rear bumper of the rolling van.

“NYPD!” she shouted. “Drop your weapon!”

He half turned, swinging his pistol toward her.

The detective pulled the trigger.

There was an audible click.

The gunman’s pistol was almost on Salazar when Bree, ignoring the fire in her left arm, pushed herself up, pointed her pistol, got a sight picture, and shot.

The shooter doubled over like he’d been kicked by a mule, but he did not fall and he did not drop his weapon.

Bree shot him again and again, and finally he spun around, fell, and lay sprawled out in the street.

The van accelerated away.

She was aware of being dizzy, of Salazar coming toward her, and of sirens screaming far and wide.





CHAPTER 91


THE DETECTIVE SQUATTED NEXT to her, panting. “You just saved my life, Chief.”

“You saved mine first, Rosella,” Bree said, becoming less confused but also more acutely aware of the agony in her arm.

“You’re bleeding good,” Salazar said, helping her to her feet.

Bree’s vision went blurry for a moment but then cleared enough for her to see the crowd gathered and the third attacker, the one she’d shot, lying on the street, gun a few feet away. His leg moved.

“He’s alive!” Bree said.

Salazar left her, did a fast waddle over, and pushed the gun away with the side of her sneaker. Bree took a few tentative steps toward the detective and heard her say, “He’s wearing body armor, but you caught him good with that last shot.”

The shooter moaned.

Salazar grabbed the top of his hood and yanked it off. There was blood all over the side of his face from a deep gash on the side of his head.

“I’ll be damned,” the detective said.

Bree felt a little nauseated. “What? You know him?”

“It’s the wolf your husband was asking about,” the detective said, a sudden pained expression on her face. “Dusan Volkov.”

“The Russian? Tull’s Russian?”

Patrol cars and ambulances were arriving on the scene. Salazar did something on her phone and got an EMT to look at Bree. Two other medics worked on Volkov in the street.

Salazar’s boss, Lieutenant Ellen Larkin, arrived, saw Bree, recognized her from the massacre at Paula Watkins’s home, and became furious.

“Are you telling me a civilian was blazing away with her gun in the streets of New York and you let it happen, Salazar?”

The EMTs lifted the Russian onto a gurney and moved it toward the ambulance.

The detective pointed at him. “If I hadn’t, I’d be dead, and that guy? Dusan Volkov? He would have gotten away.”

Larkin’s attitude changed. “That’s Volkov?”

“He killed Frances Duchaine,” Bree said. “Right in front of us. The bodyguards too.”

Salazar said, “They’re back there on the sidewalk outside Cipriani.”

“Jesus Christ,” the lieutenant said. “Jesus H. Christ.” She pulled out her radio and walked off a few feet, barking orders into it.

The EMT said the bullet had passed through Bree’s arm and did not appear to have hit bone, but he wanted to take her to the ER to have it examined.

Salazar said, “After I’m done here, I’ll come see how you’re—” She stopped suddenly, that pained expression on her face again.

Lieutenant Larkin walked toward her. “Rosella, the chief and the chief of detectives want you to write up a full—”

Holding her palm up, Salazar said, “Can’t. I have to go to the hospital. Right now. With Chief Stone.”

“That’s a flesh wound, and you’re needed here, Detective.”

Salazar waddled away from her toward the rear of the ambulance, thumbing something on her phone again. “Sorry, Ellen, I’m needed somewhere else a whole lot more at the moment. My water just broke.”





CHAPTER 92


TWO MINUTES LATER, THE ambulance squealed around the corner of Lexington and headed south, lights flashing and sirens wailing.

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.”