Triple Cross (Alex Cross #30)(82)

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.”