Kindred in Death (In Death #29)(103)

She took a blow to the eye, to the nose as she went down, another to the small of the back as she fought her way back to her feet in a tidal wave of people rushing for the exits.

Through the gaps she saw a couple of uniforms muscling a male to the floor. The ball cap he wore fell off, and his shaggy brown hair flopped forward.

Swiping blood off her face, she pushed forward again.

And she saw him, standing at the edge of the chaos, looking across the tumult of panic to the glossy white coffin blanketed with pink and purple flowers. She saw the man who’d put Deena MacMasters in that cold white coffin smile as he stared at the man who held his weeping wife beside it.

In seconds, the wall of people surged again, blocking both her view and her forward progress.

“Second-floor suite entrance. Main. Confirmed sighting.” A woman fell into her. Eve simply pushed her aside, plowed on. “Suspect is wearing a black suit, white shirt, staff ID. Goddamn it, goddamn it, move in.”

Only static sounded through her earpiece. And ahead of her, the doorway filled with fleeing people, forming a human barricade that cut her off.

She pushed, dragged, bulled while behind her she heard Whitney’s commanding voice demand order. Too late, she thought, too f**king late. When she made the corridor, she searched right, left, spotted Trueheart helping an elderly woman into a chair.

She reached over, grabbed him. “Suspect is wearing a black suit, white shirt, black tie, staff ID. Hair’s short, medium blond. Send it out. Now. Now. I want this building shut down. Nobody out.”

“Yes, sir.”

She rushed for the stairs, all but leaping down them, bursting into the foyer.

“Oh, your nose is bleeding, let me—”

“Did a male, early twenties, short hair, medium blond, staff suit and ID, come through here?”

The woman who’d greeted her on arrival stared at the blood on Eve’s face. “Ah, yes, I believe I just saw one of our assistants just—”

“Where did he go?”

“He just left. He looked as if he was in a hurry.”

Eve charged outside, scanned in every direction. She caught sight of the two cops she’d assigned to the main doors giving chase. Cursing, she leaped down to the sidewalk, kicking into a full-out sprint as she yanked out her ’link, patched through to Dispatch.

“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, in foot pursuit of murder suspect heading north on Fifth at Fifty-eighth. White male, twenty-three, slim build, blond hair, wearing black suit, white shirt, black tie.”

She couldn’t see him, not through the wide stream of pedestrians flooding the sidewalk. She dodged, wove, eating up one block, then a second.

Even as she gained ground on the two cops, she knew it was fruitless. When she caught them at the cross street she didn’t need to hear their report. It was clear on their faces.

“We lost him, Lieutenant. He had a solid block on us when we got the alert, and he was moving fast. We barely caught sight of him. He just poofed in the crowd.”

“How’d he get by you?” she demanded. “How the hell did he get by you?”

“Lieutenant, we were on watch for incomings. Wired into the EDD guys keeping us up on any possibles heading in. This guy walked out with a small group of staff. We’d just gotten an alert there was a ruckus upstairs, that we’d taken the suspect down. There was a lag between that and the notification the suspect was posing as staff and on the loose. We pursued as soon as we got it. We were lucky to even catch sight of him before—”

She cut it off with a lift of her hand. “We’ll debrief this clusterf*ck at Central. Report back to your unit and await orders.”

She clipped back, furious, her face throbbing, and only shook her head when she saw Roarke moving quickly north toward her.

“We lost him. Goddamn it.”

Roarke took a handkerchief out of his pocket, handed it to her. “Your nose is bleeding.”

“I got clocked twice, maybe more in that riot. Knocked out my com, trampled my communicator. And he walks right out, right under the noses of two cops. He did exactly what he’d come to do, and had the extra benefit of watching us act like morons. What the f**k happened?”

“I don’t know.” He took her elbow to steer her through the Fifth Avenue throng. “I saw you go down, but by the time I was able to get through that mass of panic, you were gone. I came after you when Trueheart said you’d gone in pursuit.”

“A lot of good it did me. He was lost before I hit the sidewalk.”

As she approached the building, arrowing through the people congregating on the sidewalk, Peabody came down the main stairs.

“Gone,” Eve said.

“Damn it.” Peabody hissed out a breath, then winced at Eve’s face. “I thought I took a knock,” she said, tapping ginger fingers to the bruise on her cheek. “You took harder.”

“Let’s go clean this mess up. What do you know?” Eve demanded as they went back in.

“The best I can get is some hair-trigger tackled some kid, and another cop helped him wrestle the kid to the ground and restrain him. Panic ensued. We’ve got all parties in one of the private parlors upstairs. Baxter’s riding herd there. Whitney’s with the MacMasterses, and is to be advised when you’re back on site. We had to call in MTs. People got bruised and bloodied. We’ve got a really big mess, Dallas.”