Promises in Death (In Death #28)(44)

Instead, she allowed herself to be caught at the next light while the river of pedestrians flowed in front of her. Why would Ricker hire such a shitty tail? she wondered. A man with his connections, his reach ought to be able to put someone with more skill, and more technology on her.

A homer on her car—or at the least a three-point tail that could mix it up. In this traffic, she might’ve missed it. Stupid, amateur move, she decided. Maybe she’d drive around awhile, waste their time, see if they’d swing up close enough so she could use her car to barricade then roust them.

Meanwhile, she might as well find out who owned the sedan.

She engaged her dash comp. “Run vehicle registration, New York. Eight, six, three, Zulu, Bravo, Echo.”

Acknowledged. Working . . .

When the light turned, she eased across the crosswalk, flicked a glance in the rearview.

She caught the van out of the corner of her eye. Pinned by cross traffic, she had nowhere to turn. As it barrelled down on her, she punched the accelerator and hit vertical.

“Come on, you piece of shit. Come on.” For an instant, she thought she might make it, but the speeding van caught her sluggishly-lifting rear wheels. The impact slapped her back in the seat. As the car spun, executed a clumsy nosedive toward Madison Avenue, it filled with safety gel.

She thought: Fuck. And crashed.

She heard it—sounds muffled by the gel—the smash, crunch, screech. She went into another sloping three-sixty as the car that had been directly behind her at the light slammed her front fender. Or more accurately, she slammed it. Despite the gel, she felt the jolt slap through her whole body.

Dizzy, disoriented, she shoved out of the car, fumbled for her weapon. People thronged around her, with everyone talking at once through the bells gonging in her head.

“Get back, stay back. I’m a cop.” She rushed toward the wrecked van. Her quick scan showed her the sedan, streaming sedately up Madison.

Gone, baby. Gone.

Blood in her eye, literally and figuratively, she approached the door of the van, leading with her weapon. And found the cab empty.

“They ran!” One of the eager witnesses shouted it at her. “Two men. I saw them run that way.” The witness pointed east, toward Park.

“I think one was a woman,” another witness weighed in. “God, they just rammed you, then took off.”

“They were white guys.”

“One was Hispanic.”

“They had dark hair.”

“One was blond.”

Eve carved through the helpful crowd, yanked open the rear doors. In disgust, she studied the surveillance equipment.

The tail hadn’t been stupid and sloppy. She had.

She yanked out her communicator. “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, officer-involved vehicular, Madison and . . . Seventy-fourth. Require assistance.” She elbowed her way back to the car that had hit her after she’d crashed. A woman sat inside, blinking.

“Ma’am? Ma’am? Are you injured?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think.” With glassy eyes and pinprick pupils, the woman stared at her. “What happened?”

“Require medical assistance for civilian,” she added, then turned to look at her crunched, mangled vehicle.

“Goddamn it,” she muttered. “Requisitions is going to take out a contract on me.”

The information he’d gotten claimed she wasn’t hurt. But Roarke took no one’s word when it came to his wife—not even hers. Of course, he thought, with a simmering anger he used to cover fear, she hadn’t been the one to contact him. Nor did she answer on her pocket ’link, as he’d been trying it since he’d started across town.

When he reached the barricade, he simply left his car where it was. They could bloody well tow it, he thought. And bill him.

He covered the rest of the ground on foot, moving fast.

He saw the wreck first—the accordion pleats of metal, the shattered glass, bitten chunks of fiberglass.

Fear rolled over the anger like lava.

Then he saw her, on her feet. Standing. Whole. And arguing, by the look of it, with one of the medical technicians in front of an ambulance.

“I’m not hurt. I don’t need to be examined, and I’m sure as hell not getting in that bus. The safety gel discharged. Can you see how much I’m wearing? How’s the civilian? How’s the woman?”

“Shaken up is all,” the MT told her. “But we’re taking her in, getting her looked over. You ought to come in. Your eyes look shocky to me.”

“My eyes are not shocky. My eyes are pissed. Now go away and . . .” She trailed off when she spotted Roarke, and he noted her eyes went from pissed to baffled.

He walked straight to her, controlled the terrible urge to simply sweep her up and away. He skimmed his finger beside the shallow cut, and the blueing around it that marred her forehead.

“Is this the worst of it then?” he asked her.

“Yeah. How did you—”

“I’ll see to her,” he told the MT. “If she needs to go in for treatment or exam, I’ll see to that.”

“Yeah? How?”

“She’s my wife.”

“Yeah?” the MT repeated. “Good luck, buddy.”

“Did you have to—”

“Yes. My car’s behind the barricade. Let’s go.”