Vengeance in Death (In Death #6)(90)

The dog caught McNab at the back of the knees and sent him headlong into the door he’d just been approaching. Outside it, Eve saw one of her men reach under his doorman’s coat for his weapon.

“Keep your weapons out of view. Goddamn it, don’t draw your weapons. It’s a f**king dogfight.”

But she saw, because her attention was focused on the target throughout the thirty-second battle, the exact moment they were made. The palm ‘link was shoved back in his pocket, his stance went stiff with shock, and he bolted.

“He’s made us. Suspect is proceeding on foot to the south entrance. Block south entrance,” she ordered as she ran from the suite and toward the elevator. “Repeat. Block the south entrance. Suspect’s rabbiting, consider him armed and dangerous.” She didn’t bother to glance over when Roarke pushed into the elevator with her.

“He’s nearly to the doors,” Roarke told her, and she saw now that he’d had the foresight to grab up one of the mini-monitors.

“Ellsworth, your location’s hot.”

“I see him, Dallas. I’ve got him.”

The instant the elevator doors opened, she was streaking across the lobby. Ellsworth was inside the south doors, and out cold. “Tranq’d him. Jesus.” She pulled her weapon and went through the doors.

“Suspect is out of controlled area. I’ve got an officer down at the south entrance. Suspect is on foot — “

She heard the scream as she raced for the corner. He was dragging a woman out of a car. Even as Eve reached the curb and brought up her weapon, he’d tossed her onto the street and had dived behind the wheel.

Pivoting, she pounded to the sportster she’d parked at the entrance.

“I’ll drive.” Roarke beat her to the car by a stride. “I know the car better.”

With no time to argue, she jumped into the passenger seat. “Suspect’s jacked a vehicle, is heading east on Seventy-fourth in a white minijet, N-Y-C license C-H-A-R-L-I-E. That’s Charles Abel Roger Loser Ice Even. This is Dallas in pursuit. I need ground and air support. He’s got a four-block lead, now approaching Lex.”

Roarke shoved the sportster into turbo, rocketed.

“Make that three blocks,” she murmured, eyes straight ahead when they swung around a commuter tram with a layer of paint to spare.

“He didn’t boost a snail,” Roarke commented, zigzagging through traffic without a single tap for the brakes. “Those minijets have muscle if he knows how to use it. But he shouldn’t be able to outrun us in the long haul.”

As he approached a red light, Roarke gauged the timing, punched for power, and streaked his way through the crossing traffic, leaving tire squeals and blasting horns in his wake.

“Not if we live through it. Suspect is turning south on Lexington, heading downtown. Where is my goddamn air support?” she barked into the communicator.

“Air support is being deployed.” Whitney’s words sliced through like shards of glass. “Ground units heading in from east and west, should join your pursuit at Forty-fifth and Lex.”

“I’m in a civilian vehicle, Commander,” she told him, then finished with a description. “We’re less than two blocks behind him now and closing. Suspect crossing Fiftieth.”

She barely hissed when a maxi-bus lumbered across their path. Roarke punched for vertical, sending the car in a long sweeping rise that had Eve’s stomach pitching. They leapfrogged over the bus and dived for the street.

But the bus had blocked their view just long enough. “He’s turned off. Damn it. Which way?”

“Right,” Roarke decided. “He was shifting to the right lane before the f**king bus.”

“Suspect believed to now be traveling west on Forty-ninth. Ground and air support adjust direction to pursue.”

The light changed as they reached the corner. Roarke readied to whip for the turn. New Yorkers being what they were, pedestrians surged forward into the street as the light beamed yellow and, in defiance of the electric blue bullet bearing down on them, didn’t give an inch.

“Idiots, ass**les.” Eve barely had time to finish the thought before Roarke was airborne again and skimming down the sidewalk. “Don’t kill anyone, for Christ’s sake.”

He nearly nipped the outer edge of a glide-cart umbrella, terrorized a trio of Hasidic Jews carrying their briefcases of gems to market. A Bosc pear heaved by the cart operator sailed past Eve’s window.

She caught sight of the fishtailing rear of the minijet as it rounded the corner on Fifth Avenue. The glide-cart on that corner wasn’t as lucky. She saw the unit upend and the operator go sprawling.

“We’re losing ground here. He’s on Fifth now.” She checked the skies and ground her teeth when she spotted media copters rather than cops. “Commander, I need my air support.”

“A hitch at Control. Support delayed. Deployment in five minutes.”

“That’s too late, too goddamn late,” she murmured, and felt little satisfaction when she heard the scream of sirens approaching from the rear.

“We’ll take the long shot,” Roarke decided. His smile was as sharp and deadly as a laser when he punched the sportster into sharp vertical, into full-speed nose lift that had the blood draining out of Eve’s face and her fingers digging hard into the buttery leather of her seat.