I slid down the wall into the puddle of green broken-glass diamonds. I bit my lip as I looked back at the black hellhole we’d just climbed out of.

God help us, I thought. And then-How do they know so much about St. Patrick’s? How do they know so much about us?

THE NEAT MAN folded his cell phone closed as an ambulance hopped the curb of 630 Fifth right in front of him. He had to take a step back and actually prop his back against the cold, filthy side of the crisis trailer in order to let out the female EMT from the front cab. He did a double take and then walked away with his head down.

If it isn’t I-need-a-hug Yolanda, he thought, stealing another glance at the side of the Hispanic paramedic’s face.

He shook his head, remembering her from outside the hospital where Caroline Hopkins had breathed her last.

Of all the sieges in all the cathedrals in all the world, she had to drive her meat wagon into mine.

The Neat Man smiled as he tilted his coffee at her.

Here’s looking at you, bitch. Six degrees of separation and all that crapola.

He watched her rush across the plaza, pushing a wheeled stretcher. The tactical team emerged from the revolving door just as she got to the entrance.

The Neat Man counted heads quickly. Thirteen had gone down. Now there were nine standing. His boys inside had taken care of business! Against Hostage Rescue, too! And Hostage Rescue was supposed to be the best of the best.

Thank God he’d been able to tip Jack off.

He winced a little when he saw asshole hotshot detective Mike Bennett was still among the living. Yolanda was pulling up his pant leg and wiping at a cut on his shin.

What happened, Mikey? Got a boo-boo?

He watched as Bennett shrugged her off and hobbled, shell-shocked, toward the trailer. Cops and FBI agents patted him on the shoulder as he passed.

“Not your fault,” the Neat Man called from the crowd at Bennett’s back as he passed. “It’s those bastards inside. This is all on them.”

THIS WAS A TRAGEDY. The first one for the good guys, thought Jack as he looked down on a fallen pal.

The bleeding hijacker rested his head against the false stone casket and moaned as Jack violently slammed the concrete lid to the bomb shelter shut.

Learning of the existence of the secret escape tunnel from the cathedral’s crypt was one of the major factors that had swayed him and the Neat Man to finally go through with the hijacking. It was how most of them had snuck in, and the way they were thinking of getting out.

Jack rubbed at the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes as panic began to bulge in his chest.

Had to calm down. He wasn’t allowed to panic. He’d allowed for this, remember? Practically expected it. It would still work out.

He took a breath, and let it out.

Thank God he had come up with a plan B.

He opened his eyes as his dying comrade moaned again.

Fontaine, he thought. You unlucky son of a bitch.

“Calm down now,” Jack said as he unseamed the man’s brown robe with a Ka-Bar knife, then freed the Velcro straps of his bulletproof vest with a loud rip.

“You’re going to make it,” he lied without hesitation or request.

One of the return-fire rounds shot up from the bomb shelter had ricocheted off the lead-lined lid of the hatch. Fontaine had caught the bullet in the back just above the collar of his Kevlar vest, to the left of his spine. That wasn’t even his worst problem, Jack thought. Because either he’d just spilled a couple of gallons of Benjamin Moore high-gloss red over the front of his pants, or he was rapidly bleeding to death from where the round had left his body.

When Jack peeled the heavy vest off Fontaine’s chest, he spotted the blood-gushing exit wound above his friend’s right nipple. Jack looked at the dying man with a wondrous respect. The fact that Fontaine was still breathing seemed to defy logic.

“Don’t lie to me,” Fontaine said. “I’m all sliced to shit inside. I can feel it. I can feel the blood.”

“We’ll put you outside,” Jack offered. “You’ll be caught, but at least you’ll be breathing.”

“Yeah, right,” Fontaine said. “They’ll patch me up so I can be good and healthy when they put the needle in me. Besides, they ID me, we’re all screwed. Just do me a favor, will you, when you get out?”

“Anything,” Jack said.

“Give my share to my girl, Emily. Hell, not even a full share. Just something.”

The hijacker sobbed suddenly.

“It ain’t the dying that hurts so much as the dying for nothing.”

Jack sat in the man’s blood as he got behind him, cradling him.

“You have my word, dog,” Jack said in his ear. “She gets a full share. She’ll go to college, Fontaine. Just like you always wanted. Ivy, right?”

“For sure,” Fontaine said with a soft nod. “She got fifteen hundred on her boards. I ever tell you that?”

“Only about a thousand times,” Jack said, chuckling into his buddy’s ear.

“Knocking up her worthless mother was the only thing I ever did right,” Fontaine said, smiling. He seemed peaceful now, as if he were drifting off to sleep after a hard day’s work. Jack saw a final tension jolt through the dying man, followed by a palpable slackening. Fontaine was gone. They had lost a good man.

Jack was dry-eyed as he stood and handed his Ka-Bar to one of the hijackers who had watched it all.

“Cut his hands and his head, and bag ’em,” he said. “We take them with us. We can’t take the chance they’ll identify him.”

“BUT I WANT to be the car. I have to be the car!” five-year-old Trent Bennett whined across the Monopoly board. Nine-year-old Ricky, sensing trouble, immediately snatched the piece off the GO square and clutched it to his chest. Trent started to cry.

Brian Bennett rolled his eyes. Here he was, doing his job, keeping the squirts busy. He’d busted out an actual board game, and would they cooperate? No way, Jose.

Mary Catherine, their new nanny or whoever the heck she was, had told him she needed to run out and get something from the store. Grandfather was at church. So that left Brian pretty much in charge.

He got up from the dining room table when he heard the front door open. He could see a massive Christmas tree being pushed in through the door when he stepped into the hall. Mary Catherine took off her hat and wiped her hand across her red, sweating, though kind of pretty, face.

Brian gaped at her. She’d gone out and gotten them a tree for Christmas.

That was, like, nice.

“Brian, there you are,” she said in her funny Irish accent. “Do you know where your mom and dad keep the decorations? We’ve got work to do.”

Twenty minutes later, all of the kids were in the living room, assembly-lining ornaments up to Mary Catherine on the shaky painting ladder. It wasn’t the same as their mom, Brian thought. Mom did a tree nicer than the ones in the window at Macy’s. But he had to admit, Mary Catherine’s was a lot better than nothing at all.

Chrissy, still dressed as an angel, passed by in the kitchen doorway, struggling to hold up a sloshing Brita water pitcher.

“What are you doing?” Brian asked.

“Hel-lo, my job,” she said matter-of-factly. “Socky needs his water.”

Brian laughed. With the influence of her sisters, sometimes Chrissy acted more like she was thirteen instead of three. He watched the littlest angel come back into the living room and turn on the TV.

“Ahhhh! Look! Look!”

“What is it?” Brian said, rushing over to his sister.

On the screen, their father stepped onto an outdoor podium between a cluster of microphones. Just like Derek Jeter after a baseball game, Brian thought excitedly.