Roberto was looking down the hall toward the elevator when he heard the door to 2B open behind him. He and Gomez both brought up their 9mms.But it wasn’t Hardin, and it wasn’t the woman. It was a slight man, a bag slung across his back. They paused.

The man did not. He dove to the floor in almost a somersault, right between Roberto and Gomez.

Gomez snapped off a shot, missing the rolling man, hitting Roberto in the foot.

The man had a gun out now from inside his coat.

Roberto couldn’t stand on the damaged foot, but he knew if he went down he died. He leaned back against the wall, weight on his good foot, and fired at the rolling man. But the man never stopped to aim his weapon. He just bounced off the far wall and rolled again, back across the hall.

Roberto’s shot punched into the drywall while the man snapped a couple of rounds into Gomez’s abdomen. Gomez stopped, looking down at himself like he was surprised he wasn’t dead. Then he started to swing his gun back toward the rolling man.

The man kicked into Roberto’s bad foot, the pain fogging Roberto’s vision as he fired again. The round punched through the carpet, hit the concrete, and whined down the hallway, Roberto tottering away from the wall, between the man and Gomez. The man fired again, one, two, three shots, firing from the floor almost vertically up into Roberto – one of the rounds tearing into his groin, two into his stomach, burning upward.

Roberto went down, and the man shot Gomez twice in the forehead.

Down the hall, an old lady opened her door, stuck her head out. Al Din’s gun flashed up…

Hardin and Wilson looked up simultaneously. Gunfire.

“Your place?” Hardin asked.

“Has to be,” she said.

Across the street, Red Shirt was looking up at the building, then looking down the street, then pulling out a cell.

“Not gonna be any good way for you to explain this,” Hardin said.

“I know,” said Wilson. “I think I just became a person of interest.”

“Guess we should go,” he said.

Hardin had left the black Honda he bought in Aurora a couple blocks north of the tracks. They headed for that.

As they turned up the sidewalk, tires squealed behind them. The black Escalade spun off Warren and up Main, the driver looking over and seeing Hardin, veering toward them. Hardin shoved Wilson up the street, behind a parked car, and pulled one of the 9mms he’d taken from the Italians. He braced his feet, sighted carefully down the barrel, and put six shots in a cluster just above the steering wheel. The engine stopped racing as the driver’s foot left the gas, and the car straightened out a little, slowing, crunching into the corner of the parked car next to Wilson.

Red Shirt was sprinting across the street, pistol out, ducking down. As the kid cleared a parked car onto the walk he brought his gun up, snapping off shots. Hardin heard Wilson fire from just behind him and to his left, saw some spray fly off the kid’s hip. The kid went down, his gun rattling on the walk. Hardin turned to see Wilson coming out of her crouch, her S&W in hand.

All up and down the street, people where scrambling into stores, ducking behind cars, lots of cell phones coming out.

“Let’s take the SUV,” Hardin said. “Get a little distance, walk back for the car later.”

Wilson nodded. Hardin opened the driver’s side door, the Hispanic behind the wheel slumping out. Two in his head, at least two in his chest. He was gone. Hardin dumped him in the street.

He looked up. Wilson was standing over the kid on the walk. The kid was squirming on his back, holding his hands out in front of him. The kid’s 9mm was just off to his right.

“I got nothing ’gainst you, lady. I was after that other guy.”

“He’s my guy,” she said.

The kid’s hand moved toward his gun. Wilson gave him a double-tap to the head, put the S&W back on her hip, turned and climbed into the SUV.

“Don’t ever shove me like that again,” she hissed. “You have to trust me to cover your six, not go all Sir Galahad on me.”

“Sorry.”

Her head swiveled, checking Main as they pulled out. “You see Hernandez?”

“No.”

She slammed a fist on top of the dash. “Fuck. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!”

Hernandez and Miko heard the shots from the far side of the building and jogged toward the corner. They got a view just in time to see the SUV blow north up Main, Julio down in the street, the kid down on the walk. They instantly turned and started walking west.

“Walk up a bit, call the LK crew out in Aurora, have somebody pick our asses up,” Hernandez said.

Miko nodded.

“No uniforms, nobody in raid jackets closing the ring. This wasn’t any DEA sting.”

Miko nodded again.

“Gonna have to think on this.”

Miko nodded again. Nothing to say.

CHAPTER 48

Hardin punched it, shooting up a block, turning in, winding through a neighborhood, creating some distance before the cops got to the scene. Wilson had gone quiet.

“That was a little cold,” he said. “The kid.”

A pause. “Yeah,” she said. Strange look on her face, lip quivering a bit.

He waited.

“I got called out on a domestic my third week on the force down in Wichita, some beat-to-shit rental house.” Wilson was talking, looking straight out the windshield, perfectly still, nothing moving but her mouth. “We get inside, in the kitchen, this guy’s got his wife in a half nelson, got a butcher’s knife to her neck. The kids are screaming, the wife’s eyes are rolling around, and the guy’s yelling about how nobody leaves him. My training officer stays in front of him, holding his attention, and I work around to the side. At one point the guy starts gesturing with the knife, waving it at my partner, trying to make some point, and my partner gives me this look telling me to take the shot. I mean, it’s like three feet – no way can I miss. And instead I start talking to the guy, trying to calm him down. I get him to drop the knife, to let the woman go, he lets us cuff him, and everybody tells me what hot fucking shit I am.

“So by the time the whole thing goes through the wash with the DA, the thing’s been pled down from attempted murder to some domestic violence deal. The guy does two-and-a-half years on a five-year jolt. Two-and-a-half years and two days later, I get 911’d back to the same address. The woman is duct-taped to a kitchen chair, both the kids lying on the floor with their throats cut all the way to the spine. The woman’s gutted like a fish.ME tells me he did the kids first, made her watch. The guy called it in himself. He’s sitting in the recliner in the living room when I get there, six empty Bud cans on the floor. And he tells me, ‘I told you nobody leaves me.’”

Wilson stared straight ahead, her face frozen. Hardin silent for a moment, looking for the right words.

“That’s on him,” Hardin said finally. “That’s not on you.”

She shook her head. “The first time? When I was a rookie? I knew. I looked into his eyes, and I knew. I knew, and I didn’t take the shot. I didn’t take the shot because I wanted to sleep nights. I guess I thought I could get through without ever having to kill anybody. I didn’t take the shot for me. So yeah, the woman and those two kids? They’re on me. They’re on me for not having the balls to step all the way up.”

They drove for a while. Out of the corner of his eye, Hardin could see her jaw clench and unclench, could see her lip quivering.

“All I know is this,” she said. “People get a choice to be on the right side or not. You come up on somebody who’s made the wrong choice, then you have to step up, every time. You step all the way up.”

She still had that look on her face, like she wasn’t done. Hardin didn’t know what to say.