It’s him!

“God,” Sellitto whispered. He went for his gun, crouching and spinning toward the glint. But instead of following procedures when speed-drawing a weapon and keeping his index finger outside the trigger guard, he yanked the Colt from his holster in a panic.

Which is why the gun discharged an instant later, sending the slug directly toward the spot where Amelia Sachs was emerging from the basement door to the warehouse.

Standing at the corner of Canal and Sixth, a dozen blocks from his safe house, Thompson Boyd waited for the light to change. He caught his breath and wiped his damp face.

He wasn’t shaken, he wasn’t freaked out – the breathlessness and sweat were from the sprint to safety – but he was curious how they’d found him. He was always so careful with his contacts and the phones he used, and always checking to see if he was being followed, that he guessed it had to be through physical evidence. Made sense – because he was pretty sure that the woman in white, walking through the museum library scene like a sidewinder snake, had been in the hallway outside the apartment on Elizabeth Street. What had he left behind at the museum? Something in the rape bag? Some bits of trace from his shoes or clothes?

They were the best investigators he’d ever encountered. He’d have to keep that in mind.

Gazing at the traffic, he reflected on the escape. When he’d seen the officers coming up the stairs, he’d quickly placed the book and the purchases from the hardware store into the shopping bag, grabbed his attaché case and gun, then clicked on the switch that turned the doorknob live. He’d kicked through the wall and escaped into the warehouse next door, climbed to its roof and then hurried south to the end of the block. Climbing down a fire escape, he’d turned west and started sprinting, taking the course he’d charted out and practiced dozens of times.

Now, at Canal and Sixth, he was lost in a crowd waiting for the light to change, hearing the sirens of the police cars joining in the search for him. His face was emotionless, his hands didn’t shake, he wasn’t angry, he wasn’t panicked. This was the way he had to be. He’d seen it over and over again – dozens of professional killers he’d known had been caught because they panicked, lost their cool in front of the police and broke down under routine questioning. That, or they got rattled during the job, leaving evidence or living witnesses. Emotion – love, anger, fear – makes you sloppy. You had to be cool, distant.

Numb…

Thompson gripped his pistol, hidden in his raincoat pocket, as he watched several squad cars speed up Sixth Avenue. The vehicles skidded around the corner and turned east on Canal. They were pulling out all the stops looking for him. Not surprising, Thompson knew. New York’s finest would frown on a perp electrocuting one of their own (though in Thompson’s opinion it was the cop’s own fault for being careless).

Then a faint tone of concern sounded in his brain as he watched another squad car skid to a stop three blocks away. Officers got out and began interviewing people on the street. Then another rolled to a stop only two hundred feet from where he now stood. And they were moving this way. His car was parked near Hudson, about five minutes away. He had to get to it now. But still the stoplight remained red.

More sirens filled the air.

This was becoming a problem.

Thompson looked at the crowd around him, most of them peering east, intent on the police cars and the officers. He needed some distraction, some cover to get across the street. Just something…didn’t have to be flamboyant. Just enough to deflect people’s attention for a time. A fire in a trash bin, a car alarm, the sound of breaking glass…Any other ideas? Glancing south, to his left, Thompson noticed a large commuter bus headed up Sixth Avenue. It was approaching the intersection where the cluster of pedestrians stood. Set fire to the trash bin, or this? Thompson Boyd decided. He eased closer to the curb, behind an Asian girl, slim, in her twenties. All it took was an easy push in her lower back to send her into the bus’s path. Twisting in panic, gasping, she slid off the curb.

“She fell!” Thompson cried in a drawl-free shout. “Get her!”

Her wail was cut off as the right sideview mirror of the bus struck her shoulder and head and flung her body, tumbling, along the sidewalk. Blood spattered the window and those standing nearby. The brakes screamed. So did several of the women in the crowd.

The bus skidded to a stop in the middle of Canal, blocking traffic, where it would have to remain until the accident investigation. A fire in a trash basket, a breaking bottle, a car alarm – they might’ve worked. But he’d decided that killing the girl was more efficient.

Traffic was instantly frozen, including two approaching police cars on Sixth Avenue.

He crossed the street slowly, leaving the gathering crowd of horrified passersby, who were crying, or shouting, or just staring in shock at the limp, bloody body, crumpled against a chain-link fence. Her unseeing eyes stared blankly skyward. Apparently nobody thought the tragedy was anything more than a terrible accident.

People running toward her, people calling 911 on mobile phones…chaos. Thompson now calmly crossed the street, weaving through the stopped traffic. He’d already forgotten the Asian girl and was considering more important matters: He’d lost one safe house. But at least he’d escaped with his weapons, the things he’d bought at the hardware store and his instruction book. There were no clues at the apartment to lead to him or the man who’d hired him; not even the woman in white could find any connection. No, this wasn’t a serious problem.

He paused at a pay phone, called voice mail and received some good news. Geneva Settle, he learned, was attending Langston Hughes High School in Harlem. She was also, he found out, being guarded by police, which was no surprise, of course. Thompson would find out more details soon – presumably where she lived or even, with some luck, the fact that an opportunity had presented itself, and the girl had already been shot to death, the job finished.

Thompson Boyd then continued on to his car – a three-year-old Buick, in a boring shade of blue, a medium car, an average car, for Average Joe. He pulled into traffic and circled far around the bus accident congestion. He made his way toward the Fifty-ninth Street bridge, his thoughts occupied about what he’d learned in the book he’d been studying for the past hour, the one bristling with Post-it tabs, thinking about how he’d put his new skills to use.

“I don’t…I don’t know what to say.”

Miserable, Lon Sellitto was looking up at the captain who’d come directly here from Police Plaza as soon as the brass learned of the shooting incident. Sellitto sat on the curb, hair askew, belly over his belt, pink flesh showing between the buttons. His scuffed shoes pointed outward. Everything about him was rumpled at the moment.

“What happened?” The large, balding African-American captain had taken possession of Sellitto’s revolver and was holding it at his side, unloaded, the cylinder open, following NYPD procedures after an officer has discharged a weapon.

Sellitto looked into the tall man’s eyes and said, “I fumbled my piece.”

The captain nodded slowly and turned to Amelia Sachs. “You’re okay?”

She shrugged. “It was nothing. Slug hit nowhere near me.”

Sellitto could see that the captain knew she was being cool about the incident, making light of it. Her protecting him made the big detective even more miserable.

“You were in the line of fire, though,” the captain said.

“It wasn’t any -”

“You were in the line of fire?”