Karma Patrol (33 page)

“Very funny.”

“Not kidding.”

Luke watched her for any sign that she was joking, but either she was serious or she had an incredible poker face. “What do you think our odds are?”

She shrugged. “I’ve never met the Bookkeeper, remember? I have no idea.”

“They’ve got to be better than our odds if we do nothing and wait for the sniper to take us out,” he observed, and regretted the words when Jade flinched. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“No, it’s…” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You were right. It’s not my fault that she’s gone. I just… I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach.”

“I’d be surprised if you didn’t,” he told her, his voice soft. “I’ve lost people, Jade. I saw friends die in the Army. I’ve known cops who got killed. It never stops affecting you.”

“She was my best friend,” she whispered, hugging her arms around her waist. “I can’t believe she’s dead.”

He extended his arms to her hesitantly, not sure she would want his interference in her grief, but Jade moved into his embrace and rested her head against his chest, taking the comfort he was offering her.

“How do we get to the Bookkeeper?” he asked after a few minutes, hating to disturb her but knowing that the longer they waited, the longer the sniper would have to make his next move. Jade straightened, swiping again at the tear tracks on her cheeks as she moved out of the circle of his arms.

“Like I said, he has a brownstone. It’s on the Upper West Side, near Eighty-First and Columbus.”

“All right. We’ll have a patrol unit drive us—”

“Oh?” she inquired archly. “And how are you going to explain that? ‘Oh, sorry, we know there’s been a mass shooting and a bunch of people are dead out front, but we had plans to go to the planetarium, so would you mind dropping us off?’”

He inclined his head, acknowledging her point. “Then I’ll drive.”

“It’s the same problem, Luke. How are you going to get a car out in the middle of the chaos outside?”

“What do you suggest?”

“We walk up to Columbus Circle and take the subway to the Eighty-First Street Station.”

“You want to walk.” His tone was flat disbelief. “There’s a sniper trying to kill both of us, and your solution is for us to go for a walk through a neighborhood filled with high-rise buildings that would make it painfully easy for him to pick us both off from a rooftop?”

“It’s the stupidest thing we could do,” she agreed. “Which is why he’s not going to expect it. Luke, the last two shootings have been in places where he knew at least one of us would be. My apartment building? The police station? They were easy targets for him. Going to the Bookkeeper isn’t predictable. The audacity of a street-level account enforcer showing up in the Bookkeeper’s office without an invitation—it just isn’t
done
. Even a prophet would know that. If anything, he ought to think I’d go to the Karma Division main office, which is over by the Queensboro Bridge.”

He sighed, rubbing his hands over his face. The worst part was that she was right: there was no good way for them to get up to Eighty-First Street without exposing themselves to the sniper. Even a car wasn’t that much added security, particularly with traffic in front of the precinct at a dead stop and Friday afternoon rush hour going on beyond that. The subway would give them a relative advantage, since it was bereft of perches for the sniper, but they had to get to it first.

“Every time the sniper has struck, it’s taken him at least twelve hours to come back,” Jade pointed out. “My phone sounded the all-clear alert while you were out looking for Aaron. He’s gone now, and if he does come back, we’ll have at least a little bit of warning.”

“All right,” Luke agreed, making a split-second decision and hoping it wouldn’t come back to haunt him. “We walk.
Quickly
.”

“Believe me, I’m not going to linger on the street waiting for an opportunity to get shot,” Jade replied. “Is there a back door out of the precinct?”

“This way,” he told her, leading her out of the break room and down a side hallway. They didn’t encounter anyone else, which he suspected was because they were all out front dealing with the aftermath of the attack. He would’ve liked to tell Aaron where he was going, but he didn’t want to risk the delay, so instead he took out his phone and texted him as he and Jade slipped out the side entrance and away from the chaos of the shooting.

Taking Jade someplace safe. If no contact every ten minutes, ping my cell and send SWAT to my location
.

He was sure his partner wouldn’t like that, and several seconds later his suspicion was confirmed.

U R a jackass. Dont get killed.

He put the phone back in his pocket, reaching out to take Jade’s hand. She gave him a startled look that morphed into a weak smile, and he squeezed her fingers as they set out toward Columbus Circle.

uke hadn’t felt fear like this since Iraq.

At least his time there had prepared him for this, for the knowledge that death could be hiding around any corner and atop any building. The crushing weight of terror that came with that knowledge was heavier now than it had been overseas. In the Army, his main concern had been completing his mission while keeping himself alive. His mission now was to keep Jade alive, and even the thought of failure was almost enough to shatter him.

He tightened his grip on her hand, and she looked up long enough to offer him the best smile she could muster under the circumstances.

“It’ll be all right,” she said, and he appreciated the false confidence he could hear in her voice because he knew it was for him. “As long as we’re together, we’ll be fine.”

They’d made it as far as Fifty-Eighth Street when Jade’s phone made the noise they’d both been dreading, the shrill alarm that signaled imminent danger.

“Come on,” he snapped, tugging on her hand as his eyes lit on an office building up ahead with a security guard standing conspicuously just inside the glass doors. “We can—”

Pain exploded in the back of his head, and he went down on the pavement with a grunt. He heard Jade scream, but it sounded like she was miles away. Despite his best efforts to push himself to his feet, his arms refused to cooperate, and everything went black.

Jade grabbed for the bag still slung across her body, trying to get to her gun, but an arm closed around her waist from behind and the cold metal barrel of someone else’s gun pressed against her temple.

“If you fight me, I’ll blow your soulmate’s brains out all over the sidewalk,” a male voice said in her ear. His tone was pleasant, as though he’d offered to hold a door open for her. “Is that what you want? Because I’d be happy to oblige you.”

Luke was lying face down on the sidewalk, blood trickling down the side of his neck from the cut on his scalp. The sniper had hit him with something—probably the handgun he now had pressed to Jade’s head—and he was unconscious and defenseless. It would be the work of half a second for the sniper to finish the job.

“No,” she breathed, her voice wavering. “Leave him alone. You want me.”

“As it happens, Ms. Bailey, you’re correct.”

He left Luke sprawled on the pavement, dragging an unresisting Jade across Fifty-Eighth Street toward an apartment building with clear plastic tarps flapping over the front door and several of the windows.

Jade’s attention wasn’t on their destination or her captor. Her gaze stayed on Luke’s still form until a flash of motion from off to her right drew her eyes, and she registered a familiar face.

Three familiar faces, she amended mentally as she recognized the teenagers she’d stopped to chat with during…God, had it only been yesterday? The tallest boy, the one whose karmic path had been interrupted yesterday, was holding a cell phone up in her direction. Filming, she realized suddenly. He was recording her abduction with his phone.

She looked at the boy next to him, grabbing and holding his gaze with the sheer intensity of her need, and then jerked her head forcefully toward where Luke lay. It earned her a stranglehold from her captor, but oxygen deprivation was a small price to pay for getting help for Luke. The boy followed the gesture with his eyes, and the flash of realization on his face was all the reassurance she needed. The three of them must have come along after Luke had already been hit, and they hadn’t realized he was lying injured on the other side of the street until she’d pointed him out to them.

Now that they knew, hopefully they would do something to keep him safe. Hopefully the one with the phone would call 911, and would also be smart enough to release that video to the local news channels. The fact that the sniper was targeting her at all, combined with his knowledge that Luke was her soulmate, suggested Celia was right and he was part of Destiny Division. Whether or not he was a deranged prophet was up for debate, although going on a killing spree and then kidnapping a karmic account enforcer was pretty solid evidence for his insanity. When the upper echelon of Karma Division found out she’d been killed, they would be out for blood, and that video footage would go a long way toward making sure Destiny Division couldn’t sweep this under the rug.

The prophet dragged her into the building and up a flight of stairs, shoving her into an empty apartment and closing the door behind them. She’d been waiting for any opportunity to make her move, and in the split second while he was distracted by the door, she shoved her hand into the hidden pocket of her purse and came up with her Walther.

He turned back toward her before she could get a shot off, but having her gun in her hand as she faced him gave her a glimmer of hope that she might be able to stop him before he killed her. She waited to see what he would do, her heart slamming against the wall of her chest as she tried to figure out what her best move was. Should she shoot him and hope he wouldn’t be able to get a shot off in retaliation?

“I read your file, Ms. Bailey,” he informed her, grinning. “It had a lot to say about your dedication to your job and your excellent efficiency rating. It didn’t mention you had spunk. I like that in a woman.”

“I will shoot you,” she threatened, trying to keep her voice steady, and he laughed.

“I believe you,” he replied. “But if you do that, you’ll never know the reason for everything that’s happened this week. I think it would kill you, never knowing why.”