"Aw...does it hurt? Bad news-it's not the first hit that hurts the most. It's every breath you take from now on. The good news is you don't have that many breaths left." Salvi waved a hand at Tommy Boy. "Pick this piece of s.h.i.t up."

The big man grabbed Gideon's collar and yanked him to his knees.

Dave looked away, and then he saw it-a shadowy figure popped up and peered through the grimy window.

It was Kylie MacDonald.

Chapter 80.

Three mornings a week, I try to work out at the precinct gym-weights, treadmill, elliptical. Once a week, I see a yoga instructor. So I'm in good shape-not as good as the SWAT team, but they were weighed down with so much tactical gear that I was able to catch up with the pack.

"We're not going to make it," Kylie said as I fell in place alongside her. "Our five minutes are up, and we've still got three-quarters of a mile to-"

My radio interrupted. "Monitor to Red Leader."

I answered it on the run. "Go ahead, Monitor."

"I've got you on traffic cam. There's transport on Twenty-First Street a block ahead of you. It's all yours."

Sure enough, there it was-a big, beautiful blue-and-white NYPD bus.

"Thank you, Monitor," I said as the team piled in. "What's the twenty on our target?"

"Our eye in the sky saw them pull into a garage at Eighty-Eight Crane six minutes ago."

"We're rolling," I said as the bus moved out.

Twenty-First, which runs under the el, is a narrow two-way street, but the driver managed to maneuver his way through morning traffic quickly. I just wasn't sure it was quick enough. If Gideon kept to his five-minute deadline, Rachael would be dead before we got there.

I briefed Alan Rowe, the SWAT leader, on the latest. We Google-mapped 88 Crane, and by the time the bus stopped at the top of the dead-end street, Sergeant Rowe had a plan.

He split the team into three-one to breach the garage door, a second to come through the rear, and two men to cover the side of the building next to the railroad yard.

Every building on Crane Street was covered with graffiti, and all of them looked to be abandoned, including the four-story warehouse in the middle of the block.

We ran almost noiselessly to the end of the street and took our positions. Kylie and I followed Rowe to the front of the garage.

The garage door was about eight by ten feet and made of corrugated steel. "No problem," Rowe said. "I just heard from the team in the rear and there's a small door in the back that's much easier than this one. The breacher is running detcord around each door. On my command, he'll blow the back one as a diversion. A second later, he'll take down the garage door."

"Jordan and I will go in first," Kylie said.

"Not a chance," Rowe said. "You know the drill. Entry team secures the room. It's what they do."

"Fine, you go first," she said. "Do you know what you're walking in on?"

"No idea."

"You should." With that she plastered herself against the side of the building, got down on the ground, and crawled to one of the two almost blackened windows.

"What the h.e.l.l is she doing?" Rowe said.

"My best guess would be intel," I said. "Whatever it is, there's no stopping her."

Kylie raised her head high enough to look through the grimy window. Five seconds later, she dropped down and made her way back to us.

"It's a whole new ball game," she said, taking out a pad and pen. She drew a box. "Here's the room."

She put an X in the middle of the box. "Here's Rachael. She's chained up, but she's standing, so it looks like she's still alive.

"And here," she said, adding two more X's, "are Casey and Bell. They're on the floor on their knees, and there are three men pointing guns at them." She added three more X's.

The curveb.a.l.l.s just kept coming. "Three men," I repeated.

"Yeah," Kylie said. "And one of them is Papa Joe Salvi."

Chapter 81.

"Let me repeat the question," Joe Salvi said. "Who came home from high school one afternoon and told the other that you both had to murder Enzo? There's always a leader. There's always a follower."

Salvi's words reminded Dave of his father. "There are chiefs," his dad would say, "and there are Indians. The problem with NYPD is that there are too many d.a.m.n chiefs and not enough good Indians. I'm an Indian, Dave. I get an order, and I get the job done."

And that's what Dave had tried to do. Sure, it was all Gideon's idea, but once Dave signed on, he gave it all he had. Enzo, Kang, Catt, Tinsdale, Parker-Steele-every one of them got what they deserved. He only wished he'd had the time to take down more.

But all he had left was twenty seconds. Kylie MacDonald wasn't out there alone. She and Jordan would be backed up by a SWAT team h.e.l.l-bent on saving Rachael. They'd blow the garage door, and an army of cops with ballistic shields and a.s.sault rifles would storm in.

Twenty seconds. Just enough time to take down one last sc.u.mbag.

"I did it!" Dave screamed at Salvi. "Gideon is all mouth and no b.a.l.l.s. Enzo raped my sister, and I vowed to kill him. I'm the one who cracked his greasy Guinea head with a bottle of cheap s.h.i.t vodka. Then I dragged him down to the water, and the whole time he was squealing like the little p.u.s.s.y that he was."

Dave could see Salvi tighten his grip on the gun. He willed him to squeeze the trigger.

But Salvi held back. He still needed one more push.

"All you Salvis are such hot s.h.i.t when you have the upper hand," Dave taunted, "but when the tables are turned, you're all like Enzo-calling out for his fat wh.o.r.e of a mother-"

Salvi's gun exploded.

Blood, bone, and gray matter from Gideon's skull sprayed across Dave's face.

"You know, Dave," Salvi said, "you're not only a lousy cop, you're a lousy liar. I don't know why you'd want to take a bullet for that a.s.shole. He f.u.c.ked you over. I admire you for your loyalty, but I'm going to kill you anyway."

He was leveling his gun at Dave's head when the first explosion rocked the room. The back door imploded, sending a shower of smoke and debris through the rear wall. The three mobsters wheeled around. An instant later, a second blast ripped a wide, gaping hole in the metal garage door, and men in helmets, goggles, and tactical vests poured in.

Tommy Boy reacted instantly, firing blindly into the horde of uniforms rushing toward him.

For a smart man, it was a dumb way to die. A barrage of bullets from six different a.s.sault weapons tore through Tommy Boy's body, and he crashed to the floor like a boulder.

"Hold your fire, hold your fire!" Joe Salvi yelled, raising his hands in the air.

"Drop the weapons, face down on the ground, hands behind your head," a voice barked.

A half smile crept across Dave Casey's face. The cop giving orders was Kylie MacDonald. Jordan was right there with her.

Two Berettas clattered to the floor, and Salvi and Jojo lowered themselves to the ground. Four cops cuffed them, patted them down, and pulled them up to their knees.

"Hey, take it easy," Salvi said. "We just captured the Hazmat Killers. My driver shot one of them."

"Plus we rescued the baby-killing b.i.t.c.h," Jojo said.

"Really?" Kylie said. "That's not the way I saw it through the window."

Joe Salvi looked at her incredulously. "What? You looked through a wire-mesh window that has a hundred years of c.r.a.p on it, and you think you're going to be a believable eyewitness? My lawyer will have a field day with that."

"I don't think the DA will be needing my testimony, Mr. Salvi," Kylie said. "There's a much better eyewitness who was in the room with you the entire time."

"Who? Him?" he said, gesturing at Dave. "A disgraced cop turned psychokiller? Or how about her? I'm sure she'll make a fine witness after being chained up and tortured for the last three days."

Salvi laughed. Jojo joined in.

"No, Mr. Salvi," Kylie said. "I think we've got an unimpeachable witness that will convince any jury what went down here no matter what your lawyers say or do."

"And where is this so-called witness?" Salvi said.

"It's right here," Kylie said, resting her hand on the video camera and pointing at the blinking red light. "And it's still rolling."

Chapter 82.

Dave Casey was waiting for us in the interrogation room. For a cop who murdered a black drug lord and a Chinese g.a.n.g.b.a.n.ger and was about to spend the rest of his life locked up among their homeboys and pengyous, he looked remarkably at peace.

"Thanks for coming," he said as soon as Kylie and I walked in. "Did you watch the videotape?"

"Not yet," I said. "We came straight here. Are you sure you don't want a lawyer or a union rep?"

"You've already read me my rights. No thanks. The only ones I want to talk to are you."

"Then it's just the three of us," I said, sitting across the table from him. Kylie stood.

"Right. The three of us, plus how many behind the two-way?" he asked, pointing at the large mirror set inside the far wall.

"Seven and counting. Dave, you know how big this is. You're going to pack a room. Now, should we ask questions, or would you rather just talk?"

"Oh, I'm ready to talk, but first I have a question of my own."

"Go ahead."

"That last phone call you made to me. You said that the doorman confessed to murdering Kimi O'Keefe. Was that bulls.h.i.t?"

"No. It was the real deal," I said. "We knew you were about to kill Rachael, and we wanted to head you off."

"Thanks. I couldn't live with myself if we had..."

He paused, groping for a better phrase than murdered her in cold blood.

"If we had...followed through."

"But you were okay killing the other four," Kylie said.

"The other five," Casey said. "Twelve years ago, back when we were still in high school, Gideon and I killed Joe Salvi's youngest son, Enzo. He was a vicious, s.a.d.i.s.tic little punk who terrorized the neighborhood, and we knew it was only going to get worse. Then it did-he raped my sister, Meredith, and Gideon convinced me it was up to the two of us. I'm not blaming Gideon. I was with him all the way."

Just when I thought I'd seen my last curveball, Dave Casey smoked one right past me. I looked up at Kylie. Her mouth was open, but nothing was coming out.

"From the look on your faces, I'm guessing Salvi didn't explain why he and his crew were there," Dave said. "He wouldn't. It's family business. He's been looking for whoever killed Enzo all these years, and he just stumbled on the truth a few days ago. Totally blindsided us."

"That explains why a guy as high up the food chain as Salvi didn't send in a hit team," I said.

"It's all on the tape," Casey said.

"That's the one thing that doesn't compute," Kylie said. "Guys like Salvi wrap themselves in secrecy. If there's a camera in the room, they smash it. Did he not know the tape was rolling?"

"Salvi's the one who told Jojo to turn it on. All he wanted was to record me and Gideon confessing to Enzo's murder and bring it home to his wife. I doubt if he planned to pull the trigger on tape, but that's the funny thing about video cameras-you get distracted, you forget it's on."

"What distracted him?" I said.

Dave cracked a smile. "Just watch the movie. I don't want to ruin the ending for you. By the way, you probably want to send a copy up to the One Oh Six in Howard Beach. They've got a twelve-year-old cold case I'm sure they'll be happy to close."