Go, go, go,” Nicholas shouted.
Mike started after the man, her Glock in her hand. She was fast, so Nicholas knew she’d have a good chance of running him down.
Nicholas angled off at the corner even though they had no comms, no way to communicate, but he’d seen an alley across from the Chinese place when they drove up, knew he could intercept the man if he kept running straight.
He pulled out his Glock as he made a hard left on Flushing and came back out on the street in time to see their runner was trapped between them, and he knew it. Without hesitation, the guy’s arm came up and he started shooting at Nicholas.
“What the bloody hell!” Nicholas shouted, and ducked back against the building. He heard Mike returning fire, yelling at the man to stop. Nicholas looked out to see the man had whirled around toward Mike, who was nearly on him. He was fast, he was going to shoot her. Nicholas took the shot, aimed for his leg.
The man stumbled, grabbed his left knee, and went down. Got you, mate. Now at last maybe they’d get some answers, find out who this yahoo was.
To Nicholas’s surprise, the wounded knee didn’t stop him, the guy was up and going again, stumbling toward a brown Honda that was screeching around a corner and coming fast. The man grabbed his knee and jumped in the passenger side and the driver gunned the engine. Nicholas got a fleeting glance—dark hair, baseball cap, probably older than Mr. Wounded Knee.
“Get the car!” Nicholas shouted, running after the Honda, trying to make out the license plate. Moments later the Crown Vic roared up to him. Nicholas jumped in. “They turned right up there.”
“They’re going for the bridge. We have to cut them off. Call it in.” She slapped the siren on the dash and floored the gas.
Nicholas braced himself with one hand and radioed in to headquarters to get them some backup.
Mike was good, weaving in and out of traffic, ignoring curses and middle fingers and stoplights, never taking her eyes from the car in front of them, navigating to a dime.
He hung on as the Crown Vic’s wheels screeched around a corner. He saw Mike was excited, focused; no doubt she was having fun. Was she giddy? Oh, yeah. God in all his goodness had blessed him with this woman as his partner.
Nicholas was shouting into the radio for some air support. Then two NYPD cruisers joined the chase, and their cavalcade didn’t slow, scattering people and other vehicles. Nicholas saw one taxi driver’s face when the Crown Vic spun out at the Division and Bedford intersection. He looked like death was coming at him. Mike jerked the wheel and up they went, the wrong way, on Ninth Avenue, then she sped off to the right, toward Broadway.
“Cut them off, go back, go back. Up Bedford!”
The back street here was narrow, carved with alleys. The Crown Vic rattled and shook as it sped down the uneven pavement. Nicholas was hanging on, Mike was about to take another corner, hard. He yelled at her when he saw a large lorry pulled in front of them. Mike screeched to a halt, buzzed down her window, and yelled, “Get out of the way, get out of the way!”
The cops behind them skidded to a stop as well.
The driver wasn’t a slouch. He slammed the truck into gear, shot forward, and Mike gunned the Crown Vic past him.
But the Honda was nowhere to be seen.
She said a very bad word, and Nicholas yelled into the radio, “We lost them, someone needs to pick them up.”
They pulled to a stop next to an HSBC bank branch on the corner of Bedford and Third Street, the cops fishtailing to crowd in next to them.
One got out of his vehicle and approached Mike like she was a bomb about to go off. Then she saw the officer’s nametag and laughed, couldn’t help it—P. Friendly.
Nicholas shouted, “Officer Friendly, is NYPD on the car?”
“We were calling in air support when he slipped away, Agent, sir. I’m sorry. We’ve got a BOLO on the Honda, we’ll nail them unless they pull into a garage.”
Nicholas slammed his open palm on the top of the Crown Vic, then called Gray. “We lost them. NYPD has a BOLO out. Okay, okay, let me change gears. Tell me you got something off the license plate of the Suburban Mrs. Antonio told us about.”
“I did indeed. It’s registered to a Meyers Enterprises, in Chelsea. Here’s the address.”
Nicholas punched it into his mobile. “Good. Now back to the Honda. They dirtied up the Honda’s plate so I couldn’t see any numbers or letters, but the background was white and it looked like there were some sort of flowers on a branch—”
Mike knocked on the top of the car
to get his attention. “Virginia. Tell him the Honda plates were from Virginia.”
Gray heard her. “Brown Honda Accord, Virginia plates. Doesn’t narrow it down much.”
“It’s all we have, Gray.”