The Final Cut

by Catherine Coulter

  Nothing.

  Mike climbed out of the driver’s side, spotted him standing still as a stone beside his door. “What’s wrong?” Her hand was already on her Glock.

  But he didn’t move. There, he heard something. Breathing, carefully modulated breaths.

  He motioned her to the front of the car, then stopped again, listened. There, he heard it again, this time not only breathing, harsh and low, but the sound of footsteps sliding over concrete.

  A man launched himself from the darkness, swinging a tire iron toward Nicholas’s head. He jumped back, but not fast enough. The tire iron caught him on the shoulder, and the force of the blow sent him stumbling to the concrete. Better his shoulder than his head, was all he could think. His shoulder was on fire, but it didn’t matter. He lurched to his feet to see another shadow, also male, tall, fit, lean back on the heel of his left foot and kick out with his right, smooth and high and beautifully timed.

  Before he could warn her, the man’s foot hit Mike square in the head. She went down with a small cry and didn’t move.

  Adrenaline pulsed through him as the first man came at him again, swinging the tire iron. Nicholas ducked, blocked the tire iron with his forearm, and sent his fist with all his strength into the man’s throat.

  He dropped the tire iron, grabbed his neck, and went down to his knees, wheezing, trying to breathe. Nicholas had only an instant before the second man, the one he’d mentally dubbed the kicker, was on him, whipping around to take him down with a to the head, as he had Mike.

  Nicholas didn’t hesitate. He rammed his head into the man’s face, sending him back, his arms windmilling to keep his balance.

  A gun fired, barely missing his head. Great, this was all they needed. No more silent attack, now it was all-out war.

  Nicholas pulled Mike behind her Crown Vic, leaned over her, and said in her face, “Wake up, come on, wake up!” He shook her shoulder as three more shots rang out.

  “Stop it, I’m together.” Mike pulled herself onto her hands and knees as more shots rang out. She pulled out her phone, called for backup. Her Glock was in her right hand, and her left reached for the gun at her ankle. She slapped her backup Glock 27 subcompact into Nicholas’s hand.

  They fired, crouched side by side, the Crown Vic their only shield.

  Their attackers shot off thirty-two rounds, fast and hard. An MP5, Mike knew. Bullets spiderwebbed the Crown Vic’s windshield, smashed the windows, struck the columns, sending jagged concrete shards in all directions. Nicholas saw a streak of blood snaking down Mike’s neck.

  A moment of stark silence, then the slap of another clip jacking into place. The second man, the idiot, started firing again, but many of his shots went wild, ricocheting off other cars, smashing glass, wreaking havoc. In the confined space, the noise was deafening.

  A bullet narrowly missed Nicholas’s head, shattered into the concrete pillar behind him.

  Too close. Who the hell were these guys? “Where are the cops?”

  “Any second now, they’re out of the Seventh and usually really fast.” Nicholas remembered Esposito and his Nikes. He fell forward onto his belly and shot under a parked car halfway down a row at the idiot’s legs. He yelped, jumped up, and cursed. Then he moved fast, crouching behind the rear tire of an SUV.

  He didn’t know where the kicker was, but he was clearly the one in charge of this attack. Had he left the idiot behind? Or was he circling around?

  More bullets struck the Crown Vic, this time shattering the windshield. Then, suddenly, the firing stopped.

  Nicholas touched his hand to Mike’s arm. She stopped shooting.

  Dead silence. He’d hit the idiot in the foot, so he couldn’t be lying dead behind that SUV.

  Mike shouted, “We’re federal agents. Hear those sirens? You’re surrounded. Put down your weapons now!”

  Silence. Was that talking he heard? Low, agitated? It was hard to hear anything over their own heavy breathing. He knew to his gut both men were still hiding in the dark, probably trying to decide what to do.

  A half-dozen bullets pinged off Mike’s car from the left, opposite from where Nicholas believed the kicker was crouching.

  Too close to Mike’s head, too close.

  Bullets began raining on their position again from two directions. The kicker had joined the fray with another MP5.

  Nicholas pressed his mouth against Mike’s cheek, tasted her blood, and whispered, “The idiot is on the up ramp. I think the guy who kicked you is in charge here. He’s behind the dark SUV at one o’clock. I’m going for the idiot, since he’s in the open. Cover me,” and he took off toward the ramp. Mike laid down fire to cover him, going back and forth between the ramp and the kicker.

  Nicholas made it to the opposite side of the garage seconds before the darkness lit up with the flash of bullets. He pressed hard against a column, took two deep breaths, saw the idiot, and squeezed the trigger twice, his last two bullets. He missed, and the idiot ducked away into the darkness.

  A heartbeat later, Nicholas was hit hard from behind, and went down face-first, the wind knocked out of him. He managed to fling himself over onto his back, struggling to catch his breath, when the idiot leapt on top of him, straddled him, and punched Nicholas in the mouth. He felt his teeth tear into his lip and tasted blood.

  Nicholas jerked up and headbutted him, a sickening sound of flesh against flesh, then hit him hard in the jaw with the small Glock. A shot rang out. The idiot fell sideways, his head hitting the concrete floor with a thick, meaty sound. The man’s legs twitched, and Nicholas shoved them off and rolled spread-eagled on his back, the scent of his blood hot and thick in the air.

  Mike had shot the idiot.

  Nicholas came up on his knees, dragged the idiot behind the cover of a concrete pillar, and tore off the black mask. He was young, thirties, dark hair. Indistinguishable, eyes blank, blood spreading out from his back to halo around his body. He was very dead.

  Mike shouted, “Nicholas, the kicker, he’s running up the ramp.”

  More sirens now, drawing closer.

  Nicholas took off, Mike right behind him. He slowed when he reached the final curve that turned into the street, gestured for her to hold up. He took three more steps, saw the garage barrier. It was closed tight, but the door to the street beside it was wide open.

  He heard footsteps and people shouting. He charged through the open door to see light bars flashing, an echo of the cacophony of noises in his ears. An NYPD cruiser skidded to a stop at the curb, two officers bolted from the car, guns drawn. “Stop! NYPD!”

  Mike screamed, “Federal agent! Federal agent, don’t shoot!” She held her Glock in one hand and her creds high in the other.

  Nicholas saw a flash of black to his right. He ignored the shouts from the cops and edged carefully toward the alley. Mike ran into the alley behind him, shouting over her shoulder, “We need backup!”

  The kicker was trapped at the back of the alley, a high fence behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and Nicholas saw a rim of jaw-length white hair under his mask. Of all things, the kicker smiled, then leapt onto the chain link and began climbing, fast and fluid as a monkey. Nicholas’s Glock was empty. He knew he couldn’t climb the fence, his shoulder was hurting so badly he could barely raise his arm. He could only watch the man pull himself up and over the fence, down the other side, and listen to his light footfalls disappear into the black night.

  Mike fired until her gun was dry, but the kicker was gone.

  She looked at him, then down at herself. She began to laugh. She choked out, “I don’t believe this, I really don’t.”

  “Is your head all right? Believe what?”

  “Open your coat and look at yourself. You’re still wearing your tux, what there is left of it.”

  He said, “I doubt the dry cleaner is going to be able to fix this.”

  42

  Three more NYPD cruisers crowded the street, pulling over curbs, into driveways, one even mowing down two
garbage cans.

  It was mayhem until everyone was clear they were dealing with federal agents. A sergeant arrived and finally sent out men to find the kicker.

  Mike sighed. “He’s long gone. They’ll never find him now, not in a million years. He’s fast, Nicholas, and that kick to my head, I’m still woozy. What’s this?” She slumped against the wall of the building, and eyed the blood she’d wiped off her face.

  Nicholas took a Kleenex from one of the officers and wiped off the blood. “A flying bit of concrete.” He felt her head. “And a good-sized lump. You’ve got a hard head, thank the good Lord.”

  “Give me the Kleenex, you’ve got a cut lip.”

  She dabbed at his mouth. “What’s with your shoulder?”

  “Tire iron,” Nicholas said shortly, and moved it a bit. Better. They watched the NYPD officers hurrying off in all directions.

  “How did you know?”

  He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. She saw he was uncomfortable and said only, “Your gut, right?”

  “Maybe. Something felt off when I got out of the car.”

  She placed her hand flat against his belly. “I’m not feeling you up. I’m thanking your gut.”

  He laughed, couldn’t help it. A Latina officer, her hair in a long braid, gave Mike the idiot’s wallet. His driver’s license was from Sacramento, California; his name listed as Dennis Palmer.

  “It’s a fake,” Mike said. “See, it’s missing the three-color holograph. More false identities, Nicholas. He must be connected to Browning. She must have sent the men after us.”

  He took the license and turned it over in his hands. “Or Anatoly did. The kicker had white hair hanging down from beneath his mask. I couldn’t believe it. He moved like a much younger man. He was fast and well trained, but they came prepared with their MP5s.

  “I’m sure the kicker was the one in charge, not the dead guy. If the idiot had been as talented as he is, I’m afraid guns wouldn’t have been necessary.” He looked toward the dead man now surrounded by techs, a detective from the 7th Precinct, and saw the ME striding up, obviously pulled from sleep, his gray hair a rooster tail on top of his head.

  Mike said, “A shootout in the garage in the middle of the West Village. The neighbors must be loving this.” She walked away to examine the open door beside the garage barrier. She called out, “Well, how they got in is easily answered. They jimmied the lock. Maybe we can see them on the security video tape.”

  It was 3:30 a.m. before they were cleared for the night. Nicholas fetched his leather carry-on from the backseat of the wrecked Crown Vic. Mike said at his elbow, “I really liked this car. I put in a call to maintenance, got the night guy. He swore when I come down tomorrow morning, there’ll be a new ride here in my spot. Well, not new, you know what I mean.”

  “So long as it runs and has glass in all the windows, that’s fine.”

  As they took the elevator to the lobby, Nicholas said, “Even though your doorman didn’t see anyone out of place, the crime scene techs checked through your flat; they say nothing was disturbed. You need to check, too.”

  Mike nodded to the doorman, who looked as though he was bursting with excitement and questions, but they didn’t slow.

  The third-floor halls were as quiet as the garage had been, everyone back in bed after the excitement. Consummate New Yorkers in her building, even the yelling, the bullets flying, the sirens out in front of the building didn’t bother them for long.

  Mike’s neighbor Frank Pressfield opened his door. “Are you okay? Snot-nosed kid controlling the crime scene wouldn’t let me talk to you.”

  “We’re fine. No respect these days, Frank, and here you were, ready and able to tell them what to do. Two guys ambushed us in the garage. One’s dead, the other got away.” She gestured to Nicholas. “Nicholas Drummond, New Scotland Yard, meet Frank Pressfield, formerly of the Sixty-eighth.”

  The two men shook hands, and Frank said, “You’ve had quite the reception, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, I have.” And he thought of Elaine.

  Anger, grief, questions, all three welled up in him, and a bone-deep tiredness he knew hours of sleep wouldn’t fix. Elaine was gone. She’d died a stranger in a strange land, and it made him sick to think of it. And now whoever had killed her was clearly after him and Mike. But why? They were only two individuals; there were hundreds more FBI agents to take their places.

  Rage began to build, at Victoria Browning and Andrei Anatoly, at the man with his white hair, but he tamped it down into his belly, knowing he’d need it later.

  “We’re going to crash,” he heard Mike saying to Frank. “We’ve been at it all day. Thanks for checking on me.”

  Nicholas nodded to him and followed Mike into her flat across the hall. She switched on the lights and shrugged out of her coat, and he saw how beat up she was. Her leather jacket was ripped, her jeans covered with grease stains. As for him, the bespoke tux was ready for the trash bin.

  In the long scheme of things, who cared?

  Nicholas looked around him, from the small entryway into the living room to his right. It wasn’t a large room, but it held charm and warmth. It was cozy. He really liked the stuffed floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the large sectional sofa that would be his bed, and the single big window that looked out over the street. There were several nicely framed Impressionist prints on the one open wall, and colorful rugs strewn over the oak floor. He walked after her to check out the kitchen, hidden to the left of the entrance, then the bedroom and bath, both down a short hall to the right. Nothing seemed out of place—either by Mike’s hand or one their assailants’.

  She said, “All’s as it should be. The two guys didn’t make it up here. I doubt they even wanted to.”

  “Probably not. I like your apartment.”

  Mike smiled. “It’s home.”

  “But remember, the Fox is the master of the bug. We should sweep. Too bad we don’t—” He shrugged.

  “Hold that thought,” she said, and went into the kitchen. He heard her open a drawer. A moment later, she handed him three items, a wand, a control box, and a set of headphones. “Go for it.”

  “What are you doing with a Superscout NLJ?”

  “Believe it or not, your uncle gave me this fancy nonlinear junction detector for Christmas last year.”

  She watched him go from phone to lamps to vents. Just in case, Mike flipped on her stereo as she walked past, low, and Diana Krall’s mellow voice filled the room.

  Nicholas appeared in the kitchen doorway. “We’re clear. No bugs.” He handed her back the equipment. “I wish my uncle had given me something like that for Christmas, but my aunt Emily knitted me a sweater instead. It was purple.”

  She leaned back against the counter. “I’m glad you came home with me. I’m glad you realized someone was waiting for us in the garage. I’d be dead if not for your gut, so thanks again, Nicholas.” She pulled two boxes from the fridge and faced Nicholas. “To be honest, at this moment in time I really don’t care about anything other than food—here’s pepperoni with mushroom, or plain cheese.”

  He pointed toward the pepperoni. “May I help?”

  “Yes, talk to me. Keep me awake.” She slid the pizza into a convection oven, set the timer.

  He was rubbing his shoulder. At her raised eyebrow, he said, “For a while there I thought something was broken.”

  She took a tube of muscle relaxant out of her junk drawer. “Sit down. This and some ice, it should help.”

  Without a word, he pulled off his torn, bloodstained tux coat and shirt, stripping to the waist.

  He was ripped, of course. She admired the work of art, then started rubbing in the muscle cream, slowly, in circles, then pressing deeper. He groaned.

  She realized even though she was exhausted, half dead, really, she still needed to distract herself. “Do you know when your uncle Bo told me about his sister, your mom, the actress? I called my dad and I thought he’d explode on the phone. He was in love
with your mother when she starred in that TV comedy A Fish out of Water. He watches the reruns whenever he can find them. I’ll have to call him, tell him his goddess’s son is in our midst.”

  “Mom will get a kick out of that. But as she’s always saying, she’s more than a pretty face.” He groaned again, rested his head on his hands on the kitchen table while she smoothed and rubbed and dug in.

  “Well, sure, but what do you mean?”

  He said, voice muffled, “I get my detective genes from her. She’s solved I don’t know how many mysteries in our village, a regular Jane Marple. When I was a kid, she’d take me with her, explain all the facts to me, and tell me it was up to the two of us to deduce what happened.”

  “Like what? Who stole laundry drying on a clothesline?”

  “Yeah, and who took three guineas out of the collection plate and who got Millie Hightower pregnant. There was even a murder that confounded the constabulary. She solved it.” He straightened, moved his shoulders around. “That’s much better. Thank you.” He sounded surprised. “Mind if I use your loo?”

  “Of course not.”

  He picked up his ruined clothes, his bottomless leather bag, and left her. When he returned, he was wearing a black T-shirt over his black trousers, back to business as usual.

  He said, “If Anatoly didn’t hire the Fox to steal the Koh-i-Noor, and I don’t think he did, that leaves about half a dozen very wealthy gem collectors in Europe. Which means—”

  Mike’s cell phone buzzed. She frowned, looked down, then sighed deeply. “Sorry, Nicholas. I have to take this. Hello, Timmy. It’s very late, what’s wrong?”

  He watched her face, the flickers of annoyance and bemusement. Timmy?

  She nodded to him and left him in the kitchen. She was back in under three minutes to see him standing there, arms crossed over his chest, cuts and bruises on his face, a drop of blood dried on his mouth, but he was looking easier, more relaxed. “Who’s Timmy?”