NYPD Red

Chapter 70

Kylie bolted.

I grabbed a radio and was right behind her, taking the stairs two at a time.

“I need a PPV!” she yelled at Sergeant McGrath as she careened into the front desk and pushed aside a civilian. “Two-one-seven in progress.”

McGrath didn’t hesitate. If there was any bad blood from the earlier meeting, it was forgotten. A Two-one-seven was an assault with intent to kill, and Kylie was clearly a cop on a mission.

“Sixty-four Forty-two,” he said. “Chevy Caprice out front. Fastest PPV we got. Keys are in it.”

Kylie flew out the door and raced for the Chevy. She opened the front door, and I grabbed her by the arm.

“We should call the bomb squad,” I said.

She shoved me off.

“No. By the time they suit up, mobilize, find my apartment, and decide the safest way to defuse the bomb, Spence will be dead. It’s either me,” she said, “or you and me. Are you in or out?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. She jumped into the driver’s seat and started the car.

“In!” I yelled, throwing myself into the passenger side as she peeled out and blasted through the red light on Lexington, light bars flashing, siren screaming.

“We should call for backup,” I said.

“Not until we get there and we can assess the situation,” she said, swinging onto Fifth. “We can’t take a chance on having some gung ho rookie showing up and deciding to play hero.”

“You think it’s any better to send a gung ho wife to play hero?”

“Dammit, Zach, I’ve got twenty-eight minutes,” she said. “I know where Spence is and how to get there, and I don’t have time to brief a backup unit and get them up to speed.”

Kylie made a hard right onto Central Park South, the ritzy stretch of 59th Street that runs from Grand Army Plaza at Fifth Avenue to Columbus Circle at Eighth. The street was lined with dozens of horse-drawn hansom cabs waiting to take willing tourists on a twenty-minute trot through the park for fifty bucks plus tip. Kylie leaned on the siren, then hopped the double yellow line into the eastbound lane, where there was a lot less traffic.

“We went through a list of every possible target,” she said. “How did we not think of Spence?”

“We were looking for the big cinematic finale,” I said. “But Benoit just turned this around into a vendetta. You killed his girlfriend.”

“Right,” she said. She turned left onto Seventh Avenue, skidded into the fire lane, and floored the Caprice. “So if Spence dies, it’s my fault.”

My cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. “It’s Cates,” I said. “McGrath must have told her we took off on a Two-one-seven.”

“Don’t pick it up,” Kylie said.

“Are you out of your mind?” I said. “She’s our boss.”

“Yes, right now I am totally out of my mind, and if we tell our boss what we’re doing, she might pull the plug. Zach, I know that Spence doesn’t mean much to you, but if you care about me, please, please, please don’t answer the phone.”

If I cared about her? Had I ever stopped caring? And now all that emotional baggage was threatening to drag down the only other thing I cared about. My career.

The phone rang a second time.

Cates’s caller ID flashed on the screen. Below that were two buttons. One green, one red: accept, decline.

They may just as well have said: lose, lose.

I will probably regret this for the rest of my life, I thought.

I pressed one of the buttons.