Second Honeymoon

Chapter 98

THE FORCE OF the explosion knocked me flat against the floorboards, and a fireball swept over my back. The heat was so intense I could feel my shirt melt into my skin.

It hurt so much I wanted to scream, but I was too busy being thankful. A blast like that? The only way I wouldn’t be in pain was if I were dead.

“God, that hurt,” moaned Sarah.

More good news. She was alive, too. A little better off than me.

I wish I could say it was my intent to shield her. I was thrown right into her and gravity did the rest. She was faceup and I was looking down at her. Our noses were practically touching.

“You okay?” I whispered.

“Think so. You?”

“A little toasty on the back. I’ll live.”

She didn’t say anything more. She didn’t have to. I could see it in her eyes. It was really important to her that I was okay.

Off in the distance I could already hear sirens. The curtains in the living room were on fire. So were the couch and rug. There was a chance at least one of those propane tanks hadn’t exploded.

Yet.

“C’mon,” said Harris. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

The street outside Macintyre’s building was chaos central. Fire trucks and more police cruisers were honking their way through traffic, swirling lights everywhere.

Tenants and neighbors spilled out to the sidewalk en masse, looking bewildered and scared. I glanced around, finally catching my breath. Breathing. An old woman in a red robe was clutching rosary beads and saying a prayer. Next to her was a young Hispanic mother holding her baby boy.

Sarah was ripping through a description of Cole, sending off a dozen officers to push the perimeter in every direction. The rest followed us as we searched the buildings behind Macintyre’s, from basements to rooftops.

Meanwhile, Harris was on his radio, getting officers out to the surrounding subways.

“Over here!” I yelled on the very first rooftop we reached. On the tar paper next to the ledge overlooking Macintyre’s apartment, propped up by an attached bipod, was an FN SPR, one of the sniper rifles I knew by name because it was used by the Bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team.

“An SPR,” said Sarah as soon as she laid her eyes on it. “Talk about irony.”

She was right. SPR stood for “special police rifle.” It sat there, along with a few scattered casings, taunting us.

“Every door!” shouted Harris. “We knock on every door!”

We were funneling again, this time off the roof and down the stairs, when Harris’s radio crackled. Calling in was an officer on the street. He’d found a witness. Or, rather, the witness had found him.

It was a man who lived on the top floor of a taller building behind Macintyre’s. Looking down, he had a perfect view of Martha Cole after the explosion.

“What did he see?” asked Harris.

The officer paused, the radio falling silent.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he said finally.