Rickard turned away, left the man to die in silent torment and went back into the hall. Glancing into the bedroom he saw that the mattress was now lying on the floor—so Alisha had been hiding there—and the door to the outside was wide open. Again he felt a trickle of admiration that Alisha was proving more worthy than he’d ever have thought, but it was only fleeting. It wouldn’t stop him from making her scream in agony. He went outside, switching the Glock to automatic fire.

Chapter 28

28

“There are reports of shots fired,” Harvey said. “You’d better haul ass, guys. Cops are responding to nine-one-one calls, so they’ll be going in hard.”

“Not far now,” I said. I put away my phone and checked my gun.

Rink drove the Chrysler like a crazy man, laying his hand heavily on the horn to clear a passage through traffic that seemed to have been sent by Rickard’s guardian angel to thwart us. We lost a mirror and gained a few stripes of gleaming metal in the paintwork, and more than a couple people screamed obscenities at us as we squeezed by. But we were still ahead of the blue lights and sirens heading in the same direction.

We got onto surface streets that gave us a cleaner run into Liberty City, and Rink now lay heavily on the throttle. We shot through at high speed and I was only happy that it was a school day and there weren’t children out playing in the road. Keeping one eye on the way ahead, I counted off the blocks on my right.

“Two blocks.” I indicated and Rink nodded in acknowledgement.

Approaching our turn Rink decelerated rapidly, engine compression slowing the vehicle, then took a turn that had the tires stuttering on the paved road. Then he gave the vehicle everything and we shot like a bullet toward the next intersection.

“Next left.” Rink already knew the way but I felt like I had to say something. Again he took us through a ninety-degree turn at speed, and then it was a straight run along a street that could never be described as a tourist destination.

Rink braked.

Ahead of us was a scene like a Western gunfight, only here the cowboys had automatic handguns and machine pistols instead of six-guns. I took in the scene in an instant.

One man in a vest and tattoos had his arm propped over the top of a wooden fence. He fired but his shots were ill timed and most of them got nowhere near where he was aiming.

Two others were crouching behind a car, firing randomly toward the front of a wooden house.

Lying on the road behind the two gunmen was a young woman. She had her arms folded over her head and was screaming in terror.