Immediately I ran back the way I’d come, heading for my Audi. Converging sirens were very loud now and I had to get out of there as quickly as possible. As I ran, I recited over and over again the Ford’s license-plate number like it was a mantra. And I lodged in my mind the one glance I’d got at the shooter’s face. There was something uncannily familiar about that one glimpse, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Hurling myself into my car, I started it, jammed it into gear and peeled away from the small parking bay. I headed for the ice stadium and swung into the service road toward Jefferson Street. In my mirrors I saw the flashing gumball lights of squad cars screeching to a halt where my car had just been. Then one of the cop cars revved wildly and came after me.

There was still the option of pulling over and explaining to the cops what had really happened. Anyone could see that Castle and Soames had been shot from a distance by a high-velocity rifle and that I was armed only with a 9 mm handgun that hadn’t been fired. But they’d only assume that I had an accomplice who’d taken the shots; I must have led the officers to this trap; otherwise, how would the shooter know where we were? I’d probably spend days in a cell awaiting arraignment for murder while the real killer went about his business unhindered. It didn’t escape me that he was setting me up to take the fall for all his crimes and I wondered what the hell he was planning next.

Giving up wasn’t an option. The way I saw it, the only way I was going to prove my innocence was to throw the gunman at their feet. Preferably alive so that he could confess, but in the present circumstances it was more likely he’d be dead. The killer was planning—or had already executed—something big. And it was down to me to stop him.

Chapter 4

4

Tampa Police Department HQ was situated at the junction of Franklin and Madison, little more than two minutes away. Luckily for me all the responding squad cars must have been out cruising around downtown when the call had gone in about the shooting in the Channel District. The sirens sounded as though they were all responding via Franklin, the way I’d come in. I had a free run all the way up Jefferson and under the Crosstown Expressway before anyone was astute enough to set up roadblocks. Didn’t mean I was free, it just gave me a wider area to move in before the cordon tightened around me.