“We wouldn’t want to get bored.”

“God forbid.”

“What’re you hearing about Stahl?” she asked. “Things have been oddly quiet on that front.”

“I haven’t heard a word. The quiet has me worried though. It’s not like him to go down with a whimper rather than a bang.”

Sam wouldn’t confess to having had the same thought because she didn’t want him to worry about her. And he would. If there was one thing Sam knew for sure, it was that she hadn’t seen the last of her nemesis. But she had bigger concerns right now, and she wouldn’t give that scumbag any of her precious brain cells.

The reporters outside HQ were clamoring to know when they could expect an arrest in the MacArthur murders. They screamed questions about that and about Nick as Sam and Freddie walked by them, keeping their heads down and their mouths shut.

Sam headed straight for the main conference room, which was a steaming cauldron of seething testosterone at the moment. Chief Farnsworth, Deputy Chief Conklin and Detective Captain Malone were the only friendly faces in the room.

Twenty men glared at her with unfettered hatred, no one more so than their commander.

“Gentlemen,” Sam said. “Still no women in vice?”

“You’re wasting time we could be spending looking for Billy Springer,” Roback said.

“Ahhh, speak of the devil,” Sam said. “How about you tell us how you managed to lose track of our prime suspect in a mass homicide.”

“Allow me, Captain,” a muscle-bound officer said as he strode forward to meet Sam’s steely gaze with one of his own. He had close-cropped blond hair and ice-blue eyes. “I’ve just spent the last six months of my life deep undercover with Billy Springer, who is the most arrogant, self-involved, narcissistic douchebag I’ve ever met in my life. I’ll never get back those six months, and you’ll have to pardon me if I wanted twelve hours to make sure all that time counted for something.”

“And you are?”

“Cole McDonald. Lieutenant Cole McDonald.”

“Lieutenant.”

“It was my call. No one else’s.”

“You still haven’t mentioned how he got away.”

Frosty blue eyes met icy blue eyes in a standoff for the ages. McDonald made Sam’s day by blinking first.

“He said he was going upstairs to take a shower. We think he went out through a bathroom window.”

“Did he make you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Did someone tip him off?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“Where was the rest of your team when he escaped through a window?”

“They were preparing to take down several of his associates who were due to accept a big delivery of Molly last night.”

“Did the delivery happen?”

“It did not.”

“So he got away and his associates are still running free?”

“For the moment.”

“And the operation you spent six months orchestrating?”

“Has been compromised.”