Cohen lay on the ground stunned and gasping for air. As soon as his lungs filled, he climbed shakily to his knees. He couldn’t hear a thing except the ringing of the explosion in his ears. Blood dripped onto the ground in front of him, but he had no idea where it came from.

Cohen scanned the desk area in front of him where the remote had sat but saw no sign of movement in the smoke. The windows in Horton’s office were blown out and the blinds splayed apart, but he couldn’t see Snider inside. He glanced over his shoulder. The back desk and other workstations—including the one he had just crawled along—had been replaced by a heap of twisted debris. Part of the lab’s back wall was missing, exposing the hallway beyond. And the Philadelphia sky poured in through the gaping four-foot hole torn through the outer wall.

He forced himself to his feet. He staggered back toward the shattered door, stumbling over objects, unable to see the ground for the lingering smoke. A head appeared in the doorway. Cohen’s gun-laden hand shot up. But he held his fire when he saw it was his partner.

“Seth! Down!” Leetch cried.

The ringing in his ears had subsided enough for Cohen to make out his own name. Leetch waved his gun frantically at the floor.

Instinctively, Cohen fell to his knees. At the same moment, he saw Leetch’s muzzle flash twice but heard only a couple of dull thuds. He spun around. A hand with a gun stuck through the space where Horton’s window had been.

Cohen rolled toward Leetch. Agony shot through his wrist and shoulder with each turn. A bullet ricocheted close by. He crawled painfully over the rest of the glass and rubble until he reached the blown-out doorway. The two men both crawled backward along the burnt hallway carpet to get out of Snider’s line of fire.

“He’s holed up in Horton’s office,” Leetch said. “He’s got . nowhere to go.”

Cohen nodded. As the echo in his ears lessened, he heard the wails of approaching fire trucks, police cruisers, and ambulances. “All we have to do is pin him in,” he said.

They steadied their guns on the office.

A minute passed.

“Don’t shoot,” Snider yelled. “I’m coming out.”

Leetch glanced to Cohen, his face contorted in anger. “Don’t know if I can help myself,” he growled.

Cohen saw a gun sail through the missing window of Horton’s office and land in the middle of the room with a clank. Cohen and Leetch crawled closer back into the destroyed lab. Two hands rose slowly above Horton’s office window followed by sleeved arms.

A knot formed in Cohen’s stomach. He had a flashback to the Portland alley where Frige and Jimmy lay, but he couldn’t make the connection.