Snider’s baldpate appeared, followed by the dead eyes and blank face that Angie Fischer had captured perfectly in her sketch of him. Soon he was standing, hands above his head, the view of body cropped from the waist up by the empty window frame.

With guns held rigidly in front of them, Cohen and Leetch both rose to their feet. “Listen, you son of a bitch!” Leetch snarled. “I’m begging you to give me a reason to shoot! One tiny twitch—”

“I’m not moving,” Snider said calmly.

They tread gingerly over the rubble and approached Snider slowly.

Though Snider stood stock-still, sudden foreboding overwhelmed Cohen. Portland … Portland … . Then it hit him! Forbes had gotten the drop on the already armed Frigerator. His eyes darted to his partner. “Rome! He’s got a hidden gun!”

The moment that the words left his mouth, Cohen saw a glint of black snap into Snider’s hand. In an instant Snider’s right hand dropped down and fired.

Leetch toppled backward with a loud groan.

Snider’s arm flicked to Cohen.

Cohen squeezed the trigger and the magnum buckled in his hand.

Snider’s head jerked back.

Snider collapsed below the lower edge of the window frame, but Cohen kept firing until the chamber was empty and the gun clicked harmlessly.

65 - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

65

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Kilburn experienced a sense of déjà vu as Lopez and he followed Cohen into the U. of Penn.’s glass-walled postoperative recovery room.

Stepping inside, Kilburn saw that Leetch’s eyes were open. Surrounded by monitors, he lay back on the bed with his head propped up slightly. A red bag hung from an IV pole and transfused blood into Leetch’s right arm. Bandages covered most of the left side of his chest, from which stuck a hoselike chest tube that drained blood and air from around his left lung into the negative-pressure chamber at the foot of his bed.

Leetch’s complexion was sallow. Oxygen tubing ran under his nose. But Kilburn could see that his eyes were as bright as ever. Leetch turned to Cohen with a weak grin. “Hey, KC, next time remind me to send a card instead of visiting you, huh?” He coughed a laugh.

Cohen raised his own bandaged left hand out of the sling in which it had been placed and rubbed the dressing covering the deep laceration over his eye. “I promise. I’ll remember.” His smile dimmed. “Are you in pain, Rome?”

Leetch shook his head. “They got me good and drugged. I don’t even feel where they made the cut. Some kind of epidural freezing or something.” He reached over to pat the bandages on his chest.

“The surgeon says the bullet missed your heart by an inch,” Cohen said.

Leetch sputtered another chuckle. “I told you my tiny heart would come in handy one day.”