Both eyes open as the right one stared through the scope, painting the back of the detective with the crosshairs and thinking that when he got back to Canton Falls he'd make up a Bible story about this. Jesus would play his role and would be armed with a kick-ass compound bow, about to ambush a bunch of Roman soldiers, who'd been torturing Christians. Julius Caesar would be hiding behind one soldier and thinking he was safe but Jesus would shoot through the soldier and kill the son-of-a-bitch.

Good story. The kids'd love it.

The cop was still huddled over the prosecutor.

Well, that's it, Hobbs thought, clicking off the safety of the big Colt. No time left. Burn in brimstone, Christ-killing Romans.

He centered the crosshairs on the back of the cop's leg and began to apply slow pressure on the trigger, thinking that his only regret was that the officer was white, not black.

But one thing Hobbs Wentworth'd learned in life: you take your targets the way you find 'em.

Chapter Forty

Roland Bell smelled the distinctive plastic/sweat/metal scent of the Motorola handy-talkie as he clutched it to his face.

"ESU Four, you 'bout ready, K?" he drawled into the mike.

"Roger that, K," one of them replied.

"Okay, now—"

Which is when the muffled cracks of multiple shots resounded through the canyon of the street.

Bell jumped.

"Gunshots!" Charles Grady cried. "I heard shots! Are you hit?"

"Just stay down," Bell said as he dropped into a crouch. He spun around, lifting his gun and squinting hard at the government office building across the street.

He was counting furiously.

"Got the location," he called into the radio. "I make it the third floor, fifth office from the north end of the building." Then Bell examined the glass. "Ouch."

"Say again, K?" one of the officers called.

"I said, 'Ouch.'"

"Uhm. Roger. Out."

Grady, lying on the sidewalk, said, "What's going on?" He started to get up.

"Sit tight there," the detective told him, standing up cautiously. Turning now from the window and scanning the sidewalk around him. There was a possibility that more shooters were nearby. A moment later an armored Emergency Services van pulled up and five seconds after that Bell and Grady were inside, squealing away from the attempted hit and taking the prosecutor back to the Upper East Side and his family.

Bell glanced behind him to see more ESU troopers streaming into the building across the street from the courthouse. Don't worry. . . . He'll find us. Well, he sure as hell had.