Among Thieves (43 page)

Kozlowski nodded at Finn, and the two of them moved to the back of the car. “It’s gonna be okay,” Devon said to his daughter.

Kilbranish sneered. “Shut up. She wouldn’t be in this if it wasn’t for you.”

“You’re getting what you want,” Devon said. “Just don’t hurt her.”

“Hurry up!”

Kozlowski got the rope holding the trunk closed untied, and he and Finn lifted the box out of the back, setting it down gently
on the rollers. They pushed it around to the front of the car.

“Put it in the van,” Kilbranish said. He took the gun away from the girl’s head for a moment and pointed it over her shoulder
at Finn and Kozlowski. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Finn and Kozlowski moved the box to the back of the van and hoisted it up, laying it on its side.

“Close the doors,” Kilbranish ordered. He was up toward the front of the van, and as they swung the doors closed, Finn couldn’t
have been any more than ten feet away—almost close enough to touch him. He looked up and he caught Sally’s eyes. They didn’t
look scared. They looked angry and determined.

“Step back!”

Finn and Kozlowski moved back slowly. Devon hadn’t moved; he remained by the side of the car, looking at his daughter. His
hands were extended from his body, as if he was reaching out to her. “You’ve got what you wanted, you let her go now!”

Kilbranish was holding Sally around the neck with his arm, pointing the gun at her head again, holding her up as she leaned
precariously with her feet bound together. “Not yet,” Kilbranish said. “I haven’t got everything I want yet. You crossed me.”

“I didn’t,” Devon said. “I had nothing to do with any of this.”

Kilbranish shook his head. “You crossed me. If we’d had the paintings, if we’d had the money, the movement would never have
died. You killed it. You and yours.”

“Please,” Devon said. “Please give me my daughter back.”

“You want her back?” Kilbranish said. “Then you take her back!” He pushed her hard in the back, not toward Devon, but toward
the slurry wall that ran along the edge of the river, falling off on the other side to a deepwater slip at the edge of the
pier. With her feet bound, Sally had no way to stop the descent. Her hands shot out in front of her to brace her fall, but
it was useless. Her shins hit the wall and her momentum carried her forward, over the edge and into the water.

“No!” Devon screamed. He rushed forward to the spot where Sally had gone in. As he did, Kilbranish was in retreat, headed
to the van’s open driver’s-side door. He turned and let loose a volley of gunshots. Finn hit the ground, looking up just in
time to see Devon dive into the water.

Kilbranish fired twice more in Finn’s and Kozlowski’s direction, but they were wild efforts, intended more to buy time than
to actually hit anything. He jumped into the van; the engine was running, and he hit the gas, kicking up rocks and dust as
he peeled out.

Kozlowski took a few running steps after the van, drawing his own gun. “Koz!” Finn shouted. The ex-cop turned around. “Forget
him, he’s not our problem! We’ve got to get to Sally and Devon!”

Finn ran to the edge of the river, looking down into the black water. He could see nothing. The wind off the shore churned
the river, and he couldn’t even tell for sure where Sally and Devon had gone in. He looked behind him and saw Kozlowski hesitating.
“Koz, I need your help!”

“I can’t swim!” Kozlowski yelled back.

“You don’t have to; you need to help us out when I find them!”

Kozlowski took one last look at the back of the van as it sped away. Finn could see that the cop in him wanted to give chase.
He’d been a police officer for too long for the instinct to die. After a moment, though, he pulled himself away and ran to
the river wall where Finn was standing.

“You better be here when I come up!” Finn told him. Then he jumped into the frigid river without waiting for a response.

It all went so fast, Sally didn’t know what was happening. One moment she was looking at her father; the next she was airborne—twisting
the way people fall in dreams, waiting for an impact that seemed never to come. Her hands were wrapped in tape, and paddled
the air as she turned over and over in the fall. If it truly had been a dream, she would have woken with a start, heart racing,
hands shaking as she breathed deeply to calm herself to a point where she might be able to get back to sleep.

She wasn’t dreaming, though.

When she hit the water, she experienced a pain greater than she’d known in her life. She went in headfirst, and as her forehead
made contact, she thought she’d hit cement. Her neck snapped back, and it felt as if she’d been hit with a baseball bat. Next
she felt the water. It spread out from her head down to her shoulders, and then engulfed her. She thought for a moment it
was blood, spilling from a gash on her head, burning her with an icy-hot fire as it ran like a waterfall from what she could
only assume was a mortal wound. It wasn’t until her lungs expanded that she realized what had happened, and then the panic
truly set in. Her mouth was gagged, and as she breathed in reflexively the water flooded into her nostrils, through her sinus
passages, and down her windpipe into her lungs. The sensation sent her body into spasms, her inability to breathe intensifying
her body’s desperation. She involuntary gasped for more air. It was a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle.

In that moment she went under she knew she was going to die. She felt her life ripped away with complete certainty, and she
experienced a torrent of memories and emotions. They assaulted her, violent and unbearable. She fought against them, thrashing
back and forth as they closed in on her. Finally she gave in, and her body went still. She’d fought her entire life, but at
that moment the fight was too much for her; at last she let herself drift with the current of the river.

Stone and Sanchez heard the shooting. “We gotta get in there,” Stone said. He started the car, but left the lights off.

Sanchez looked over toward the car where Hewitt and the other FBI agent sat. They were closer to the building, closer to the
drive that wound around toward the back, in the direction from which the gunshots had come. Sanchez was hoping they would
be moving in that direction, so she and Stone could maintain their surveillance—not only of Finn and his crew, but of the
FBI as well. Hewitt and the other agent gave no sign of moving, though.

“What are they doing?” Sanchez asked no one in particular.

“They’re not doing a goddamned thing,” Stone said. “We’ve got to move.”

Sanchez still hesitated.

“C’mon, boss. We’ve got to get in there.”

Finally she nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”

Stone hit the gas. As he pulled out from the parking space he flipped the switch on the portable flashing light and reached
out to put it on the roof of the car. Then he grabbed the wheel with both hands and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. They
sped down along the side of the building, accelerating as they approached the corner near the river’s edge. As they neared
the end of the drive, they passed the two FBI agents, still parked. Sanchez looked over at them, saw their faces illuminated
in blue by the flashing light on top of the car, stretched in shock.

She turned her attention back to the assault. They were just about at the corner of the building when she pulled out her gun
and readied herself for the confrontation.

When Liam’s foot hit the gas pedal, he breathed a sigh of relief. It was done: Malley and his people would be busy trying
to save the girl, and Liam had the paintings. His mission was complete. He had succeeded.

He was still unsure how he would get the paintings out of the country; he didn’t even know where he would spend the night.
He couldn’t return to the house in Quincy; the girl was probably dead, but he couldn’t take that chance—if she survived, the
place was compromised. These were problems he could deal with, however. There were enough people in Boston still loyal to
the cause. As for getting the paintings out of the country, it had been twenty years; the investigative pressure that had
prevented Bulger from getting them out of the country two decades earlier was surely gone. Once his superiors learned that
the mission had been successful, they would make sure that the paintings made it to Ireland.

He was thinking through his plans and gathering speed as he came around the corner of the building. He could do nothing when
the car appeared in front of him.

He saw the flashing blue light first, and he instinctively hit the brakes with both feet. There was no way to avoid the collision,
though; the police car was coming around the corner at full speed. He let out a scream of rage as he saw the front of the
onrushing car disappear underneath his bumper. He could feel the van ride up onto the hood as it crumpled in toward the two
silhouettes in the front seat. He saw them for only a split second before the air bags deployed in the van, and he was thrown
back into the seat. It felt as though his nose was broken, but he ignored it. He was too angry to feel pain.

He flailed at the air bag with his arms, buying enough space to get out of the van. The door was bent, and he had to throw
his shoulder against it before it gave way.

His mind was churning, assessing his situation. He had to deal with one issue at a time, and the first priority was making
sure the police officers in the car were dead. If they survived, he would lose whatever head start he had, and law enforcement
would be on him before he could move the paintings. Once they were dispatched, he could figure out his transportation problem—his
van was totaled.

He staggered out of the van, looking back briefly to make sure the box with the paintings was still intact. That it was gave
him a renewed sense of hope and urgency.

His head was throbbing as he walked around the front of the van and looked into the front seat of the unmarked police car.
There were two of them, and they were shaken, but alive. The woman in the passenger’s seat looked a little older than Liam.
She was shaking her head, trying to regain her bearings. She looked up at him, confusion on her face. A younger man was in
the driver’s seat next to her, already struggling to free himself from the air bag. The steering wheel was bent forward and
looked as though it had been pushed back toward him, though it didn’t appear that it had gone far enough to cause any bodily
damage. Instead, it just hindered his efforts to get out of the car.

Liam raised his gun and pointed it at the woman. She looked at him through the cracked window, comprehension coming to her
slowly through the fog of the crash. Then she shouted, “No!”

A gunshot rang out, and the woman jumped. She didn’t struggle against the pain, though, and now it was Liam who was confused.
He looked down at his gun and saw that he hadn’t pulled the trigger. The gun was still held aloft, and it seemed to have tripled
in weight. He looked at the woman in the car with consternation, and raised his gun slightly with great effort.

A second gunshot rang out, and this time the force of impact spun Liam on his axis. He was knocked back onto the hood of the
unmarked police car, facing the rear of the car. He could see a large black man twenty feet from him, pointing a gun at his
head. “Don’t move!” the man said.

Liam looked down and saw two dark stains on his shirt: one on his left shoulder, one on his chest. Only then did he realize
that he’d been shot. “You bastard,” he said. His breath was weak, and it came out as a whisper. He struggled to get more air
in his lungs. He looked up at the man. He was advancing, his gun still leveled. Liam realized he still had his gun in his
hand and he raised it, pointing it at the man with the gun. “You bastard!” He shouted it this time as he went to pull the
trigger.

He never felt the third shot. It hit him just above the right eye socket, shattering his ocular ridge and traveling through
his brain before blowing out the back of his skull. His body slumped back onto what was left of the hood of the police car,
and then slid to the ground, leaving a deep red stain in its wake.