Green Light (Sam Archer 7) (31 page)

Archer
didn’t reply; he saw Vargas on the Upper West Side, the first time
he’d seen her, spinning round as she and her team were ambushed. An
hour later, the two of them bloodied and beaten up, alone in a
Harlem apartment block and fighting to stay alive.

He saw
her lying in the sitting room of their apartment, reading with
Isabel asleep beside her, the girl’s head resting on her
lap.

And
three months ago, the look on her face when he’d broken into an
office building to save her life after she’d been
kidnapped.

There
was a pause.

‘
Juliana wasn’t my first child,’ Marquez suddenly said quietly.
‘I had a boy eleven years ago, just after I became a
cop.’

Archer
shifted his gaze, looking at her.

‘
His father ran off not long after I found out I was pregnant.
I was alone when I went into labour. There were complications
during the birth.’

She
looked down.

‘
Two days after he was born, the doctor told me he wasn’t going
to make it. I held him for forty five minutes until they turned off
his ventilator. That’s a TV episode without commercials, or half a
soccer match. I was telling him about me, his family, my interests,
my life.’

She
swallowed.

‘
When I was done, I realised he’d stopped breathing. While I’d
been talking, he’d died.’

Pausing,
she took a moment.

‘
But even though he was only alive for two days, I still have
those memories; they’re always there for me whenever I want or need
them. So do you with Alice; and you have six months of
them.’

Archer
stared at her, seeing a different side to the normally tough and
guarded detective he worked with every day.

For a
brief moment, she seemed vulnerable.

A moment
later, there was a quiet knock on the door and Shepherd walked into
the room, easing the door shut behind him.

‘
Sorry to interrupt, guys,’ he said. ‘But Mount Sinai just put
the word out. The surviving Russian died.’

Neither
Archer or Marquez replied.

‘
I spoke to Detective Massaro again too. He said the
Prizraki
crew operate
from a club on Brighton Beach. We’re gonna go down there, round up
whoever’s left and bring them in for questioning to try to find out
what the hell is going on.’

‘
Wait,’ Marquez said. ‘Are we going down there to arrest them
or save them from Henderson and Tully?’

‘
A bit of both, I guess.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘Arming
up to save a group of Russian mobsters.
Normal
and
ordinary
definitely didn’t check in
for work today.’

Loose
ends. They were what separated those who succeeded in any criminal
activity from those who were caught. Fingerprints, shell casings,
ballistics evidence, witnesses, camera footage, hair fibres, all
potentially the difference between getting away with it or getting
caught.

If a
mistake was made, it had to be fixed; a shell casing had to be
retrieved, a bullet pulled from some drywall, an entire crime-scene
bleached and wiped down.

Sometimes however, tying off a loose end meant ending
someone’s life altogether.

The
source of Henderson, Tully and Lister’s information inside the
Department swallowed their nerves while watching Matt Shepherd
gather his team. They hadn’t picked up on the leak’s involvement
yet; that they’d been feeding Henderson and Tully information all
night. Shepherd was about to lead a group down to Little Odessa
where they would be taking the last four surviving Russian mob
members into custody.

However,
the inside man didn’t care about that; those were Henderson and
Tully’s loose ends.

The
leak’s concern was focused on just two people. The red-headed
hooker and the blond police detective who’d just joined Shepherd
and the others on the walkway. News of what had happened to Vargas
had already spread; the person currently watching the team didn’t
know why Henderson and Tully had greased her but fallout from that
one action was inevitable.

Archer
was still dealing with the shock of what had happened right now but
that would switch to focused anger soon enough. With Vargas gone,
he’d stop at nothing to find Henderson and Tully and he’d dig deep.
He could find everything.

Sliding
a hand into a pocket, the inside man withdrew a cell phone and
started tapping a quick text message to the Latino gang contact
he’d hired, who’d been demanding retribution after what went down
in the prison shower block.

Sam
Archer was suspended, had been attacked in Rikers, fought off
Henderson and Tully, and had just lost his girlfriend.

But his
night was about to get a whole lot worse.

Upstairs, Shepherd and Marquez were almost ready to go.
Hendricks was gathering his team comprising three men and two
women, all hand-picked by Hendricks himself. As Marquez joined the
group, Shepherd took Archer to one side, moving a few feet from
everyone else on the walkway.

Archer
glanced down and saw Royston glaring up at him, standing by the
coffee machine a few feet from Palmer who was just tucking her
phone away in her bag.

‘
We’re bound,’ Shepherd said. ‘Your case is still on hold. We
can’t do anything about that. I have to obey the rules. You’ve
gotta leave.’

‘
It’s OK. I understand.’

‘
Go home and rest up. When this is over, we’ll talk about your
situation. I don’t give a shit what procedure says; you’re not
leaving my team.’

Archer
smiled. ‘Appreciate that.’

Pause.

‘
So you’re going to bring in the last remaining
Prizraki
. What about
Henderson and Tully?’

‘
Massaro and his team are going to bait a trap and wait at the
club to see if they show up. With everything that’s happened
tonight, they’ll be desperate to get out of the city. If they’re
gonna take out the remaining gang members, they’ll do it tonight.
The news of what happened to Vargas and the two officers at St
Luke’s has spread fast. Every cop in the city is looking for them.
They’ll know they can’t hang around.’

April
had seen the two men talking and rose, walking out of the
Conference Room towards them. Shepherd turned to her.

‘
We’re stepping out for a moment. But you’ll be safe
here.’

‘
I thought I heard you telling him to go home?’ she asked,
looking at Archer.

‘
That’s right. But as I said, you’ll be safe here.’

April’s
eyes immediately widened; she shook her head. ‘I want to stay with
him.’

‘
There are over fifty detectives in this building.’

‘
I don’t care.’

‘
There are people out there hunting you,’ Shepherd told
her.

‘
He’ll protect me.’

‘
You know he’s suspended.’

‘
I don’t give a shit.’

Shepherd
looked at her for a moment; the girl stared straight
back.

‘
OK; if that’s what you want,’ Shepherd said. ‘I guess I can’t
keep you here against your will. You got a spare change of
clothes?’

She
shook her head.

‘
Vargas does,’ Archer said quietly.

‘
OK. Go get cleaned up then go straight to the safe-house.
Royston’s a piece of work but he’s right; you’re still technically
suspended. Until that gets resolved, you can’t remain on site. But
stay close to your phone.’

Archer
nodded. With that, Shepherd looked over at Hendricks; moments later
the eight person team went quickly down the stairs. As they headed
for the exit, Archer looked down into the detective pit and saw
Palmer talking with some of the family members, Royston ten feet
from her and still glaring up at him. The Lieutenant drained his
coffee then made a big deal of checking his watch.

Ignoring
him, Archer focused on the family group and saw Isabel sitting
close to Palmer and Melissa Hendricks, completely unaware that
Vargas had died.

Taking a
deep breath, he turned to April.

‘
Just give me a couple of minutes.’

In the
tall canyons of the Financial District, Henderson pulled up outside
his place in their back-up van, killing the engine and looking over
at Tully beside him. The two men had loaded up the rear of the
vehicle with the last of their lye solution, ten canisters tightly
sealed and stowed beside some barrels of bleach they were going to
splash down the interior of the vehicles with, making completely
sure every speck of DNA was destroyed.

Shooting
his cuff, Henderson checked his watch. The Little Odessa club would
already be open and busy, a prime opportunity for them to do what
they had to do and then get out before anyone realised what had
happened.

‘
Go sterilise your place,’ he told Tully. ‘Work fast. Meet me
back here as soon as you’re done.’

Nodding,
the smaller man opened his door and stepped out, slamming it behind
him, then jammed his hands into his pockets and headed across the
street towards his apartment four blocks away. Henderson also
jumped out, locked up then crossed the street and walked towards
his apartment building, pushing the door open and keeping his head
down to avoid looking into the lens of the security camera that was
mounted in the lobby.

After
almost a year, the two men and their accomplice were finally
leaving this place.

But before they could go, there were just four last
Russian
Prizraki
who needed to be dealt with.

THIRTY EIGHT

Sam
Archer’s mother had died when he was eighteen. Cancer had weakened
her body but a blood clot in her lung had been what finally ended
her life. She’d been in a hospice in the UK when it had happened
and he’d known it was coming, giving him a chance to prepare and
say goodbye.

However,
he’d only ever lost one mother. Isabel had just lost her second and
neither circumstance had been either peaceful or expected; no
hospices, no opportunity to say farewell, just bullets and lye,
violence and murder, pain and heartbreak.

The day
Archer had first met Vargas, she’d almost been killed protecting
Isabel. The bond that had developed between the two had been as
strong as titanium.

Now, he
had to tell her Vargas was gone forever, just like the rest of her
blood family.

Taking a
deep breath, he eased the door to the room shut and turned to look
at Isabel. Dressed in jeans and a white sweater, her dark hair
hanging over her shoulders, she was sitting on the edge of the
table swinging her legs, a look of childish naivety on her face as
she looked at him. Most teenagers and adults could gauge when
something was wrong from body language but she was still a bit too
young.

For the
best-intentioned reasons, he’d lied to her about Vargas’ absence
for the past four and a half weeks but he couldn’t lie to her about
this.

Taking a
deep breath, he pulled up a chair, sitting in front of her. He felt
her eyes scanning his face, beginning to sense something was wrong
but not yet sure what it was.

‘
Did someone hurt you?’ she asked, looking at a trickle of
blood that had dried by his temple. He reached up and touched it,
remembering the pistol-whip sucker shot that had caused it in the
Park Avenue hotel bar.

‘
I walked into something.’

‘
You’re always injuring yourself. You need to be more
careful.’

He
smiled. ‘Yeah, I guess I do.’

The
smile quickly faded and he hesitated, trying to find the words,
feeling the girl’s eyes on him as she waited. The room was silent,
Isabel sitting there wondering what was going on but seemingly
happy to have Archer all to herself.

‘
Do you remember those dreams you told me about?’ Archer said
eventually. ‘The ones with your mother?’

She
nodded. ‘We talk to each other.’

‘
There’s going to be someone else there now too with you
both.’

‘
Who?’

‘
Alice.’

He
paused.

‘
She had to go away.’

‘
When is she coming back?’

‘
She’s not, sweetheart. She’s in the same place as your mother
and the rest of your family.’

Isabel’s
brown eyes stared at him as she took in what he was
saying.

Then
they filled with tears as realisation started to dawn, just like
Vargas’ in the car park after she’d been shot.

‘
She died?’

Archer
swallowed and nodded. ‘Yes. She did.’

He
paused.

‘
But now she’ll be there too when you have your dreams. She’ll
be with your other mother too; I think they’ll already be
friends.’

Isabel
didn’t speak for a moment; then she looked at him again. ‘How? They
never met.’