Page 82

"We're glad to know you're safe, Captain," he said.

I nodded. "Thank you."

He raised his coffee in a small salute and stepped back into the crowd. Janine watched him go. She turned back to me and looked at my face.

"Do you need to go to the hospital?"

"No."

"Alex."

"I'm fine. The paramedic cleared me." I pulled her close. "I just want to go home."

She took my face in her hands. An hour ago I thought I'd never see this face again. She kissed me and I let the rest of the world fall away.

The department put me on critical incident leave. Mandatory. Forty-eight hours minimum, plus a stress debriefing before I could return to duty. I didn't argue.

Janine kissed me longer those first days. Held on tighter when she hugged me. Looked at me across the room as if I was going to disappear if she turned away. We didn't talk about it, but the incident still had a hold on both of us whether we wanted to admit it or not.

"Declan Gallagher is in custody." Westbrook came to the apartment three days later. He sat at our kitchen table with a folder in front of him. "We've been working through the people connected to what he did to you." He opened the folder. "You remember the cooperating witness I mentioned before the holidays? The one who gave us the names?"

"Rowan," Janine said.

"Rowan. He's been cooperating with us since the night you two talked him off that roof. The names he gave us helped us map the gambling network Declan was collecting for."

Janine turned to me.

"Reggie Bulard was one of the people in that network. He owed Declan money directly. Personal debt. When Reggie couldn't pay, he and his wife Miki ran from Chicago to Boston. Declan followed them here. That's why he was in the city in the first place. He came to collect on Reggie."

"The 911 call that brought Alex's crew to that building was placed by Miki. Declan told her if she made the call, the debt was forgiven. She'd been calling 911 for months before that. Every time Declan's collectors came to her door, she'd dial and hang up."

He turned another page.

"Some of Declan's associates have also been taken into custody. One name you'll know—Lester Hale."

I squeezed Janine's hand hard enough that she looked at me.

"He was feeding Declan your family's schedule. Practice times, Saturday mornings, who picked Hazel up." Westbrook closed the page. "He's been charged."

I'd always hoped there was something underneath Hale. A decent coach buried under the ego, maybe. A man who was in over his head and could still come back from it. I'd been wrong. There was nothing underneath. Hale was exactly what he looked like, all the way down.

"Going back to Gallagher. He's been transferred from the hospital to a corrections facility. He's paralyzed from the waist down. The spinal cord was severed by the second round."

Janine pulled in a sharp breath through her nose.

Westbrook turned a page in the folder. "That wasn't SWAT's doing."

Janine looked up. "It wasn't?"

"The ballistics don't match any SWAT weapon. The rounds came from a position on the adjacent rooftop. Clear sightline to the second-floor windows." He looked at both of us. "Someone else took that shot."

I thought about the man with the coffee. The small salute. The winter coat. We're glad to know you're safe, Captain.

"Who?" Janine asked.

"Organized crime groups, they don't like rats. Someone gets arrested, there's always a chance they cut a deal and start talking. So they make sure that doesn't happen." Westbrook turned a page. "Now, either this was Declan's own people making sure he never sits across from a prosecutor, or it was a rival group who'd benefit from him staying alive and the investigation tearing his network apart. Either way, one shot to the spine does the job."

He looked at me.