before coming down.” Sam picked up his radio. “Anybody want to tell me they have her?”
“You didn’t mention she used to run track,” one of his men complained back. “She’s heading over two streets toward the park.”
Sam looked at Luke.
“Let her go,” Luke replied.
“Let her go and come on back in,” Sam repeated for those on the radio loop. “You want me to join you?”
“No. I’ve a hunch where she might go eventually, and if not there, a reasonable guess for where one of her other safe houses is located. At least if she’s uptown she’s not prowling the lower east side looking for our Irishman.”
“Don’t underestimate the hurt she’s feeling over Tracey; Amy may in the end simply put out word where she is and intentionally let the Irishman find her.”
“I know, and I’m not sure who would be the last one standing in that confrontation.” Luke checked his watch and then turned up the collar of his coat. “Call me if you spot her again or if she makes contact. She’s spoken with Caroline and Marsh so far-I’m guessing she sees her sister Marie sometime soon.”
“She’s going to call you.”
Luke shook his head. “No. Not this time. Not until she’s settled everything she wants to settle on her own.” They might be friends, and maybe a lot more than friends, but she wasn’t going to trust him with this part of her world yet, and he wasn’t going to be able to set aside the fact he was the chief of police long enough to look the other way. But there was no reason to chase her at this moment and just make it harder on both of them.
“Thanks, Sam.” He headed back toward his car.
Caroline was beginning to expect the slipped-in visit when the nurses thought she was asleep. “Do you want me to call the chief for you?” she asked Amy softly, worried at the stress on her friend’s face, at the lack of sleep she could see.
“Calling him just makes this harder. Luke has his own ideas for how this should play out, and I’m tired enough not to want to fight him over it.”
Caroline eased a breath in against the heaviness in her chest. “It’s the same guy, isn’t it, the shooter here and the man who shot Greg?”
“Maybe. Eight years kind of changes someone’s appearance. Your sketch was close, but it wasn’t an immediate that’s-him reaction.”
“So maybe I got part of the face wrong,” Caroline whispered, not surprised if that turned out to be the case.
“You’re tired. I’d better be going.”
Caroline touched her hand to stop her. “Call Luke, please. He cares an awful lot about you. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know.” Amy squeezed her hand. “I see Marie in the morning; Daniel’s arranging it for me. Anything you want me to pass on to him?”
“Daniel?” Caroline asked, looking puzzled at her friend.
“He’ll be asking to stop by and see you, I think.”
Caroline smiled. “Sure he will; he’s a nice guy. Luke doesn’t have friends who aren’t basically nice guys.”
“Well, maybe it’s time you let one of those nice guys get close enough to be the one pacing the halls when you’re in here.”
“He’s not a cop; it doesn’t work unless it’s another cop,” Caroline whispered, appreciating the thought though.
“Maybe true.” Amy smiled. “You can tell Luke that he can call me. He’ll understand.”
Caroline frowned at her, confused by the message. “Where, what number?”
“He’ll figure it out,” Amy replied. She leaned over and offered a gentle hug. “I’ll see you later, friend. That’s a promise.”
Because there were certain days in his life being the chief of police was simply too hard a burden to bear, Luke watched Amy walk across the hospital parking lot and turn back toward downtown, and he let her go without stopping her. The car dashboard clock showed minutes after 3 a.m. He had figured she would come to see Caroline, that she would eventually make arrangements to see Marie, and so far he was two for two.
He finished his coffee and wearily wondered if Amy was staying somewhere reasonably safe and if she’d ever decide it was simply time to trust him and call him. The shooter would get picked up sooner or later, and if Henry’s son out there had done the two murders-it was only a matter of time before they figured out his name. This wasn’t settled by any means, but the pieces were moving around on the board. All that remained was the learning to live with the reality that had come. But it looked like he had lost Amy, nearly as permanently as Marsh had lost Tracey. He just hoped Connor and Marie managed to survive this together.
He started the car and let it idle again to warm. Another couple hours and he’d visit Caroline too, then head over to see Daniel.
“55-14.”
He reached for his radio. “10-2.”
“DMV records for that plate shows a Hampton Road address, 754, Apartment A, registered name Ivan Graves.”
“754 Hampton Road, Apartment A.” He thought about it a moment and put the car in drive. “Mark me 10-8, same address.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was a long night of playing hunches, but there were only so many ways the reporter dogging his investigators could get inside information to run in screaming headlines above the fold on page one. Sykes had made news with too many stories to make it simply good reporting. And since Luke couldn’t put an inside source on the most serious of the leaks, that meant the reporter had another source. He wasn’t above admitting a reporter had better contacts than the cops when it became obvious he did. Luke would start with what he had. Ten minutes ago Sykes had walked out of the hospital, over to a car owned by Ivan Graves, and slipped into the passenger seat. Who had been driving was a mystery, but the deadline for a story in tomorrow’s paper was thirty minutes from now and Sykes was still working-that was enough to get a chief’s interest.
In the middle of the night there was time for a chief to follow a very slim hunch.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“COME SIT DOWN, MARIE,” Daniel encouraged. “Amy won’t be late. She just said she was walking over, and it’s a cold morning out there. Give her a few minutes.”
“I know.” Marie walked back over to the couch in the living room. She smiled. “I changed my mind; your apartment does kind of grow on a person over time.”
He offered the pillow she’d taken to sliding behind her back to ease the ache. “You can help with more of the artwork if you like. It still needs a lighter touch, I think.”
“Maybe the seascape,” she offered, having thought that before. Her smile faded into the weight of waiting for Mandy. Days had passed, and she still didn’t know what to say. She’d stayed behind at the restaurant to ask Connor about Christmas plans with Mandy being able to join them, and moments later glass had rained down and she had ceased to be thinking.
“Don’t cry. Not before she comes,” Daniel said softly, offering his handkerchief.
“Some guest I turn out to be, walking around in slippers and carrying a box of Kleenex and sleeping the majority of the days.”
“The rest of those pills from the doctor are going to get used too and without protest. Another five or six days and you may be standing upright without weaving on me, but until then you’re sleeping some more.”
She rested her head back against the couch and thought again that she was glad she liked him, this cousin she had never known she had. “Tracey would have never wanted all this, the manhunt, the hiding, the fact her photo is
