Longevity

satisfaction in securing their captive’s arms and legs as tightly as the cuffs allowed. She found two other small pistols, one at each ankle, when she searched him for backup weapons, and impatiently jammed them and the palm pistol into her bag. Then she sat down next to Chris.

“That was masterly, except for getting shot, McGregor. As soon as you left I started worrying that maybe you only had the one vest and had given it to me this morning. I was already coming after you when I heard the glass shatter. I am going to clock you, as soon as your ribs heal.”

Chris wasted a painful breath on a short, soft chuckle.

“I want to know where you got this ruthless streak,” Livvy said.

“These are… really bad guys. You have to be proactive.”

“No. I mean ruthless, as in how you treat your partner,” Livvy replied, making Chris laugh painfully again.

They heard the sound of converging footsteps.

“Got your credentials… handy?” Chris asked. “I don’t care to reach for mine… at the moment.”

Their prisoner awakened fully and glared at them as High Speed Security personnel moved cautiously in from both directions.

“Yeah,” Livvy said, searching her bag. “Wouldn’t want to be mistaken for the really bad guys.”

*****

“What now?” Livvy asked.

There’d been a brief discussion with High Speed Security, which had converged on the scene heated and ready for a fight. After an exercise of some tact and matter-of-fact civility and charm, almost exclusively by Livvy, the LLE officers had handed their bound and disarmed prisoner over to the High Speed people. That seemed to mollify them more than a little. In fact, the security lugs actually seemed pleased to have a real-life professional assassin safely in custody. They had a nice little cell they didn’t get to use that often.

After Livvy and Chris moved out of the corridor and back into the relative comfort of their compartment, they’d called the Chief with a brief report, and he’d arranged to have uniforms collect their prisoner at the D.C. terminal. He’d also ordered them to come in and bring him up to date on everything they’d done to investigate Josephson’s disappearance, including why they’d gone to Manhattan that morning, and how it was related to the fact that someone was suddenly desperate to see them dead. They were going to have to tell him their theory about Bedford.

“And you’re both staying in WitSec rooms for the next few nights. You have to work the case, but at least you can get some sleep,” the Chief had added just before signing off.

“Now,” Chris said, “if I’m Bedford, and I’m a preemptory sort, and I’ve tried to have two LLE detectives killed this afternoon… if I’ve decided the time has come to aggressively search out… and destroy every possible bit of evidence I can find that links me… to a particularly horrible fraud I’m determined to perpetuate… and I especially want to figure out how LLE detectives… found out about the connection between me and my tame Frankenstein… what else would I be doing today?

“What I’d be doing,” Chris continued, “is arranging a search of the apartment of the LLE detective who’s been leading the investigation. The Chief is right, we need to go to WitSec for tonight and until this is over. But I need to go home now.”

“I’ll go,” Livvy said. “He may have failed to have us killed to a certain extent, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need to get some medical attention for some probable broken ribs. I’ll get Louie and your notes.”

“Bedford is still ahead of us. We’ll both go. I need back up.”

“Nope,” Livvy said. Chris turned to her in surprise.

“Call it,” she said. She was holding an antique coin, a quarter. She flipped it into the air with a practiced toss, caught it out of the air and slapped it onto the back of her hand in a seamless sequence.

“Imagine for a moment an alternate universe in which we are actual partners. Heads or tails?”

If Chris did recognize the archaic exercise, he wasn’t in the mood.

“It’s my apartment.”

“Undoubtedly you’re senior and I absolutely respect that, especially when we’re dealing with LLE matters. In the squad room and interviews I listen and defer and learn. Just now, when you went after that gunman, there wasn’t time, so I let it go. But in a situation like this, in the field, we have to trust each other. That means sharing the risks, like real partners, even if only for the next week. If it was my apartment, and I had just had my ribs kicked in by a couple of 45s, I’d be saying the same. And a whole lot more quickly,” she added.

Chris hesitated, and then said, “All right. Heads.”

Livvy peeked at the back of her hand and slipped the coin back into her bag. “Beginner’s luck. This time I’m lead, you’re backup.” The fact that he didn’t call her on the cheat told Livvy he’d accepted her argument. Either that or he was just too painful or too worried to care.

*****

They parked a block away on the quiet street. It was still only 3 PM and since the neighborhood supplied apartments for mainly middle-class singles and couples most people were still at work.

Livvy pulled out her Stinger and climbed out of the car. “You coming? I’ll go in first, but I want to stick together on this.”

Nursing his ribs, Chris followed more slowly.

“It must hurt to even breathe,” she said on their way up in the elevator.

“You don’t have to sound so pleased,” Chris said. “You’ve made your point.”

They stopped one floor up and then walked down, and Livvy went braced through the stairwell door into Chris’ hallway. She kept her position against the opposite wall, sighting down the hall towards Chris’ door, while Chris came through a second later and checked out the opposite end. For nothing; they were already too late. The first thing they saw in the hallway outside Chris’ apartment was a long rod that looked to Chris like part of the towel rack from his bathroom. It had been broken to produce a sharp angle at one end, and there was blood on it. There was no effort at concealment. There was more blood on Chris’ doorjamb and some drops on the hallway floor. The door to his apartment was closed.

The silence was complete. Chris looked at the broken rod and said very quietly, “Not much of a weapon. I guess they didn’t want to keep it.”

She gestured Chris to one side of the door and took the other, closest to the lock. When he nodded once, she pointed her Stinger at the ceiling and nodded. Chris reached across to deactivate the lock, the door swung open automatically, just as it was supposed to, and Livvy dashed through, sweeping the room with her Stinger and simultaneously moving to the side to allow Chris to enter behind her.

They heard a whimper and saw a lot of blood on both the walls and the floor, and then they saw Louie, standing in the middle of the efficiency and watching the door intently. He was wagging the whole rear of his body. The front half was scratched and gouged and bleeding, and one eye was almost swollen shut. At his feet there was a gun, and next to it, a finger.

Whimpering with excitement, Louie sat down and then quickly went down to a sternal position on the floor, then stood up and started wagging again.

“Good boy, Louie,” Livvy said, sparing Chris, who couldn’t have said anything if he’d tried. “Good boy.” At that, Louie bounded over, first to Chris and then to Livvy, still wagging his tail and occasionally whimpering.

“They’re long gone, aren’t they, boy?” Livvy said, closing and locking the door. At this point, that didn’t seem enough. It was a 20^th century building with swing-open doors, and Livvy engaged the two additional interior locks. The external lock hadn’t kept them out the first time.

While Livvy wandered through the apartment, Chris got some warm water and towels and sat down stiffly on a low stool so he could clean away enough of the blood to determine the extent of Louie’s wounds.

“It’s an even bigger mess in here,” Livvy said, standing at the bathroom door. “The towel rack has been torn down, which we already knew, I guess. Someone lost a lot of blood before they found the medikit and the clotting powder. More blood than out there, even, if you can believe that. It’s all over the floor, with some piles of bloody