most of them were on those lists not because they were suspected by the authorities of terrorist or criminal acts or tendencies, but simply because of their religion. It made him uneasy; it also made for a lot of unnecessary work, sifting out the few possibles from the many who were innocent of everything except their beliefs.
He still felt the bubba route was the way to go on this, but one thing was missing. The specific grudge, the link between a group of heavily armed fanatics and the Roman Catholic Church. To that end, a team of agents was scouring manifestos and databases for the elusive common thread.
He took in the open floor, absorbing the ordered chaos of agents working their phones and their computers before making his way to his desk. As he reached it, he spotted Amelia Gaines coming toward him from across the room.
'You got a minute?'
Everyone always had a minute for Amelia Gaines. 'What's up?'
'You know that apartment we hit this morning?'
'Yeah, I heard,' he said cheerlessly. 'Still, it did buy us some brownie points with the DEA, which isn't a bad thing.'
Amelia shrugged the notion away. 'When I was in there, I was looking out the window into the park. A couple of people were out riding. One of them was having some trouble with her horse and it got me thinking.' '
Reilly pushed a chair over to her and she sat down. She was a breath, of fresh air in the male-dominated Bureau, where the percentage of female recruits had only recently risen to the lofty height of ten percent. The Bureau's recruiters made no secret of their wish for more female applicants, but few applied. In fact, only one female agent had ever reached the rank of SAC, earning herself the mocking nickname Queen Bee in the process.
Reilly had worked with Amelia a lot over the last months. Amelia was a particularly useful asset when it came to dealing with Middle Eastern suspects. They loved her red locks and freckled skin; a well-timed smile or a strategic flash of skin often got more results than weeks of surveillance.
Although no one at the Bureau went out of their way to hide their attraction to her, Amelia hadn't incited any cases of sexual harassment; not that it was easy to imagine anyone victimizing her. She was raised in a military family where she had four brothers, she was a karate black belt at the age of sixteen, and she was an expert markswoman. She could pretty much take care of herself in any situation.
Once, less than a year ago, they had been alone at a coffee shop and Reilly had come close to inviting her out to dinner. He had decided against it, knowing that there was a good chance, in his hopeful mind anyway, that it wouldn't end with dinner. Relationships with coworkers were never easy; at the Bureau, he knew, they simply didn't stand a chance.
'Keep going,' he now said to her.
'Those horsemen at the museum. Watching the videos, it's pretty obvious that those guys weren't just riding the horses, they were skillfully controlling them. Riding them up the steps, for instance.
Easy for Hollywood stuntmen, but in real life that's a pretty hard thing to do.'
She sounded as if she knew; she also sounded uneasy.
Amelia saw his glance and smiled tightly. 'I can ride,' she confirmed.
He immediately realized she was onto something. The connection with horses glared at him. He'd had an inkling in the first few hours when he'd thought of how Central Park Precinct officers used horses, but he hadn't developed the thought. Had he done so, they might've been onto this sooner.
'You want to look into stuntmen with rap sheets?'
'For a start. But it's not just the horsemen. It's the horses themselves.' Amelia moved a touch closer.
'From what we heard and what we've seen on the videos, people were screaming and shouting and there was all that gunfire. And yet those horses weren't panicking.'
Amelia stopped, looking across to where Aparo was picking up a phone call, as if unwilling to add her next thought.
Reilly knew where she was going. He made the uncomfortable connection for her. 'Cop horses.'
'Right.'
Damn it. He didn't like this any more than she did. Cop horses could mean cops. And nobody liked to contemplate the possibility of the involvement of other law enforcement officers.
'It's all yours,' he said. 'But go easy.'
She didn't have time to answer. Aparo was rushing over.
'That was Steve. We've got something. Looks like the real deal this time.'
Chapter 15
A s he turned into Twenty-second Street, Gus Waldron began feeling jittery. Okay, so he'd had the jumps since Saturday night, but this was different. He recognized the signs. He did a lot of things on instinct. Betting on the horses was one of them. The results? Lousy. But other things he did instinctively sometimes worked out for the best, so he always paid attention.
Now he saw that there was a reason for his jitters. A car, plain and ordinary. Too plain, too ordinary. Two men, looking carefully at nothing in particular. Cops. What else could they be?
He counted off the steps and stopped to look in a window. Reflected in it, he saw another car nosing around the corner. Just as unremarkable, and as he risked a quick glance over his shoulder he saw that two men were in this one as well.
He was boxed in.
Gus immediately thought of Lucien. He flashed on any number of gruesome ways he would end the miserable French prick's life.
He reached the gallery and suddenly dived for its door, storming in fast and rushing across the floor to where a startled Lucien was now rising out of his chair. Gus kicked the table aside, sending the big ugly clock and a can of cleaning fluid crashing to the floor, and smacked Lucien hard across the ear.
'You ratted me out to the cops, didn't you?'
'No, Gueusse—'
As Gus raised his hand to hit him again, he saw that Lucien twisted his head, his eyes popping as he looked toward the rear of the gallery. So the cops were out back too—then Gus realized that he could smell something, gasoline maybe. The can he had knocked off the table was leaking onto the floor.
Snatching up the can, Gus pulled Lucien off the floor and thrust him ahead toward the door, where he kicked him behind the knees, sending the skinny weasel down again. Keeping him down with his boot, he tipped the can over Lucien's head.
'You know better than to mess with me, you little shit,' he barked as he kept on pouring.
'Please!' The Frenchman sputtered, his eyes burning from the liquid when, too fast for the terrified man to resist, Gus yanked open the door, picked Lucien up by the scruff of his neck, pulled out a Zippo, ignited the fuel, and booted the gallery owner into the street.
Flames flared blue and yellow around Lucien's head and shoulders as he stumbled across the sidewalk, his screams mingling with yells from shocked onlookers and a sudden blare of car horns.
Gus emerged close behind him, eyes darting left and right, fixed like a hawk on the four men, two at each end of the block, rushing out of their cars now and with guns, and all more concerned with the burning man than with him.
Which was exactly what he needed.
***
Reilly knew they'd been spotted as soon as he saw the man bolt off the street and dive into the gallery. Yelling, 'He's made us. We have a go, I repeat, we have a go!' into the mike tucked into his sleeve, he chambered a round into his Browning Hi-Power handgun and scrambled out of his car with Aparo emerging from the passenger side.
He was still behind the car's door when he saw a man stagger out of the gallery. Reilly wasn't sure he was seeing straight. The man's head seemed to be on fire.
***
