He coughed brown water and moaned.
“Good, good,” she said. “Stay with me. We’re gonna get you out of here.” She tilted her head up and shouted, “We need a bus!”
“Already on the way,” the sergeant called back.
Erin knew better than to try to move a man who’d taken a fall, especially one with a head injury. Her job was to keep him from drowning until the paramedics got there. It was crazy. He’d been shooting at her and Vic less than ten minutes earlier, and now here they were, both of them soaking wet, with her just trying to keep him alive. This was not how armed standoffs usually ended. She was already shivering. The water was near freezing and wasn’t going to help Rojas’s chances. He was in deep shock and rapidly going hypothermic.
Erin didn’t see much choice. The best thing to do with a shock victim was to elevate the legs and lower the head, but she couldn’t do that without drowning him. She carefully eased herself under him and raised his body as cautiously as possible, trying to hoist him most of the way out of the water. Then she wrapped her arms around him in a weird embrace, trying to share and conserve body heat.
They were down there for what felt like a very long time. Erin’s toes and feet first throbbed, then went completely numb. But she grimly held on. She couldn’t tell how badly Rojas was hurt, but he was definitely bleeding from a gash on the side of his head. The blood trickled down, staining both their coats.
“Detective!”
Erin blinked up at the flashlight. She saw a silhouette against it.
“I’m coming down!” the guy called. “I’m an EMT.”
“Great,” she managed to say through chattering teeth.
She’d thought it was crowded before. Now, when the burly paramedic squeezed down the shaft, it was almost impossible to move. After some awkward wriggling, she managed to get partway down the storm sewer passage and give him some room to work.
There was no way they’d get a stretcher down, of course. The paramedics worked with calm, professional skill, fitting the injured man with a cervical collar to immobilize his head, splinting his leg, and getting him rigged to a hoist. Then they winched him up the shaft. Finally, Erin tried to follow. She made it three rungs up the ladder before her legs buckled. All she could do was hold onto the ladder.
Erin hung there, too weak to climb further, too stubborn to let go. She didn’t think she’d ever felt so cold in her life.
“Jesus Christ, you bunch of idiots,” she heard a familiar voice growl. “Get outta my way.” Then a big, strong hand snaked down under her arms and around her shoulders. She recognized the distinctive smell of Vic’s aftershave. He hauled her up as if she weighed nothing, lifting her clear of the manhole.
“Vic?” she mumbled.
“Yeah?”
“What kept you?”
He grinned. “Securing the scene, just like I promised. What the hell were you doing down there?”
“Figured we needed him,” she said. “Alive.”
A cold, wet nose poked Erin in the ear. She turned to see Rolf’s furry, anxious face. He licked her, then bent down and nosed his chew-toy toward her. He wagged his tail. It was his favorite thing in the world, he seemed to be saying, and maybe it would make his partner feel better, too.
Erin reached for her dog and rubbed his head behind the ears. “Let’s get somewhere warm,” she said, still shivering. “And dry.”
Chapter 9
“Erin, how many times have I told you I don’t want to see you during your shift?”
Sean O’Reilly Junior glared at the woman he’d never stopped thinking of as his kid sister.
“Comes with the job, Sean,” she replied.
“I’m just glad you’re not the one in my OR,” he said, sinking into a waiting-room chair beside her.
They were at Bellevue Hospital, where the ambulance had taken Diego Rojas. Sean was a trauma surgeon. He’d just gotten done operating on the gunman.
“Don’t worry about me,” Erin said. They’d wanted to check her out at the hospital to be on the safe side, but she was fine once she’d changed out of her wet clothes and warmed up. Now she was wearing a set of dark blue NYPD sweats she’d had in the trunk of her Charger. She had her hands wrapped around a cup of almost-palatable hospital coffee and was feeling pretty much human again. Rolf lay beside her, taking an after-action nap.
“He’s pretty banged up,” Sean said. “But he’ll pull through. The concussion is mild, and I don’t expect any lasting neurological effects. The leg’s the bad part. Compound fractures of the tibia and fibula.”
“He ran half a block on that leg,” Erin said.
“I’m surprised he got two steps,” Sean replied. “He’s a tough guy, no doubt about it. But we’ve pinned the bones and pumped him so full of antibiotics he’ll be pissing amoxicillin. Assuming no secondary infection, he won’t walk for a couple of months, but he will walk.”
“No he won’t,” she said with a smile. “We’ve got him cold on attempted murder of police officers, and assuming a ballistic match on the gun we pulled out of the sewer, we have him on murder one for good measure. No way does he walk.”
Sean smiled back. “Different priorities, you and me.”
“Not as different as you think. I tried to save his life.”
“And you did,” he said, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “The shock, blood loss, and hypothermia probably would’ve done for him even without the drowning, if you hadn’t found him. You done good, kiddo.”
“When can we talk to him?” she asked.
“You better leave it overnight. His system’s still pretty fragile.”
“I need to know if he’s got an accomplice out there,” she argued. “Sean, there’s a war going on. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t want to throw you guys any more business than we have to.”
“Tomorrow morning,” he insisted.
A man in a black suit came into the
