“Shit! Gun!” Erin barked. She kicked out and caught the man’s forearm just as he pulled the trigger. The revolver went off one more time, then spun out of his hand. Newton sagged and coughed. Blood spattered out of his mouth and nostrils.
“Clear,” Erin said again, dropping to one knee beside the wounded man. He wasn’t in good shape. He’d taken two shotgun shells at close range, both center mass; one in the chest, the other in the side. The blood he was coughing up meant he’d caught a pellet in the lungs or windpipe.
“First aid!” she shouted to one of the uniformed officers who’d jumped out of the patrol car. The man nodded and went back to the car. The other uniform went to check on the bystanders, who were cautiously sitting up.
The wounded gangster was staring up at Erin with oddly clear, bright eyes. He coughed again and spat blood.
“It’s okay, Newton,” Erin said. “Geez, they don’t call you Twitchy for nothing. You nearly tagged me. Just stay still, we got an ambulance on the way. Stay awake, you hear me?”
“Shot… me,” Newton said. His voice had a breathy bubbliness to it. He’d definitely taken a hit to the lungs.
“Yeah, he sure did,” Erin said. “But you’re going to be fine.” She put pressure on the chest wound. The patrolman got there with the first aid kit and started pulling out bandages.
“Got… Liam,” Newton mumbled. “Then they got… me. Gonna get… the others…”
“What others?” she asked. He was losing a lot of blood, leaking from more holes than she could possibly plug. The shotgun had punched buckshot through his chest in at least a half dozen places.
“Pat… Lonnie… the girl…”
“Girl?” Erin echoed. “What girl?”
But Newton’s eyes had gone cloudy as he slipped into shock. He choked and gurgled and then went still.
The ambulance arrived less than five minutes after Piekarski called it in, which was better than average for New York City, but not fast enough for Timothy Newton. He was dead by the time the paramedics got there.
Chapter 12
“You’re bleeding,” Piekarski said quietly.
“Huh?” Erin was spattered with blood. She hadn’t thought any of it was hers.
Piekarski pointed. Erin looked down and saw a red furrow down the back of her left hand.
“Oh,” Erin said. “I think a pellet grazed me.” Now she could feel the burning heat again and wondered how she could’ve forgotten it.
“Better have the medics patch you up.”
The street was full of cops now. The EMTs, after determining Newton was beyond their help, were examining the bystanders. The girl had bloodied her nose when her boyfriend had tackled her, but they were otherwise fine. Unfortunately for the boy, his girl wasn’t at all happy about what had happened. She seemed to think the gunfire was all his fault, that he’d somehow planned the whole thing just so he could deliberately smash her face into the concrete. She was listing his shortcomings as a boyfriend and lover, loudly and angrily. Erin wouldn’t bet on that relationship’s longevity.
One of the paramedics was only too glad to step away from the young woman and check Erin over. He disinfected the wound, pronounced it minor, and slapped a butterfly bandage on it. Piekarski didn’t have a scratch on her. Then the detective and the SNEU cop sat down on the curb to wait for Lieutenant Webb and the CSU team to arrive.
“First time I’ve shot at anyone,” Piekarski observed. “I missed, of course. Dammit.”
“So did I,” Erin said. She was mad at herself. The range hadn’t been that long, the light hadn’t been that bad, and she’d been in other gunfights.
“I’ve mixed it up with plenty of bad guys,” Piekarski went on. “Fists, knives a couple of times, hell, even had one guy whack me with a steel chain with a padlock on it.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, I woke up halfway to the hospital. But never guns.” Piekarski sighed. “You got any idea who the hell the shooter was?”
“Buddy of Diego Rojas,” Erin said. She thought back, trying to see the guy’s face. He’d definitely looked Latin American. “Colombian cartel gunman.”
“You know he was out there?”
“No. I thought Rojas was the only guy gunning for McIntyre’s boys.”
“Think we’ll catch him?”
“Yeah.” They’d put out a BOLO for the getaway car, and this case was a high priority for the NYPD. There was a good chance a Patrol unit might grab him. But if they didn’t get him before he ditched the car, Erin wasn’t so sure. They didn’t have a name, and the man had been wearing a bulky coat and hat. Erin thought she might recognize him if she saw him again, but couldn’t give a good description.
“I should’ve hit him,” Piekarski said.
“Me, too.” Erin shrugged. “It’s probably best not to get too upset about failing to kill someone. He’s just muscle, anyway. It’d be nice to get the guys who sent him.”
“Where are they?”
“Colombia, I’d expect.”
Piekarski smiled suddenly. “You know, I’m feeling pretty weird right now. Wired. I feel like I want to get drunk, or maybe laid. You think that’s normal after a gunfight?”
Erin returned the smile as well as she could. “There’s nothing normal about being in a gunfight,” she said. “Everyone reacts to it differently.”
“You been in them before?”
“A couple times.”
“Do you get used to it?”
“Not really. And you don’t want to.”
“Nothing personal, O’Reilly, but I think I’m gonna go back to SNEU after this. Gold shields are overrated. Too boring, then too exciting. You wanna come with me?”
Erin shook her head. “I like it here fine.”
Vic’s unmarked Taurus pulled up to the scene and squealed to a halt. The big Russian was out of the car almost before the engine died. Webb was still trying to pry himself out of the passenger seat when Vic ran up to the two women.
“Jesus, Erin,” he said. “You gotta have all the fun without me?”
“You didn’t both need to come,” she said, getting to her feet. “Who’s watching the other Irish?”
“I left Logan
