“I’m fine. Just got grazed.”
“You the cavalry?” Piekarski asked, looking him up and down.
“Some of it.” Vic gave the blonde a quick smile.
“Another gunfight, O’Reilly?” Webb asked.
Erin sighed. “Yes, sir. If it’s any consolation, I don’t think we hit anybody.”
The Lieutenant put his hands on his hips and took a look around. “So, that’s another one down, two left.”
“Three,” she corrected.
“Oh, right, the guy out back,” Webb said.
“And one of them is female,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“The last thing Newton said before he died was that the shooter was going to get the others. He said ‘Pat, Lonnie, and the girl.’”
“What girl?” Vic asked.
“I guess one of the shooters was a woman.”
“We lose one suspect and pick up another,” Webb said.
“Some days, the best you can do is break even,” Vic said. “So, who’s this chick with you?”
“Chick?” Piekarski echoed.
“I call people all kinds of names, all day long,” he said. “You gonna bust my balls about that one?”
“I dunno,” Piekarski said. “Think I can find them, or are they too small?”
Vic grinned. “I like this girl.”
“This is the first time a woman’s been mentioned in connection with the restaurant job,” Erin said. “We haven’t got anyone on our radar, except…”
“Except Finneran,” Webb finished. “You think it’s her?”
“She’s a trained assassin,” Erin said. “I saw her make a headshot at better than thirty yards with a handgun last year. She’s got the skills.”
“And the contacts,” Webb said. “And she’s in town. But it’s thin. If you’d gotten a name out of Newton, that might’ve been something, but as it is, we won’t get a warrant. ‘The girl’ is just hearsay, and there’s more than one girl connected to the O’Malleys.”
Erin nodded, but she was thinking about Siobhan. The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. The Irishwoman had been brought into New York once before to do a hit. She’d left town immediately afterward. Now she’d come back, just in time for a major takedown of an O’Malley rival. Erin thought again of what her dad said about coincidences.
“Coincidence is like winning the lottery,” she said quietly.
“Come again?” Webb asked.
She’d thought Ian Thompson was a good fit for the last gunman, and he was. Siobhan might be better. But they couldn’t prove any of it. And there was something else.
“Sir,” she said, “I don’t see how Rojas is coordinating this. He’s in the hospital, under guard, incommunicado. There’s another gunman running around taking guys down. Where’d he come from?”
“Colombia,” Piekarski said. “Right?”
“Right,” Erin replied. “But how’d he know who to go after?”
“Easy,” Vic said. “Rojas must’ve called him before he moved on McIntyre. The guy could’ve hopped a plane from Bogota this morning, got here in plenty of time to ghost Newton.”
“I buy that,” Erin said. “But how’d he know to track Newton?”
“Rojas knew about the other guys,” Vic said.
“He only confirmed their faces when he saw the photo in Liam’s apartment,” Erin reminded him. “He might have recognized the guys on the street, but he’d have had no way to send the info to anyone else before that. We took him into custody right afterward. He didn’t have a phone in the sewer with him. There’s no way he sent the information to anyone else. And even if he had, it was just faces. He didn’t have names. This targeting was too precise, too quick.”
“What are you saying?” Webb asked.
“I’m saying the Colombians have a source,” Erin said. “Either in the O’Malleys, or in the NYPD.”
All of them fell silent, thinking it over.
“Could be an O’Malley mole,” Vic said finally.
“I hope so,” Erin replied. The alternative was very unpleasant.
“In either case,” Webb said, “we’ve got to assume this shooter has the other names, all of them. Even the girl’s.”
“We don’t have the girl’s name,” Vic said.
“But the Department might not be the source he’s using,” Webb retorted. “The other thing we don’t have is time. We don’t know that there’s only one Colombian in town. The cartel might’ve sent a whole hit squad. They could be making moves on our other subjects right now. If they think they can come up here and play Wild West, they’re mistaken. Not in our city, not on our watch. I want a lid put on this, right now. I don’t want any more killings, not even bad guys. Forget about spooking these guys. Get close, keep them alive while we build the case. They move, you move. One of them takes a piss, I want one of you helping him zip up afterward. Get going. I’ll coordinate with CSU here, and I’ll be right behind you as soon as I’ve put them to work.”
“I guess the van’s part of the crime scene,” Erin said, glancing at the battered surveillance vehicle. It had caught the buckshot that had grazed her, its side panel resembling a colander. It was lucky Rolf hadn’t been hit. “Mind if I ride with you, Vic?”
“Sure. You and the mutt both?”
“I’m not leaving him behind.”
“What do you want me to do?” Piekarski asked.
“You want a ride?” Vic asked. “I’ll get you where you want to go.”
“We might need an extra pair of hands,” Erin said. “Hop in.”
“We going after Burke or Maginty?” Erin asked.
“Maginty,” Vic said. “Logan seemed to know what he was doing. Burke should be fine.”
“He does,” Piekarski agreed. She was riding shotgun. Erin was in the back seat next to Rolf. “Is it always this exciting in Major Crimes?”
“I dunno,” Vic said. “I’m asleep half the time, so I miss some stuff.”
“What’d you do before you got this job?”
“ESU.”
Piekarski whistled. “They have you knocking down doors?”
“Yeah,” Erin said. “With his head. That thick skull goes right through reinforced steel.”
“So I guess this must be boring by your standards,” Piekarski went on.
“Any day I take fire is pretty damn exciting,” Vic said.
“You hear about
