She heard Dillon step onto the first stair. The stride of his feet against the steps continued unbroken. The basement door began to open. Dillon stepped into the hallway.
“Freeze,” she yelled. “Down on your knees. Hands up. Hands up.”
She’d replay the next milliseconds in her mind’s eye countless times. What had she seen? Had Dillon’s hands reached for his weapon? Had they reached over his head as she’d commanded? Had they moved at all? The subtle movements of a man’s body in less than a second’s time, when he was surprised to see her, and when she feared for her safety, could never fully be reconstructed.
She knew with certainty, however, what happened a second after Dillon first spotted her outside the doorway. She heard the blast of gunfire—two shots—and saw Dillon fall to his knees, red stains blossoming at his stomach and on the collar of his light blue dress shirt. She saw him look up to her in confusion as he fell to the ground. And then she saw his eyes move from her to Robin Tucker, whose Glock was still raised, ready to fire again if necessary. Dillon’s own weapon was at his waistband. Ellie bent over his limp and bleeding body and removed it to be safe.
She heard the faint sound of multiple sirens in the distance.
“He reached for his gun,” Tucker said, reholstering her Glock. “Don’t look at me like that, Hatcher. He reached. You saw it. Didn’t you see it? Tell me you saw that. He would’ve killed us.”
Then came the first of the many times Ellie would try to replay that partial second—that tiny gap of time between the opening of the basement door and the sound of Tucker’s shots. Maybe Dillon had reached for his waist and Tucker simply had a better view from her position. Or maybe he hadn’t, but would have half a second later if Tucker hadn’t fired. All Ellie knew was that she hadn’t seen his hands move. She also knew that her beliefs about what she’d actually seen didn’t really matter.
Dillon was a killer. She, Tucker, and Stacy were alive. Ellie was raised by a cop. She knew how this worked. As far as the official record was concerned, Dillon had reached for his weapon. Tucker would say so. So would Ellie. And, from the looks of the blood beginning to pool on the floor beneath him, Dillon wouldn’t be around to give his side of the story.
Her lieutenant still seemed to be processing what she’d just done as Ellie stepped around Dillon’s body. “I was outside,” she said. “Down the street. Watching. I saw him come with her. I thought—I thought he was fooling around. And then the unis knocked and left. And then you showed up, ran off, and came back again. When I saw the broken window, I realized—Hatcher, what am I going to say?”
“He reached for his gun.”
“But I was here. At his house. I was
Ellie was already taking the basement stairs two at a time. She could tell from the approaching sounds of sirens that backup would be there soon. “You were coming over to surprise him. It’s fine. Call dispatch,” she yelled. “Have them send two ambulances.”
Stacy let out a sob when she saw Ellie turn the corner toward her.
“Is he gone?”
Her words were strained as she struggled to control her breath. Her ankles and wrists were bound together at the small of her back in a complex tangle of black nylon rope. Ellie relieved some of the pressure from Stacy’s limbs by supporting the weight of her bent legs in her own hands.
“We need a knife. Tucker, can you hear me? Find a knife.”
Her lieutenant descended the stairs seconds later wielding a ten-inch chef’s knife. Stacy’s body stiffened at the sight.
“Shh,” Ellie said, reaching for Tucker’s extended hand. “It’s okay now. He’s dead.”
She sawed at the rope, freeing Stacy’s hands and feet. Stacy’s weight dropped limp against the concrete, and she began to cry.
“Thank you,” she wailed between sobs. “Oh, my God. Thank you.”
Ellie crouched on the floor beside her, rubbing her shoulder as Stacy’s breath started to return to normal. She heard Tucker’s footsteps on the basement stairs and then in the living room above her, followed by heavier footsteps and the sounds of police radios. The backup had finally arrived.
“The cavalry’s here,” Ellie said, tugging the hem of Stacy’s dress over her bare thighs. “Let’s get you put together.”
She helped Stacy to her feet. She wobbled at first but managed the steps slowly as she held Ellie’s hand for support. Just as she reached the final step, she turned to look at Ellie.
“I know what he did to Katie. She tried not to tell him who I was. She tried to protect me. I tried at first, but I just couldn’t do it. I told him about Tanya. I told him she was the girl at that apartment that night.”
Ellie gave her hand a squeeze. “You were strong, Stacy. And Tanya will be okay. He’s gone now.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
9:15 P.M.
The Maybach slowed in front of the house. Sparks stepped from the driver’s seat just as the EMTs were rolling Dillon’s gurney out the front door. The change in his face from panic to absolute devastation told a story about his relationship with Nick Dillon—the secret that Dillon had killed to protect.
“Nick,” he cried out. He did not need to see beneath the white sheet to understand the significance of the swarm of police cars and ambulances.
Ellie and Robin Tucker were standing guard over Stacy Schecter as she sat on a bench on the front porch, an EMT wrapping the lacerations on her wrists and monitoring her for signs of shock.
“I’ll be all right,” Stacy said, clearly sensing Ellie’s hesitation to leave. Tucker placed a reassuring hand on the woman’s shoulder as Ellie made her way across the lawn.
By the time she reached Sparks, a uniform officer was holding him back from the cluster of emergency vehicles in the middle of the street. Sparks saw Ellie approaching and held her gaze.
“Please. Please tell me he’s still alive.”
Ellie shook her head, and he seemed to collapse against the uniform officer. The confused cop walked him back toward the Maybach, where he rested his weight on the front bumper.
“No, oh God no.” He placed his face in his hands. “It’s my fault.”
She stood and let him cry. And talk. He wasn’t in custody. No Miranda warnings were required. And he was about to give them more of a confession than she could ever get through interrogation.
“I should’ve known. I should have said something. I didn’t know. At first, when Robo was killed, I wondered. But I didn’t know.”
“He was blackmailing Dillon.”
Sparks nodded. “It started when Nick was in Afghanistan. Robo found out about Nick—”
“That he was gay.”
“It wasn’t about that at first. It was Nick being stupid, shaking down some opium farmer he stumbled on during a security job in Nangahar Province. Robo and his people came through on patrol and found Nick where he wasn’t supposed to be. Nick made up some b.s. story, but Robo figured out what was going on.”
“You knew about this?”
“Of course not,” he said, shaking his head. “Not until later. Nick would tell me old stories about cops ripping off dealers, but he always made it sound like he was talking about someone else. Robo made it clear to Nick that he expected a job when he was discharged. By the time that happened, I had convinced Nick to come back to New York. He wasn’t happy about working for me, but it was supposed to be temporary, a way for him to bolster his corporate security credentials without being over in that hellhole. Then he’d move on to another company.”
“So he hired Mancini?”
Sparks’s eyes remained glued on the ambulance as Dillon’s body was wheeled into the back. “For a while, things were all right. But then Robo walked in on us once in Nick’s office. It was just a kiss, but still, it was obvious what was going on. Next thing we knew, he was asking for a much better job—well, a non-job really—at an
