team of firefighters had been murdered. “Did you get a good look at him, Chief?”
Catch nodded.
Back in Room 426, the rude little bastard was assembling his M107. From barrel to stock, it was twenty-nine inches long and weighed almost twenty-nine pounds. A certain symmetry, that. It could accurately fire .50 caliber rounds at a distance of 6,561 feet, or over one mile. His target today, though, was only twenty feet away. Vertically. Galileo double-checked the snapshot he’d taken on his cell phone to verify the corresponding location in the room of his prey.
Curly McCue didn’t budge. His bed was soaked with urine. On TV, two scantily-clad pregnant women were wrestling. Curly McCue tried to recall the words to the Lord’s Prayer.
Tom leaned into the bed. Catch’s parched voice made his words difficult to understand. Darcy mimicked her boss and stood at the other side of the bed and also leaned.
Catch swallowed down another gulp of water. Smiled at the agents. And then his heart splashed Valentine’s Day blood against the ceiling of the room, across Tom and Darcy’s faces, and the world.
Tom and Darcy recoiled from the bed. Catch’s face still displayed that patient smile, frozen now in time and spattered scarlet. The plastic cup was squeezed in his left fist. Water trickled down the side of his hand and drip-dropped against the tiled floor below. Blood soon joined.
The Rangers burst into the room, pistols at the ready.
“Seal the exits!” Tom demanded. “Go!”
BAM! Catch’s body jumped again. The assassin had taken a second shot, just to be sure. The bullet angled off a rib and nabbed Tom in his left shoulder.
“Stay here,” he ordered Darcy, who was leaning against the wall. Possibly in shock. “Keep everyone outside the room.” In case the shooter fired again.
Darcy nodded, catching her breath. She was wiping Catch’s blood from her nostrils and irises when she noticed Tom’s wound. With his right hand he unsheathed his Glock from its shoulder-holster and dashed out to the nearest stairwell to intercept the sniper. He took the steps three at a time, emerged on the fourth floor, and didn’t have to worry about getting lost—he just followed the sounds of the screaming.
The wound in his left shoulder screamed in unison. He knew it wasn’t just a flesh wound. The bullet was lodged inside his muscle. Blood soaked his inoperable left arm. Tom, left-handed, did his best to ignore the pain and briskly walked to the nurses’ station.
The nurses were on the floor—uninjured, but seeking shelter. The screams came from the patients on the ward. Hospital security wasn’t there—the Rangers had undoubtedly commandeered them to help man the exits.
The door to Room 426 was wide open.
Chunks of ceiling panel crumbled on to Curly McCue’s bed. Curly had a single gunshot wound to the forehead, close range. His eyes were closed. He had known what was coming.
The sniper was gone.
“Which way?” Tom barked at the nearest orderly.
“I…”
“WHICH WAY?”
But no one replied. They either didn’t know—or were too afraid to say. Tom approached the nurses’ station and dialed security.
“Did you get him?” he asked. But he already knew what the answer would be.
6
F or their Valentine’s date, Rafe bought his wife a wrist corsage. He spent most of his office hours in line at the florist’s down the block from the university. Apparently every married man in Long Island was both a romantic and a procrastinator.
“A kelly green carnation,” he requested. That’s what she’d had in her wedding bouquet, so he knew he was on safe ground. He didn’t want to screw anything up, not today, not for Esme. The florist secured the delicate flower, still dappled with water droplets, in its plastic container.
He stored it in the fridge in the faculty lounge. He made sure to stick on a Post-it with his name on it, and hoped that would be enough to dissuade thieves (although he knew in academia no property—especially intellectual—was ever sacred). Fortunately, the corsage remained undisturbed, and by 5:30 p.m. he was carrying it (and a valise heavy with student papers) to his Saab.
It was a long walk. Rafe was out of breath by the time he reached his car. The arctic weather didn’t help; he could feel his ears and bare hands ache with each blast of wind. How peculiar, he thought, that both extreme heat and extreme cold turned bare skin red. He surmised it had something to do with blood. But Rafe Stuart was an associate professor in cultural sociology. He dissected demographics and memes. Anatomy was two quads away, in an oblong, curvaceous building shaped roughly (and somewhat appropriately) like the starship Enterprise.
Rafe tossed his valise in the trunk but very, very gently placed the corsage on the passenger seat. He was a little nervous. Big romantic evenings were not his forte. He much preferred a quiet night at home where he wasn’t under pressure to be Casanova. He loved his wife dearly, desperately, but loathed the typical dinner-and-a-movie rituals that society demanded, especially on days like this. Romance, he always had believed, should be a private affair. But today was Valentine’s Day, and so a corsage (for charm) and Il Forno (for pasta by candlelight). All for Esme. Anything for Esme.
Stuck in traffic on the way home, Rafe adjusted his rearview mirror to verify his necktie’s knot. He’d changed into a suit before leaving campus but hadn’t felt confident about his knot. Sure enough, it canted to the left. As soon as he exited the expressway, as soon as he reached his first red light, he tried to fix it. Loosen—straighten—tighten. Nope, try again. Drive another mile. Next red light. Loosen—straighten—tighten. Close, but still a bit askew, no? Drive another half-mile. He’d reached downtown Oyster Bay. Sophie’s school was to his left. He braked at a red light by the school and gave the knot one last go. Loosen—straighten—tighten. Some of his colleagues in social sciences wore ties year round. How could they breathe?
He angled his Saab into his subdivision. While questions like why one’s skin turned red were well beyond his field of knowledge, the matters of appearances and social perception were very much in his reach and grasp. Although he rarely wore a tie to work, he always wore a long-sleeved, iron-pressed, button-down shirt, even in the summer. Neutral colors, nothing flashy or flamboyant. Respect had to be earned, and man was the most superficial of God’s beasts. When they first met, Esme would have been happy attending a cocktail party in a T-shirt and jeans. He’d shown her the error of her ways.
Butterflies zipped around inside him. Did what was left of his black hair look adequately flat? Were his eyeglasses clear of specks? He shuffled out of his Saab and headed to the front door. He adjusted his tie knot one last time and rang the doorbell to his own house. Their teenage sitter greeted him with a mouthful of braces.
“Hello, Mr. Stuart. You look very nice tonight.”
“Thank you, Chelsea,” he replied. He didn’t want to come in. That wasn’t what he’d planned. Esme would meet him at the door. It would be like a prom date. That’s what he’d planned. That’s what would have been romantic. He was sure of it. But instead here was their brace-faced babysitter—
“Daddy!”
Sophie
