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“There is an owner?” Alex guessed.

  “And it’s none other than Jason Bigelow. Recent sale, too. He must have thought he needed a hideout,” she told her partner.

  He took out his cell phone again. “I’ll be making that call for backup now.”

  “There’s no real hurry,” she told him, although she was experiencing a sense of urgency just because she wanted to catch and isolate the gamer who had fooled her. “It’s a tournament, Brody. These things go on for very long periods of time. He’s not going to be going anywhere for a while,” she assured him. Getting up from the desk, she grasped his shoulders and paused long enough to deliver a long, deep kiss. “That’s a retainer against later,” she told him with a wink. “Now let’s go catch us a hacker.”

  * * *

  Jason Bigelow had taken up residence in what looked to be an old abandoned warehouse that had once been used to house the latest electronic equipment a couple of decades ago. A few could still be found tucked away on rusted shelves and covered with dust that had become part of the cardboard that surrounded each product, products such as Betamax recorders and other things that had fallen out of favor and then slipped away, unnoticed, out of society.

  The company that stored its products in the warehouse had been forced into bankruptcy some eighteen years ago. Salvaging what it could, the defunct business left the warehouse to bear witness to its footprint. Bigelow had bought it for the proverbial song.

  Using bull cutters, Alex cut through the old lock that barred access to the warehouse. It fell to the ground with a deep thud.

  Setting the bull cutters aside, Alex asked, “You sure he’s in here?”

  “That’s what the signal says. It’s perfect,” she told him. “The place was abandoned, Bigelow has it all to himself and there’s probably wiring that he can put to his own use. This is his own slice of heaven, and best of all, his mother isn’t living twenty yards away.”

  Weapons out and raised, adrenaline radiating at what felt like peak level, Valri and Alex placed themselves at opposite sides of the warehouse doors. Alex pushed them ever so slightly. Without the lock holding them in place, the doors gave.

  His eyes on Valri, he silently held up three fingers, mouthing a countdown. When Alex formed the word one, they went in, guns and flashlights crossed over one another.

  At first glance, the warehouse appeared to be as empty as it was supposed to be. But a closer investigation allowed Alex to spot just a sliver of light evident in the space between the door at the far end of the warehouse and the doorsill.

  “Just follow the light,” Alex whispered to her as he led the way to the back.

  Braced for anything, they crept from the warehouse doors to the door that was located all the way at the other end of the building.

  The door that was undoubtedly meant to keep intruders out.

  The closer they got, the clearer the sound that was emanating from behind the door became.

  Looking in her direction. Alex cocked his head, as if to ask if that was the sound they were supposed to be hearing. He had absolutely no experience—and no desire to have experience—with video games.

  Valri slowly nodded.

  That was when Alex kicked the door in, shouting, “Aurora Police Department! Show us your hands! Now! Jason Bigelow, you are under arrest for the murders of Hunter Rogers and Randolph Wills.”

  Rather than feigning innocence and attempting to talk his way out, now that that he had been exposed, Bigelow threw aside his controller and grabbed what appeared to Valri to be a gun that the gamer had kept right next to him as he played.

  “You don’t want to do that,” Valri warned.

  “The hell I don’t!” Bigelow shouted back, discharging two quick rounds in her direction. He missed both times.

  The bullets ricocheted, making a noise as they hit something metallic.

  “Looks like you’d better stick to shooting people in the video games,” Alex told him.

  The instant Bigelow had gotten off the shots, Alex knocked him down. There was a short, intense struggle for possession of the handgun. Bigelow was very fast, but when it came to strength, Bigelow was the loser by a long shot.

  All in all, the struggle was over almost before it had begun. Bigelow was in handcuffs within a matter of a couple of minutes.

  Alex read the gamer his rights. Bigelow hardly seemed to hear them. Instead, he seemed to vacillate between timidity and outrage.

  “It’s a mistake! You’re making a big mistake!” he cried, frustrated as he yanked at handcuffs that were not about to give way.

  “I think that big mistake belongs exclusively to you,” Alex told him. “And if you don’t stop whimpering like an overgrown baby, I’m going to gag you—or knock you out. Take your pick. Personally, I’d love an excuse to knock you out,” he said. The sound of approaching squad cars pierced the air. “Sounds like your ride is here,” he informed Bigelow.

  “Whatever you want, your fondest dreams, I can make it happen,” Bigelow said, talking fast as desperation set in. “Just let me go,” he pleaded.

  “Sorry, that train left the station a long time ago,” Alex replied. “And as for my fondest dream, that would be to see you behind bars.”

  * * *

  Less than two minutes later, the empty warehouse was filled with uniformed officers, weapons drawn and at the ready.

  “All the excitement’s over,” Alex told the two policemen who were the first to arrive. “Take this piece of garbage down to the precinct and book him for double homicide. We’ll be there to fill out the report in a few minutes,” he promised.

  “You got it, Detective,” Owens, the officer closest to him, said obligingly.

  Owens and his partner herded the gamer out. Predictably, Bigelow didn’t go quietly. But Alex was no longer paying attention to the gamer. Something else was bothering him.

  Valri’s behavior was out of sync with her usual manner. She’d not only let him take the lead, but she had completely hung back, acting more like a shadow than a partner.

  Something was off.

  He turned toward her, about to ask her what was wrong, but before he could open his mouth, Valri beat him to the punch and asked her own question.

  “Are you finished with Bigelow for the time being?” she asked, her voice oddly hollow.

  “Well, since the officers just took him down to the precinct, I’d say that the answer is yes,” Alex responded, thinking that was rather a strange question to ask.

  “Good.” Valri exhaled, then took in another shaky breath. That was when he noticed that she was perspiring in addition to looking rather pale. “Because I think I need a ride to the hospital,” she told him.

  Instantly alert, Alex drew closer, his eyes sweeping over her entire body, one side at a time. “Why?”

  “Those bullets Bigelow fired? The ones that made that strange pinging sound? I think I know why the sound stopped,” she told him. Running her tongue along her dried lips, she looked down at her left side. “One of them hit me.”

  And that was when he saw it. There was blood slowly soaking into the pullover sweater that she had borrowed from him. The red stain was claiming more and more of the material even as they stood there. “I think I ruined your sweater,” she told him weakly.

  “The hell with the damn sweater,” he bit off. Closing his arms around her, he forced her to the ground. “Stay down!” he ordered.

  His cell phone was instantly in his hand and he hardly remembered pressing the number connecting him to the station. “I need a bus,” he shouted into the phone, following up the terse statement with the one that always sent chills vibrating through officers and detectives alike. “Officer down. I repeat—officer down! Corner of Magnolia and Jamboree!”

  Then he looked accusingly at the woman he’d forced to lie on the ground.<
br />
  “Why didn’t you tell me you were shot?” he demanded angrily, struggling to block out the possible consequences that could evolve from this scenario.

  “I didn’t realize that I was hit right away. And then I didn’t want to interrupt you. You were doing so well,” she told him, not realizing that she was whispering.

  “Of all the crazy, stupid—”

  He couldn’t find the adequate words to finish his thought. That was when he heard it. A siren.

  The ambulance was almost here.

  He was afraid to be relieved, afraid not to.

  “After they patch you up at the hospital,” he said, deliberately treating her condition lightly because he couldn’t handle the thought of it being otherwise, “I’m going to strangle you.”

  “It’s a deal,” Valri murmured just before she passed out.

  Chapter 17

  Full-figured with iron-gray hair she wore in a tight, slightly askew bun, Sophie Moorehead had been a nurse at Aurora Memorial since the day the hospital had opened its doors some forty-four years ago.

  Throughout the years, she had survived the building’s five makeovers, enduring remodeling dust and tripping over overzealous construction workers. She put up with it all with good grace and a sense of humor. But in the past few years, she found herself fondly longing for the days when visitors were restricted to only a few hours a day and even those were not all in succession.

  “You people really should have your very own hospital, or at the very least, your own annex to this one,” she grumbled, trying yet again to get the concerned policemen and women to move out of the corridor into the room where friends and family were supposed to congregate. “It’s called a waiting room for a reason, people,” Sophie announced to the crowd in general. She looked around at them expectantly.

  But none of the Cavanaughs seemed to hear what she had said, or if any of them heard, they pretended not to.

  Her hands on her very ample hips, Sophie turned to look at Brian Cavanaugh, who had arrived in the third wave, looking more concerned than usual, which in her opinion was a great deal.

  “Don’t they ever follow the rules?” she demanded, looking at him accusingly, as if the overflow of police personnel was all his fault.

  “Only when they absolutely have to,” Brian answered. His customary genial, understanding smile was nowhere to be seen. Instead, his brow was furrowed and he looked as if the weight of the world was firmly on his shoulders. “Anything new?” he asked Sophie.

  “From five minutes ago? No,” she informed him tersely, treating him the way a seasoned teacher would handle a wayward student who needed to be set straight. “She’s still in surgery. When I hear anything, you’ll be the first to know.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw three more people coming down the corridor from the front entrance. Scowling, she told them the same thing she had told all the others who had come within the past two hours. “Waiting room’s right there.” She pointed to the space that was largely empty before heading to the operating rooms.

  Duncan Cavanaugh, accompanied by two of his siblings, Brendan and Kelly, nodded absently at the older woman in the blue scrubs. He’d seen the chief of Ds and made straight for him.

  However, Brendan was the first to reach the chief. “Is it true?” he asked, trying not to worry but failing miserably. Valri was the baby, the one they were all supposed to protect. This kind of thing wasn’t supposed to happen. “Was Valri wounded?”

  Brian nodded grimly. He told them everything that he knew so far. “The perp’s bullet went wild, ricocheted off something and hit her. She’s still in surgery. Her partner said she was lucid until a few minutes before the paramedics arrived.”

  “What does that mean?” Kelly asked. “Is she getting worse?”

  Brian shook his head. “Hopefully not” was all he could honestly say.

  Brendan looked closer at his superior and read between the lines. “It’s not your fault, sir,” he said quietly.

  Brian hadn’t said anything to anyone about that so far, but the whole incident had been preying on his mind since he’d gotten the word. He was having a great deal of difficulty keep his guilt under wraps. Valri wouldn’t have been shot if he hadn’t put her on the case in the first place.

  “Maybe I sent her in too soon. Maybe she could have used a little more on-the-job experience before I set her loose in the big leagues.”

  “Valri’s Valri, sir. There’s nothing that’s going to change that. She was very proud that you picked her for this assignment,” Kelly confided, speaking up. “She’ll come through this. She’s been a scrapper all her life. No reason to believe that this is different from anything else she’s been through.”

  Brian looked over toward the closed doors that separated all of them from the operating rooms. “Still, maybe I didn’t do your sister any favors by picking her for this.”

  “She didn’t see it that way, sir,” Duncan assured him.

  The former chief of police approached and the trio took their cue and went to talk to some of the other detectives and patrol officers who were keeping vigil and bolstering each other’s spirits.

  “Here,” Andrew said, placing a paper cup filled to the brim with steaming black liquid into his younger brother’s hand. “You look like you could use this.”

  Brian blinked, looking down into the cup. The overhead light shimmered across the black surface. “Coffee?”

  “Looks like it,” Andrew commented.

  Brian took a sip, then looked at his older brother. “Irish coffee.”

  “I prefer to think of it as Scottish coffee. You looked like you needed something a little stronger than the sludge that comes out of these vending machines.” He glanced at Brian’s dubious expression. “Don’t worry, I’ll drive you home,” Andrew promised.

  In response, Brian took another sip. “How many times have we stood here like this, waiting to hear if one of our own made it or not?” he asked Andrew wearily.

  “Too many times to count, although I’m sure that Nurse Smiley over there could probably give you the exact number,” Andrew said, nodding over at the scowling head nurse. “Just for the record—to raise your spirits—we haven’t lost a Cavanaugh yet.”

  “We did once,” Brian reminded him grimly. Andrew looked at him. They were sharing the same thought. One of the first times they’d stood here, waiting with time dragging itself by, was when their brother had caught a bullet in the line of duty.

  “You mean Mike?” Andrew said rhetorically. “I think that Mike chose to go that way. Taking a bullet was a lot easier than facing up to your mistakes if you’re an emotional coward.”

  “And he was that, I guess,” Brian agreed. That was never more evident than when their brother’s secret family came to light. Married to one woman, he had still created a family with another.

  True to her word, Sophie came out of the operating room and walked into the center of the waiting throng before she said a word.

  “Detective Cavanaugh is out of surgery. It’ll be a while before they take her from recovery to her room. At least an hour, if not more. Why don’t you people pick someone to represent you and the rest of you can go home and stop blocking the halls?” Sophie suggested in a voice that would have made a drill sergeant proud.

  The woman’s small, sharp blue eyes swept over the crowd. No one was budging.

  With a deep sigh, she shook her head and walked away, mumbling to herself. “Six more months to retirement, just six more months...”

  For the past ninety minutes, Alex had stood like a sentry outside the operating room doors. When he saw the inner doors to Valri’s operating room part, he instantly came to attention, watching every movement, searching for some sort of reassurance that everything had gone well.

  He saw his partner being whee
led out toward another room he assumed was the recovery area. Alex continued to look through the small portal until there was nothing to see. The recovery room doors had swung closed, terminating his view of her.

  “You know, I’m pretty sure that the wall’ll stay up even without you propping it up with your back. Why don’t you give it a try and sit down?” Sean Cavanaugh suggested. Though slightly shorter than his two brothers, his chiseled features, contrasted with his kindly smile, definitely identified him as a Cavanaugh.

  Alex turned to look at the head of the day-shift crime scene investigation unit.

  “Can’t,” Alex replied.

  Sean looked at him with sympathy. “Knees forgot how to bend?”

  “Something like that,” Alex answered.

  He didn’t even bother trying to smile. He knew the older man was being kind and trying to raise his spirits, but right now it was all he could do to keep his imagination from running away with him.

  If he’d just been a little faster, a little more observant and pushed her out of the way, Valri wouldn’t be lying in recovery.

  “My brother Andrew has some heartening statistics you might want to hear,” Sean told the younger man. “We’ve spent a lot of man-hours in this hallway, waiting for news about one member of the police department or another. And in all that time, we’ve never lost a single person.”

  As far as Sean was concerned, there was no point in talking about the brother he had never gotten to know. Alex didn’t need to hear anything negative right now. There was more than enough going on in his immediate life right now.

  “She’s going to be all right,” Sean said with conviction.

  With his whole heart and soul, Alex wished he could really believe that.

  “There are no guarantees, sir,” Alex pointed out.

  “No, there aren’t,” Sean agreed in an easy tone. “People don’t come with warranties, which is why we have to make the very most of what we do have. Make every day count and seize happiness wherever you find it.” He smiled then, thinking of the wedding they had all just attended. “Like my father, Shamus, just did.”