Witness in Death

"Hold your fire!" She shouted it, grabbing both weapon and communicator. "Stuart, order your man to cease fire! Target is cornered. Do not deploy weapons."

She was using elbows, boots, knees, to fight her way through the surge of people fleeing the area. Someone fell against her, all wild eyes and grabbing hands. Gritting her teeth, she shoved him away, bulled through an opening.

The next wave of people swarmed like bees, screaming as windows on the storefronts spat glass. She felt heat on her face, something wet ran down her neck.

She saw Stiles leap over the fallen and the cowering. Then she saw Trueheart.

He had long legs, and they moved fast. Eve used her own, burst free. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a jerk of movement.

"No! Hold your fire!" Her shouted order was drowned out in the chaos. Even as she jumped toward the transit cop, he shifted to shooting position and took aim. At the same instant, Trueheart bunched for a leap and tackle.

The shock of the beam hit him midair, turned his body into a missile that rammed hard against Stiles's retreating back. The forward force sent them both tumbling off the platform, onto the tracks below.

"No. Goddamn it. No!" She shoved the transit cop, spun to the side, and rushed to the edge of the platform. "Hold all northbound trains! There are injured on the track. Hold all trains! Oh Jesus. Oh Christ."

A tangle of bodies, a splatter of blood. She jumped down to the tracks, feeling the shock sing up her legs. Her breath panted out as she searched for the pulse in Trueheart's throat.

"Goddamn it. Goddamn it. Officer down!" Her voice cracked out of a dry throat and into her communicator. "Officer down! Require immediate medical assistance, Grand Central, Level Two, Area C as in Charlie. Deploy medi-vac units. Officer and suspect down. Hold on, Trueheart."

She yanked off her jacket, spread it over his chest, then used her hands to press down on the long gash ru

Feeney, out of breath and sweating, landed beside her. "Ah, Christ. How bad?"

"Bad. He took a hit, jumped right into the fucking beam." She'd been a step too late. One step too late. "Then the fall. We can't risk moving him without stabilizers. Where are the MTs? Where are the fucking MTs?"

"On the way. Here." He unfastened his belt, nudged her to the side, and fastened a tourniquet. "Stiles?"

She ordered herself to maintain, crab-walked to where Stiles lay facedown, checked for a pulse. "Alive. He didn't catch the hit, and the way they went down, it looked like the kid broke the worst of his fall."

"Your face is bleeding, Dallas."

"I caught some glass, that's all." She swiped at the trickle with the back of her hand, mixing her blood with Trueheart's. "When I get done with Stuart and her hot-shots – "

She broke off, looked back down at Trueheart's young, pale face. "Jesus, Feeney. He's just a kid."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Eve burst through the emergency room doors in the wake of the gurney and fast-talking MTs. The words were like slaps, hard and ringing. Under the barrage of them she heard something about spinal injuries, internal bleeding.

When they hit the doors of an examining room, an enormous nurse, her skin a gleaming ebony against the pale blue of her tunic, blocked Eve's path.

"Step aside, sister. That's my man down in there."

"No, you step aside, sister." The nurse laid a boulder-sized hand on Eve's shoulder. "Medical perso

"I can clean myself up. That boy in there belongs to me. I'm his lieutenant."

"Well, Lieutenant, you're just going to have to let the doctors do what they do." She pulled out a memo board. "You want to help, give me his personal data."

Eve elbowed the nurse aside, moved to the observation glass, but didn't attempt to push through again. God, she hated hospitals. Hated them. All she could see was a flurry of movement, green scrubs for the doctors, blue for the nursing staff.

And Trueheart unconscious on the table under harsh lights while they worked on him.

"Lieutenant." The nurse's voice softened. "Let's help each other out here. We both want the same thing. Give me what you can on the patient."

"Trueheart. Christ, what's his first name. Peabody?"

"Troy," Peabody said from behind her. "It's Troy. He's twenty-two."

Eve simply laid her brow against the glass, shut her eyes and relayed the cause of injuries.

"We'll take care of him," the nurse told her. "Now get yourself into Four." She swung through the doors, became part of the blue and green wall.

"Peabody, find his family. Have a couple of counselors contact them."

"Yes, sir. Feeney and McNab are monitoring Stiles. He's in the next room."

More gurneys were streaming in. The injured at Grand Central were going to keep the ER busy for the rest of the night with cuts, bruises, and broken bones. "I'll inform the commander of the current status." She stepped back from the glass so that she could give her report without wavering.

When she was done, she took her position by the doors and called home.

"Roarke."

"You're bleeding."

"I – I'm at the hospital."

"Where? Which one?"

"Roosevelt. Listen – "

"I'm on my way."

"No, wait. I'm okay. I've got a man down. A boy," she said and nearly broke. "He's a goddamn boy. They're working on him. I need to stay until… I need to stay."

"I'm on my way," he said again.

She started to protest, then simply nodded. "Yeah. Thanks."

The nurse pushed back through the doors, sent Eve one smoking look. "Why aren't you in Room Four?"

"What's Trueheart's condition?"

"They're stabilizing him. He'll be heading up to surgery shortly. Op-Six. I'll get you to a waiting area after you're treated."

"I want a full report on his condition."

"You want it, you'll get it. After you're treated."

The waiting was the worst. It gave her too much time to think, to replay, to second-guess. To spot every small misstep.

She couldn't sit. She paced, drank vile coffee, and stared out the window at the wall of the next wing.

"He's young. Healthy," Peabody said because she could no longer stand saying nothing. "That weighs on his side."

"I should've sent him home. I should've relieved him. I had no business taking a rookie on this kind of operation."

"You wanted to give him a break."

"A break?" She spun around, and her eyes were fierce, brilliant with emotion. "I put his life on the line, into a situation he wasn't prepared for. He went down. I'm responsible for that."

"The hell you are." Peabody's chin lifted mutinously. "He's a cop. When you put on the uniform, you take on the risk. He's on the job, and that means facing the potential of taking a hit in the line of duty every day. If I'd taken the left instead of the right, I'd have done exactly what Trueheart did, and I'd be in surgery. And it would seriously piss me off to know you're standing out here taking away from actions I took to do my job."

"Peabody – " Eve broke off, shook her head, and walked back to the overburdened coffee machine.

"Well done." Roarke moved over, rubbed a hand on Peabody's shoulder. "You're a jewel, Peabody."

"It wasn't her fault. I can't stand seeing her take it on."

"If she didn't, she wouldn't be who she is."

"Yeah, I guess. I'm going to see if I can tag McNab and get an update on Stiles's condition. Maybe you can talk her into taking a walk, getting some air."

"I'll see what I can do."

He crossed to Eve. "You keep drinking that coffee, you'll have holes in your stomach lining I could put my fist through. You're tired, Lieutenant. Sit down."