Penance

“So let’s do that.”

“What I hear, it is all cleaned up, or close to it. What I hear, I don’t gotta worry. I got friends. What I hear, you’ve been losing yours.”

“You know what your friends are doing?”

“Don’t wa

“Sure you do. That’s why you’re talking to me, that and when Paddy Wang talks, your lips move. Your friends kidnapped a cop and are going to kill him and frame him for murder. Your friends are pla

Hurley stood with his back to Lynch still looking out the window. Lynch expected a reaction, he got nothing.

“And what do you care about, Lynch?” Hurley asked.

“I care about ending this without being an accessory to murder.”

Still Hurley didn’t move. For a long time he didn’t speak.

CHAPTER 62 – CHICAGO

Weaver sat at the table in the breakfast nook at the back of Ma

But the entry team was his – long-time InterGov, and all of them with more than enough blood on their hands to know where they stood if things went south. When Fisher took his shot, Weaver was going with the entry team, to be with them personally to handle the dirty work with Cu

It had gone harder than they figured, getting the confession out of Ma

Brown walked back into the kitchen.

“You got the player?” Weaver asked.

She pulled the small digital device from her pocket and waved it at him. Weaver looked her over one last time. She was dressed in Ma

“You ready?”

Brown nodded. “Let’s rock and roll.”

Weaver clicked on his comm unit. “Brown is rolling. Ping me as soon as she’s in the church and we’ll fire up the radars.”

Through his scope, Ishmael Fisher watched Andrea Ma

He felt an intense love for Ma

Cu

“Time to get dressed, big boy.” It was the FedEx guy.

They only loosened one cuff at a time, slipping his arms and legs into the fatigues, rolling him around on the bed. Worst thing about it was that they’d done it before, they had a process. Cu

“Time for a little ride.” FedEx guy again.

They lifted him by his arms and legs, set him into the box, then clipped the restraints to the sides. When they snapped the lid shut, Cu

Ferguson and Jenks were under the big AC unit on the roof of the building across from St Mary’s, covered by a tarp, their rifles barely protruding.

“Here she comes,” said Ferguson, watching Ma

“West negative thirty-three,” Jenks muttered into his comm unit. He swung the detector back north, repeated the process. Window box. Slight shadow two windows over. Shooter number two. “West sixty-one.”

“You sure?” Ferguson asked. “Doesn’t make sense.”

“West sixty-one,” Jenks repeated.

Chen popped up in their earpieces.

“Where the hell is Lynch?” she said.

Lynch sat in the back pew of the church, watching the door. Ma

Lynch waited, that weird feeling where you lose concept of time. Over the comm unit he heard Jenks give the radar locations. West sixty-on? What the hell? That was Ma

Then Ma

Captain Starshak sat in the back of one of the SWAT vans lined up two blocks west, still not believing that all the shit Lynch had told him over the past ten hours was actually going down. Lynch had gone over maps with Starshak, explained the location codes, given him the comm frequencies that Ferguson would be using. Starshak had briefed the leads in all the other units. Now they were listening in, waiting for Ferguson to name the locations, ready to roll. Only thing Lynch hadn’t said was where Ferguson and this Jenks guy would be. Said he didn’t know. Starshak had let that go. Knew the line Lynch was walking. Hell, if he were in Lynch’s shoes, he’d be walking it himself. Things worked out right, it wouldn’t matter. Things worked out wrong, well, it wouldn’t much matter then, either.