Vendetta (3 page)

“In a nice, polite way,” Cat added.

“Of course.” Tess took another swig from her travel mug and made a face as if she had just swallowed battery acid. “I’m telling you, J.T. makes the worst coffee I have tasted in my
life
. I’m getting him one of those fancy machines with the little pre-measured cups. You can’t screw that up.”

“J.T. made you coffee?” Cat chuckled. “At your place or his?”

Tess scoffed. “Are you kidding? This coffee was destroyed on-site at nerd central.” Tess went a little pink, but just a little. “The conditions of my man-cleanse require that no one stays at my house. Staying at my house is messy. In more ways than one.”

Tess and J.T. had a complicated relationship: Tess had told J.T. to his face that he was all wrong for her. Shortly after that, she had leaped on top of him in his rolling desk chair and planted a long, passionate kiss on him. Cat hadn’t been a witness to this, but J.T. had told Vincent, and Vincent had told Cat.

As for the other definition, for a neat freak like Tess, “messy” meant that one of the many framed photographs of her and Cat was a centimeter askew. J.T. had no housekeeping skills whatsoever. Give him a place to set down a bag of gummi worms and a beer and he was happy as a clam.

“Does J.T. mind that you never have him over?” Cat asked as they trooped together toward Captain Ward’s office. The door hung wide open and plain-clothes and uniformed officers were racing in and out. Beyond, the windows were broad rectangles of ebony.

“The Bronx is down,” a uni said as he sailed past Cat and Tess.

Rikers
, Cat thought. Former FBI Special Agent Robert Reynolds, her biological father, was incarcerated there. Her stomach did a flip, but she put thoughts of him on hold. As she so often did.

“What on earth is
happening
?” Tess said. In a lower voice meant for Cat’s ears, she added, “Are you kidding? J.T.
mind
that I’m staying over at his place? He’s having sex on a regular basis. He’s in heaven.”

“A regular basis?” Cat echoed.

Tess closed her eyes and grimaced—as if to admit that she’d said too much—and looked past Cat.

“Captain,” she called.

Their harried boss glanced up. When he saw them, his expression grew very somber, and Cat swallowed hard. Her cop instincts told her that he had bad news for one or both of them… and that it had nothing to do with the DeMarcos.

It can’t be Vincent. Vincent is safe. He’s fine.

“Chandler, Vargas,” he said, by way of greeting. His manner was very grave, even stern, as if they hadn’t partied together hours before, toasting Zilpho’s demise. “The entire city’s in chaos.”

“Are they suspecting terrorism?” Cat asked. The tragedy of 9-11 was never far from any New Yorker’s mind. Vincent had lost both his brothers in the Twin Towers, and their deaths had prompted him to drop out of medical school and enlist in the army. From there, his own tragedy had occurred—being experimented on by Muirfield, then hunted like an animal so that Cat’s own father could put him down.

“Unknown,” Ward replied. “But we have plenty to keep us busy while that’s under investigation.”

“Speaking of which, we have a case,” Tess said. “It’s a case we deserve. Right, Cat?”

Tess looked over at Cat for confirmation. But Cat was staring straight at Captain Ward. “What is it?” she asked slowly.

He returned her serious expression. “Chandler, let’s take a minute.” He looked expectantly at Tess.

“I’m her partner,” Tess said. “You want me to butt out, Cat?”

Cat shook her head. “If it’s all right with you, sir, I’d like my partner to stay.”

“Very well.”

Just then Pamy, one of the civilian secretaries, poked her head in, assessed the situation, and smoothly exited the room, shutting the door behind herself.

“Have a seat,” he invited the two detectives.

Cat kept a lid on her nervousness. “If it’s all the same to you, Captain, I’ll stand.”

“Me, too,” Tess said.

“Chandler, it’s your father, former Special Agent Reynolds.” Ward paused.

“My father.” That lid was threatening to blow. “Who’s at Rikers.”

Captain Ward said, “He’s missing.”

The room tilted like a ship at sea. A panic reaction, pure and simple, she told herself, but there was nothing simple about her father. Reynolds was a man she despised and mistrusted, and she had risked Vincent’s life to save his. And just when she thought she was done with him, another tornado of his making tore through her life.

“As in, out of his cell,” Tess said.

“As in, no longer at Rikers,” Captain Ward said.

“Whoa.” Tess slid a glance in Cat’s direction. “He escaped?”

And then Cat was back, swallowing a flood of stomach acid so she could ask questions. But the most important question could not be voiced:
Is he coming after Vincent?

Ward said, “As to if it was voluntary or not, we don’t know yet. They had a blackout same as us. Generators didn’t come on right away and the disappearance took place in that window of opportunity. Witnesses say the guards were overpowered by armed assailants in ski masks. But no shots were fired and there were no injuries.”

“Rikers guards? Overpowered?” Tess echoed. “That place is like the Fort Knox of prisons.”

“So it’s said,” Captain Ward replied.

“Any leads on the assailants?” Cat asked.

“We don’t know yet. FBI’s at the scene. Early reports say it looks like an inside job.” He waited a beat as he studied Cat’s face, and then the tornado landed on top of her:

“A job orchestrated by you.”

W
e carved out a little time
, Vincent reminded himself as he put on his scorched ball cap and kept his head down, quietly departing Cat’s building.
We got to be together.

But it was never enough time. And he hated how he put Cat at risk whenever he visited her apartment. When they had first met, Cat had come to the abandoned chemical factory he and J.T. had turned into a sanctuary. Her trespassing had sent J.T. into a spiral of dismay, and as J.T. feared, Cat’s initial investigation into Vincent’s supposed death had put Vincent back on the radar of the clandestine organization that had changed him into a beast—Muirfield. In Afghanistan, his superiors had received orders to wipe out his unit of experimental super soldiers, and he had used every bit of Special Forces training to elude the shock troops, survive, and get back to the States.

J.T. had been terrified that Cat’s repeated visits to the factory would lead Muirfield right to their door. Unfortunately, he had been right, and the chemical factory was now gone, blown up to convincingly stage the death of “the Vigilante”—Vincent’s nickname in the press. Now J.T. lived in a vacated gentlemen’s club and Vincent stayed on a houseboat in the 79th Street Boat Basin.

It would have been easy for someone as loyal as J.T. to resent Cat for all the danger and tumult she had brought into their lives. But thanks to her interference, they actually had lives. Before Cat, they had essentially existed in stasis, and she had been right when she had insisted that he and J.T. couldn’t spend another decade in lockdown.

And anyway, I was the one who exposed us in the first place, when I went out at night to help victims.

Like I’m doing tonight, actually.

It had been inevitable that he would leave trace DNA and the occasional fingerprint when administering CPR or wheeling a wounded victim into the receiving bay of the local hospital’s ER. He had always risked discovery because of his insistence on helping humanity… even though back then he had ceased thinking of himself as human. Muirfield had turned him into a monster, a beast. It had taken Catherine’s love for him to see himself not as hopelessly damaged and beyond redemption, but as someone whose life had value.

Someone who was worthy of love, worth risking everything for.

I was dying inside, and she brought me back to life. J.T., too. All those years, all he was doing was treading water. Sooner or later, he would have drowned.

He surveyed the streets and buildings of her neighborhood, as impenetrable to the naked human eye as the streets of Afghanistan on those terrible, violent nights of the war and its aftermath for him and the other beasts. Lights were coming on in Greenwich Village—candles, lanterns, flashlights. Errant, handheld light sources would be harder for him to avoid. He kept the collar of his pea coat up high and his cap down low. He did not move furtively, for that would attract attention, and the street he was walking down was empty. It was the middle of the night, when most people were indoors, and civilians were wisely barricading themselves in their homes. New Yorkers would be terrified tonight. So much misery had rained down on their heads: the destruction of the Twin Towers, Hurricane Sandy. It was not lost on him that he lived in a city every bit as resilient as he was. He would do everything he could to increase NYC’s odds of survival against anything that came at it—be it opportunistic criminals, a terrorist group, or a natural disaster.

He heard approaching footsteps and kept his head down. One block up, a pair of large men turned the corner and approached. Vincent could smell the metallic tang of concealed weapons and stayed loose. He was not afraid, just ready.

The men spotted him. He sensed their interest in a stranger, a potential target. He heard one murmur to the other, “Whatcha think?”

“Naw,” said the other. “That guy’s too strong. He works out.”

Wordlessly, they passed Vincent. He waited until there was some distance between him and the two men, and then wheeled around to follow them. They were on the prowl, and he wasn’t about to let them harm anyone.

Behind him, glass crashed and someone shouted, more out of anger than fear. He heard more shattering glass, and then a siren, and a man’s voice shouting, “Police! Freeze!”

Vincent maintained his position, glad that there was a police presence in Catherine’s neighborhood despite the fact that he would have to be more cautious as a result. With every news outlet in the city broadcasting his image as New York’s most wanted, he had decreased his covert visits to Cat’s apartment until he went half-crazy from missing her. He wondered if Gabe Lowan had possessed the nerve to attend the precinct party at Rosie’s tonight, or if he had respectfully kept his distance. Gabe’s misguided desire to “protect” Catherine from Vincent was the reason Vincent was being hunted down… again.

And to think we trusted him after his beast side died
, Vincent thought in disgust. And Cat had done more than trust him…

Adrenaline rushed through Vincent’s body and he forced his mind off the track it was taking before he beasted out. Caught in a romantic triangle, Cat had ultimately chosen him over Gabe. But for a while, she had shared her bed—if not her heart—with the ADA. There had actually been a time when Vincent himself had considered the other Muirfield refugee to be the better choice for Cat. But now Vincent finally had his beast side under control, tamed by his love for Catherine and his need to be a man whom she could love in return. To be someone whose existence and efforts made the world a better place, whether he remained a beast forever or could one day become fully human again.

A car horn blared and dubstep thumped on a tricked-out set of speakers in a passing Chevy Camaro lowrider. A head hung out the opened car window and Vincent kept his own head bowed but his shoulders straight. He had no interest in appearing as some cowering target for a gang of street toughs.

The horn honked again and he ignored it. The car slunk on.

On the sidewalk up ahead, the criminal duo Vincent had been trailing seemed to lose interest in sizing up prey and fell to arguing about football instead.

Vincent’s path took him more deeply into Greenwich Village. Windows flickered with light. Bodies moved along the sidewalk in silhouette from the car traffic. There were a lot of vehicles on the road, especially considering the time of night and that this was Greenwich Village, not busy midtown Manhattan.

He approached an alley partially blocked by an especially fragrant Dumpster. Years of training as a soldier urged him to caution; it was the perfect hiding place for a potential mugger.

Then, through the street noise, he detected a snick from across the street in the alley opposite to this one. He sent blood to his auditory system, enhancing his hearing.

Zing!

His ears picked up the sound of a bullet rocketing straight at him. His reflexes kicked in and he dove behind the Dumpster, flattening on the ground and covering his head.

The projectile slammed into the Dumpster, rolling it on its wheels toward Vincent. He rose cautiously to his feet and crabbed backwards against the shadowed brick wall. He focused quickly down his alley in both directions, ensuring that no one was headed his way. Threatened, his beast side began to emerge; he didn’t rein it in fully but he also took care to remain concealed. For all he knew, someone had taken a potshot at him just to see if they had the right man.

The right
beast
.

For years, he had been unable to prevent himself from beasting out whenever his safety had been jeopardized. But then Catherine had come into his life and he had learned to subdue it, if not entirely control it. If someone was trying to unmask him, this was a damned dangerous way to go about it.

There were no more shots. He eased around into the narrow space between the other side of the Dumpster and the wall, and squinted in the direction of the shooter. He spent a couple of seconds recreating the scene as only a beast could do. In his mind’s eye he saw a single shooter in a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and boots—looking much like Vincent himself, actually—standing in the alley across the street holding a pistol. As soon as the man had loosed the shot, he had run.

Vincent took off with a burst of speed. He could run faster than any human alive. But once he crossed the street and leaped over trashcans and wooden pallets into the alley, he found nothing, and he couldn’t track his quarry any farther. Able to see in the dark, he looked up toward the fire escape, then higher up at the rooftop. He raced through the alleys of the next three streets, hearing only his own footsteps.