Excerpt - Chicago Cop
Her heartbeat hammered against her ribs as she charged through the shadowy maze of back streets and alleys, her breath hitching. The territory was unfamiliar. She'd lost him.
Damn.
She saw movement just ahead. A glimpse of a coattail, the gleam of a boot heel. Her throat tightened.
She charged after him, her legs aching, her lungs burning. She was exhausted, but she had to keep up. She had to stop him. Would it be enough? Was she enough?
Raw determination in her gut, she pushed herself forward with one last burst of speed
Suddenly a high wall appeared. It stood at the end of the alley, dark and gleaming with ice. The man stood facing it in his long black coat. Expensive coat. He was Mafia, all right. A made man.
He turned and smiled at her, cruelty on his lips.
She stared at him, but couldn't get a make on his face. You're under arrest, she tried to call out, but her voice wouldn't come.
She saw him raise the gun.
She dove for cover, but wasn't fast enough. The weapon exploded with an eerie rumble. The bullet hit, zigzagged through her body with excruciating pain. Her head spun. She wasn't enough.
Her hand was on her weapon, trying to fire back, but it wouldn't respond.
Jammed. Dammit!
Sounds blurred around her. Shouts. Screams. The boom of more gunfire. Somewhere in the distance, a siren went off.
Then she heard her father's gentle Irish voice, plain as day. "Fight, lass. Don't let them win. Fight back."
With a start, Maggie Delaney opened her eyes and realized the siren was her ringing cell phone.
The dream evaporated as she groggily groped for the irritating thing on the nightstand. She flipped it open. "What?"
"Lieutenant?" It was the crisp, no-nonsense voice of the Bureau of Investigative Services Deputy Superintendent. Her boss.
She ran a hand over her face, glanced at the angry red digits of clock. Three a.m. "I apologize, sir. I –"
He cut her off. "There's been a shooting."
She pulled back the covers and sat up. A shooting? Not good to hear, but not unusual in Chicago. "Go on."
"Officer down at the six hundred block of West 74th."
Maggie squinted into the darkness, stretching to force herself awake. Officer down? Hell of a piece of news to wake up to.
She turned and studied Ned's long body huddled under the blankets beside her. The call hadn't woken him, thank God. She slid her feet into her slippers and padded to the bathroom.
"The South side?" she said to her boss after closing the door. Her unit was citywide, but their cases were usually in and around the Loop.
"Timberwood. Get your team together and get down there ASAP."
Timberwood. A neighborhood with some of the worst crime stats in the city. "May I ask why my team is being called in on this case?"
"You will, whether I say yes or no." He sounded annoyed, but Maggie knew he liked her spunk.
"I am, after all, the hard-ass bitch you handpicked to run the GUTS unit," she said dryly.
It was an inside joke. Maggie had razzed Orton with the phrase ever since she'd overheard him using it to describe her on a call to the mayor. Her boss had meant it as a compliment. Sort of like calling a man "one tough sonofabitch." But Orton could play politics and she wasn't beneath using the "joke" to keep him from going too far.
Tonight, it was a reminder that she didn't like pulling her team out of bed without a reasonable explanation. They had just come off a long assignment and they had lives.
She heard him exhale through the receiver. "Detective Mark Zielinski from the Timberwood Station has asked for our help. There's going to be a shitload of bad PR if we don't handle this right."
"Bad PR?" That meant dealing with the press. It was political.
Orton sounded like he was chewing his mustache off. "He's denying it, but from reports on the scene, it looks like Officer Juan Perez was shot by his rookie partner."
Oh God. "By his partner?"
"It was probably an accident. They were fired on by a couple of gang members."
Gang members. That only made it worse. Maggie stared into the darkness. A rookie and a Hispanic officer. This was more than just politics. She could hear the accusations already. Trigger-happy cops. Incompetent. Badly trained. Bigoted. Shit. "Give me thirty minutes," she said and hung up.