An Angel In Stone

Locked on his fleeing target, the rider wasn’t listening. “Police!” he yelled. “Halt or I’ll—”

The fugitives stopped, swung obediently toward the command. Clinton raised his arm.

Blam!

As his rider yanked on the reins, the horse reared—then settled back to earth, snorting and sidestepping. With a befuddled frown, the cop slipped gradually from his saddle. Just as Raine reached him, he hit the ground.

“Put some pressure on that,” Cade growled, jogging past.

“Jeez, you’re bossy!” Raine glared after him, then beyond, where Trenton and the gunman were staggering out through the park’s iron fence onto Columbus Avenue. Traffic screeched to a halt as they lumbered across.

“What happened? What happened? Is he all right?” Dragged by a leashed and yapping poodle, an elderly couple hurried across the park.

“Put pressure on anything that bleeds! You’ll find an ambulance out front.” Raine rose and walked toward the snorting horse, fingers outstretched. “Good fella, good boy. Come here, sweetheart.”

The bay rolled his eyes and leaned back on his haunches, but he’d been trained to stand when the reins were dropped. He shook his black mane as she rubbed his neck.

“Easy, sweetie.” Raine gathered the reins, glanced down at her gown. Ought to just rip some legroom, but this was Shoba’s best yet, a keeper. She scrunched its hem up to her crotch, then stepped into the stirrup. “Okay, big boy, wanna collect some payback?”

They plunged through a gap in the avenue traffic, then clattered up onto the far sidewalk. Cade stood, his raised gun by his lean cheek as he peered around the corner of a coffee shop and up West 80th Street. “Where’s he headed?” she called.

“Beats me! The subway stop at Broadway?”

“Okay, whatever. Just distract him.”

Cade stared after her as she cantered south down the Columbus Ave. sidewalk, indignant yells marking her progress as pedestrians bolted for the doorways or gutter. “Me, distract him!” Cade wasn’t the one wearing a red silk thong with red high heels. “And where the heck are you off to?” He shrugged, glanced west around the corner—and winced as another bullet smacked the stone just above his head. That was, what, Clinton’s fifth shot? But did he have a nine-round automatic like the SIG-Sauer that Cade had taken off Jimmy—or a fifteen?

“Whatever.” He dashed for the nearest parked car.

A third of the way up the one-way street, Clinton had stopped an oncoming SUV.

“Great.” If he hijacked some wheels they hadn’t a prayer of catching—But no; the driver took one look at the gesturing gunman and jammed it into reverse. “Good for you!” Cade sprinted up the sidewalk, then ducked down. Both curbs were lined with parked cars, providing plenty of cover.

Meanwhile, midstreet, Clinton was losing his cool. “You gas-guzzling son of a bitch, get back here!” he screamed, wasting a shot that blew out a headlight.

The SUV sideswiped a van—screeched and scraped along the car behind it, then crunched to a glass-tinkling halt. Its far door slammed open and the driver bolted west.

Ripping his mask off, Clinton drew down on the runner, but Ten-ton dropped to his knees—which yanked on the tails of the tie the gunman had wrapped around his forearm. He staggered; the shot struck sparks off a brownstone, half a block away.

“Son of a bitch, you want me to shoot you?” Clinton jammed the bore of his pistol in the player’s ear. “Get up!”

“I’ve had enough, thanks,” the linebacker said in a soothing baritone. “So how ’bout we all just settle down and take a deep breath?”

“How ’bout I blow your brains out? On your feet! NOW!”

Peering around the front end of a Toyota, Cade lined up his sight. Okay, he could cap Clinton from here, but should he? If the creep squeezed his trigger as he died—Better to draw the heat instead, Cade decided. He shaved a bullet past Clinton’s cheek. “Drop your gun, bozo!”

A hail of bullets slammed into the Toyota. Cade retreated to the curb, then crab-walked along the car. A shot punched through its back window, then the side glass above his head. The guy packed a fifteen-round automatic as well as a temper!

“I’m doing this why?” Cade asked the stars above, then startled as a movement down the street drew his gaze. A horse, turning the far corner. Damned if Lady Godiva hadn’t ridden clear around the block! And here she came, riding hell-for-leather down the middle of the road. Distract him now!

He popped up, bounced a shot off the pavement at Clinton’s feet, then dived for the next car under withering fire. He popped up again, squeezed the trigger, and—

And—dammit all—Clinton had seen him try. So much for bluffing. Cade threw the gun at his head.

Clinton dodged it, then straightened with an ugly grin. “All out, hero? Well, ain’t that a pity, ’cause I sure saved one for you!”

Sirens whooped, blue lights flashed down at the Columbus Ave. end of the block. Finally, somebody had clued in the cops.

Too late. Clinton tossed the ends of his hostage’s tie aside. He took loving aim on Cade, savoring the moment—then paused. His grin faded to frustration. “I really am gonna shoot you.”

“Got that. You want me to cry about it?” Hold his gaze. Hold him while the hoofbeats hammered louder and louder, or was that Cade’s own heart?

“Suit yourself. You can always cry aft—” Clinton spun. Froze before the oncoming apparition: flash of long bare legs and red silk, horse big as a truck and growing bigger by the second. His jaw dropped, his gun drooped from nerveless fingers.

He’d let go of Trenton, so maybe she didn’t need her knife. Jamming it back in its sheath, Raine braced her weight in her right stirrup as she leaned down. Reached. Her target’s eyes grew wide…wider…his mouth a rounding O of horror. Just love a man with a tie! She grabbed it at the knot—“Ooof!”—and kept on riding.

“Aaaaagh! Urrkkk!” He tripped—somehow found his feet as she yanked him up—to bound, stumbling and shrieking, alongside the thundering bay.

Thirty feet down the block, she flung him to the pavement and galloped on.

“Hey, cowgirl!”

Once she’d reined her mount to a snorting, curvetting trot, she glanced behind.

Cade sat midstreet on Clinton’s back. Making himself quite comfortable, it looked like. “Where d’you think you’re going?”

Sticking around here answering police questions all night would be a total bore. They had plenty of witnesses without her. And Trenton had stumbled to his feet, looking shaken, but fine. She’d call him tomorrow, but as for now—“Got a hot date at midnight, remember?” she called, brushing her tangled hair back from a wicked smile.

Intent on the downed shooter, a wave of cops stormed past her on either side. Raine walked her horse docilely to the corner and peered uptown. Here came a cab, miraculously with its light on. “Taxi!”

When it pulled into the curb, she swung down and tied the bay to a lamppost. “I owe you a bushel of apples, sweetie.” She slid in behind the goggle-eyed cabbie. “Brooklyn Bridge, please.”

Hot date? Oh, yeah, we’ve got a date. Ignoring the shouted questions as New York City’s finest bent over him, Cade stared after the taxi. And if you think make-up sex is fun, try almost-got-shot sex, was the thought dancing round his mind.

Even if she was the enemy.

Chapter 5

“H ow did Cade know that I love the Brooklyn Bridge?” Raine wondered as she approached its first tower. Or was this simply another sign that their minds marched in step?

Whenever Raine passed through New York, she walked the bridge. She hadn’t done so yet, this trip. And always before she’d come at dawn or sunset. Now she shivered with anticipation as its massive suspension cables curved upward to either side of the boardwalk. “Don’t look back,” she encouraged herself. “No-ot yet. You can do it.”

Already she’d walked almost a quarter mile up the gradually rising ramp from street level. She was out over the East River itself—must be at least ten stories up in the air and still climbing. Beyond the bridge’s first tower, Brooklyn was a molten glow on the opposite shore, while Raine could feel Manhattan, looming at her back.

On the roadway some twenty feet below the pedestrian walk, a car rushed past, fleeing the city. Tires growled on concrete, a radio wailed. A cool glissando of sax and trumpet drifted back on the salty air and Raine shuddered with pleasure. Rubbing the goose bumps on her bare arms, she took a deep breath—and turned. “Sha-zamm!”

Palisades of light scraped a buttermilk sky—a jagged dazzle of gold and silver, blinking red and strobing white. Diamond rivers of headlights; streaming ruby taillights. While serene in its own beauty, a fat saffron moon smiled above this electric city of neon-crazed cliff dwellers.