Save one thing.
The girl.
Luca said Mike had attended the funerals for his family; they’d had two joint services, nineteen caskets eventually going into the ground, all of them different sizes for the men, women and children killed that afternoon. However, Mike’s hit list had included twenty names; standing there in his suit at the second of the two funerals, the priest talking, he suddenly realised there was a coffin missing and started to panic.
Who did we miss?
Mike had been quick to realise who it was: his seven year old half-sister, Isabel, the youngest member of the family, the apple of her father’s eye who’d been an unplanned surprise to them all when Gino’s wife had announced she was pregnant again at the age of forty three. Isabel’s coffin wasn’t there. He’d checked with his guys if they remembered capping her off, but none of them could. She probably wasn’t at the villa, he told himself. She was at a friend’s place. The police have her in protective custody in case the Devaneys try to finish the job. His suspicions were confirmed two weeks ago when he caught a news bulletin of the girl being ushered towards a car in DC; she was alive. He didn’t order any moves on her though; they’d wasted everyone at the villa and checked every room. She didn’t see anything.
How wrong they were.
Shepherd chuckled, remembering Mike and his crew’s face when the child was brought in as a witness. The Court had to provide a box for her to stand on so the jury could see her as she gave her testimony which she gave clearly, her high pitched little voice condemning them to a life inside. Four weeks on from the building siege, the child was recovering but still had a long path ahead of her. She’d seen more violence in the past few weeks or so than most people experienced in their entire lives. Nevertheless, with Vargas sitting near Shepherd and smiling at her reassuringly, the girl had told the courtroom what she’d seen that day and had unhesitatingly identified her brother and his crew as the shooters.
Game, set, match.
It was one of the worst acts of violence committed in living memory by a New York crime family. Although he had nothing to do with what happened at the building on West 135th, Mike Lombardi and his team, save for Luca, received several life sentences each on nineteen counts of murder. The story on page 4 was to do with them; apparently, there had been some kind of incident at Riker’s yesterday involving four new inmates during yard time. An investigation was underway, but no murder weapons had been found and apparently no-one had seen who jumped them. Mike Lombardi and his team were out of the picture for good. Street justice, if ever such a thing was appropriate. Here, it definitely was. You reap what you sow.
Shepherd and Josh stood there in silence, the building around them at work but not busy, the weekend shift putting in their time. Looking at the paper, the same person came to mind, someone who should have been standing there beside them.
Shepherd rose. ‘C’mon. We’ve got work to do. Franklin’s got a new op for us. And I’ve finally found a replacement for Jorgensen.’
‘Really?’ Josh said, intrigued.
‘You, me and Marquez will lay out the audit first upstairs. They’ll meet us all in the city later and you can make introductions.’
He rose, patting Josh on the shoulder as he passed. Josh looked down at the newspaper’s headline for a few moments. Then he turned and followed Shepherd up a metal flight of stairs leading to some Conference Rooms used for briefings on the floor above.
Marquez was already in there, waiting for them with Rach, an analyst. She nodded to the two men as they both took a seat. Shepherd was damn proud of her; it turned out she’d had a hunch that the response team had a sharpshooter. Josh had joined her but lost patience and left her to it, thinking she was imagining things. However, she’d found a rifle soon after he left, just before she had a gun pulled on her from behind. The sniper was about to shoot, but Josh had returned just before he pulled the trigger and dropped him. Apparently on his way out Josh had noticed something leaking out from a store closet in the stairwell. Pulling open the door, he’d found the dead body of the guard from the front desk inside. She was right. There was a sniper there.
Marquez had used the dead man’s rifle to put down the enemy chopper as it came in from the Hudson. If she hadn’t, the building would have been detonated. Once again, his team had outdone themselves. And he had a feeling their new fifth member would fit right in.
‘Morning Rach,’ Shepherd said, settling into his chair.
‘Morning sir.’
‘So what do you have for us?’
‘Checkmate.’
Vargas examined the chess board in front of her. Her opponent was right; she’d lost all her pieces and the King was done. Across the small circular table in Bryant Park 42nd Street, Isabel reached over and knocked it over.
‘You win,’ Vargas said, smiling ruefully. She’d allowed it to happen, but managed to look suitably crestfallen.
Across the table, Isabel grinned back. She went to respond but something caught her attention over Vargas’ shoulder. Vargas turned and saw another small girl waving at them. She was with what had to be her parents on the lawn, the adults taking a seat and enjoying the sun.
‘Do you know her?’ she asked Isabel.
She nodded keenly. ‘Can I say hi?’
‘Go for it.’
Isabel was already off her seat, running over and hugging her friend. Moments later, the two girls were doing cartwheels and handstands on the lawn, getting rid of some of their seemingly limitless energy. Vargas leaned back in her chair and watched.
Now they were approaching the end of April, the good weather was here to stay and the city looked spectacular. She still had a small bandage over her eyebrow and was walking with a limp from the shrapnel wound to her thigh, but other than that she was in pretty good shape, the other bumps, cuts and bruises all but healed. She’d had some minor heart palpitations as a result of the electric shock she’d sustained, but the doctor told her those would settle and pass with time. However, psychologically she felt much better. She now knew for a fact that everyone involved in the corruption in the Miami PD Special Response Team was either dead or in jail. For the first time since she could remember, she wasn’t undercover or looking over her shoulder, worrying if the guys she busted had found her.
Surviving the ordeal on the street and inside the building had earned her a hell of a lot of respect in the Marshals service as well as in the Miami-Dade Police Department, especially considering she’d not only kept her witness alive but had also taken down the four gang members and the ten-man response team with Archer’s help. Isabel had made the stand and buried her brother and his crew. They were all going away for several life sentences. Mike Lombardi had been picked up on Monday morning having been found handcuffed to a chair inside an NYPD safe-house in Midtown. He was shouting and hollering that a dark-haired cop had put a gun to his balls and assaulted some of his people at their bar in Tribeca. He’d kept up the complaints all the way to the stand, but no-one took any notice and Isabel’s testimony finished him. As it turned out, he had more than a few enemies inside. Reports had come through that he and his four friends hadn’t made it past their second night; Gino Lombardi’s influence had reached out from beyond the grave and for some men, you didn’t need to share the same blood to be considered family.