Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [classic children's novels txt] 📗

There was a noise like two doors slamming in rapid succession. Bellini was still staring at me. His gun was trained on me. He seemed to convulse and gurgle, and blood spewed from his mouth. There was a big, ugly hole in his chest. He lay back and died. I turned and looked at Dehan. She was staring at Bellini and she was holding her automatic in both hands.

She turned to me. “Are you okay?”

“I’m not sure. How many rounds did you pull off?”

“Two.”

I nodded. “Then I’m okay.”

“Detective?”

I turned. There was a paramedic looking up at me, frowning. She was pretty and I smiled at her. “Hi.”

“You’re bleeding. Quite a lot.”

Twenty-SIX

“We have to get you to the hospital, Detective.”

“No, what you have to do is give me something for the pain, plug the hole and let me do my job.”

I was sitting in the back of an ambulance with my shirt off, a drip in my arm and the pretty paramedic examining a hole in my shoulder. Overhead, I could hear the thud of the chopper searching Baretto Point. I was watching Vincenzo being loaded in the back of a patrol car and the dead cops being wheeled out on gurneys and loaded into the back of a meat wagon. Dehan was staring at me.

“Don’t be an ass, Stone.”

“I yam what I yam and dat’s what I yam.”

She sighed. I made a ‘whatcha gonna do?’ face.

The pretty paramedic said, “You were lucky, detective, it’s a through and through. Couple of inches down and it would have punctured your lung. Even so, you need to get to a hospital.”

I smiled at her. “It means a lot to me that you care. Put a plaster on it and I promise to go to the hospital tomorrow, first thing, after breakfast.”

She sighed and started patching me up. Dehan was shaking her head. I noticed the way the red and blue lights washed the planes of her face and her cheekbones and realized I was still a little high on shock. A car pulled up and the captain climbed out. He had a look of outrage on his face.

“What in the name of…?”

Dehan cut across him with a voice like frozen hydrogen fashioned into a blade.

“Detective Stone was injured in the line of duty, sir! He was shot while attempting to save myself and other officers!”

He frowned at her a moment, then looked at me. “Is it serious?”

“Just a graze.”

The pretty paramedic had to speak up. “It is not just a graze! It is a gunshot wound and needs proper medical attention at the hospital.”

“Stone, you are to go to the hospital and have that wound seen to, then I want a report on my desk.”

I smiled at the paramedic. I said sweetly, “Don’t talk.” Then I smiled at the captain. “Captain, I will do that, but we are not done and I cannot afford the time to do that right now. There are things you need to know.” I was aware I was not speaking normally.

Dehan opened her mouth and I gave her a look that Julius Caesar might have given Brutus seconds before he stabbed him. She closed her mouth, the Captain didn’t.

“Detective, I am giving you…”

I interrupted him. “Please don’t make me disobey a direct order, Captain. It would look so bad on TV and in the papers. Especially when they report the bent FBI agent angle.”

His open mouth sagged, then closed. “I hope you know what you are doing, John.”

“That is a wish we share, John. Now, with your permission, I need to go and talk to Mr. Alvaro Vincenzo.”

I turned to the paramedic. “Did anybody ever tell you you are real pretty?”

She gave me ‘that look’ and said, “Yeah, my mom. Did anybody ever tell you you’re a real ass? Oh, yeah, your partner, who knows you best. Put this on.”

She looked past me and winked at Dehan, then slipped a sling over my neck and fitted my arm in it. I gave Dehan the keys to my Jag and said, “To the station, Detective.”

A dull, penetrating ache had started in my shoulder and was sending the occasional needle into my back and lungs. I ignored them and put my hand on the captain’s shoulder. “The man we are hunting for, Captain, is Special Agent Paul Harrison, and I have got to be in at the kill. You understand that, right?”

He followed me to the car, gripping my arm, trying to pull me back. “What the hell are you talking about? Who the hell is Special Agent Paul Harrison?”

“He was the liaison between the Feds, Vincenzo and Pro, Maurice Learner, Vincenzo’s top hit man.”

“And what in the name of all that is holy, Stone, has he got to do with this?”

I opened the door to the passenger seat and heard the reassuring growl of the Jaguar firing up.

“I’ll fill you in at the station, Captain.”

We eased out of Coster Street and on to Viele Avenue. I slid back in the seat and gave myself a few seconds to indulge in shameless suffering. Dehan’s voice invaded my pain.

“I am this close to taking you to the hospital.”

I spoke without opening my eyes. “If you do, I will never be your date again. I’m fine, just give me a second, talk me through it.”

She sighed noisily.

“You were right, as usual, ‘H’ was Harrison. But he and Bellini were working behind Vincenzo’s back, using Father O’Neil to steal money from Conor Hagan, playing on his twisted ethics about serving his community.”

“A fact,” I said, wincing as a four-foot shard of glass stabbed through my right lung, “that Conor Hagan learned from Bellini, probably under torture, and exploited with some skill tonight.”

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