The Penitent One (Boston Crime Thriller Book 3), Brian Shea [best non fiction books of all time .TXT] 📗

Mainelli took a crouched firing position using the door as both brace and cover, while Barnes maintained her prone position.

She pulled slowly at the hip line of the dead man she was lying behind, trying to roll him up onto his side more. Barnes hoped the extra layer of flesh and bone would be enough to protect her.

And then the strangest thing happened. With the calm of somebody on a Sunday afternoon stroll through the park, the white jacket appeared as The Penitent One moved across the floor toward the closed door of Walsh's study. He didn’t see her.

Barnes fired twice as she yelled, “Police, drop the gun!”

The impacts of her two rounds spun the killer in a wild pirouette.

His face, even after being shot, was dead calm as he turned toward Barnes. He raised his pistol and fired controlled bursts at her.

She ducked as low as humanly possible, shrinking herself as the mobster’s body shook. His hip and belly were pelted with the silenced rounds of the gun.

Mainelli had fallen backward and was sprawled into the hallway.

Barnes tucked herself down as low as she physically could. Then, as quickly as the gunfire had started, it stopped.

She counted silently, "Three…two…" She willed herself to move. "One!"

Barnes raised herself up, preparing to face the threat, her gun pushed out in front of her. Looking down her sights, she realized he was gone.

It took half a second for her mind to play catch-up. The study door was now open.

Gunfire rang out from within. Six, maybe ten shots were fired, Barnes couldn't keep track. She quickly ran her hand over herself, ensuring none of the rounds he’d fired at her had found their mark. Although she was now covered in the blood of the man she'd used as a human shield, Barnes wasn’t hit.

She rushed forward toward Walsh’s study as she heard the loud crash of breaking glass. Mainelli huffed a curse from close behind.

Barnes didn't pause outside the door. She entered, button-hooking in and taking the room in a swift sweep of her weapon.

To her left, against a bookcase, was the last man in the mob security team. His body was riddled with bullets. Behind the overturned desk was Connor Walsh. His hand was partially exposed, as was a bit of his face. He was covered in blood and didn't appear to be moving. No sign of The Penitent One.

Then she saw the source of the breaking glass. The back window had been shattered, spraying glass all over the floor. Barnes rushed to the window, her eyes following a bungee rope that led down the side of the house.

She looked out to the street just in time to see a gray Kawasaki motorcycle disappear down Harvest Street and out of sight.

Mainelli was standing in the doorway, taking in the scene and then Barnes, looking shocked. “That was some ballsy police work there.”

"I think I got him," Barnes said. "Obviously I didn't stop him." The high and low in her voice was a side effect of the adrenaline coursing through her veins. She flexed her shaking hands and holstered her weapon.

A gasp and gurgling noise came from Connor Walsh as he rolled to his side and coughed blood. He looked bad. She couldn't tell how many times he had been hit from the amount of blood covering his clothing.

Watching the mob boss flail, Barnes paused, thinking of Mainelli's earlier conversation about killing two birds with one stone. How hard would it be to not render aid? To let this pariah of a human being slip away into the abyss?

She pushed back the thought. Not her call, not who she was.

Barnes moved over, pushing the table further out of the way so she could get a better look at the damage to the bleeding mob boss. She ripped open his button-down silk shirt and saw he had been wearing a bulletproof vest. It looked as though two of the rounds he'd taken had bypassed the Kevlar, leaving his upper chest and shoulder bleeding heavily.

She sank her finger deep into the bullet hole just beneath his clavicle. She could feel his pulse through the blood pushing against her finger.

"We've got six dead and one critical. Suspect on the loose. Gray motorcycle heading West on Harvest," Mainelli radioed in, and then knelt alongside Barnes, putting pressure on the other wound.

26

Kelly screeched the Caprice to a halt near the intersection of Dorchester Avenue and Harvest Street. Easy enough to find with the florist van fully engulfed in flames by the curb. Kelly passed the two dead mobsters with the green roses on their chests and ran into Connor Walsh’s home. Kelly and his team weren’t the first on scene. Patrol had already converged on location minutes before their arrival. He ran up the stairs to the third floor, Gray and Halstead close behind.

They entered Walsh's suite on the third level of the converted triple decker. Barnes was standing in the center of the room near a fireplace when Kelly entered.

He wanted to run to her, to step over the dead mobster and take her in his arms and hold her. But he resisted the urge, forcing himself to walk. A euphoric wave of relief washed over him upon seeing her unharmed.

He walked directly to Barnes and Mainelli. "You guys good?" He addressed both of them but was looking directly into Barnes's emerald green eyes.

She nodded but didn't speak.

He could see the look in her eyes, the distant stare. She was there, but she wasn't. Kelly had been in shootings himself and knew that everybody's brain reacted differently. There was a universal truth—nobody bounced back immediately. The brain had to process, and that process took time. Being on scene, covered in other people’s blood, was not the place where that mental healing could begin. The brain needed distance from the causative event if it were to begin to repair itself from the trauma.

Halstead walked up. "I’m