Night's Landing Read Online Free PDF Page A

staggered back out of the bathroom.
    FBI Special Agent Joe Collins was waiting for him. “Thought I was going to have to go in there and scrape you off the floor. How you feel?”
    “Like I look.”
    “I was afraid of that. Up to talking?”
    Nate knew Collins, although they’d never worked together. The shooting of two U.S. marshals was a federal crime that fell to the FBI to investigate, with the assistance of the Marshals Service, ATF and the New York Police Department. The marshals handled fugitive investigations and apprehension, prisoner transport, witness protection, the security of the federal judiciary and special operations—evidence gathering in federal criminal investigations was up to the FBI.
    Nate nodded. “Sure. Excuse the outfit.”
    “You’ve got someone bringing you a change of clothes?”
    His uncle Gus and sister Carine would have been contacted by now in Cold Ridge, about a six-hour drive to New York unless they got a shuttle flight from Manchester. Antonia was in Washington. Closer. But she was almost eight months pregnant. Maybe she’d stay put.
    Not a chance.
    And his brothers-in-law would be at their wives’ sides.
    Collins looked tired, but he always did. He had the kind of laid-back demeanor that made people think he wasn’t quite with it—their mistake. He was in his mid-forties, his wedding ring too tight on a knuckle-swollen finger, his stomach pushing against the buttons of his button-down blue shirt. He had a friendly face filled with broken capillaries.
    Another FBI agent, straight backed, tense looking, maybe in her mid-twenties, stood silently in the corner by the bathroom.
    “Any word on Rob?” Nate asked.
    “He lost his spleen,” Collins said. “You can live without a spleen. It’s the blood loss the doctors are worried about. It’s still touch-and-go.”
    Nate remembered the paramedics talking about internal bleeding at the scene. He didn’t respond. What was there to say?
    “How’re you doing?” Collins asked.
    “Fine.”
    The FBI agent gave him a look that said they both knew better.
    “We walked down to Central Park after the news conference. Rob—Christ, he wanted to see the tulips. Someone shot us.” Nate sat on the edge of his hospital bed. “That’s it. End of story.”
    Except he knew it wasn’t. Collins would want to ask why they went into the park, who knew they’d be at the news conference, what they saw—and that was just for starters.
    At this point, Nate doubted anyone thought it was a random shooting, a guy concealed somewhere in or around the park with an assault rifle and a silencer, waiting for the right moment, as opposed to the right victims, to shoot.
    “He had to have an escape route,” Nate said.
    “One thing at a time.”
    Collins took him through the shooting step by step, minute by minute. Nate could feel his anesthetic slowly wearing off, the bandage heavy on his arm, the reality of what had happened earlier in the day hitting him. He’d been taking down fugitives for a long time, guys wanted for murder, carjacking, drug dealing, torture, rape and every other manner of violent crime. He’d been shot at before, but never like this—never a sneak attack, never with a fellow deputy collapsing, maybe dying, at his side.
    “Deputy Dunnemore called his sister before the paramedics arrived?” Collins asked.
    Nate pulled himself back to the matter at hand. “That’s right.”
    “You dialed?”
    “He had her number in memory. He wasn’t in any condition to talk. I think he just wanted her to hear what happened from him.”
    “Then you talked to her?”
    “That’s right. Rob couldn’t hold on to the phone. I took it.” Nate related his brief conversation with a shocked, frightened Sarah Dunnemore. “I told her I’d call her back, but I haven’t been able to. I’d need Rob’s cell phone. I don’t have her number.”
    Collins wanted to know what Rob said to his sister. Nate told him.
    There were more questions. The guy