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emphasis, a gesture several of his detectives had developed pretty good imitations of, Brad Kepler included.
    ‘She was distracted. It was chaos, weapons, screaming, diving for cover. I got the thing into her jacket pocket.’
    Barkley was pleased, Kepler could tell, but his nature required him to ask, ‘You think that was a safe idea?’ The captain could never just say, Good job.
    ‘Safe idea?’ Kepler asked. He didn’t know what that meant. ‘I frankly didn’t think about it. It was just something I had to do: Get the tracker onto her then back off.’
    Surani, his gray complexion even grayer under the inhumane lights in the dismal operations room, said, ‘It was pretty good, pretty smooth. She doesn’t have a clue.’
    ‘Microphone?’ The captain brushed his trim, white hair – senior congressman’s hair – twice, then a third time. He seemed to look Kepler up and down, as if approving of his impressive tan. Or disapproving.
    ‘No, just a tracker. We lost her for a bit in the subway.’
    The New York city metro system was huge and fast and efficient, and that meant it could transport Gabriela anywhere within a several-hundred-square-mile area. And GPS trackers wouldn’t work there.
    ‘But then she surfaced. CCTV got a facial recognition exiting a station in Midtown. The signal’s been solid since then.’
    ‘Unless she decides to hop on the A train again.’
    ‘She can’t live in the MTA,’ Surani said. ‘The food sucks down there. And the showers? Forget about it.’ This drew a hard glance from Kepler because the joke was beyond stupid. It wasn’t even a joke.
    ‘And she was with the guy?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘Stay on her. But I want everybody tailing to be invisible. You follow me? If Surveillance gets made, then people could get killed. That’s not happening on my watch.’
    And why not? Kepler wondered, of the dramatic pronouncement. You can protect all the innocents in New York City, can you now, boss? A lot of people have died on your watch over the years, when you think about it.
    But Surani said only, ‘We’ve told the teams to stay back. They’re near but not too close.’
    One of the deputy chiefs stuck his head in the doorway. ‘Hey, sorry, gentlemen. Need to commandeer this room.’
    ‘What?’ Barkley snapped. ‘Move the op center? Again? You gotta be kidding me?’
    The white-haired, rotund brass shrugged, looking only slightly contrite. ‘Got a terrorist tip and we need an ISDN line. They’re not up and running in the other rooms.’
    ‘Terrorist. We get a thousand terrorist tips a year. Why’s this one a big deal?
    ‘Bureau’s running it. Pretty serious, it seems. And could be going down in two, three weeks, so it’s prioritized. Infrastructure target, that sort of thing. You got ten minutes to find new digs.’ He disappeared. Kepler glanced at Surani and he knew that his partner was just barely refraining from giving the empty doorway the finger. They swapped smiles.
    Sighing, Barkley looked over sheets of paper on the table. One was headed Charles Prescott Investments .
    The other was another copy of the press release.
    Surgery to remove a bullet lodged near his heart is planned for later today …
    ‘ We’ll make this work. I know we will.’ This flimsy reassurance came from Kepler.
    Just then Surani got another call. He listened. He disconnected. ‘Surveillance. Gabriella and Reardon’re on the move again. Near Forty-Eight and Seventh, moving west. There’re a couple unmarkeds in the vicinity, but they’re staying out of sight.’
    Vi-cin-ty.
    Jesus, Kepler thought.
    Barkley slid the Prescott file away as if it reminded him of a bad medical diagnosis. He asked, ‘Is the tracker a good one?’
    Kepler said, ‘Yeah. Battery lasts for days and it’ll pinpoint the location down to six feet.’
    Surani added proudly, ‘And she’ll never spot it. It’s inside a Bic pen.’

CHAPTER
30
     

2:10 p.m., Sunday
5 minutes earlier
     

 

 
     
    The