Heather Graham - Flawless

He heard Mike’s voice again in his ear. “I’m inside. Two people in here, both okay. One is old man Krakowsky. He said they went out the back and they have a hostage.”

“I’m on it,” Craig said.

Dammit. The thieves had been there—and they were a step ahead.

He could see people running at the other end of the alley.

Men in black hoodies. And they weren’t alone.

Mike had been right. They had a hostage. A woman was being dragged along with them.

At least she wasn’t dead on the ground in the alley.

Swearing, Craig cranked up his pace.

As the thieves neared the street, he saw that they were heading to a van that was waiting at the end of the alley, a commonplace white van.

The sliding door was open, the driver obviously waiting for his companions to jump in.

One of the thieves drew the woman out of the way as they reached the sidewalk. Another brandished his gun.

People were screaming everywhere. Some were running; others, too startled to move, stood where they were.

Right in the way of the thieves.

And in his mind’s eye, all Craig could picture was the video of the thieves shooting the manager. And of the dead woman lying in an alley.

“Craig, what the hell are you doing?” Mike demanded.

“I’m on them.”

“You’re on them how? Wait for backup.”

“I can’t—I’ll lose them.”

He could hear Mike cursing.

“Can’t talk—running!” Craig said.

The thief holding the woman turned and saw—in the midst of the chaos—that they were being followed. He shoved her into the van and jumped in after her.

Craig practically flew toward the street. The last of the thieves was entering the van, and the door hadn’t closed yet. He couldn’t fire, though; he could too easily hit the woman or an innocent bystander.

He was going to need both hands, he thought, and shoved his Glock back into the holster nestled into the small of his back. Then he launched himself through the open door.

He pitched headfirst into one of the thieves and heard a cracking sound—the guy’s head hitting the far wall.

The driver screeched into traffic, rounding the corner onto the avenue and yelling, “What the hell...?”

His entry had been something like a bowling ball striking the pins at the end of the lane. All three thieves went sprawling. The woman was facedown, and he was somehow entangled with her legs.

“Craig, what the hell’s going on?” Mike demanded.

“White van going south on Fifth,” he said.

The thief he’d catapulted into was out cold. That left two more, plus the driver.

He heard a cacophony of shouting in the van. And through his earpiece, he could hear Mike cursing Craig beneath his breath between giving orders to stop every white van on Fifth.

Then Craig saw that one of the men was rising and that he had a gun. Craig reacted, rolling the woman onto her back as he struck out with his left foot. He caught the guy right in the jaw, and he stumbled back awkwardly, then fell flat on his rear.

Craig barely missed getting whacked across the head by the third man. But he ducked in time and head butted the man in the gut.

By then the second man was moving again. He lifted his gun and aimed at Craig’s head.

He never got the chance to fire.

Craig was astonished—and incredibly grateful—to see that the woman had not only moved, she’d found a tire iron and cracked the thief hard over the head with it. He went down like a brick.

The panel door suddenly slid open. The last of the thieves hopped from the moving vehicle.

The driver suddenly stepped on the gas. Craig looked out the windshield and realized that they’d miraculously hit a clear patch of Fifth Avenue.

Craig knew he couldn’t have gone after the thief anyway. The woman was still in the van, and the driver was alive and well.

Now his lead foot on the gas sent both Craig and the woman flying. He landed half on top of the unconscious man she’d hit and half on top of her.

For a moment he got a good look at her face. Mid to late twenties, brilliant blue eyes, deep red hair, fine bone structure and porcelain skin.

He got moving again quickly, staggering to the front, pulling the Glock out of its holster as he went, then pressing the muzzle against the driver’s head.

“Pull over. Now.”

“Ah, hell,” the driver muttered. He added a few colorful expletives, but, as ordered, he pulled over to the side. Craig cuffed him and then went back to cuff the other two, easing their guns out of reach as he did so, swearing inwardly. A takedown wasn’t easy when he was stooping over the whole time to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling of the van.

The young woman was getting to her feet at that point, and he realized she was tall enough that she needed to stoop, as well. He met her eyes. They were a stunning crystal blue, almost impossible to look away from.

“Thanks,” he told her. “You saved my life.”

“I think you saved mine,” she said.

“Oh, fuck you both,” the driver said. “No one saved anyone. We don’t kill people. We’re thieves. We don’t even use real guns!”

Craig spun around toward him and then bent down to pick up the thieves’ guns.

It was an incredibly real copy of a Smith & Wesson. And it was made out of plastic.

He grabbed the other weapon off the floor of the van; it, too, was an excellent copy and, like the first, made of plastic.

“Where the hell did you get these?” Craig demanded.

The driver laughed. “Toy store,” he said. “Check that one out. It’s a water pistol.”

“You idiot. Don’t you know that the police would shoot you, whether these were real or not?”

“Police never should have caught us,” the driver said.

“Am I hearing this right?” Mike demanded over the earpiece.

Craig wasn’t sure how Mike could hear anything, frankly. By now sirens were ripping through the air and police cars were surging around them.

He slid open the panel door, holding out a hand with his badge showing. “Lower your weapons. FBI. The situation is under control.”

He looked back at the driver.

The guy wasn’t wearing a ski mask or a hoodie. He looked like any other blue-collar worker in a Yankees’ beanie and a plaid flannel shirt. He was about thirty-five, Craig estimated. Brown hair, neatly trimmed beard and mustache.

Someone’s all-around good old boy uncle, perhaps, come to the big city.

Craig realized that he and the woman were no longer in danger—not as far as this crew went. He regretted the fact that he was now certain he had been right.

There was a copycat group working the streets. With real guns—guns that killed.

He’d won the bet with Mike.

He wished that he’d lost.

Two groups...

And the one that killed was still out there.

CHAPTER THREE

ALL KIERAN WANTED to do was escape, but getting away wasn’t going to be that easy.

The police and the FBI and everyone else who had shown up where the van had stopped needed to speak with her.

At least half of them were convinced that she needed medical attention.

She was somewhat banged up. There weren’t seats in the van—the back had been empty except for some tools, including the tire iron she’d used on the thief when he’d had a gun trained on the FBI agent.

Except that it hadn’t been a gun at all; it had been a water pistol. However, she didn’t feel quite so foolish, because Mr. FBI hadn’t known it was a water pistol, either.

Why the hell did companies make such accurate children’s toys? Were they trying to help raise the next generation of crooks?

She needed to leave. She needed to get back to the pub before Declan started worrying about her.