Carla Neggers - The Rapids

“Did he see you just now?”

“You mean, was he running away from me? I don’t know.”

At the same time, they noticed a change in the crowd at the entrance to the boat tour. A sudden tension, gasps.

Screams.

Maggie and Rob charged back down the street, heading for a half-dozen people who were standing at the open fence, pointing into the water. A woman was screaming.

“Een man…”

A man.

Maggie picked out another word. Gevallen… Fallen. Fell.

“A man’s fallen into the river,” Rob said tightly.

There were more screams, excited words in Dutch that all ran together to Maggie’s untrained ear.

Rob obviously spoke enough languages that he was able to make out the basics. “They think he’s dead.”

“Not Tom—”

She didn’t know why she said his name.

When they got to the fence and looked down at the river, they could see the body of a man floating facedown in the shallow water, drifting downstream.

The balding head, the stocky build, the rumpled clothes.

“Hell,” Rob breathed. “It’s him. Kopac.”

Maggie turned away and took in a breath, pushing back a rush of emotion, then forced herself to look again at Tom’s body.

Blood.

His head…

The images she was seeing came together, registered. He’d been shot at the base of his neck, the bullet going upward into his brain.

Tom. My God.

There was almost no hope he was alive.

Rob pounded down the stairs to the waterway, and Maggie jumped after him, a man yelling to them in Dutch. From the tone of his voice, she knew he was worried about them.

She understood his fear. “A shooter. Rob, if there’s a shooter—”

But another look at Tom confirmed, at least in Maggie’s mind, it hadn’t been a sniper attack. There was no one hiding on a rooftop—or in the bushes, as the gunman who’d shot Rob had done in Central Park four months ago.

From what she could see, Tom had been shot up close and personal. She felt a sense of revulsion, anger and grief, even as she forced herself to pull back from her emotions and focus on the problem at hand.

Rob pushed out to the edge of the dock. “Someone will have called the police by now.”

As he spoke, Maggie heard sirens. Neither she nor Rob had authority as law enforcement officers in the Netherlands. Given the circumstances, they weren’t even armed.

But they had to make sure there was nothing they could do for Tom.

Rob knelt down and grabbed Tom’s arm. His body was snagged on a support post, and Maggie helped, taking hold of Tom’s belt. His skin was warm, water pouring off his clothes as they managed to get him up onto the platform.

He was dead. He’d probably died instantly.

“I just saw him,” Maggie said. “It wasn’t, what, even five minutes ago? The killer can’t have gotten far. Someone must have seen something, someone—”

Rob glanced up at the frightened and horrified people along the fence. “At least we know one of us didn’t kill him.”

Maggie nodded. At least they knew that much, if not a damn thing else. Like why Tom was here. If he’d spotted her, heard her. If he’d taken off because he didn’t want to talk to her.

If he’d known his killer.

And if his killer had anything to do with the American fugitive who’d been picked up in Den Bosch two days ago.

“Come on,” Rob said. “The Den Bosch police are going to want to talk to us.”

A dead American in their small city?

The local police most certainly would want to talk to the two U.S. federal agents who’d pulled him out of the river.

“He was the kind of guy who got homesick for Krispy Kreme doughnuts,” Maggie said, realizing her front was soaked with river water.

“A nice guy,” Rob said.

“A very nice guy.”

It was four o’clock before Rob and his DS escort left the police station, their clothes finally dry, every question asked of them answered. Maggie pushed ahead on the narrow, sunny street. “I need to walk,” she said.

Rob didn’t object. It was a hot, still afternoon. The city seemed quiet, almost as if it were mourning the violence that had taken place there a few hours ago.

An exhaustive search hadn’t produced a single lead on Thomas Kopac’s killer so far.

No one saw anything. No one heard anything.

Except for Maggie Spencer.

Rob said nothing as he walked alongside her. She seemed preoccupied. Not, he thought, that she was an easy woman to read.

Various Dutch and American authorities had swarmed the Den Bosch police station, including the FBI and Regional Security Officer George Bremmerton, Maggie’s immediate boss. All of them grilled both her and Rob about what they’d seen that morning, what Maggie had talked about with Kopac in recent days, why he’d shown up at Rob’s hotel last night.

Although she knew Tom Kopac well enough to consider him her first real friend since she’d arrived in the country, Maggie had been straightforward and professional with her answers. She’d also had her own questions, namely, if there was anything about Tom Kopac that she hadn’t been told.

Rob had that same question himself.

Den Bosch police were trying to locate people who’d been in the vicinity of the boat tour that morning, interviewing the café’s wait staff and manager—anyone who might have seen the American who’d turned up in the Binnendieze. Maggie’s sighting of Kopac and the subsequent commotion along the river pinpointed the approximate time he’d been killed.

Apparently someone had walked up to him, shot him and disappeared.

Not an easy feat to pull off.

The brutal, calculated murder of an American diplomat had taken Dutch and U.S. authorities by complete surprise. They had Nick Janssen in custody. The killing was supposed to stop.

“Another American in trouble on Dutch soil,” Maggie said as she and Rob walked across the street to Den Bosch’s market square, crowded with booths and shoppers. She was obviously spent, taken aback by Kopac’s death, the loss of a friend. “The second American murdered in less than a year.”

“Nick Janssen ordered Charlene Brooker’s murder,” Rob said unnecessarily.

“No one had a clue that she was on to him. He was still a fairly low-priority tax evader then.”

“Has there been any sign of Ethan Brooker since Janssen’s arrest?” Rob asked.

After his wife’s death, Ethan, an army Special Forces officer, had made finding her killer his personal mission. It’d taken him to Tennessee, where he’d posed as the Dunnemores’ property manager. After helping Sarah Dunnemore, Nate Winter and Juliet Longstreet stop their Central Park shooter—a loose cannon with a crazy scheme of his own—Brooker had simply disappeared.

When things exploded in Night’s Landing, Rob was still recovering from his gunshot wound in his New York hospital.

“It’s not as if Brooker’s kept the embassy informed of his whereabouts,” Maggie said.

“Could he have given you the tip on where to find Janssen?”

“I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible. But nothing suggests he’s anything but one of the good guys—he couldn’t have killed Tom.” Her voice cracked, and she turned away, fixed her gaze on a nearby food booth. “Damn.”

“Are you going to be all right?” Rob asked.

She nodded. “I’d like to offer up a prayer.”

A prayer? “Okay.”

She lifted her chin, squinting against the late afternoon sun. “It’ll only take twenty minutes or so. Do you mind?”

“No, of course not.”

She smiled faintly. “You can try the fresh herring. It’s a Dutch favorite.”

“It’s raw.”

“Yes, but it’s good. You salt it, then more or less drop it down your throat as if you were a seal. I like it. The tradition is to chase it with a shot of genever. Dutch gin.”