Burn (Michael Bennett 7)

I’d been on a few car pursuits in NYC in my time, but never an off-road one!

Roger looked surprised when he turned around and saw me right on his quad’s bumper. He tried to turn again, but I was waiting for him. He and his vehicle went flying as the right front bumper of the Chevy tapped the rear of the quad, sending it into a fishtail that soon turned into a barrel roll over the diamond’s infield dirt.

I screeched to a stop about a millimeter from home plate just in front of the fenced-in backstop, turning to see if Roger was still alive. Of course he was. Off the toppled quad and on foot now, he slipped through a gap beside the backstop and ran for the footbridge about a football field away.

“I got this,” Arturo said, already out of the car and up-righting the still-running quad.

I could hardly believe my eyes as my chunky partner pinned it after Roger through the gap in the fence.

Roger was twenty yards from the base of the footbridge when Washington and I, watching through the chain-link, saw a fired-up Arturo leap from behind the wheel of the speeding quad. Like a three-hundred-pound Puerto Rican cannonball, he sailed through the air toward Roger’s sprinting back.

It was a direct hit, center mass. Roger and Arturo went facedown in a plume of dust.

When I finally got the car around the fence and screeched up, Arturo had already cuffed him. Still amped on adrenaline, Arturo leaped to his feet, dancing around, arms raised over his head like Rocky.

“How’s that for fast, Mike?” Arturo yelled as Roger lay there gasping. “Oh, yeah! Uh-huh! Done! Finito! Over!”

“Not bad, Lopez,” I said, laughing, as I finally got out of the car and gave him a high five. “Your form could use some work, but I have to hand it to you. You definitely nailed the landing.”

CHAPTER 86

A WINDOW-SHAKING RUMBLE of thunder woke me without preamble that next Monday morning. Sitting up on the edge of the bed, I remembered the meeting I had to be at in a couple of hours.

How could I forget it?

We’d been subpoenaed to appear at a preliminary custody hearing for Chrissy at ten a.m. at the Manhattan Family Court House downtown.

I’d been going crazy on the phone with Gunny Chung all weekend. We’d been working hard on a pretty good game plan to nip this in the bud ever since Bieth had come uninvited to my house. We’d uncovered some very interesting information about Robert Bieth and his relationship to Chrissy’s birth mother that definitely threw this whole matter into question.

But now, with the hearing staring me in the face, I wasn’t so sure.

I clamped a hand over my stubbled chin as I stared out through the blinds at the rain pouring down from the glum, dirty-gray sky.

Why the hell is this happening?

I was still sitting there frozen with worry a minute or two later when my phone hummed on the nightstand.

Michael God bless you and God bless Chrissy said the text from Mary Catherine. I let out a breath. Despite the fact that my nanny was an ocean away dealing with her own heartbreaking problems, she’d insisted that I keep her in the loop on Chrissy.

What time was it in Tipperary? I wondered. Noon? And how did Mary Catherine even know I was awake?

Because she was Mary Catherine, of course. Nothing was hidden from the angels and saints.

The phone gave off its little hum again as I was putting it back down.

Everything will turn out well. I know it will, Mary Catherine had typed.

“I’m glad you’re confident, lass,” I whispered to the screen in the dark as I stood. “Because I’m not so sure.”

Shaved and dressed ten minutes later, I walked into Chrissy’s bedroom to find her not only already awake but already ready. Her face was scrubbed, her curly blond hair washed and carefully combed and ponytailed, her nails polished. Wearing her nicest poufy dress and a cardigan and tights, she looked like she was on her way to Easter Sunday Mass.

“Look, Daddy. I’m all ready for our special day,” my little girl said.

I’d been very vague to Chrissy about the whole situation from the beginning. Today I had promised her a special lunch, just the two of us, after an appointment I had with some people downtown. I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do, but I was out of ideas, as well as time. I just couldn’t stand scaring her.

I shook my head as I smiled at Juliana and Jane standing behind her. Without being asked, my two eldest daughters had gotten up early and gone way above and beyond.

“You guys are the best sisters in the world, you know that, don’t you?” I said to them.