3rd Degree (Women's Murder Club 3)

hen he yanked open the door and ran out of the house.

About four feet from the van he raised the gun, squeezing off a long burst in the direction of the police. There were two loud cracks. Just two. Robert stopped in his tracks. He spun around, a surprised look on his face, crimson stains widening on his chest.

“Robert!” Julia screamed. She smashed the barrel of her gun through the front window and started shooting wildly. Then she was hurled backward and didn’t move again.

Suddenly a black canister sailed through the front window. Gas started to leak out. Then another black canister. A stinging, bitter cloud began to envelop the room, clawing at Michelle’s lungs.

“Oh, Mal,” she cried. She looked toward him. He was standing there, no fear on his face now.

In his hands he held a portable phone.

“I’m not going out there,” he said.

“I’m not, either.” She shook her head.

“You really are a brave little girl.” Mal smiled.

She watched him punch in a four-digit number. A second later she heard a ring. It came from the suitcase.

Then a second ring.

A third…

“Remember”—Mal took a breath—“no juice, no boost. Right, Michelle?”

Chapter 98

WHEN THE HOUSE BLEW we were crouched behind the cover of a black-and-white, barely a hundred feet away.

There were bold orange flashes as the windows exploded. Then the house seemed to lift off its foundation, a fiery cloud ripping the whole thing apart through the roof.

“Get down!” Molinari yelled. “Everybody down!”

The blast hurled us backward. I took Cindy, who’d been standing next to me, down to the ground, shielding her from the force of the blast and the shower of debris.

We lay there as the searing gust lifted over us. A few cries of “Holy shit” and “Are you all right?”

Slowly, we got back up. “Oh, God…,” Cindy groaned.

Where a second ago a white clapboard house had been standing, now there was only smoke, fire, and a crater of blown-out walls.

“Michelle,” Cindy muttered. “Come on, Michelle.”

We watched the fire rise as the wind whipped the flames. No one came out. No one could have lived through such a blast.

Sirens started up. Frantic radio transmissions filled the air. I heard cops shouting into walkie-talkies: “We have a major explosion at seven twenty-two Seventh Street….”

“Maybe she wasn’t in there.” Cindy shook her head, still staring at the devastated house.

I put my arm around her. “They killed Jill, Cindy.” Later, after the fire crews had doused the blaze to smoking cinders and the EMS teams were going around tagging the charred remains, I sifted through the debris myself.

Was it over now? Was the threat gone? How many were in there? I didn’t know. It looked like four or five. Hardaway was probably dead. Was Charles Danko in there, too? August Spies?

Claire had arrived. She was kneeling over the covered bodies, but the parts were burned almost beyond recognition.

“I’m looking for a white male,” I told her, “about fifty.”

“Best I can tell, there seem to be four of them,” she said. “The black male who was shot in the driveway. Three others inside. Two of them female, Lindsay.”