“You better be good.” Dietz chuckled. “You miss, Lieutenant, the next one goes in her.”

“I am good.” Hauck nodded.

Hauck took a step toward him. More of a stagger in the sand. It was then he realized that his knees were growing weak and that his strength was waning. He had lost a lot of blood.

“No reason to die here, Dietz,” he said. “We all know it was Lennick who was behind the hits. You’ve got someone to roll on, Dietz. Why die for him? You can cut a deal.”

“Why…?” Dietz circled behind Karen, keeping her in his line of sight. He shrugged. “Guess it’s just my nature, Lieutenant.”

Using her as a screen, he fired.

A bright streak whizzed just over Hauck’s shoulder, the heat burning him. His wounded leg buckled as he staggered back. He winced, his arm lowering, exposed.

Seeing an advantage, Dietz stepped forward ready to fire again.

“No…!” Karen screamed, lunging out of the water to stop him. “No!”

Dietz shifted his gun to her.

Hauck hollered, “Dietz!”

He fired. The round caught Dietz squarely in the forehead. The killer’s arm jerked as his own gun went off in the air. He fell back onto the sand, inert, landing like a snow angel, arms and legs spread wide. A trickle of blood oozed from the dime-size hole in his forehead into the lapping surf.

Karen turned, her face wet, glistening. For a moment Hauck just stood there, breathing heavily, two hands wrapped around the gun.

“You didn’t leave,” she said, shaking her head.

“Never,” he said, with a labored smile. Then he dropped to his knees.

“Ty!”

Karen pushed herself up and ran over to him. Dark blood leaked from his side into his hand. Shouts emanated from behind them, flashlights raking over the beach.

Exhausted, Karen hugged him, wrapping her arms around him, a sob of laughter and relief snaking through her tears of fear and exhaustion. She started to cry.

“It’s over, Ty, it’s over,” she said, wiping the blood off his face, tears flooding her eyes.

“No,” he said, “it’s not over.” He collapsed into her, sucking back his pain against her shoulder. “There’s one last stop.”

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THREE

The call came in just as Saul Lennick settled down for a late meal in his kitchen at his house on Deerfield Road.

Ida, the housekeeper, had heated up a pain du champignon meat loaf before she left. Lennick poured himself a glass of day-old Conseillante. Mimi was on the phone upstairs, going over donors for this season’s Red Cross Ball.

He caught his face in the reflection from the window that overlooked Mimi’s gardens. It had been close. A few days later, he didn’t know what might have happened. But he had tidied it all up. Things had worked out pretty well.

Charles was dead, and with him the fear that anything might fall on Lennick. The heavy losses and the violations of the loans, those would be pinned on Charles. The poor fool had simply fled in fear. The cop was dead. Hodges, another loose end, would be dealt with the same way that very night. The old geezer in Pensacola, what did it matter what he went on about now? Dietz and Cates, as soon as he got the call, they would be rich men and out of the country. Out of anyone’s sight.

Yes, Lennick had done things he never thought himself capable of. Things his grandchildren would never know. That was what his career was all about. There were always trade-offs, losses. Sometimes you just had to do things to preserve your capital, right? It had come close to all tumbling down. But now he was safe, his reputation unimpeachable, his network intact. In the morning there was money to be made. That was how you did it-you simply turned the page.

You forgot your losses of the day before.

At the sound of the phone, Lennick flipped it open, the caller ID both lifting him and making him sad at the same time. He washed down a bite of food with a sip of claret.

“Is it done?”

The voice on the other end made his heart stop.

Not just stop-shatter. Lennick’s eyes bulged at the sight of the flashing lights outside.

“Yes, Saul, it’s done,” Karen said, calling from Dietz’s phone. “Now it’s completely done.”

THREE GREENWICH BLUE-AND-WHITE police cars were pulled up in the courtyard of Lennick’s stately Normandy that bordered the wooded expanse of the Greenwich Country Club.

Karen leaned against one, wrapped in a blanket, her clothes still wet. With a surge of satisfaction running through her, she handed Dietz’s phone back to Hauck. “Thank you, Ty.”

Carl Fitzpatrick himself had gone inside-as Hauck was under the care of a med tech-and the chief and two uniformed patrolmen pulled Lennick out of the house, his wrists bound in cuffs.

The banker’s wife, dressed in just a night robe, ran out after him, frantic. “Why are they doing this, Saul? What’s going on? What are they talking about-murder?”

“Call Tom!” Lennick shouted back over his shoulder as they led him onto the brick circle to one of the waiting cars. His eyes met Hauck’s and cast him a contemptuous glare. “I’ll be home tomorrow,” he reassured his wife, almost mockingly.

His gaze fell upon Karen. She shivered despite the blanket but didn’t break her gaze. Her eyes contained the hint of a wordless, satisfied smile.

As if she were saying, He won, Saul. With a nod. He won.

They pushed Lennick into one of the cars. Karen came over to Hauck. Exhausted, she rested her head against his weakened arm.

It’s over.

The sound came from behind them. Only a sharp ping of splintering glass.

It took a moment to figure it out. By that time Hauck was screaming that someone was shooting and had pressed his body over Karen’s on the driveway, shielding her.

“Ty, what’s going on?”

Everyone hit the pavement or ducked protectively behind vehicles. Police guns came out, radios crackled. People were yelling, “Everyone get down! Get down!”

It all stopped as quickly as it began.

The shot had come from up in the trees. From the grounds of the club. No car starting. No footsteps.

Guns trained, the officers looked for a shooter in the darkeness.

Shouts rang out. “Is anyone hurt?”

No one answered.

Freddy Muñoz got up and got on the radio to order the area closed off, but there were a dozen ways to get out from back there. Onto Hill. Deerfield. North Street.

Anywhere.

Hauck pulled himself up off Karen. His eye was drawn to the waiting police car. His stomach fell. “Oh, Jesus, God…”

There was a spiderweb of fractured glass in the rear passenger window. A tiny hole in the center.

Saul Lennick was slumped against it, as if napping.

There was a widening dark spot on the side of his head. His white hair was turning red.

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FOUR

Illegal search. Breaking and entering. Unauthorized use of official firearms. Failing to report a felony act.

These were just some of the offenses Hauck knew he might be facing from his bed in Greenwich Hospital. Not to mention misleading a murder investigation in the BVIs, but at least, for the moment, that was out of the jurisdiction here.

Still, as he lay attached to a network of catheters and monitors, recuperating from surgeries on his abdomen and leg, it occurred to him that a continuing career in law enforcement was pretty much of a morphine drip right now.

That next morning Carl Fitzpatrick came to visit. He brought an arrangement of daffodils with him and placed it on the sill next to the flowers sent by the local policemen’s union, shrugging at Hauck a bit foolishly, as if to say, The wife made me do it, Ty.

Hauck nodded and said, straightfaced, “I’m actually a bit more partial to purples and reds, Carl.”

“Next time, then.” Fitzpatrick grinned, sitting down.