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Foster shrugged. “Just damn lucky, all I can figure. Except for getting banged up. Didn’t have his seat belt on and got thrown around the back of vehicle.”

Payne just looked at him.

“No seat belt?” he then said. “Maybe that’s it. He got lucky and saw the shotgun before the first round went off. Or got even luckier when it did, ducking down on the floorboard and using the engine block for cover.”

Foster and Harkness exchanged glances.

“I just figured he’d left his seat belt off,” Foster said, nodding thoughtfully. “Hiding behind the fire wall makes sense.”

“Their friend . . .” Harkness said. “She showed up right after we dragged the two out of the vehicle. Said she’d run down from The Rittenhouse. That’s how I found out they were all staying there.”

“Good-looking blonde woman, mid-thirties, nicely dressed, right?” Payne said.

“Yeah,” Harkness said. “A real beauty. The rich kind, you know? Wasn’t happy she couldn’t ride along in the ambulance. She calmed down real quick when I flagged a cab to take her to Hahnemann.” He paused, then added, “So, then, you saw her?”

Payne nodded. “Near the shooting. Who is she?”

Harkness pulled from his notepad what looked like a business card and handed it to Payne.

“She gave me this.”

Payne’s eyes went to the card.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “Camilla Rose Morgan. That was her. Didn’t recognize her.”

“She someone important?” Harkness said.

“That is what’s known as a vast understatement, but you were right about the rich part,” Payne said. He motioned with the card. “I can keep this? You have the info off it?”

“Sure thing, Sergeant Payne.”

“By the way,” Payne said, “nice work, you two. Pulling those guys out took real guts. Not everyone would’ve taken the risk.”

“Thanks,” they said over each other.

“You would have done it,” Simpson, the EMT, said. He gestured toward Payne’s bloodstained shirt. “You have done it. Just one example is ol’ Ray-Ray damn near making you number 373.”

The blue shirts nodded their agreement and obvious admiration.

The news media was still reporting, weeks later, on Homicide Sergeant M. M. Payne’s foot chase of eighteen-year-old Rayvorris Oliver, a street-corner drug dealer, after Ray-Ray’s partner had just shot up a North Philly coffee shop.

Payne, who had been in the coffee shop talking with a confidential informant who had been their target, took out the shooter when he attempted to aim the semiauto at Payne. Oliver fled the scene.

After running through multiple overgrown, weed-choked lots, Payne had been ambushed by Oliver—and took a bullet in the gut.

Payne returned fire, then collapsed from his wound.

Ray-Ray died at the scene, making him homicide number 372 for the year. His partner had become number 371 moments after his bullets killed an innocent bystander—number 370—who had been eating at the coffee shop’s back counter.

The shootings had been, and remained, big news because the city was not only living up to its unwelcomed epithet of Killadelphia, it was doing so with record numbers of deaths. And there was no reason to expect a reprieve anytime soon.

“Thanks,” Payne said to Simpson, then looked between Harkness and Foster. “But, fact is, I let you guys go into harm’s way while I chased—and lost—the shooter. And you performed admirably.” He paused, then added, “If you’ll excuse me.”

Payne took a couple steps away from them, then pulled out his cellular phone and thumbed a text message: Can you meet me at Hahnemann ER in maybe 20?

A minute later, his phone vibrated once with a reply message: Once again, boss, you’re a day late and a dollar short. I’m already at ER. And you’ve been requested by name.

[ THREE ]