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You are dead!

Five minutes later, after firing off a string of messages, he got what would be the last one from the woman. Two minutes after that, beyond furious, he was still looking at it:

831-555-6235

I NEED $200,000 CASH BY TOMORROW.

I’LL BE IN TOUCH.

This dollar amount, it is not random.

She knows. She does have the books.

I should kill Ricky.

But first this woman.

He wrote:

IT WILL TAKE A LITTLE TIME TO GET THAT MUCH IN CASH.

BUT YOU SHOULD HAVE WHAT YOU WISH BY TOMORROW.

IF YOU WOULD MEET ME WITH PROOF THAT YOU HAVE WHAT IS MINE?

A PAGE WOULD SUFFICE.

AND OF COURSE IT SHOULD BE A PUBLIC PLACE OF YOUR CHOOSING.

He read it over.

Not all a lie.

Cash will be short now that I have to pay for the coke that was lost.

And she can pick any place she wants to die.

Dmitri Gurnov hit SEND, then threw the go-phone onto the passenger seat.

He yanked the transmission into drive and sped toward Chestnut Street, trying to decide if it was the fastest route to the Fishtown dive bar.

[THREE]

The Roundhouse

Eighth and Race Streets, Philadelphia

Monday, November 17, 3:15 P.M.

Matt Payne approached the heavy wooden door of the Executive Command Center on the top floor of police headquarters. He could hear the low hum of activity inside.

When he pulled the door open, it didn’t surprise him to find maybe twenty men and women, both sworn officers and civilian staff, in the brightly lit room. Most were seated at the T-shaped conference tables, busily working at the rows of laptop computers and multiline telephones. On the ten-foot-tall wall before them, the three banks of sixty-inch flat-screen monitors, twenty-seven total, were all glowing, their screens reflecting on the glass-topped conference tables.

Payne felt some people glancing at him as he entered. He exchanged nods with those who made eye contact with him—including Kerry Rapier, seated across the room at the ECC’s control bank, who greeted him by raising one of Matt’s coffee mugs and mouthing Marshal—then they turned back to their computers and phones.

Being called the Wyatt Earp of the Main Line cut both ways. While Matt had widespread support—beginning with Mayor Carlucci—he was acutely aware that not everyone thought he should be a cop. There were more than a few who felt his privileged upbringing and high connections gave him, put very politely, an unfair advantage. And his reputation for headline-grabbing O.K. Corral shoot-outs that left a long trail of dead bad guys only poured fuel on what was their fiery rhetoric.

Matt knew that no matter what he did, some opinions would never change. He didn’t dwell on his detractors, but he also made sure he didn’t forget that they were there—and would love nothing better than to see him fail.