Page 29 of Dangerous Vengeance

Natalie turns for a moment and looks terrified as Mike stands and moves toward me. She shakes her head. “I swear I won’t tell anyone, Matty. I need to find Hal’s killer. I swear. Your secret is safe…” Natalie sets the bag down on the white marble floor.

Then she runs.

I drop the cane and dart after her, trying to leap over the turn style but the guard is there grabbing me around the waist. I jerk and wrestle him as he pins me against the turn style and searches me. His hands frisk me so quickly I don’t know what’s happening except that Natalie darts out the front of the paper as he produces her barrette from my pocket.

“Goddammit!” I shout, reaching for my weapon. I yank the plastic gun from my boot and aim it at the guard, shooting him in the leg with my single bullet. Then I leap over the turnstile and race through the door, grabbing the bag with the laptop in it on the way.

But she’s gone.

But at least I have my evidence.

“God fucking dammit!” I scream again, pointing the useless weapon at the ground.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. I angrily run toward Rome’s car as the security guard finally shoots off a few rounds. If she thinks she’s getting away with this she’s wrong.

17

NATALIE

Irun—as fast and as far as I can before I’m breathing so hard, I have to stop. My pocket is full of cash from the petty cash fund Sheffield allotted me during my probation period. I shoved it there when Matty wasn’t looking at me, right before Lucy put her nose right where it doesn’t belong. It’s not much, a couple hundred bucks, and in New York it won’t even get me a night in a hotel. But it will help with a few things hopefully. I can’t go back to my apartment; that’s the first place they’ll look. They may be there waiting for me now. And I can’t go back to the newspaper either.

Leaning against the brick exterior of this pharmacy, I realize I’m in this alone now. There is no Sheffield to back me up, no source to glean information from. It doesn’t matter. As I stand there catching my breath, watching cars pass on the street, I know I’ll never write that story. Whether Matty’s family catches up to me and kills me, or I skip town and hide the rest of my life so they don’t, his secret really is safe with me. I don’t have a death wish, I just want justice for Hal, and I won’t stop trying.

My feet hurt, but I start walking north. Running in heels is difficult, so I’m surprised he didn’t even try to chase me. Or maybe he didn’t see what way I went. Regardless, I'm free for now and I have to make every second count. Based on my information and the images I’ve seen I know one of the men who snatched me off the street was there at the scene. I never got a good look at their faces at all, but I remember a voice. My memory is so foggy from the event that I have to rely on pictures to paste it all together. The doctors said it would be that way, that the beta blockers could mess with my memories.

I walk for twenty minutes at least before I get an idea. There is a library near me, on Fifth Avenue. I can go and access public records, old issues of magazines and newspapers. If I can do a little digging on my own, maybe I can find out who is really to blame. If Matty was the one who made the hit, he’d have told me. He wasn’t shy about telling me he killed Sheffield. And if his family was to blame, I think I’d have seen it in his eyes. Still, I can’t be sure, and finding Hal’s killer is the only thing driving me now.

The streets of New York are never an overly friendly place to be, but today I feel all the more vulnerable. I have only a pocket full of cash—no handbag with pepper spray, no phone to call a cab. As I walk past the homeless folks begging for cash, I can’t help but wonder where I’ll sleep tonight, if I’ll be safe. I glance over my shoulder and shudder at the idea of sleeping on the street like that. I’ve seen rats as large as small dogs out here after dark. It’s no joke.

The thought of sleeping on a sidewalk or bench makes me long for the confines of Matty’s house, even if he smacks me and locks me up. It was a shelter over my head, and now I have nothing. I know they’re looking too, which only frightens me more. With no way to protect myself and nowhere to go, I’m a sitting duck. I have no clue how far their reach is, and I’m right in the center of Bratva territory here.

By the time I get to the library I have blisters forming on the backs of my ankles where the heels I’m wearing dig in a little. I’m sweaty from walking so quickly, and my mouth is dry. I should have stopped and gotten some water, but now I have no time. If I don’t find Hal’s killer before the Gusev family catches up to me, I never will. They’ll kill me or keep me locked up forever. And maybe I should have gone to the police, but with the way they cover things up and the number of dirty cops working for them, that will do no good. I can’t even call my family, or I risk dragging them into this.

This place is huge. It feels more like a castle or a massive courthouse. Tall ivory pillars hold up the ceiling. Sweeping grand staircases of marble and granite rise to the second story. A welcome desk is nestled near the archways I enter through, but no one is there. Red velvet ropes on golden pedestals separate the line area from the main entrance. I feel awed by how elegant this place is for a library. It’s like I’ve stepped into history.

I see a sign indicating the research and computer room is located in the basement, so I make my way to the stairs and head down. My eyes take everything in at every angle as much as I can. I can’t afford to be caught off guard and wind up with a bag over my head in the back seat of a car again. My hand shakes as it glides along the handrail until I’m in the basement and the computers come into view.

No one seems to take notice of me as I walk lightly across the red carpet. There are a few computers open, though one of them is isolated near a small window that allows light from the street above to filter down. I choose that one, hoping for some privacy. If nothing else, I can search public records to get phone numbers of people who can actually help me. I don’t have my phone, and no one memorizes numbers these days. If I even want to call Lucy, or anyone at the paper for that matter, I have to look the number up and use a pay phone or buy a burner.

The computer is frustrating, forcing me to create an account with the library and sign up for a card to be mailed to my apartment in a few days. At least they give me seven-day access on a temporary basis today. Once I’m logged in, however, I freeze up. I don’t even know where to begin. My research was so extensive, going back years. I don’t need to bring everyone down, just the one responsible. So where do I start?

I navigate to the archives where they store digital copies of all magazines and newspapers. I know this one well, because I have to use it on almost a daily basis. It’s different than the one at the Herald—this one has every issue of every paper in the city. The Herald’s archive like this only stores its own issues. I used an archive like this at a different library, but it wasn’t so extensive either. Maybe here I will have more luck than in my previous research.

I type in the day of the shooting and the computer pulls up thousands of articles, by hundreds of reporters. There are literally more than a thousand pages of search results with ten articles per page. This could take forever, and I don’t have that sort of time. I click on the filters tab and select a few. I don’t need anything in sports or religion. National news and international affairs can go too. The more ways I can filter this out the better. I find a few more relevant ones to remove and then I refresh the page.

It leaves me with around three hundred articles, which I can skim the names of to narrow it down further. What I’m looking for will be very obvious. The Herald’s story on the shooting didn’t give me enough information. The Tribune and the Times both covered it, but they were just copies from Reuters who got their information from the Herald. I need a fresh perspective, someone who had boots on the ground, not an after the fact interview with a dirty cop.

I sit in that chair for at least two hours reading through headlines and articles that look promising. Finally, on the twenty-second page of search results I find a small press that covered the shooting. It’s a vanity press, and oftentimes they can’t be trusted, but it’s worth having a look through it. I open the article and read their version of the events. It sounds strangely similar to the story my parents told me about what happened. Again, my memories are foggy thanks to the drugs I took in therapy, but it seems pretty accurate.

The images this reporter captured are graphic too—the type you don’t show children. There’s a lot of blood. At least three people died in this shooting. The man I see standing over one of the bodies resembles Matty, and I’m pretty sure he may have been one of the men who snatched me. I’ve seen this photo before, or one like it. It’s immediately following the aftermath of the shooting. I study the image, trying to conjure a memory that will help me put the pieces together. Thankfully there are no pictures of Hal here or I’d probably lose it.

Suddenly all the threads start to come together in my mind. If a man who resembles Matvey Gusev is standing over a dead man, no gun in hand, why did the police indicate that the Bratva were the ones doing the shooting? Detectives pinned the whole thing on the Gusev name as if they had been the gunmen all along, but why would they shoot at their own people? And how was I so blind to not see this before?

Before I leave this place, I need numbers. I take a notepad and a pencil and go to the public records search. I find Matty’s number and a few others—the paper, Lucy, and a police detective I think I can trust. His name is Akers. I scrawl the numbers and shove it in my pocket then my heart nearly stops.

I hear a man’s gravelly voice speaking across the room and the hair on my arms rises. I straighten in my seat and look over my computer, then over my shoulder. He’s dressed in all black, jeans and a jacket, with a turtleneck beneath. I see a tattoo peeking out of the neckline of the jacket and I start to panic. I can’t see his face. I don’t know if he is someone Matty sent to find me, or if I’m just being paranoid. I have a good reason to be so skittish though. I just ran from the largest crime syndicate in the city, and they will be looking for me.

Slowly pushing my chair back, I rise and walk the opposite direction from where the man stands talking to a librarian. My heels sink into the short, tufted carpet and I try to take large steps to move more quickly without looking like I'm running. I don’t want to live like this—always looking over my shoulder in fear, running from place to place because I feel like someone is watching me. I need to get out of this city as soon as I can, but how can I do that if Hal hasn’t been given his justice?

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