Luke liked to think that, barring anything wildly unnatural, he was prepared for anything. Quinn whipping open the back door to the ambulance and wearing a look of uncut terror when she was supposed to be getting them to Remington Memorial for a patient workup?

Not what he’d been expecting.

“Quinn? What the—”

“Ice. It’s Ice. He’s out there in the crowd.”

Every part of Luke froze except for his heart. “What?”

“Are you sure?” Isabella asked at nearly the exact same time, and Quinn nodded in a broken movement.

“He held a gun to my head and threatened to kill everyone I care about. I’m never going to forget his face.”

Carmen released a soft string of what Luke would bet were top-shelf curses in Spanish, and he fought the very irrational, very strong urge to elbow his way out the back of the ambulance, pluck that motherfucker out of the crowd, and rip him to shreds with his bare hands.

Thankfully, Isabella was a touch more level-headed. “Okay, Quinn. Where is he, exactly?”

“H-he’s standing with the onlookers at about ten o’clock. Black T-shirt, sunglasses. Baseball hat pulled low over his face.”

As carefully as they’d looked, he and Quinn hadn’t been able to find a photo of Ice in any of the photo arrays or surveillance footage they’d looked at down at the Thirty-Third. They had, however, given up detailed descriptions of the guy—ones that Isabella seemed to have memorized, because she didn’t ask for more details before she nodded. “And he’s just standing in the crowd, watching the scene?”

A visible shiver moved over Quinn’s body, turning Luke’s fingers to fists. Christ, he wanted to dismantle this guy.

“He was, but when he saw me looking at him, he lifted his sunglasses up and stared back. Then…” She trailed off for a second, her voice pitching to a whisper as she said, “He looked at the pizzeria, then back at me, and he smiled this cold, dead smile and started to walk away.”

“Damn it,” Isabella bit out. She placed one hand on her gun, reaching for the door to the ambo with the other. “Stay in here with Carmen. Do not get out of the rig until I come back. You copy?”

Quinn nodded, but nope. Not today.

Luke followed Isabella out the back of the ambulance, his boots thumping against the ground next to hers before she could protest. “Your partner isn’t here,” he said from the side of his mouth, his eyes roving over the crowd as calmly and covertly as possible. “Plus, I can ID Ice if he’s still out here. Let me help you.”

“Fine,” she said with a frown that said he’d get an earful from her later. “But only because arguing would waste time. And if we put eyes on him, you stay here and call for help. Do you understand me?”

“Copy that,” Luke said, because he knew that even though her sentence had technically ended with a question mark, she really wasn’t asking.

“Good. You see him?”

Luke had to hand it to her. Isabella’s laid back, nothing-to-see-here stance was flawless, even though he had zero doubt she had their surroundings under a microscope and would be able to put the weapon her hand still rested on to defensive use in about two seconds flat if she needed to.

“No.” Damn it. He surveyed the crowd, which still looked as big as it had earlier even though the fire seemed nearly—if not all the way—dispatched. “I don’t see him anywhere.”

After another three minutes of surreptitious scrutiny from as many vantage points, they both came up empty.

“Still nothing.” Luke shook his head. He’d seen a handful of men that had made him do a double-take, but no Ice. No Damien or Baseball Hat, a.k.a. Adam Simpson, either. “The only way he’s still here is if he’s invisible.”

“Shit,” Isabella said. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

Luke’s pulse tapped in a steady rhythm of unease. “That he’s in the wind?”

“That he suspects you and Quinn came to us. I’ll radio dispatch to add Ice to the BOLO list, and they’ll update Bridges. In the meantime, let’s get Carmen to Remington Mem. I’m sure Sinclair will meet us there.”

* * *

Luke sat back in his hard plastic chair and examined the small, sterile conference room in Remington Memorial for the nine thousandth time. Also for the nine thousandth time, he wished that the bottle of water in his hand was a triple shot of tequila. The only silver lining of the last two hours had been discovering that Momma Billie had left this morning to take Hayley on an overnight trip to Asheville to visit their Great-Aunt Margaret. Everything else—from the fire call to the assault on Carmen to the possibility that Ice knew he and Quinn had gone to the intelligence unit—had ranked somewhere between being audited by the IRS and having his nuts slammed in a drawer.

All painful as shit with the high possibility for permanent damage.

Quinn sat next to him with her own bottle of water in-hand, watching as Hale fiddled with the laptop on the conference room table and the other detectives from the intelligence unit filtered in from the hallway. The flicker of hope that had lit her dark blue stare when she’d grabbed his hand in the back of the ambo earlier was gone, replaced by that guarded fear Luke had thought was in the past tense. That Quinn was scared again was bad enough. That right now he’d do anything, however irrational, to erase the fear from her face?

On second thought, screw a triple shot of tequila. What he really needed was the whole damned bottle.

Sergeant Sinclair followed Captain Bridges into the conference room, shutting the door with a firm thump behind him. “Copeland. Slater. How are you two holding up?”

“Fine,” Quinn said, the word stabbing into Luke with all the subtlety of a scalpel. “How’s Carmen?”

“She’s hanging in there,” Isabella said, sitting down next to Quinn. “Her ribs are bruised and she’s got four fresh stitches over her eye, but after a week of rest, she’ll be as good as new.”

“Probably as mouthy, too,” Hollister added. “But you guys did a great job taking care of her.”

There was no mistaking the gratitude beneath the detective’s attitude. Luke wondered—not for the first time—exactly how Hollister and Isabella knew the woman. But considering the circumstances, it was a question for another day. “She’s lucky that whoever assaulted her didn’t do worse,” Luke said. “Do you think it was Ice?”

Sergeant Sinclair took point on that one. “No. She put a positive ID on someone else for the break-in, a guy named Marcus Dixon.”

He nodded to Maxwell, who pulled up a mug shot on a tablet and turned it toward Luke and Quinn.

“I’ve never seen him before,” he said, confusion filling his brain as Quinn also shook her head to the negative. “So does that mean the assault isn’t related to our case?”

“It means things are complicated.”

Quinn stiffened beside him, her ponytail bouncing over the shoulder of her uniform top as she asked, “Okay. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Dixon’s a bit of a wild card,” Garza said from the spot where he leaned against the doorframe. “He’s not a known member of the Vipers, but he’s definitely not a choir boy, either. His rap sheet’s as long as my arm, and he’s got some nasty B&E’s headlining the list. He just got out of county lockup a couple of weeks ago. It’s possible he hooked up with Ice for this smash and grab.”

“Or?” Captain Bridges put the unspoken question to voice, and Luke connected the dots a second later.

“Or you think this is some weird coincidence and the Vipers aren’t involved at all.”

“We’ve still got a BOLO out on Cherise, and we know she was at Three Brothers the other night when Moreno and Hollister were talking to Carmen. We also know that someone out there is fishing for intel on Damien,” Hale said, looking across the table at him. “But without a connection between Cherise and Dixon, or either of them to Damien and Ice, we’re left with a lot of maybes.”

“I don’t understand.” Quinn spun a gaze from Hale to Sinclair. “We know Ice is involved. He was there.”

A beat of silence filled the room, making Luke’s gut pang. One of the bonuses to staying one step outside of any group was that he could read most people like the Sunday paper. Those loaded glances all five detectives had just swapped? Yeah, they might’ve lasted for only a split second, but he still hadn’t missed them.

Finally, Sinclair said, “Eyewitness testimony isn’t always ironclad, and you’ve been under some very understandable stress for the last week.”

“Are you saying you think I was seeing things, Sergeant?” Quinn covered the words in a not-small amount of frost, which was the same way Sinclair answered them.

“That depends. How sure are you that you saw Ice in that crowd today?”

The legs of Luke’s chair had scraped over the linoleum before he’d even realized he would move, but Quinn put out a hand, beating him to the figurative punch.

“You’ve been a cop for a long time, right?” she asked, and the question was so unexpected that it stunned Luke into place.

It must have shocked Sinclair, too, because his gray-blond brows had just taken a one-way trip toward his crew cut. “I have.”

“So it’s fair to say you’ve probably had someone point a gun at you. Threaten your life. Maybe even try to kill you.”

Detective Maxwell and Captain Bridges both opened their mouths simultaneously, but Sinclair shook his head, his eyes never leaving Quinn’s. “That’s an accurate assessment. Yes.”

Quinn nodded, and although her chin trembled ever so slightly, the words she said next didn’t. “Then you know you don’t forget the faces of those people. Ever. I might not be able to prove it, but am one-hundred percent certain I saw Ice in that crowd. I’d stake my life on it. And the lives of my station-mates.”

The silence that followed was punctuated only by the rapid thump-thump-thump of Luke’s heartbeat pressing against his eardrums, until finally, Sinclair broke it.

“Okay, then. Let’s figure out what the son of a bitch is up to.” Turning toward Garza, he asked, “You know the guy’s patterns. What are you thinking?”

Garza tugged a hand through his hair, and the way the stuff stuck up in about six different directions told Luke he’d made the move into a habit. “Ice isn’t your average gang leader, and he’s certainly not a run-of-the-mill street thug. To him, the Vipers are a family business—one he takes very seriously. He’s ruthless and as mean as they come, but he’s also methodical. Smart. Always under the radar.”

“I’m not so sure about that.” Capelli’s voice sounded through the laptop positioned at the head of the room, the click of the keys in the background proving that the guy could Skype and run research from home at the same time. “Not entirely, anyway. He might not have taken a mid-day stroll down Main Street, but if he’s behind this assault and he showed up at the scene, he’s certainly above the surface.”

“It does sound less cautious than his usual MO,” Isabella said, and Maxwell lifted his chin in agreement.

“Which means he’s got a good reason to risk being sighted.”

“The question is,” Sinclair said, “what is it?”

Luke’s stomach dropped as the silence stretched out to fill every crevice of the room, but oh no. No fucking way. There had to be a plan. Some way to figure this out. Ice was completely diabolical. If he made good on his threats…

Of course. “He’s trying to intimidate us.”

Luke felt every stare in the room on his skin, but Quinn’s most of all. “He’s already done that pretty well, don’t you think?” she asked.

“No, you might be onto something,” Garza said. “Ice may be strategic, but he doesn’t mess around. If he knew for sure that you and Quinn had come to us—”

“He’d have already made good on his threats to hurt us,” Quinn whispered.

Luke shook his head, taking care to hold on to her stare with his. “But he didn’t. Hell, he didn’t even try.”

“So he’s got to be up to something,” Sinclair said slowly. “He clearly wants to know what we know, if he got Cherise and Dixon to do his recon.”

“And his dirty work,” Hollister muttered, tacking on, “fucking asshat,” for good measure.

Garza nodded, his boots echoing off the floor tiles as he paced in obvious thought. “It’s not unusual for Ice to put other people into play. He runs one of Remington’s most notorious gangs. To him, Cherise and Dixon are like employees. That they both seem to be freelancers with no clear connection to him doesn’t hurt.”

“He’s definitely proving hard to track,” Capelli said. Luke didn’t have to look at the laptop screen to know the guy was frowning. His voice said it all as he continued. “Street cam footage in North Point is hit or miss, and most of the other businesses on the pier are like Three Brothers. No security cams to speak of. The crime scene unit couldn’t find any DNA in the ambulance from the day of the kidnapping. Not that any defense lawyer worth his salt wouldn’t scream reasonable doubt at the top of his lungs even if we did, or point out the pretty obvious fact that—at least as of right now—we don’t even have a body to try and match it to. I’m willing to bet connecting him to Cherise and Dixon—even if you do find either of them—is going to be just as hard.”

“Is he always this cheerful?” Garza asked. Whether it was the detective’s deadpan delivery or the fact that simply no more unease could possibly fit in the damned room, Luke wasn’t sure. But the question scattered the tension, and Isabella chuffed out a soft laugh.

“In a word? Yeah. But he’s really awesome at Jeopardy! so we keep him around.”

The strange sense of humor they also shared at the fire house took another chip out of Luke’s stress, and more importantly, out of the stranglehold Quinn’s shoulders had on her neck.

“Okay,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “So what do we do now?”

Sinclair didn’t hesitate. “We step things up a bit. This all started from a drive-by. Garza, let’s find out more about the beef between the Scarlet Reapers and the Vipers, see if that’ll give us an angle on what Ice is up to. We still have BOLOs out on Cherise and Dixon. Capelli, talk to me about where to find these two.”

“The DMV has Cherise’s last known address over on Delancey Street,” Capelli said after a few seconds’ worth of clacking, and Sinclair nodded.

“Good. Maxwell, you and Hale go for a knock and talk. Bring her in on whatever will stick.”

“You got it, boss,” Hale said, swiping a set of keys off the conference room table less than a breath before Maxwell could.

“Capelli, pull up Dixon’s address along with his parole officer’s contact information. Moreno, you and Hollister work all the leads you can get on him until you find his sorry ass. Let’s see how cooperative he is when he realizes he’s about to go back to the clink for a robbery/assault with a little arson on top,” Sinclair ground out, and okay, yeah. Good. This was starting to sound like a plan.

The sergeant turned back to fix Luke, Quinn, and Captain Bridges with a steely, no-bullshit stare as the detectives filed out of the room.

“We’re in some dicey territory in that we don’t technically have any new or escalated threats to either of you or your families. That said”—Sinclair lifted both hands, probably in response to the way Captain Bridges had just shifted forward in his seat. Sinclair might be a badass police sergeant, but Luke’s captain wasn’t shy about standing up for his people, and hell if that didn’t send a spiral of something sharp and unexpected all the way through his gut—“I think it’s in our best interest to make some adjustments for the sake of everyone’s safety.”

“What did you have in mind?” Bridges asked.

“A few things,” Sinclair said, his focus lasering in on Luke. “I understand your family is out of town for the day.”

Instinct, the tough old bitch, had him nailing a cover over both his emotions and his expression, even as he made the disclosure. “Yes, sir. Until tomorrow afternoon, actually. They’re in Asheville.”

Hayley’s spring exam schedule had offered up a rare Monday off, and Momma Billie had taken full advantage. She’d never liked driving in the dark.

“Good. That’s far enough outside Ice’s reach for us to breathe easy until they get back. If he’s going to act, he’ll do it closer to home first.”

That his grandmother and sister were safe reassured him. That Quinn and everyone else at Seventeen might not be…not so fucking much.

“So what do we do here, then?” Quinn asked, stealing the question directly from his brain.

“We stay sharp. Ice is smart, and we know he’s watching. If we tighten up too much, he’ll spook, so we’ve got to walk a pretty fine line to stay ahead of him.” Sinclair turned toward Captain Bridges. “The RPD will put extra eyes on Station Seventeen and you’ll get a police escort on any calls your people go out on for the rest of today’s shift. We can pin it on heightened precautions from your response to this morning’s crime scene.”

The steady stream of keystrokes sounding off from the laptop on the table said Capelli was turning Sinclair’s words into reality, and the sergeant’s gaze hardened as he continued. “We’ll keep to non-disclosure to the rest of your firefighters for now, but Copeland and Slater are off rotation until at least next shift.”

“What?” Quinn chirped at the same time Luke’s pulse sped way up.

“Come on,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. “You’re sending us home?”

Sinclair looked about as moveable as a skyscraper. “Ice might not have overtly threatened either of you today, but I’m not taking any chances. For now, we need you both to lay low and let us see what we can turn up. Garza will get you both secure at home, and of course, we’ll complete regular sweeps and check-ins, just in case.”

“I’m in perfect agreement,” Bridges added. “With this guy still out there, taking you both off shift and having you hunker down at home is the safest way to handle this for now.”

“Great,” Luke said, but between the emotions in his gut and the lack of emotions currently on Quinn’s face, the truth was, he felt anything but.