Chapter 15: The Mitten

The tip reached Vincent at nine on Saturday morning, through one of his father's captains.

A dockhand had seen a grey van unload at a cold storage building in Chelsea before dawn.

It carried a small child, wrapped up, and two men.

"Too convenient," Maura said.

"I know." Vincent was already loading a pistol with his healing hands. "I'm going anyway."

"Then I'm going with you."

"No."

"I'm the one who can tell you whether the boy in that van is mine."

He looked at her for a long moment and then handed her a flak vest.

The building stood at the dead end of an alley off Eastern Avenue, between a scrapyard and a fence hung with plastic bags.

Vincent brought four men, three at the corners and one at the back door.

The youngest was barely twenty-five, a lean guard who kept calling her ma'am until she told him to stop.

They went in at ten minutes to noon.

The rooms inside were cold and bare, with a line of empty crates and a space heater still ticking.

Nobody was there.

On the concrete in the middle of the floor sat a child's sleeping bag, zipped to the top.

Maura crossed the room and tore it open.

A rolled-up sweater, a pillow and a broken tape player.

"It's a stage," she said.

"Out," Vincent snapped. "Everybody out."

The first shot came through the front window.

It hit the young guard in the thigh and spun him to the floor.

The second shattered the space heater, and the room filled with the stink of burning dust.

Vincent had her down behind a crate before she could breathe, with his body over hers.

"Stay low."

"He's hit!"

"I know he's hit. Stay low."

Gunfire cracked from two sides.

His men answered, and the noise was huge in the small room.

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