Читаем Code of Honor полностью

Pistol in low-ready, he stood over Adara and the wounded agent, scanning the doorways and windows along Doyers — the street known as the “Bloody Angle,” where Chinese tong hatchet men stained the street red, hacking rival gang members to death in the early days of New York.

“Talk to me, Nick,” Adara said. “Can you hear me?”

Sutton mumbled something Dom couldn’t make out.

“We’re gonna get you fixed up,” Adara said, her voice grim. “Ambulance is on the way.”

Dom glanced down at her blood-soaked phone on the steps.

Sutton moaned. Despite Adara’s efforts, he was losing a lot of blood.

“They’re long gone,” Dom said. “What do you need me to do?”

She pointed to Sutton’s armpit. “You can help me with this artery. There’s another bleeder somewhere and I need to find it.”

Caruso holstered his weapon and knelt across from Adara. She used two fingers to hand off a spaghetti-like end of Sutton’s brachial artery. A gaping three-inch gash laid bare the meat and bone of his upper arm. Two smaller wounds framed the gash like bloody parentheses. The blood and gore made it difficult to tell how many times Sutton had been stabbed, but his wounds were many and deep. His aggressor had gone for his neck, but he’d been able to get his arm up, taking most of the damage to his triceps and his ribs — small consolation, since such a wound only meant he would bleed to death at a slightly slower rate than he would if he’d had his throat cut.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Sutton gave a rattling cough. His eyes fluttered open, and he appeared to see Caruso for the first time.

Adara pressed her palm over a hissing stab wound in his chest, doing her best to seal it until paramedics arrived.

“Dom?” Sutton coughed again, croaking, wincing from the effort.

With his hand literally half buried in Sutton’s flesh, Caruso could feel the man’s hummingbird pulse — rapid but extremely weak, as his heart worked to deliver the little blood left in his system to his brain.

The agent blinked. “What… What are you doing here?”

“Tell you later, bud,” Caruso said. “Who did this to you?”

“Rene…” He coughed again. “She stabbed the shit outta me. Rene Peng… hiding down here while I followed her husband…” Sutton swallowed. “You got any water? I’m really thirsty.”

“Sorry,” Dom said. “We’ll get an IV in you as soon as the ambulance arrives. Save your strength.”

Sutton shook his head. “Pengs are Chinese nationals. Run… snakeheads out of the docks.” He shuddered, spit out a mouthful of blood, then stopped to catch his breath.

“Ambulance is almost here,” Adara said.

“Trying to get these bastards for months… Took my wife and kid to Vincent’s… damned if I didn’t see Rene walk by on the street…”

Sutton’s eyes widened. “My wife… I told her to wait… at restaurant.”

“I’ll go get her,” Dom said. “We’ll bring her to the hospital so she can visit with you.”

“Thanks… dude,” Sutton said, panting harder now. “Oh, man… I should… never have brought Melissa here…”

Caruso patted the agent’s cheek, gently but firmly. “Stay with us, Nick. No going to sleep. Where do you think Rene Peng is going?”

“No idea,” Sutton said, his words slurred. “If I woulda known that, I coulda caught ’em already…”

Ding’s voice broke squelch on the radio. “We have a woman wearing a white ball cap coming at us on East Broadway, toward the bridge. She’s restrained, like she’s trying to look relaxed but isn’t. There’s a guy with sunglasses and blue hoodie about three steps behind her.”

“That has to be them.” Dom looked down at Sutton’s wounds. “There no way she doesn’t have blood on her. Either that or she changed shirts.”

“Stand by,” Chavez said. “She’s walking past me now…” He whispered the next. “Bingo on the blood. It’s them, all right.”

* * *

The swath of red across the front of Rene Peng’s shirt was almost hidden by her arms. Her husband moved up beside her as she passed Ding, stuffing a cell phone back into his pocket and trotting to catch up as if he’d been on a call. He said something to her and they both laughed.

“Heartless bitch,” Ding mumbled, ignoring Clark as he came out of a little bodega and fell in behind the couple. Ding fell back, taking a moment to check out a vendor with a table full of used books in Chinese.

“I have the eyeball,” Clark said. “Half a block from the bridge.”

“Nearly there,” Midas said. “We’ll trap them in a pincer—”

“Let’s hold off on that,” Clark said. “If it looks like they’re going to get away, we’ll take them.”

“John,” Dom said, the need for vengeance straining in his voice. “They slashed the hell out of an FBI agent.”