THE MAFIA BOSS WATCHED ME CATCH THE BLUE BIRTHDAY BALLOON HIS NINE-YEAR-OLD SON'S FUTURE STEPMOTHER HAD JUST CUT LOOSE DURING HIS ENGAGEMENT DINNER

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Luca didn't wait for police backup.

He slammed the Maserati into gear, pulled a violent U-turn across four lanes of Pearson Street traffic, and floored the accelerator toward Lake Shore Drive.

The twin-turbo engine screamed as the speedometer needle climbed past ninety, then a hundred miles an hour, weaving between evening commuters as the dark waters of Lake Michigan flashed past on our left.

Luca was on the hands-free speakerphone dialing Marco's cell phone while steering with one hand.

The line clicked twice, then cut straight to dead static.

"Signal jammer!" I cried, bracing myself against the dashboard as we took the Museum Campus exit ramp at seventy miles an hour, the tires screeching against the asphalt. "The same kind of mobile frequency jammer they used near the hospital elevator! Russo's men are blocking cell calls on the peninsula so Marco can't call for backup!"

Ahead of us, at the far end of Solidarity Drive where the limestone dome of the Adler Planetarium stood silhouetted against the twilight sky and the glittering Chicago skyline, the streetlamps were strangely dark.

Someone had tripped the circuit breaker box at the entrance to the parkway.

And parked sideways across the narrow bicycle path near the bronze Copernicus statue was the Moretti family's armored black Escalade—with its front passenger tire blown out by spike strips and its windshield spiderwebbed with bullet impacts!

"Oh, God, no," I whispered, every drop of blood freezing in my veins.

Luca killed the Maserati's headlights two hundred yards out so they wouldn't hear us coming until the last second, coasting silently up onto the grass embankment behind a row of thick oak trees near the stone seawall.

Thirty yards ahead on the concrete observatory terrace overlooking the crashing waves of the lake, two of Marco's guards were lying motionless on the pavement—alive, groaning as they tried to push themselves up, but pinned down behind the stone parapet by two gunmen in black ski masks holding suppressed submachine guns.

Marco himself was bleeding from a grazing wound across his forehead, crouched behind the open rear door of the disabled Escalade with his pistol drawn, unable to fire without hitting Caroline—because standing twenty feet away by the brass promenade railing was Dante Russo!

Russo had one arm locked around Caroline's throat while his third gunman dragged nine-year-old Benjamin backward toward a high-speed fiberglass cigarette boat idling against the concrete boat dock at the base of the seawall stairs!

Benjamin was still clutching his little wooden telescope in one hand, kicking wildly at the masked man's shins while trying not to drop it.

"Let my mommy go!" Benjamin screamed against the wind coming off the lake. "Daddy! Miss Rachel!"

"Drop the piece, Marco!" Russo shouted over the roar of the cigarette boat's twin engines below the seawall. "Or I put one through the ex-wife's knee and take the kid to Indiana in pieces! Tell Moretti if he wants his heir back alive on Monday, he drops the charges against my ports and wires twenty million by midnight!"

Luca reached under the driver's seat of the Maserati and pulled out a matte-black Heckler & Koch 9mm pistol, racking the slide with a lethal click.

"Stay in the car and lock the doors, Rachel," Luca whispered fiercely, his hand on the door handle.

I looked out the windshield at the layout of the terrace.

Russo and the gunman holding Benjamin were facing west toward Marco and the disabled Escalade.

Between our car under the oak trees and the seawall stairs where the gunman was dragging Benjamin down toward the boat ran a low, four-foot-high granite retaining wall covered in dark autumn ivy.

If Luca attacked Russo and the two riflemen from the left to save Caroline and Marco, the third man by the seawall stairs would throw Benjamin onto that boat or into the freezing water of Lake Michigan before Luca could shoot through three men to reach him!

"If you shoot at the two men pinning Marco down," I whispered urgently, grabbing Luca's wrist, "the man on the stairs will take Benjamin onto the boat before you can clear the terrace!"

"I don't have a choice—Marco can't move until those two rifles are down!" Luca hissed.

"Yes, you do," I said.

Before Luca could grab me, I slipped out the passenger door on the dark side of the car, staying crouched below the four-foot granite retaining wall in my dark midnight-blue dress—practically invisible against the shadows of the lakefront rocks.

"Rachel, get back here!" Luca rasped under his breath, unable to shout without alerting Russo thirty yards away.

I didn't look back.

I ran barefoot and completely silent along the wet grass behind the granite wall, my heart pounding so hard in my ears it drowned out the crashing waves of Lake Michigan.

Ten yards.

Twenty yards.

Up on the terrace to my left, two sharp cracks echoed across the water as Luca stepped out from the oak trees and fired twice—dropping both of Russo's masked riflemen with pinpoint shots to the shoulder and leg before they even knew he had flanked them!

instantly, Marco lunged forward from behind the Escalade, tackling Dante Russo off his feet and knocking Caroline clear onto the grass!

Just as I had feared, the third gunman down on the seawall steps panicked when he saw Russo go down.

Instead of letting Benjamin go, the man cursed, grabbed Benjamin by the collar of his coat to haul him onto the fiberglass boat, and raised his heavy 9mm pistol to fire a blind shot back at Benjamin's chest so Luca couldn't pursue them!

I didn't think.

I didn't calculate the odds, or think about how much it would hurt, or remember that I was just a twenty-five-year-old girl with no armor and no weapon.

I vaulted straight over the four-foot granite wall onto the concrete landing right between the gunman and nine-year-old Benjamin!

"Run to your dad, Ben!" I screamed, shoving Benjamin behind me with my left arm while swinging the heavy wooden telescope Benjamin had dropped with my right hand—smashing the solid oak barrel straight across the bridge of the gunman's nose!

The man howled as cartilage crunched, his finger jerking convulsively on the trigger of his pistol at point-blank range.

A blinding flash of orange fire erupted six inches from my ribs.

It didn't feel like a cut at first.

It felt like someone had swung a white-hot iron sledgehammer into my left side just below my ribs, knocking the breath completely out of my lungs and spinning me off my feet onto the wet concrete steps of the seawall.

"Miss Rachel!" Benjamin's terrified scream pierced the night air right beside my ear.

Two gunshots roared from the top of the stairs—Luca's gun—and the masked gunman pitched backward off the dock straight into the black, churning waters of Lake Michigan.

I lay flat on my back on the cold concrete landing, staring up at the clear autumn sky where the first bright stars of Orion's Belt were just beginning to glimmer through the dark blue twilight.

Why were the stars spinning so fast?

And why was my midnight-blue Chanel dress suddenly so warm and heavy against my left side?

"Rachel!"

Footsteps pounded down the stone steps like thunder, and then Luca was on his knees beside me on the wet concrete, his hands covered in my blood as he tore off his white dress shirt and pressed it hard against the gunshot wound in my left side.

"Look at me, Rachel!" Luca shouted, his voice breaking completely—all the cold control of the mafia boss shattered into a million pieces as tears spilled down his face onto my cheek. "Don't you dare close your eyes! Marco, get the ambulance on the radio right now! Tell them we have a gunshot wound at the planetarium dock!"

Beside Luca, nine-year-old Benjamin dropped to his knees in the puddle of blood without hesitating, grabbing my right hand with both of his tiny, freezing hands and pressing his wet cheek against my knuckles.

"Miss Rachel, please don't go to sleep!" Benjamin sobbed, his little chest heaving. "You promised we were going to look at Orion tonight! Daddy, make it stop bleeding! Please don't let her die because of me!"

"I'm right here, sweetheart," I tried to whisper, though my voice sounded as far away as the waves hitting the rocks below us.

I tried to lift my fingers to wipe the tears off Benjamin's cheek, and then up toward Luca's terrified face.

"You see, Ben?" I murmured faintly as the dark edges of the sky began closing in around the stars above us. "I told you... I wouldn't let anyone take you away..."

"Stay with me, Rachel!" Luca's voice echoed down a long, dark tunnel as he scooped my limp body up into his arms and ran up the stone steps toward the flashing red lights of the approaching ambulance. "I love you, damn it, do you hear me?! You stay with us!"