Night's Landing by Carla Neggers Page B

get-on-with-life spirit of the tourists and New Yorkers around her.
    But her hands were clammy, and her vision seemed constricted, as if her mind was resisting taking in the details of her surroundings, mixing them with those of what she’d seen on television on the shooting, what she’d been told and had heard in the hospital corridors.
    According to news reports, witnesses hadn’t heard shots fired or noticed anything out of the ordinary, certainly no one crouched in the bushes with an assault rifle. They’d only seen the two men falling, the tall one helping the more seriously injured one to cover behind the rocks, his gun drawn as he shouted instructions to onlookers, then the New York City police officer arriving on his horse, and finally dozens of paramedics and federal, state and city law enforcement officers descending.
    The undergrowth along the pond and on the hillside below Central Park South conceivably could hide a shooter, but how could he get away with a near-instantaneous dragnet dropping on the surrounding area? How could he have avoided being seen crawling under the brush, setting up his weapon? The Pond—that was its name, just
The Pond
—was a wildlife sanctuary in the heart of the city.
    Sarah reminded herself she wasn’t an investigator or firearms expert. She ran her fingertips along the smooth granite face of the rock outcropping.
    As she forced herself to take a deep breath she noticed a man standing at the stone fence above her on Central Park South. He seemed to be watching her. He wore a black turtleneck and black leather jacket that were a little too warm for the conditions.
    She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe.
    The clothes. The dark hair that was long in the front.
    She squinted—yes, the angular features.
    She’d seen him before.
    Not in New York. He wasn’t a reporter, a doctor, a marshal.
    Where?
    Amsterdam.
    Sarah expelled the air from her lungs and tried to gulp in more, but her head was spinning. How could it have been Amsterdam?
    The Rijksmuseum.
    Now she remembered. She’d flown to Amsterdam from Scotland three weeks ago to visit her parents while Rob was there on vacation.
    They’d all gone to the Rijksmuseum together.
    You’re being dramatic again.
    What difference did it make if it was the same man she’d seen at the museum?
    The man above her on Central Park South made eye contact with her briefly, then turned and disappeared across the street.
    Sarah started for a bench, but her knees buckled under her. She felt herself sinking.
Damn. I can’t faint
.
    “Hold your breath.” Nate Winter walked up behind her, speaking firmly, even sternly. “You’re hyperventilating.”
    “I’m not—I can’t breathe.”
    “It just feels that way.”
    She nodded, doing as he said. He slipped an arm around her middle and stood motionless, silent, for the minute or so it took for her to get her breathing back to normal.
    Feeling foolish, she stepped back out of his arm. “I’m okay now. Thanks.” She was too far away to have made a credible, positive identification of the man—of anyone—up on Central Park South. Thinking she recognized him had to have been a trick of her imagination. A product of the stress of the past two days. “I hope you didn’t hurt your arm.”
    Winter seemed even taller than he had at the hospital. “I didn’t grab you with my injured arm, although I could have. It’s doing fine.”
    “I wouldn’t have fainted.”
    He half smiled. “Of course not.”
    Sarah had no intention of telling him that she may have recognized someone up on the street. New York had a population of eight million—it had to be a common experience for people to think they saw someone they knew and have it turn out to be a perfect stranger. She didn’t even know why she remembered the man from Amsterdam. Because he’d stopped to look at a Dutch painting with her while she waited for her mother?
    Not entirely, she thought. She also had wondered if he might be with