Kansas City Countdown. Julie Miller

hell.” Duff was tearing up. “This is not happening to me.”

      Keir blinked rapidly. If he wasn’t careful, he might embarrass himself and do the same thing. “She looks the way I remember Mom.”

      Niall slipped Duff a handkerchief while Olivia shared a tight hug with their father. Keir gave her a thumbs-up when she smiled at the three of them, then turned his attention to the exchanging of vows and rings.

      By the end of the ceremony, Keir was feeling that sting of envy again, a hollowness that seemed to fill the area of his chest right around his heart.

      “You may now kiss the bride.”

      But he’d made his choices. He was genuinely happy for his sister. While Liv’s new husband planted an embarrassingly thorough kiss on her lips, the guests applauded and Keir whistled a cheer between his teeth. Then the recessional started and the happy couple proceeded down the aisle to acknowledge all the family, friends and coworkers gathered here. Duff followed with the matron of honor. Niall took the arm of his bridesmaid and Keir extended his arm to walk Natalie back to her husband and get going to the party to find someone who could make him forget, for a little while, at least, that he wasn’t missing a thing by not putting his heart on the line again.

      He even danced the first few steps in time with the music until he caught a glimpse of movement up in the balcony. A door opened beside a limestone buttress near the organist. The man who stepped in was dressed in black from head to toe. That was no guest. “What the...?”

      By the time Niall shouted, “Gun!” and the recessional ended on an abrupt, dissonant chord, the masked man upstairs had pulled a rifle from beneath his long coat and opened fire down into the church. Keir cursed as he reached for a gun at his waist that wasn’t there and pulled Natalie to the floor behind the front pew.

      Gunfire exploded in the air and chips of wood blasted over their heads and rained down as the shooter emptied his rifle into the congregation.

      Keir was calling Dispatch for a SWAT unit when he heard Duff yell for everybody to get down and heard more chatter among the many police officers in the crowd—getting guests to safety, pinpointing the shooter’s location, making plans to go after the man. A matter of seconds passed as the shooter emptied his clip. The momentary pause meant he was reloading, pulling another gun or running. Now was the time to move.

      “Stay put,” Keir warned Natalie, turning on the camera on his phone. He raised the device over the pew, snapping pictures and getting a position on the shooter before crawling into the aisle. “Damn.” New gun. Keir scrambled toward his father, grandfather and Millie as the man pulled a semiautomatic pistol from his belt and sprayed the church with more bullets. A chunk of marble spit off the floor and smacked into Keir’s leg.

      What the hell was the guy aiming at? Was he blind? Going for chaos over accuracy? The minister at the front of the church was crouched behind the pulpit, and though there were children crying and shouts of panic, Keir couldn’t see signs that anyone was hurt or administering first aid. He didn’t intend to give the guy the opportunity to improve his aim. He might only have milliseconds to reach his family before the shooter turned his gun back in this direction. “Dad? Grandpa? Millie?”

      Keir reached his family, ducking between the seats as a bullet shredded the lacy bow decorating the pew beside him. He pushed Millie to the floor and reached over the seat to help the others. Seamus’s cane clattered to the floor.

      “Grandpa!” Keir felt the spatter of warm blood hit his cheek a split second before the old man crumpled against Thomas. “Ah, hell.”

      Seamus Watson had been hit.

      Keir shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it on the marble floor beneath his grandfather as his father lowered him to the floor. The rage of bullets fell silent and he spared a glance up at the door closing in the balcony as the shooter escaped, silently swearing to track down the bastard. He pulled a shocked, weeping Millie into his chest and turned her away from the blood pooling on the floor as his brother Niall worked on their grandfather’s wound.

      Keir had already made one call to Dispatch, but he dialed the number a second time and repeated the call for help, making sure an ambulance was en route. “I need a bus. Now. Officer down. I repeat—officer down.”

       Chapter One

      May

      Keir dropped the shot of whiskey into his mug of beer and picked it up before the drink foamed over. “Here’s to the Terminator.”

      His partner, Hudson Kramer, dressed in work boots and blue jeans, lowered his bottle of beer to the bar top. “Please tell me that’s sarcasm.”

      “Loud and bitter, my friend.” The Shamrock Bar tonight was loud with Irish music, conversation, laughter, the periodic clinks of glassware and the sharp smacks of pool balls caroming off each other. The frenetic, celebratory energy was typical for a Friday night where several denizens from the KCPD and surrounding downtown neighborhood liked to hang out. They’d survived another week of long hours and hard work that could be, at turns, tedious and dangerous. Some of his fellow cops here had broken cases wide-open this week or arrested criminals or even just kept a drunk driver off the streets, where he could be a threat to the citizens they’d all sworn to serve and protect.

      But Keir and Hud, yin and yang in both style and background, yet as close as Keir was to his own brothers, had nothing to celebrate. Keir was feeling the need to either get drunk or get laid to ease the tension coiling inside him.

      Sure, some of it had to do with his frustration over the slow-moving investigation into the shooting at the church where his grandfather had nearly died—an investigation that he and his two older brothers weren’t allowed to be a part of in any official capacity. Not that departmental restrictions were going to stop Keir and his brothers from pursuing answers for themselves. A masked shooter who threatened a building full of cops on a happy occasion and then disappeared into thin air made every officer in the department an investigator until the perp who’d targeted Keir’s family could be identified and caught.

      No, tonight’s extra-special foray into moody sarcasm all had to do with a leggy, ash-blond defense attorney who’d made mincemeat out of the attempted murder-for-hire investigation he and Hud had turned over to the DA’s office on Monday. It had taken Kenna Parker only five days of motions and court appearances to punch holes in their airtight case. The hoity-toity plastic surgeon who’d talked to Keir in an undercover op about hiring him to kill his estranged wife before she could divorce him and cost him a fortune in alimony had gotten off with little more than a slap on the wrist.

      Yes, the guy was now under an ethics investigation by the state medical board—a sidebar that could cost him his license or, at the very least, put a dent in his lucrative medical practice. But that wasn’t the same as a judge acknowledging that Detective Keir Watson had done his job right. Kenna “the Terminator” Parker hadn’t even really cleared Dr. Andrew Colbern of conspiracy to commit murder—she’d just raised enough doubts about Keir’s competence and a few seconds of static on the recording he’d made of the conversation that Colbern was walking.

      “Did you see how she booked it out of the courtroom right after the judge announced his ruling?” Hud punctuated his condemning tone with a long swallow of his beer. “That’s just rubbing her victory in our faces.”

      Keir eyed the foamy amber liquid in his mug. “She probably went off to pop open a magnum of champagne at our expense.”

      Hud turned the brown bottle in his hand, then grinned. “Well, then let’s just hope she’s drinkin’ it alone, my friend.”

      “You got that right.” Keir clinked his mug against Hud’s bottle, but he couldn’t match his partner’s good humor.

      They’d failed to prove Colbern’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, according to the Terminator. Interesting what kind of justice a lot of money and a killer law firm could buy.

      Well,