US Marshall 03 - The Rapids by Carla Neggers Read Free Book Online

them, below street level. Steps lead down to a small dock for the boats, a crowd gathering for the next tour.
    “Janssen had two dogs,” Rob said, stopping along the open black-iron fence above the waterway. “Rhodesian ridgebacks.”
    “Big dogs.”
    “Do we know what happened to them?”
    “They weren’t with him when he was arrested. I doubt he had them with him when he took off in May.”
    “How long do we think he was in Den Bosch before you got the tip?”
    From his tone, Maggie knew he didn’t expect her to have an answer. “Not long, but that’s not a guess at this point. Den Bosch strikes me as an unlikely place for the leader of an international criminal network to turn up. It’s possible he—”
    She stopped. Who was that? A man in front of a café just down the street…balding, rumpled.
    Tom Kopac?
    Rob was instantly alert. “What is it?”
    “I think I recognize someone. Hold on.”
    Maggie started toward the café, but Tom had disappeared. She pushed past the outdoor tables, where a few tourists were enjoying coffee, and checked inside, her eyes quickly adjusting after being in the bright sun.
    Nothing.
    Had she mistaken someone else for Tom?
    No. She was positive it’d been him.
    He must have continued past the café or cut down another street.
    She headed back outside and scanned the scene.
    Rob stood behind her. “What’s going on?”
    “A colleague at the embassy is here. Maybe he’s like us, just checking out where Janssen was picked up.”
    “Did he work the case?”
    She shook her head. “No. But he’s a good guy. A friend.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “Kopac. Tom Kopac. He works in economic relations.”
    Rob frowned at her. “He came by my hotel last night.”
    “Tom did? Why?”
    “Checking me out. Are you two—”
    “No.”
    She thought she detected a flicker of amusement at her forceful answer. “You DS agents are the expert drivers. Could he have followed us out here?”
    “It’s not like I’m on a secret mission or driving around the secretary of state. I wasn’t paying that close attention, but I doubt—” She realized she sounded very serious and deliberately lightened up. “I’m sure he didn’t follow us.”
    “Did he see you just now?”
    “You mean, was he running away from me? I don’t know.”
    At the same time, they noticed a change in the crowd at the entrance to the boat tour. A sudden tension, gasps.
    Screams.
    Maggie and Rob charged back down the street, heading for a half-dozen people who were standing at the open fence, pointing into the water. A woman was screaming.
    “Een man…”
    A man.
    Maggie picked out another word. Gevallen… Fallen. Fell.
    “A man’s fallen into the river,” Rob said tightly.
    There were more screams, excited words in Dutch that all ran together to Maggie’s untrained ear.
    Rob obviously spoke enough languages that he was able to make out the basics. “They think he’s dead.”
    “Not Tom—”
    She didn’t know why she said his name.
    When they got to the fence and looked down at the river, they could see the body of a man floating facedown in the shallow water, drifting downstream.
    The balding head, the stocky build, the rumpled clothes.
    “Hell,” Rob breathed. “It’s him. Kopac.”
    Maggie turned away and took in a breath, pushing back a rush of emotion, then forced herself to look again at Tom’s body.
    Blood.
    His head…
    The images she was seeing came together, registered. He’d been shot at the base of his neck, the bullet going upward into his brain.
    Tom. My God.
    There was almost no hope he was alive.
    Rob pounded down the stairs to the waterway, and Maggie jumped after him, a man yelling to them in Dutch. From the tone of his voice, she knew he was worried about them.
    She understood his fear. “A shooter. Rob, if there’s a shooter—”
    But another look at Tom confirmed, at least in Maggie’s mind, it hadn’t been a sniper attack. There was no one hiding on a rooftop—or in