by Blake Pierce
Seventeen-year-old Orin Rhodes and his fifteen-year-old girlfriend, Heidi Wright, had started their killing spree just days ago in the nearby town of Hinton. It had begun with a simple act of pure desperation.
Heidi had called Orin by phone to tell him she was in danger at home. Orin had gotten his father’s gun and gone to Heidi’s house, where he’d found her being sexually assaulted by both her father and her brother. Orin had killed both of the girl’s attackers.
Then Heidi had grabbed her own father’s gun, and she and Orin had gone on the lam. Finding themselves short of cash, they’d tried to rob a liquor store. But the robbery had gone bad, and they’d wound up killing both the store manager and an employee.
The police weren’t sure exactly what had happened next. They knew the kids had turned up in the town of Jennings, where they’d tormented and killed two perfectly innocent people—a middle-aged handyman and a seventeen-year-old girl. Then the killer pair had disappeared again.
That was when the local authorities had called for FBI assistance. They’d found the teenagers’ behavior so puzzling that they’d specifically requested someone from the Behavioral Analysis Unit.
Riley and Agent Crivaro had flown in from Quantico to do whatever they could to help. It was clear to them that Orin and Heidi had gotten some kind of pleasurable rush from the impromptu murders. They likely craved more of the same. They no longer needed reasons for killing, and their spree wasn’t going to end soon.
By the time Riley and Crivaro had analyzed the situation, the local cops had determined that Heidi and Orin were hiding out in this motel. The two agents had joined the local team that went to capture them… or to kill them if necessary.
Now here they all were in this parking lot with snow falling around them. One of the teenagers had greeted their arrival with a shot from the motel room window, and now a second shot had been fired, narrowly missing Riley herself.
What now? Riley wondered.
Agent Crivaro spoke through his bullhorn again in what sounded almost like a sympathetic, kindly tone.
“Orin, Heidi, don’t make this worse than it already is. We don’t want trouble. All we want to do is talk. We can work this out. Just come outside with your hands where we can see them, both of you.”
Another silence fell before a young man’s voice called out from the window.
“We’ve got a hostage.”
Riley felt a chill of alarm. Agent Crivaro’s expression showed that he felt the same way.
Orin continued, “It’s a motel maid. She says her name is Anita. Don’t try anything or we’ll kill her.”
Agent Crivaro peered cautiously from behind the SUV and called back, “Let us see her.”
No reply came. Riley could guess what Crivaro was thinking.
Is Orin bluffing?
Maybe they didn’t have a hostage at all. Maybe they were only stalling, trying to put off their inevitable capture. They certainly weren’t behaving as if they really had a hostage. Riley had studied and trained in hostage situations at the Academy, so she had a pretty good idea of what to expect.
The kids ought to be negotiating right now, insisting on some sort of safe passage away from this location. But that wasn’t what was happening. The whole situation seemed to have come to a standstill.
Then Riley could hear voices inside the hotel room. It was impossible to make out what was being said, but it sounded like the boy and girl were arguing. Then Heidi’s voice called out through the window.
“Okay, we’ll let you see her. Just don’t try anything.”
Riley looked out from behind the car again. She could see the motel room door open. Then a figure stepped into the doorway. It appeared to be a woman wearing a hooded winter jacket. Her face was impossible to see in the swirling snow. She stood still in the doorway, holding her hands shakily above her head.
Orin Rhodes called out from inside the room, “Okay, there she is, you’ve seen her.”
Crivaro spoke back on his bullhorn, “Yeah, but you really don’t want to do things this way. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen it happen lots of times. Keeping a hostage only makes things worse for you. Just let her go. Let her come over here with us. Then we can negotiate some sensible solution.”
Riley doubted Crivaro’s ploy was going to work, and she suspected that he felt the same way. Why would the couple give up the only leverage they had at a moment like this?
Then, to Riley’s surprise, the woman took a couple of steps toward them. Her heart jumped up in her throat as she heard Orin growl some kind of inaudible protest. Riley couldn’t see him, but he clearly didn’t like what was happening.
Is he going to shoot her? she wondered.
But the woman took a few more faltering steps away from the motel. Maybe, Riley thought, Orin and Heidi had finally lost their taste for killing. But Riley felt even more uncertain than ever about what was happening. If the couple actually let the hostage go, what would they do next? What could they do?
They could surrender, Riley thought.
Or they could fight.
Of course, it would be suicide if they did. Riley had some idea of what to expect if shooting started. The couple really didn’t stand a chance in an actual gunfight, not against a team like this. They weren’t likely to withstand a hail of bullets, and they’d surely run out of ammunition long before the team did. The ultimate choice was to surrender or die.
The woman walked silently across the sidewalk, then stepped off the curb onto the parking lot pavement. Riley watched Crivaro, wondering what her mentor might do next. Would he step out to greet the woman, then make sure she was hustled away to a place of safety? At the moment, he showed no sign of budging from his crouching position behind the SUV.
Then the woman’s steps quickened alarmingly. She drew close to Riley, apparently without seeing her there.
And now Riley could see the woman’s face. It wasn’t a hostage at all. It was Heidi Wright herself and she was whipping something out from her jacket.
She’s got a gun, Riley realized.
Riley knew what she had to do, but even so she hesitated.
The girl’s gun blazed, scattering ill-aimed shots across the barriers that hid the cops and agents. Then she spotted Riley. She smiled a weirdly innocent smile as she turned her weapon toward the young agent.
For what seemed like an interminable split second, Riley stared at the barrel of the pistol. Then she realized that she had already raised her own weapon and aimed it squarely at the center of Heidi’s chest.
Riley fired a single shot.
Heidi staggered backward, and the pistol fell from her hands. Her smile disappeared, replaced by what appeared to be an expression of shock and dismay. Then she tumbled into a heap onto the ground.
Riley could hear Orin’s voice cry out, “Heidi!”
She turned and saw several cops rushing toward the motel doorway. With a look of stunned horror, Orin emerged from the room. He raised his hands high as he stared across the parking lot at his stricken girlfriend. He remained completely docile as one of the cops put him into cuffs and read him his rights.
Seized with a deep horror, Riley walked toward the girl’s body. Blood gushed out of the wound in her chest, staining the layer of snow on the pavement. Heidi’s eyes were wide open, and her mouth worked silently as she gasped her final breaths. Then she fell completely still. The look on her dead face seemed inexpressibly sad.
Riley began to shake all over, and her own gun almost fell from her hand. Suddenly, Agent Crivaro was at her side, and he gently took the weapon away from her.
Riley felt completely numb now.
She heard herself say, “What have I done?”
Crivaro put his arms around her shoulders and said, “You did good, Riley. You did what you had to do.”
But Riley could only repeat, “What have I done?”
“Come on, let’s get you where you can sit down,” Crivaro said.
Riley coul
d barely stay on her feet as Crivaro gently led her away toward a police van. She could still feel the dead girl’s eyes staring at her.
I killed someone, she thought.
She’d never killed anyone before in her life.
And now she had no idea how she was going to deal with it.
CHAPTER TWO
When Riley’s fiancé, Ryan Paige, tried to put his arm around her shoulders, she pulled away. It wasn’t the first time tonight that she’d reflexively drawn back from his touch. She was sure it hurt his feelings, but she couldn’t help it.
After the shootout in Jennings, Riley had returned to Quantico with Jake and then made the drive back to DC. She was sitting beside Ryan on the couch in their little basement apartment, but the images in her mind were from the earlier part of that long day.
Riley could still see Heidi Wright’s dead eyes staring into the snowfall, and she couldn’t shake off her feelings of guilt. She knew she was being irrational, but she didn’t feel deserving of anyone’s affection right now.
“What can I do?” Ryan asked.
“Nothing,” she replied. “Just sit here with me.”
They sat together in silence, and Riley felt grateful for Ryan’s presence. They’d had their differences during the last few months, but right now he seemed very much like the handsome, earnest, and considerate young man she had fallen in love with during her last semester in college.
Meanwhile, her mind went back over all that had happened since she’d shot Heidi. It had all been a blur, and during the flight back to Quantico Agent Crivaro had kept telling her she was in a state of shock.
I still am, I guess, she thought.
She still had all the physical symptoms of shock, including cold, clammy, sweaty hands and recurring dizziness and confusion.
How long would it take before those symptoms went away?
In a dull monotone that had sounded strange even to her, she’d just now told Ryan about the whole incident. It was all she could do not to relate the events in the third person. It was hard to use the words “I” and “me” to describe her own actions. She kept wanting to believe the whole thing had happened to someone else.
When she finished Ryan said in a gentle voice, “There’s one thing I still don’t understand. I guess it kind of makes sense that Heidi pretended to be a hostage, at least for a few moments. It was a desperate bluff. But why did she come right on out into the parking lot? Why did she try to…?”
Ryan’s voice faded, but she knew the words he couldn’t bring himself to say.
“Why did she try to kill you?”
Riley remembered the moment when the girl had stood in the motel room doorway before taking those fatal steps into the parking lot, and how she’d heard Orin’s inaudible protests.
She said to Ryan, “Orin didn’t want her to go outside like that. He tried to talk her out of it. But I guess she thought… she realized… it was over. She wanted to go out …”
Her own voice faded as a stupid cliché froze on her lips.
“…in a blaze of glory.”
Ryan shook his head.
“I can’t imagine how you feel about it,” he said. “But good God, Riley, she and her boyfriend killed six people. You can’t say she didn’t deserve what happened to her.”
Riley felt as though she’d been slapped across the face at the sound of that word.
Deserve.
Right now she herself felt so painfully undeserving of Ryan’s consideration or even affection. It hadn’t occurred to her to think of Heidi Wright as deserving what Riley had done to her.
Is Ryan right? she thought.
She thought over what little she knew of the girl’s life—a life of unthinkable cruelty and abuse, apparently. Heidi and her boyfriend had started on their murder spree when her own father and brother sexually assaulted her. Riley couldn’t blame Orin for killing those men. Then, after that, both Orin and Heidi must have felt too desperate to have any idea what they were doing.
And too young as well, Riley thought.
Once again, Riley couldn’t help remembering Heidi’s fresh, smiling face at the moment when she’d pointed her gun at Riley—the moment before her own death.
Riley murmured aloud, “Heidi was just a kid, Ryan. She didn’t deserve to die like that. What she deserved was a better life than the one she got stuck with.”
Ryan looked at Riley with an uncomprehending look.
“But you didn’t have any choice,” he said. “If you hadn’t fired when you did, you’d surely be…”
His voice trailed off again. Riley knew the word he just couldn’t say.
Dead.
“I know,” Riley said with a sigh. “That’s what Agent Crivaro keeps telling me. He says it was justified. It was even proper procedure. It was self-defense, a clear case of ‘imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm.’”
“Crivaro’s right, Riley,” Ryan said. “Surely you know that.”
“I know,” Riley said.
And rationally, she did know. But at some primal level, she couldn’t accept that judgment. She felt as though her whole body was accusing her right now. She wondered if she could ever get over this feeling.
Ryan gently touched her hand, and Riley let him hold it. Ryan’s hand felt almost hot against the chilly sweat in her palm.
Ryan said, “Riley, how often are you going to have to go through this?”
“It’s my job,” Riley said.
“Yeah, but… what kind of job is it that makes you feel so terrible about yourself? Is this really what you want to do with your life?”
“Somebody has to do it,” Riley said.
“Does that somebody have to be you?” Ryan asked.
Riley had no idea how to answer that question. And as much as she appreciated Ryan’s concern, she couldn’t be sure how sincere he really was. Who was Ryan really troubled about deep down—Riley or himself?
She hated to doubt him like this, but she couldn’t help it. During the short time they’d been together as a couple, she’d learned to her dismay that Ryan had a selfish streak. And he had plenty of selfish reasons to hate what she was doing these days. He even hated the commute Riley took to Quantico every day. It deprived him of the use of his prized Ford Mustang and forced him to use public transportation to get to his job at his law office every day. He’d hadn’t hidden from her the fact that he found that humiliating.
Ryan squeezed her hand and said, “Maybe you should just think about a change. We can live off my paychecks. We’ve even started a savings account. Even if you stayed at home—and I know you don’t want to do that—I could still support us both. I could even move us into nicer place someday soon. You don’t have to do this… for us.”
Riley said nothing.
Ryan said, “Maybe this is something you should talk through with your counselor.”
Riley winced sharply. She regretted having mentioned to Ryan that she had to go to at least one therapy session. After she and Crivaro had gotten back to Quantico, Special Agent in Charge Erik Lehl had told her that counseling was mandatory now that she had used deadly force for the first time.
She hadn’t made an appointment yet.
Ryan said, “Riley, I’m worried. What are you going to do? What are we going to do?”
Riley was startled to feel a twinge of impatience.
She said, “Ryan, do we really have to talk through this right now?”
Looking chastened, Ryan patted her hand and said, “No, of course not. I’ll go fix us some dinner.”
“No, I’ll do it,” Riley said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ryan said. “You need to take it easy. I’ll take care of everything. Do you want me to bring you a drink?”
Riley nodded, and Ryan went on into the kitchen. A few moments later he came back out with a glass of bourbon and ice and set it on the coffee table in front of Riley. Then he went back into the kitchen and rattled around as he started to fix supper.
Riley
really wished he’d let her do the cooking tonight. She needed something, anything, to do with herself. She positively dreaded having all of tomorrow off.
As she sat alone on the couch sipping her bourbon, she felt a rising surge of emotion. Before she knew it, she was sobbing. She tried to keep it quiet so Ryan wouldn’t hear her and come back and try to comfort her.
She didn’t want to be comforted.
All she wanted to do was cry.
During the flight back to Quantico, Agent Crivaro had told her again and again that it was all right to cry.
“Go ahead, let it out,” he’d kept saying.
But somehow, she just hadn’t been able to do that—not until right now. And now it felt good to just let her feelings pour out after such a long, horrible day. She cried and cried until she felt limp from it.
When the tears finally stopped flowing, Riley figured she’d better go to the bathroom and wash her face so Ryan couldn’t see her like this. But before she could get up from the couch, the apartment’s landline phone rang.
She heard Ryan call out, “I’ll get it.”
“No, I will,” she called back.
She was closer to the phone than Ryan. And even a trivial task like answering the phone felt good right now—although she couldn’t imagine that the call was from anyone she could possibly want to talk to.
When she picked up the phone, she heard a familiar voice.
“Hey, kid. How’re you doing?”
Riley’s spirits suddenly rose as she recognized that voice. It was her roommate from her days at the Academy, Francine Dow.
“Frankie!” she stammered with surprise. “It’s—it’s good to hear from you!”
Riley hadn’t seen Frankie since they’d graduated in December, and they’d only talked by phone a couple of times. After graduation, Frankie had been assigned to work as an agent at the FBI’s DC headquarters.
With a voice filled with concern, Frankie said, “Go ahead, talk to me.”
Riley was startled.
She stammered, “Do you mean… you know…?”
“Yeah, I know what happened. And you’ll never believe how I found out. I got a call from Special Agent Jake Crivaro himself. He said he was worried about you. He said you might need to talk to a friend.”