The Chase

by Lisa Harris

  “Yeah . . . I’m not stupid. You’ll say anything you can to get me to do what you want. You’ll empathize to get my trust. Tell me how you understand why I’m doing what I’m doing.”

  “I can tell you’re frustrated, and I know . . .”

  Madison pulled Jonas aside while the agent continued talking. “This isn’t going to work. He is patronizing him, and the guy on the other end isn’t responding to that.”

  “You have an idea?”

  She nodded and started to tell Jonas, but he held up his hand and rushed back to the agent. They were running out of time and he was willing to trust whatever her gut said.

  “Tell him you’ll call him back,” Jonas whispered.

  Agent Osborne muted the call. “This isn’t the time—”

  Jonas met his gaze. “Tell him you’ll call him back.”

  He shook his head, clearly irritated with the interruption. “I can’t do that.”

  “Trust me.”

  Osborne hesitated, then tapped the mute button again. “Mike, I need to call you right back.” He hung up the phone, his face reddening. “You’d better have an extremely good reason for cutting me off, because we’ve got a man dying in there.”

  Jonas nodded toward Madison.

  “You’re not going to talk them out of this,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They planned every detail. They knock out cameras and use their weapons to scare people. You can hear the tension in his voice. They’re arguing with each other in the background.” She shook her head. “This wasn’t part of the game plan. They’ve been on this winning streak, believing they’re invincible, but now their luck has just run out. They’re panicked because this is a situation they’ve never had to deal with before. You’ll have to get him to do what you want him to do without taking away his control.”

  Osborne dropped his hands into his front pockets. “What are you suggesting?”

  “They rob banks because it makes them feel like they’re in control,” she said. “They plan out their strategy, and they’re in charge. And from what I’ve heard, it’s not just about money. But while they want to be in control, they also don’t want anyone hurt. Problem is, they just crossed that line.”

  “Sounds like a game.”

  “It is. But the problem is, they’re losing, and they know it.”

  Osborne stared at one of the command center’s screens that showed the front doors of the bank for a few long seconds. “Then what are we supposed to do? We don’t have a clean shot to take them down, which means we have to talk them down.”

  “We have a probable ID for one of the suspects,” Jonas said. “Ben Galvan. From what we’ve compiled, he’s a risk-taker. He’s not doing this just for the money, like my partner told you. In fact, from what we know, he doesn’t need the money. It’s for the thrill.”

  “What are you saying? He’s robbing banks because he’s bored?”

  Madison nodded. “Think of it this way, every time they rob a bank and get away with it, it’s an adrenaline rush that empowers them. So every time they get away with a load of cash, they’re fueled up to do it again.”

  “The last time they shot someone, they didn’t miss,” Jonas said. “Witnesses said they shot him in the foot on purpose.”

  They had Osborne’s attention now. “So they have some standard of ethics, but they’re not opposed to holding people at gunpoint, and even shooting if necessary.”

  Jonas nodded. “That’s one way to look at it.”

  Osborne tapped the table with his fingers. “So anything I throw at them will sound like a challenge, and they will resist that.”

  “Exactly,” Madison said. “We interviewed the ex-girlfriend of one of the suspects. The guy’s smart. He works for an accounting department at a major firm. He’s not just going to walk away from this because you talked him down. He will only leave when and if he wants to.”

  “I hear what the two of you are saying, but what do you want me to do?”

  “Jonas and I need to go in,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  From the look on Osborne’s face, he clearly wasn’t convinced. But Jonas was.

  “Make him think that he’s getting something,” Jonas said. “A couple more hostages for the victim who was shot. We can wear earpieces so you’ll be able to hear what they’re saying. But we need to hurry because at this point, they don’t want to get caught, and they have nothing to lose.”

  “We’ll try your way, but you better pray this works.” Osborne signaled to the officer handling their communication with the bank phone, then picked up the tapped line again. “Mike? I’m back. How’s the guard?”

  “He . . . he’s still breathing.”

  “I’d like to arrange for a couple paramedics to come in and stabilize him, then bring him out. That way, you and I can focus on negotiating an end to this.”

  Silence hung on the line at the suggestion. Jonas held his breath.

  “Listen,” Osborne continued, “I know this isn’t what you want. For someone to get hurt. I can help you work through this, but we need to make sure the guard gets the treatment he needs. Please.”

  “If I let him go, I’ll need something from you then.”

  “What is that?” Osborne asked.

  “I need you to move your perimeter back another hundred feet.”

  Osborne shook his head. “I can’t do that, Mike. There are rules I have to follow—”

  “I told you what you have to do. If you want the security guard to get medical attention, then do what I say. Now.”

  Osborne nodded at the FBI agent standing on the other side of him and mouthed do it.

  “I’ve just ordered that the perimeter be moved,” Osborne said into the phone.

  “Fine. They can come in, but if they do anything—anything at all to make me question your motives—then I will shoot another hostage.”

  “Okay. Give us a minute, and I’ll send them to the front door.”

  “No cops,” Mike said.

  “They won’t be cops.”

  Osborne hung up the phone, then started barking orders.

  A few minutes later, Jonas pulled on a button-up EMT shirt someone had handed him over his T-shirt. “You sure about this?” he asked, turning to Madison.

  “I might as well make sure my first day back is one I won’t ever forget, though I’m starting to see a strange pattern to my working with you.”

  His gaze narrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “The first time I trained with you, there was a murder during one of our tactical training exercises. The second time, a prison transport ended in a plane crash, and now you’ve somehow dragged me into a hostage situation—”

  “I dragged you?” he started to say before catching the soft gleam in her eyes as she tried to downplay what was going on. But the lighthearted exchange between them quickly vanished as they walked up to the front of the bank with a gurney and medkit. They were each wired with hidden two-way Bluetooth comms so they could communicate. This was no game. The lives of everyone in the building were at stake.

  A man in black wearing a mask opened the door and motioned them inside. “Try anything stupid, and you’ll both get a bullet in your head.”

  FIVE

  Madison pushed the gurney through the front entrance of the bank behind Jonas, then held up her gloved hands as ordered while a second masked man patted her down for weapons. She used the pause to study the large lobby. A couple dozen hostages lay on the white-tiled floor with their faces to the ground. The three captors were dressed alike in black jeans and jackets and all wore face masks that covered everything but their eyes. They each carried a semiautomatic weapon. The glass door clicked shut behind her, but she could still hear shouts as law enforcement continued moving their perimeter.

  “Mike?” Madison asked, grateful they hadn’t discovered her earpiece.

  The man who had let them inside nodded.

  “Where�
�s the guard?” she asked.

  “He’s over there on the ground, but don’t forget that you are here to make sure he lives, not play hero. We already put a bullet in his side. And we can do it again.”

  Madison nodded, then grabbed the medical kit off the gurney. “Jonas, if you’ll evaluate the wound and staunch the bleeding, I’ll check his vitals.”

  Jonas knelt beside her as they surveyed the guard. Blood pooled beneath their victim, and his skin was cool and gray. She’d done enough medical training to know the importance of a rapid evaluation in order to assess the situation. But the actual treatment couldn’t be done here on the floor of a bank lobby. And with an abdominal wound, observation was not enough, as it was impossible to know the extent of injury on the inside. If the guard survived this, it would be a miracle.

  Madison lifted the man’s hand, then began taking his vitals. “Sir, can you look at me? Can you tell me your name?”

  “Vin . . . Vincent.”

  “Vincent, good. We’re going to get you out of here and to a hospital as soon as we can, I promise. Can you squeeze my hand?”

  His thumb pressed lightly on the back of her fingers.

  “Airway is open, breathing shallow. Reflexes are weak,” she said.

  Jonas pressed a compress against the wound. “I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but it looks like the bullet is still inside the body.”

  “Vincent.” Madison leaned closer to his face. “Vincent, I need you to open your eyes again and talk to me. We’re going to get you out of here, but you need to stay with me.”

  “I need . . . I need you to talk to my kids for me.” He took a long, labored breath. “They told me to retire, but I . . . I did that once, and I hated sitting at home. Tell them I’m sorry. If I would have listened to them, I wouldn’t be lying here right now.”

  “We’re going to help you get through this.” Madison choked out the words. “There is no reason to talk that way. I just need you to stay focused.”

  Jonas stood up and walked toward Mike. “We can’t wait any longer. We need to get him out of here now.”

  Madison kept her hands steady as she put pressure on Vincent’s wound, even as Mike shifted his weapon at Jonas. “Not until your people are done moving the perimeter back.”

  “They’re doing it now—”

  He leveled his aim at Jonas. “Get back over there!”

  Jonas returned to Madison’s side and made a show of relieving her of putting pressure on the compress. “I counted sixteen customers plus four with name tags,” he whispered.

  She took a quick glance at the suspects and noticed they were distracted by the commotion outside. “Osborne?” she whispered. “The guard needs serious medical help. Any advice?”

  Silence.

  She lowered her voice. “Are you receiving?”

  Still nothing.

  Madison turned to Jonas. “Are you getting any response on your comm?”

  “Negative. They’ve got to be scrambling the signal.”

  “They really did think of everything.” Madison chewed her lip. Including a way out. But how?

  She looked to the front door, where a row of three backpacks had been set, then back to the hostages, trying to work through the suspects’ options. Except for a young woman who was wheezing in the corner and the sounds of footsteps from the captors pacing the room, the lobby was quiet. Eerily quiet.

  “What’s their plan to get out of here?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” The compress Jonas was using was tinged red, a reminder that they were running out of time. “Moving the perimeter has to be part of it, but even so, the building is surrounded and there are sharpshooters in place. If they step out of the building, they’ll be stopped immediately.”

  Whatever their plan was, she and Jonas hadn’t been sent in here to wait.

  “We need to see if anyone else is injured,” she said. “And we should check on the girl on the far left who’s wheezing pretty bad.”

  “Something tells me that they won’t be open to that idea, but stay here, I’ll—”

  “No. Let me do it. I’ll be less intimidating.”

  Before Jonas was able to protest, Madison started to rise slowly, her hands in the air, deciding that action was worth the risk.

  “What are you doing?” Mike turned to her.

  “While my partner gets the bleeding stabilized, I’d like to make sure everyone else is okay. One of the hostages seems to be having an asthma attack.”

  Mike walked up to Madison and grabbed her elbow, wrenching her arm behind her back. “I already told you that you’ll leave when I say you can leave.”

  “And if one of them ends up dying on your watch?” Heart pounding, she pulled away from him and started toward the counter without waiting for his response. “Does anyone else need any medical care?”

  “That was not part of the deal,” Mike shouted. “You came in to get the guard. That was it.”

  “Then let him go.” She swiveled back to Mike, wishing she could read his expression behind the mask. “He’s still bleeding out.”

  “She’s right.” One of the other captors spoke up. Madison noticed it was a woman’s voice. “I didn’t sign up for murder.”

  He took a step forward. “Are you questioning my decision?”

  “I just know that this was never a part of the plan.”

  Madison turned, briefly catching Jonas’s gaze. Was it possible that Kira was their third suspect? She couldn’t be sure, but it was definitely a woman.

  Madison turned back to Mike. “I’m assuming you don’t want to add murder to your list of charges either. And it’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen. You’ll still have a room full of hostages, but at least you won’t have anyone’s blood on your hands. Let me take them both out of here.”

  “Please.” A girl no more than sixteen was hunched over on her knees, her long red ponytail hanging over her shoulder. “I . . . I can’t breathe.”

  Madison hurried over and knelt down in front of the girl. “Do you normally use an inhaler?”

  She nodded, pressing her hand against her chest as she struggled to breathe. Asthma and panic attacks often went hand in hand. Sometimes all it took was a traumatic experience . . . like a hostage situation.

  Madison rubbed the girl’s shoulder lightly. “What’s your name?”

  The girl wheezed again. “Grace.”

  “Grace, where’s your inhaler?”

  “In my bag. It’s . . . it’s the red one.”

  Madison held up her hands and hurried to where they’d tossed everyone’s bags and cell phones. “I need to find her inhaler.”

  She picked up the only red bag and dumped the contents onto the floor. The inhaler tumbled out.

  “Madison, we’re running out of time. We need to get him to a hospital,” Jonas said as she rushed back to the girl and handed her the inhaler. “His heartbeat is slowing, and his blood pressure is dropping. He’s still losing too much blood.”

  “Please,” Madison said to Mike as the girl took her first puff from the inhaler. “Do it as a sign of good faith, if nothing else. He needs to go to a hospital. There is only so much we can do. But we need to get him out of here now.”

  “Fine.” The man threw his hands in the air. “You want a show of good faith? I’ll let all the hostages go except for your partner and the bank employees.”

  A flood of relief washed over Madison. “Let me call and tell them what to expect,” she said.

  Mike picked up the phone, dialed, then put it on speaker.

  “This is Osborne. Mike, what’s going on in there?”

  “This is Madison. One of the medics,” she said. “They are letting everyone go except for the bank employees and my partner. I’ll bring our gunshot victim out on a stretcher along with a girl who’s having an asthma attack in the front with me. The rest will foll—”

  “The hostages will be instructed to walk out of the building,” Mike cut in. “You are to stay back unti
l they are all out. If one of them is shot by your agents, I won’t be held responsible.”

  “Okay, Mike,” Osborne said. “And thank you. You’re making the right decision.”

  Mike pressed his finger into the receiver, then turned to the hostages. “I want all of the bank employees to stay on the ground, facedown in the middle of the lobby.” He turned back to Madison. “Get the guard onto the gurney. You can take him out first, then the others will line up behind you.” Mike raised his voice and looked around the lobby. “The rest of you will stay where you are, or you’ll end up needing medical attention as well.”

  Madison rushed over to Jonas and quickly helped him get Vincent up onto the gurney. The older man groaned as she checked to make sure the gauze and bandages Jonas had applied were staying in place. The bleeding had slowed, but that wasn’t enough. She could hear several of the bank customers sobbing in relief, but they weren’t out the doors yet. She’d been in law enforcement long enough to know that the situation could change in an instant.

  She took the car keys Jonas had handed her in case she needed them. “Promise me you’ll come out of this alive,” she said to him. “You owe me dinner tonight.”

  He smiled. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. And for now, your job is to get Vincent out of here safely.”

  She nodded, but she was worried. Mike shouted at Jonas to get on the floor with the rest of the hostages. Madison started toward the entrance, pushing the gurney in front of her. The other two captors pulled open the door so the hostages could leave, staying out of sight of any snipers waiting to take a shot. Her heart pounded as she crossed the threshold. The gurney clicked through the doorway, then out into the sunlight.

  “Hang on, Vincent. This will all be over soon.”

  Lights from an ambulance flashed to her right. She could see officers standing next to their cars, ready to spring into action at the signal from their boss.

  Special Agent Osborne walked toward the freed hostages. “I need each of you to keep your hands in the air. Please stay calm as our officers approach you.”

  There was a loud pop then smoke filled the entryway. Four more pops were followed by the earsplitting blast of an alarm system. Pain shot through her temples. Someone screamed. Smoke filled her lungs. She couldn’t see anything anymore. Someone was shouting, but she couldn’t understand what they were saying above the noise of the siren.