They stepped up to an iPad some tech guy was holding. Talon gazed in horror as he recognized Finn lying on the floor. He took a slow breath. “Play from the beginning, please.”
The tech restarted the feed, and it showed various customers standing in line, Finn among them. They saw a security guard step up to a child wearing a baseball hat, and there was some sort of altercation. Finn took a step closer, and the guard reached for his gun. Finn stopped and seemed to be trying to talk to the guy. The mom and child were getting upset. Then all hell broke loose. Three guys in ski masks ran in at the same time as the guard panicked and shot his weapon at the ceiling. Within seconds Finn was laid flat on the floor with a boot on his face and a gun pointed at him.
Talon breathed through his nose and tried to calm down. Finn had his head turned away from the camera, but Talon didn’t need a reminder of those luminous green eyes and what they had looked like the night before. The bastards were going to regret ever laying a finger on him.
He stepped away, and his team surrounded him.
“I still think I should go in there first,” Sawyer insisted.
The lieutenant called over to them. “The negotiator has arrived.” Talon looked over his shoulder. A balding, middle-aged guy was getting a hurried briefing from the cops. Good, they were distracted for a minute.
“Gael, take Sawyer around the back. See if there’s anywhere he could enter that he wouldn’t be seen by the cops.” Gael nodded, and Talon clasped Sawyer’s arm. “I want an assessment first before I give permission for anything.” They ran off.
Talon interrupted Dobbs. “How thick are the walls? It looks an old building.”
The lieutenant frowned. “No different than normal. The security is within the vault itself, but the bank is open. The outer door would be unlocked, and the inner cage just usually requires two keys.”
Talon breathed out again and tried to unclench his fingers. They’d been like that since he saw the gun in Finn’s face. “So they’re not relying on finesse here, just speed?”
“That’s exactly what’s happened in the other two robberies, but there’s been no delay like this up to now, and never any weapons fired. Straight in, straight out,” the lieutenant confirmed. “We think the guard wasn’t supposed to lose control like that, and I have no idea what was up with the kid.”
Gael stepped forward and pointed to the screen. “He entered wearing a baseball cap.” He moved the video until it stopped, showing the guard reaching for his weapon after he yanked the cap off the boy and the look of fear on his face.
“I would bet he has a mark on his face in the same place as I do,” Talon said in resignation.
The lieutenant peered at the screen in surprise. “That had never occurred to me,” he admitted. The more the lieutenant spoke, the more Talon liked him.
“It would also explain why our teammate tried to de-escalate the situation,” Vance said.
The lieutenant looked up. “Of course. This is your partner. I saw him on the video yesterday.” He shook his head. “I would never have recognized him.”
“Yeah, he looks about fifteen,” Vance added dryly.
“That explains the reaction to seeing his ID,” the lieutenant said. “I’ll go update our negotiator.” The lieutenant stepped away.
“What we going to do, boss?” Eli asked.
Talon tapped his earpiece. “Anything?” he asked quietly.
Gael answered straight away. “Yeah, there’s a parking lot behind. Quite a few cops, but there’s some dumpsters Sawyer could maybe get past without them seeing him if we can arrange a diversion.”
Talon watched as the negotiator picked up the telephone to try to see if someone would answer inside the bank. He knew what would be asked. Was everyone unharmed? What did they want? Yadda yadda.
He was torn. He wanted to send Sawyer in. Fuck, he wanted to take a battering ram to the bank doors, but he had to think about his team as a whole, not just the one inside. Sawyer had never changed himself, walked through a wall, and deconstructed metal simultaneously. He was always exhausted after changing his body composition, and that’s why they never asked it lightly. Talon didn’t want a second member of the team in danger, as desperately as he wanted Finn out.
Sawyer had to be unarmed as well. He was never able to take any metal objects with him, and he always wore plastic buttons or simple ties to his clothes. They had a few laughs in the last few months when Sawyer reappeared without the zipper in his pants. He couldn’t take a gun in without the metal part deconstructing, rendering it useless.
“How long is Sawyer up to for maintaining it now?” Talon knew he’d been practicing, but the longest he could stay hidden seemed to be a maximum of forty minutes. Talon heard the negotiator ask for some of the hostages to be released. “Wait one second,” he instructed Gael quietly and moved back to the lieutenant. “Have we established how many hostages we have?”
The lieutenant took a step away from the negotiator. “At least six bank staff. We saw four customers, plus the child and the baby, plus your guy.”
The negotiator winced a little and put the phone down. “He wants a fully fueled armored car, and I asked for a hostage release as a sign of faith.”
Everyone looked at the bank as the door opened. They heard a baby crying straight away, and the sobbing mom pushed the stroller out and ran with it straight at the armed police. Talon stepped up to her as soon as she was brought behind the barricades and had a blanket wrapped around her. She quickly bent to unfasten the crying baby and pick it up.
“Bobby. They still have my Bobby,” the mom cried.
Vance leaned in to Talon. “That’s odd. You would think the perps would want the kid out of the building in case his abilities are a threat. It makes no sense to keep him there.”
Talon stepped closer to the mom and hunkered down in front of her. He smiled reassuringly. She seemed to start in surprise when she saw his scar. It stopped her crying, anyway. “Are we right in thinking your boy is enhanced?” he asked gently.
She hesitated, then sagged and started crying again. “S-Six months ago. The day after his eighth birthday.” She looked completely bewildered. “He just woke up with it.”
Vance sat and covered her hand reassuringly, and she gave a watery smile. “Is there someone we can call? What about Bobby’s dad?”
She looked up at the baby, who had stopped crying and was currently playing with Vance’s handcuffs. Sadly, she turned to Vance. “He left. He wanted us to take Bobby to state, to give him up,” she said in bewilderment. “We had a huge fight, and I asked what would he do if Jack suddenly woke up one morning with a scar? Would he stop loving him too?” She choked the last words out, and Vance wrapped an arm around her. “What’s going to happen? Why wouldn’t they let him come out with me?”
Talon almost shook his head. A lack of confidence on his part wasn’t what she needed right now. He stuck his hand out. “My name’s Talon. That’s Eli and Vance.” He gestured to the other two.
She gave a wobbly smile. “I’m Jenny Anderson.”
“I need to know, ma’am—”
“—Jenny.”
“Jenny.” Talon smiled. “What’s Bobby’s ability?”
She looked at him in confusion. “He doesn’t have any yet. He’s only eight.”
Talon looked sharply at the others. Sometimes the most dangerous abilities only came out later. “Ma’am, all enhanced have their abilities as soon as they transform. Get the mark,” Talon added hurriedly and touched his scar.
Jenny shrugged. “Well, whatever it is, neither of us know. He’s just a normal little boy, as far as I’m concerned.”
Talon subsided. He wished there were more moms like Jenny, but he knew a lot of enhanced weren’t so lucky.
“Have you ever known an enhanced to transform as young as eight?” Eli asked.
Vance shook his head. “The child from the school was only around that age, and that was unusual. And it’s perfectly possible that the abilit
y is rare enough that it’s not something that would occur to an eight-year-old to do.”
They all looked up as the telephone rang, and the negotiator answered it. They heard him speaking reassuringly on the telephone and asking for more time for whatever it was. “They’ve given us an hour,” the negotiator said as he replaced the handset.
“Or what?” Jenny asked, her voice cracking again.
Talon stood and tried to sound reassuring. “We’re just working that out. We have a few tricks up our sleeve.”
“What can you tell us about the other hostages, ma’am?” Vance asked, getting a notebook out.
“There are at least five people who work there, maybe six. To be honest I wasn’t totally sure if one lady was a customer or an employee.”
Talon nodded. They knew this.
Jenny screwed her eyes up in concentration. “There was a really nice boy.”
Vance looked up. “Another child, ma’am?” he said, concerned.
“No, sorry. I shouldn’t call him a boy. More a teenager, I suppose. Probably around seventeen, eighteen, maybe.”
Talon smiled to himself and shared it with Vance. Only Finn fit that description from who they’d seen on the vid.
“Nice?” prompted Eli. Talon looked at him in shock. Eli asking about Finn?
“Yes,” Jenny said. “He tried to keep the guard from reacting so badly to Bobby, and even when they hit the young man with the gun, he stayed close to Bobby.”
Talon’s heart thudded in his chest. “They hit him with the gun?” he repeated.
Jenny wiped her eyes. “Yes. One of the guards who was the loudest. He hit him when he tried to stop them from threatening Bobby. He seemed to be in charge. In fact—” Her eyes widened. “Oh. I just realized what they said. They looked at all our wallets for ID, and they said the young man was a fed.”
Talon couldn’t get words past his throat.
“He’s actually part of our team, Jenny,” Vance said carefully.
She smiled. “That’s wonderful. I-I mean….” Jenny reddened as she realized what she’d said.
“Yes,” said Vance firmly. “He’s going to help us coordinate our efforts to get everyone out safely.”
Talon barely heard the rest of Jenny’s words as she tried to remember who else was being held. His brain was stuck on the thought of Finn getting hit with the gun. Apparently one of the older ladies had a scarf she gave him to try to stop the bleeding, and the loudest gunman hit him another time when he put himself in front of Bobby to stop him from crying. Jenny thought he might have gotten knocked out for a few seconds, but she couldn’t be sure.
What have I done? Why was I such an asshole this morning?
He distantly heard Vance finish questioning Jenny.
“Boss?”
Talon blinked, bringing Eli into focus.
“Gael’s waiting to hear what you want them to do.”
Talon took a deep breath. What he wanted to do and what was a good idea might not be the same thing. “Let’s walk.” He turned. Vance quickly joined them, as Jenny’s mom had arrived. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gael and Sawyer running over.
“What are our options?”
“They have eleven hostages,” Vance replied. “Six bank staff. An elderly couple and a middle-aged man we haven’t been able to identify yet.”
“Finn and Bobby,” Talon finished.
Vance quickly filled in Gael and Sawyer on the details of the child and what they found out about the robbers.
“There’s three robbers plus the security guard,” Eli confirmed. “I don’t get the guard, though. He was completely freaked out about the whole thing, but Jenny says he definitely sided with the robbers and has a weapon, which no one has tried to take off him. There wasn’t enough said for her to tell whether they knew each other or not, but apparently the guy who seems to be the leader was pissed at the guard for firing his gun.”
“It ruined the whole surprise thing for them,” Gael agreed. “They seem to be very smash-and-grab type. In and out as fast as they can.”
“Jenny said one of the robbers didn’t look like he was participating much,” Vance said. “He just stood there until the one in charge ordered him into the back. They made Finn go in with them. Apparently the guy in charge completely freaked when they found out Finn’s a fed.”
“How trigger-happy do we think these guys are?” Gael asked.
Talon tried to bank down the sick feeling in his stomach. “If they’re the same group that did the banks in Miami and Atlanta, there were no shootings at all.”
“Then much as I would love to see what Sawyer can do, maybe we ought to see what the negotiator can do first,” Gael said slowly.
The lieutenant walked over to them. “All the blinds have just been closed. I have cops with telephoto lenses, and they can’t see a thing.”
Talon took a breath. “Sir, we have no reason to think that the gunmen won’t give up peacefully. Both their previous raids were carried out without one single shot fired.”
“What do we know about this guard?” Gael asked.
“This is his first day,” the lieutenant answered. “Divorced dad. No red flags except a hefty judgment for child support. Apparently the agency he works through recently received instructions for his wages to be garnished.”
“Money might be a problem, then?” Sawyer said what they were all thinking.
“So we’re agreed we let the negotiator take point?” the lieutenant clarified. “We have absolutely no eyes and ears in the place, and no easy way of getting any. The building is stand-alone. We have a hostage crisis team, but they are an hour away.”
Talon agreed. “Unless we are faced with the possibility of injury to any of the hostages, an incursion is the absolute last resort.”
The lieutenant walked back to his negotiator.
“There are many possible complications, boss,” Gael started. “My biggest worry is the enhanced child. I know his mom said he hadn’t demonstrated any abilities, but we don’t know what he will do if he’s scared or threatened.”
Talon sighed. He hoped to God Finn managed to keep him calm. They all knew it could go badly wrong very quickly.
Chapter Fifteen
FINN LOWERED the cotton scarf. His head wasn’t bleeding anymore, just felt like it was threatening to explode, and his vision kept blurring, which he didn’t think was a good sign. He sat with his back to the counter and the kid close by. For some reason they were keeping the two of them separate from the rest of the hostages—the bank staff, a guy in his fifties, maybe, and an elderly couple. The older guy looked pale and shaky. His wife seemed in better condition. Finn tried to give them a reassuring smile a couple of times if his guard, or “Slim,” as he had nicknamed him, wasn’t looking. Bobby, as he heard his mom call him, surreptitiously shuffled closer to Finn, and Finn tried to give him an encouraging look, even if he couldn’t speak without the threat of a gun in his face.
The idiot guard was in the far corner, watching the bank staff. If he had to guess, the guard was in on it, but he’d definitely never done this before. He didn’t have the swagger of the guy who was in charge. Finn glanced at the clock on the wall. Three hours since he’d stormed out of the field office.
“There’s no fucking food in here,” Slim grumbled.
Finn risked speaking. “Get on the phone and ask for some.” He gestured to the phone.
Dave opened his mouth, but at that second, the phone rang. Everyone jumped a little, and Dave snatched it up. “You got my car yet?” he said gruffly. He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Yeah,” he said, looking at Finn. “We’re hungry. Yeah. Wait,” he demanded and slammed the phone down. “They’ll bring food and water, whatever we want, if we let a hostage go.” He pointed to Bobby. “They want him.”
Bobby ducked his head and pressed into Finn’s side.
“That makes sense,” Finn agreed. “You want hostages who will be cooperative and sensible. Adults, not children. The more you g
ive them, the more likely it is we will resolve this soon.”
He realized his mistake as soon as the big guy turned.
“More likely?” Dave said incredulously. “Maybe we should give them a hostage in a body bag and then they’ll cooperate.”
One of the bank tellers burst into tears, and Dave rounded on her.
“Shut the fuck up, you bitch.”
One of the other women put her arm around her and tried to calm her down.
Dave leaned over and snatched the phone up. “I want food and water brought to the door and left. And everything in packets so I know it hasn’t been drugged.” He lifted his chin toward the old man. “Stand up, Grandpa.”
The old man shook his head. “No, please. Take my wife.”
His wife shushed him. “The boy,” she said pleadingly. “Please let the child go.”
Dave grinned and looked at the old man. “Uh-uh. See the scar on his face? That means he can do cool shit. He’s going nowhere.”
Finn was surprised. He hadn’t met any humans who seemed to be in awe of enhanced before, and he noticed Dave kept glancing toward the quieter one standing in the corner. After Finn saw him open the safe, he didn’t get involved in anything, just kept out of the way. He seemed to glance at Finn one or two times, though, and Finn had no idea why.
Finn looked up sharply, wishing he could see behind the mask. What if Dave was an enhanced? Was that why he wasn’t scared? No, thought Finn. That made even less sense. If he were an enhanced, he wouldn’t need the child. In fact, he would understand how unpredictable any ability was in so young a child. Finn would have thought he was more likely to want to get rid of him.
Slim peered out of the blind. “There’s a guy putting an open box down with stuff in.”
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