The helicopter was landing.
Was Ware’s thinking really so disordered that he actually believed he would be allowed to just climb inside and fly away?
You have no idea what this is about. She could almost hear Ware saying it.
Caroline wet her lips.
“Hollis Bayard is here,” she said into the phone. For a second there, she thought Ware looked relieved. Then, as she added, “So is the helicopter. And the money,” Ware’s face turned inscrutable while her father closed his eyes.
In that moment Martin looked incredibly old. And tired.
Again Caroline felt a stirring of unexpected feeling for her father. Harsh as he could be, as bullying and occasionally violent as he had been to her and her mother and sisters before his subsequent virtual abandonment of them, their relationship was still apparently not as dead as she had thought. Impossible as it was to fathom, on some level she obviously still cared about him.
I need counseling, was the acerbic corollary thought that popped into her head.
“I want to talk to Bayard. Get him in there, get him on the phone,” Ware said.
Caroline nodded, forgetting Ware couldn’t see her.
“I’ll be right back,” she said.
Putting the phone down, Caroline walked to the door and opened it. The fresh night air was more than welcome after the stale interior of the van. The rattle of a generator was the dominant note in the sea of sound that greeted her. So many klieg lights had been set up that it was now bright as day around the van, and she squinted a little and shielded her eyes as she looked for Dixon. He was standing with a small group beside a police cruiser parked in the middle of the street. Someone opened the rear door behind the driver’s seat, reached in, and, with a hand protecting the top of the emerging person’s head, pulled the backseat passenger out.
The emerging passenger was a young man, Caroline saw at a glance, and if she’d been about fifteen she probably would have found herself thinking he was way cute. Medium height, wiry thin in the way of some still-growing adolescents. Black hair long enough to curl around his neck, a lean face with good bone structure, deep-set dark eyes and a full mouth. Dressed in jeans and a gray zip-front hoodie with a Saints logo that was currently unzipped to reveal part of a white wife-beater. A tattoo—some kind of ornate cross—on the side of his neck, small silver hoops in his ears.
It was immediately obvious that he was a prisoner: his hands were cuffed behind his back.
Hollis Bayard, she had little doubt.
“Wallace,” Dixon greeted her. He and the others—Villard and Esteban were among them—had broken off what had seemed to be an intense conversation as she approached.
She kept her voice low enough so that Bayard, who was being watched closely by the uniforms, couldn’t hear. “Ware wants to talk to him on the phone.”
Dixon and the others exchanged looks. “That works,” Dixon said. “You go on back in there and get Ware on the phone. Tell him Bayard’s coming in to talk to him. And get those monitors shut down before Bayard can get a look at them. We don’t want him telling Ware about our arrangements out here.”
“Will do.” Caroline gave a nod, and returned to the van. As soon as she glanced at the monitors, she saw that something was wrong. The monitor that had allowed her to see Ware and the hostages had gone dark.
“What happened?” she asked the technicians, tapping the darkened library monitor with a forefinger.
“Right after you left, the camera shut down,” Isaacs said. “I’m almost certain Ware did it, but I was working on trying to get eyes inside other parts of the house and I missed exactly what he did. Then he must have noticed the opening in the curtains, because they got closed all the way and we lost that, too. Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. Listen, Dixon wants the rest of the monitors shut down temporarily. Hollis Bayard’s on his way in.” Taking a deep breath, Caroline picked up the phone.
“Reed?” she said. “Are you there?”
“I’m here. Do you have Bayard?”
The sound of Ware’s voice was so welcome that Caroline felt a flutter of relief. She realized that in some shadowy corner of her mind, seeing the darkened monitor had made her fear that he had been killed while she was gone. She realized something else, too: the reason she had felt such instant anxiety was because she was expecting him to be killed.
Nothing in Dixon’s or anyone else’s attitude made her believe that they wanted him to emerge from this alive.
Frowning, she replied, “Yes, he’s here. He’s on the way in to speak to you.” Then she added impulsively, “You shut down the camera.”
“Yeah, I did.” He sounded unapologetic.
A sound at the door of the van told her that it was being opened.
“Reed, listen: you need to surrender. It’s the only option you have if you want to live through this.” She stopped talking as the creak of footsteps and the drone of voices told her that whoever had been at the door was now inside the van.
“You’re living in la-la land if you think my surrendering would make any difference at all,” Ware said.
Then Dixon and Bayard and the two uniforms escorting him crowded in behind her. Caroline glanced around at them in acknowledgment.
Dixon said, “Get Bayard up there.”
Bayard was pushed forward just as Ware said, “If Bayard’s there, put him on the line.”
Bayard was standing next to Caroline now, looking sullen. He kept wetting his lips, and his eyes darted around suspiciously. His shoulders were hunched, and he swayed from side to side slightly as if he was too nervous to stand still.
“Detective Reed Ware wants to talk to you,” Caroline told Bayard. “I’m assuming you know who he is.”
For a moment Bayard held her gaze. She saw that his eyes were the color of caramel, that he was still young enough to have downy peach fuzz rather than whiskers on his cheeks, and that he was sweating bullets.
He’s just a boy. And he looks scared to death.
“Yeah,” Bayard said.
“Is the phone on speaker?” Dixon asked, and Caroline shook her head.
“Not on this end. On Ware’s it is, just like before.”
Dixon nodded. “We’re going to be listening to everything you say, kid,” he warned Bayard, who gave him a surly look. “You go spouting off, and the conversation’s over, understand?” Bayard’s eyes held his for a moment before his lids drooped over them. Then he gave a barely perceptible nod.
“Okay, then.” Dixon gestured to Caroline. “Go ahead.”
Caroline depressed the talk button and said into the phone, “Reed? I have Hollis Bayard for you.”
As she started to pass the receiver to Bayard, she realized that he couldn’t take it because his hands were cuffed. Holding it up so that Bayard could speak into it, Caroline reflected that talking to Ware without being able to see him was as disconcerting as flying blind. What was going on in the library that he’d felt he needed to conceal from the view of the camera? Merely considering the possibilities gave her the jitters.
“Holly?” Ware’s voice filled the enclosed space.
“They can fucking hear every word you say,” Bayard burst out fiercely, shooting Caroline a furious look. His glance then slid past her to encompass the others in the van. The chain linking his cuffs rattled as he jiggled from foot to foot. “There’s like six of them in here. Fucking butchers. Fucking scum.”
“Chill out,” Ware ordered in a warning tone as the uniforms responded to Bayard’s speech by taking nearly simultaneous steps closer to him. Ware continued, “What I need for you to do right now is just stay cool.”
As he listened to Ware, Bayard looked at Caroline, who stood closest to him because she was holding the receiver. She could feel the nervous heat emanating from his thin body.
“Easy for you to say,” Bayard told Ware bitterly. “You’re a damned cop, too.”
Ware made a sound that was impossible to interpret. “Are you hurt
?”
Bayard’s eyes flickered around. Nervously. “They picked Ant up not long after me. Edie got word to me in jail. They got Ant. You hear what I’m saying?”
Caroline noticed that he hadn’t answered Ware’s question.
“Goddamn it.” The sudden anger in Ware’s voice was unmistakable.
Bayard said, “He’s just a little kid. I can’t let nothing happen to him.”
“I know,” Ware replied. “Nothing’s going to happen to him. I got this. Quit worrying about Ant for right now. What I need for you to do is focus on what’s going on here.”
“Yeah.” Shifting from foot to foot, Bayard looked suspiciously at Caroline, then cast another uneasy look around at the others and added to Ware, “So what’s the deal?”
“You come on inside the house here,” Ware told him. “Come in the front door, up the main staircase, and the room right at the top of the stairs is the library, which is where I am. You come up here to me, and then you and I are going to head out to that helicopter waiting down there by the pool and fly on out of here.” He paused. “Got it?”
Bayard’s brows snapped together. He wet his lips as he gave Caroline another hard look and glanced around at the other cops again. “They ain’t going to let that happen. They’re gonna kill us, fool.”
Bayard’s assessment was so right on that Caroline had to work to keep her expression neutral.
“No, they aren’t,” Ware said. “I’ve got this under control. You just do what I tell you.”
Bayard moved his shoulders nervously. “What about Ant?”
Ware said, “You leave me to worry about—”
Dixon interrupted by signaling to the uniforms, who grabbed Bayard by the arms and started pulling him toward the door. “That’s enough,” Dixon snapped. “Conversation’s over.”
“Hey.” Sounding panicky, the kid yelled back at Ware, “They’re taking me out of here.”
Only then did Caroline remember to release the talk button.
“Hang in, Holly, it’s going to be okay,” Ware called back, then added, in a totally different tone, “That you I’m hearing, Dixon? Just so you know, I’m holding you personally responsible for that kid’s welfare.”
Dixon took the receiver from Caroline and spoke into it. His harsh expression was at complete odds with his voice, which was placating. “We’re getting ready to have somebody escort him in to you right now. You’re getting everything you want, so no need to go on making threats.”
Ware said, “For everybody’s sake I hope that’s what happens. Caroline, you there?”
Dixon gave her back the phone.
“Yes.” Caroline’s throat felt tight as she watched Bayard being hustled out of the van.
“This is all going to be over very shortly,” Ware said. “You’ve been doing great.”
Ordinarily the praise would have warmed her, but the thought that everything really was going to be all over very shortly sent an icy slither of dread coursing down her spine. What were the chances that everybody would still be alive in, say, half an hour? What were the chances that Ware would be?
She felt sick thinking about it.
“Surrendering is in your best interest,” Caroline told him. She was all too conscious of Dixon listening beside her: she couldn’t do what she really wanted to do and drop all pretense of professionalism and outright beg. Still, her voice took on an urgent note. “Reed, think for a minute. No harm will come to you or Hollis Bayard or anyone else if you give up now. Just walk out with your hands up.”
The look Dixon gave her was unreadable. He gestured to Caroline to indicate that he wanted to say something, and she held the receiver out so that he could speak into it.
“That’s right,” he said to Ware. “You do that, you walk out with your hands up, you’ll make everybody happy.”
Ware laughed, a brief, harsh sound. “I just bet I would.” Then his tone changed. “Caroline, I want you to bring Hollis Bayard in to me.” His voice hardened. “You hear that, Dixon? I want her to escort the kid, and it’s not negotiable. She’s the only one of you assholes I’m letting near me.”
“I hear you.” Dixon’s face was grim as he looked at Caroline. “You game for this, Wallace?”
Caroline hesitated. Hostage negotiators had a saying: no cop ever got killed on the far end of a phone. She was supremely conscious of the risk of ordinary police work: her first stepfather, her mother’s second husband (her mother was now on husband number three), had been shot and killed while pulling over a guy for speeding. A friend had been badly wounded responding to a convenience store robbery. Another had caught a stray bullet in the leg working crowd control at Mardi Gras. That was the reason she was so conscientious about always wearing a flak vest: in her line of work, when things went wrong they tended to go wrong bad and fast. Escorting Bayard inside the mansion would constitute putting herself in harm’s way. If the situation went south—and the situation was inevitably going to go south—she could get caught in the crossfire. She could get shot. She could get blown up. She could die.
“Yes.” Even as she said it, she knew that the driving force behind her decision was her hope that in the brief time that she could talk to Ware face-to-face, she would get him to see how hopeless his situation was and surrender. If she was forced to choose, the lives of the hostages had to come first, but she was going to do everything in her power to keep Ware alive, too. Not that she meant to let any hint of her intentions show in her face or her manner. She might be prepared to pull out all the stops and plead with Ware on the basis of their long-ago—what, friendship? flirtation?—but she wasn’t prepared to share the fact that she meant to do so with Dixon or anyone else.
“If I do this . . .” she directed her words down the phone line to Ware. Her tone made what she said to him next a challenge. “If I bring Bayard inside, you owe me three hostages.”
“Minute I set eyes on you and Bayard, I’ll let three of them go,” Ware promised.
“I’m going to hold you to that,” Caroline said. The accompanying sinking feeling she experienced was because she knew in her gut that even if he lived up to his promise, it wasn’t going to be enough to save him. Nothing short of his all-out surrender would do it.
“You do that. Come through the front door. From the way people were scooting out of it, I’m pretty sure it’s unlocked. When you get inside, close the door behind you, lock it, and bring Bayard up to the library. Straight up the stairs, first door at the top. I’ll be waiting. Oh, and Caroline? Come unarmed. Understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good. I’m not talking on the phone anymore. This is it. I’m out.”
“Reed—” Before Caroline could say anything more, the sound of a click was followed by the hum of a dial tone: Ware had hung up.
CHAPTER SIX
DIXON WAS ALREADY MOVING purposefully toward the door. Uncomfortably conscious of the increased drumming of her heart, Caroline followed him.
“Ware seems mighty friendly with you.” Dixon waited for her as she descended the steps. “You got some history with him I should know about?”
Caroline looked across the sea of official activity at the beleaguered mansion and shrugged. “I’ve seen him around. He is—was—with the NOPD.” Her tone implied that Ware’s employment with their sister department said it all. It was not a lie. It was, in fact, the absolute truth.
Just not the whole truth.
“He’s probably seen you around, too.” Dixon’s gaze slid over her, assessing her slender figure, her shapely bare legs. “Yeah. A womanizer like Ware—he would have noticed.”
“Hey,” Caroline protested as she followed him. “Think that might be a little sexist?”
“What? I can’t tell the truth? You’re hot stuff, Wallace, and that’s a fact. Sometimes it’s a pain in the butt. Sometimes, like tonight, we might be able to work it to our advantage. If it means Ware’s willing to let you get close to him, that’s a good thing. Come on.”
&nbs
p; Caroline opened her mouth to say something, anything, that would sum up her feelings at being assessed in such a way, but wasn’t able to immediately come up with a retort with enough zing to it. Instead, she said, “What about you? Ware recognized your voice. You got some history with him I should know about?”
Dixon scowled at her. “We’ve worked together before. Guy’s a prick.”
She let the subject drop—for now—as they caught up with Villard, who was beckoning to them.
A few minutes later—standing in the middle of a semicircle composed of Dixon, Villard, and Jim Wasserman, who it turned out was one of the strangers she had noticed earlier and was also the EMP guy Villard had been talking about—she was shaking her head vigorously no.
“I think it’s a bad idea,” she said, though the words that had first crowded to the tip of her tongue, only to be immediately repressed, were, Hell, no. I won’t do it.
“Here’s the way this is going to go down,” Dixon told her, blatantly disregarding her protest. She used the too-bright glow of the klieg lights as an excuse to pull her cap lower over her eyes for fear her expression would reveal too much, as in, her instinctive, complete disinclination to do what Dixon was suggesting. “We’re going to give you the EMP device. As soon as you’re within ten feet of Ware, all you have to do is push the button. Wasserman will be watching his monitor and will know instantly whether or not it worked to disable the dead man’s switch.”
“And then you’ll—what? Have a sniper blow Ware’s head off?” Caroline couldn’t help the accusatory note in her voice.
“Or SWAT will burst in and take him out.” Dixon gave her a hard look. “Whatever seems most likely to succeed at that time. Our mission is to rescue the hostages unharmed. That’s the goal.”
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