by Julie Miller
“Hey, buddy, just leave her alone, okay?” Mike edged the wheel of his chair between her and Dylan.
Dylan arched a golden brow and glared at the teen. “And you are?”
“A patient, Dylan,” Jillian defended. Apparently one with a protective streak that echoed his father’s. She shoved her bangs off her forehead and inhaled a calming breath. Remembering that she was the adult here, she rested her hand on Mike’s shoulder, thanking him and reassuring him at the same time. “I’m sorry I jumped down your throat like that, Smith. But Mike isn’t the problem here. Did I tell you someone broke into my apartment on Friday?”
Dylan swore beneath his breath and was instantly contrite. “No. Did they take anything?”
“They didn’t steal anything. Whoever it was got in and painted my bedroom.”
“Painted…? Is that a crime?” Dylan asked.
“Someone broke in?” Mike repeated, perhaps better understanding her sense of violation. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m just a little paranoid about my space and my things now. I don’t like knowing someone was in here while I was out. I don’t want these. Here.” She picked up the vase and thrust it into Dylan’s hands, shooing the flowers away as though they disgusted her. Bright, beautiful blooms aside, they did. At the last moment, she snatched the card from the bouquet and stuffed it into her slacks. “Would you take those down to the hospital wing for me? Maybe give them to Mrs. Carter. She was here this morning.”
“That’s a nice gesture, but they’re so pretty…they must mean something special.”
“My allergies have been acting up.”
“Okay. To the hospital they go.” Dylan squeezed her arm and offered a sympathetic smile. “No worries. You take care.”
After Dylan had gone, Mike frowned. “You have allergies?”
“No.” Jillian circled her desk. She tossed a stack of folders into Mike’s lap. “Why don’t you start by alphabetizing these?”
Then she pulled out the hospital directory and sat down to dial the number for Maintenance.
She’d be changing the lock on her office door, too.
Chapter Six
“Think, Cutler.”
Michael muffled his helmet mike beneath his gloved hand and leaned back against the brown SWAT van where he’d set up his command post. Dale “Buck” Buckner had hung up on him again, sticking by his promise to blow away his ex-girlfriend and detonate the bomb he claimed to have rigged to explode the instant her limp thumb came off the detonator’s trigger. What a hell of a way to terrorize someone he supposedly cared about. Her weeping pleas hadn’t moved him any more than Michael’s logic had.
This morning’s bank robbery hadn’t turned out to be about money at all. This six-hour standoff was about love, loss and a sheaf full of violated restraining orders.
Greedy gunmen were a cinch to negotiate with compared to a call like this one. Thieves might be desperate, but they wanted something. Michael could give them what they wanted—at least long enough for his men to take them down and put them in cuffs.
But a guy like Buckner had nothing to lose. He didn’t care about his freedom. He didn’t care about his life or the lives of his ex-girlfriend’s coworkers. He sure as hell didn’t care about material things. He just wanted his woman back. And if that didn’t happen, he’d make sure that no one else could have her, either. And he’d take out anyone who tried to keep them apart—Michael, her boss at the bank, the Jackson County judicial system, pretty much anyone who made his ex laugh or smiled at her or even looked her direction. Buck thought he could force Daphne to love him and walk out of that bank a free man.
Michael knew better. This was going to end badly. Daphne Mullins was going to wind up dead and Buck would kill himself, and anyone else who happened to get in his way, so that he wouldn’t have to live without her.
The waste of it all squeezed like a fist in Michael’s gut. He was getting too old for this kind of crap. Too old for fighting and trying and people still dying.
God, he wanted to be young again. He wanted to feel strong and invincible, the way he had when Jillian Masterson had walked into his arms and held on to him as though he just might have the answers she needed. He wanted to feel the hope pounding through his cynical veins again. See the trust shining in her sweet green eyes. He wanted to kiss her and touch her and come alive again, in ways he seemed to have forgotten since his wife’s death and Mike’s accident. The stubborn brunette with her risky do-gooding and miracle smile had turned to him as though she believed he could save the day. And for that brief moment when she kissed him back, he believed he could.
But after six hours, with only one hostage released, Michael didn’t have any more answers in him. He wasn’t the hero Jillian needed any more than he was the man getting the job done here.
Tuning out the chatter on the radio inside his helmet, as well as the doubts settling inside his heart, Michael tipped his chin up to the sunshine. He needed to forget about what he was feeling and clear his head. He needed options, short of storming the bank and taking out innocent hostages and maybe even losing his men in the process. Perfect blue sky. Perfect spring weather—sunny, but not too hot, even suited up in the layers of protective and communications gear and weaponry he wore. What a lousy, lousy day.
The streets outside the Drury State Bank looked as if the army were gearing up for another D-day invasion. Police cruisers, the bomb squad robot and its armored command center, uniformed cops, off-duty officers, detectives, snipers, bomb squad techs—all waited for his word to launch their attack and take out the SOB who’d walked into the bank that morning with a military duffel bag and a suicidal attitude.
Michael had tried every trick in the book. But giving up wasn’t an option. His men were depending on him for guidance. Kansas City was depending on him for protection. Daphne Mullins was depending on him for her very life. He needed to calm himself, get creative, think beyond the pages of any training manual.
And then his upturned eyes zeroed in on the roof of the bank. Could that be the new trick he needed? Standard bank security had every entrance sealed tight, and Buckner wasn’t about to let anyone on the bank staff override the lockdown. But what if there was a way in that didn’t involve doors or windows?
Michael pushed away from the van, energized by the chancy idea that just might work if his men lived up to the speed, accuracy and resourcefulness of their training.
He tapped the microphone in his helmet and summoned his men while he organized his plan. “I need a sit rep. Who’s got eyes on our perp?”
“Shades are still drawn on the front windows, boss,” Holden Kincaid answered from his position on the rooftop across the street. The deep voice of Michael’s number-one sharpshooter crackled through the static in his ear. “I do not have a shot at this guy. I repeat, I do not have a shot.”
Alex Taylor, the young patrol officer whom Michael had handpicked to replace Dominic Malloy, the funny man who’d been gunned down in a shoot-out at a safe house, added his observations from his position at Kincaid’s side. His job was to protect Kincaid and keep an ongoing assessment of potential casualties in the area so that the sharpshooter could concentrate on making his shot and taking out the perp on a moment’s notice. “I’ve got two thermal images on the monitor on the other side of those blinds.”
“But there’s no way to tell which one is Buckner and which is the woman,” Kincaid pointed out.
Malloy had been Holden Kincaid’s best bud and a damn good scout. Taylor had some big shoes to fill, and the rest of Michael’s men didn’t hesitate to point that out. But to his credit, Alex Taylor didn’t seem to be backing down, either. “What I was saying is that none of the other hostages are showing up on the thermal. Could be he’s moved them to a separate room or into the vault.”
That meant there might be a way to get them out. The brain cells were ticking.
“Trip?” Michael spoke into the mike again, summoning their big man, Joseph Jones, J
r.—Triple J or Trip, as the men liked to call him. “You still on the roof of the bank?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How fast can you open the AC vent up there with the tools you’ve got on you?”
He heard the hesitation in Trip’s voice. “The fans are still running inside. Anyone who goes through there would be chopped to bits unless we kill the power, and that would alert Buckner for sure. There’s no clear path.”
“How fast?” Michael repeated. If Trip could jerry-rig a truck to run on parts scavenged from a lawn mower engine, a feat he’d accomplished on a survival training mission, he could make this happen.
“I’m on it, sir.” He heard the scuff of boots or a rifle being laid on the roof as the big man went to work. “I’m assuming you want me to figure out a way to stop the fans, too?”
“You’re reading my mind, Trip.” Michael was back at his post now, sighting each of his men and the other KCPD men and women who were keeping curiosity seekers and the press at bay.
He spotted Rafe Delgado, charming a pretty blonde reporter into staying inside her news van beyond the cordon tape. “Delgado. Get me something to talk to Buck about. I’m going to call him back and keep him distracted while Trip’s working.”
Rafe secured his rifle on his hip, tapped the news van and signaled the driver to move farther away from the potential blast area. Then he was on the horn again, a reliable source of information, as usual. “The heart attack victim Buckner released is en route to Truman Hospital. Looks like he’ll make it. I’ve got the name on Buckner’s cell mate at Leavenworth, where he served his time before the army discharged him. The warden says he’s a phone call away if we need him. His civilian parole officer is on the scene with me, but says he doubts Buckner will listen to him. No luck getting a hold of his mother, either. Looks like you’re going to have to sweet-talk him out all by yourself, boss.”
“You know what a charmer I can be.” He allowed his men their moment of stress-relieving laughter, then got dead serious again. “Let’s make this happen, men. Let’s get these hostages out. That’s priority one.” He picked up the phone to make the call. “Trip? Tell me you’ve got a way in through the roof, big guy.”
“Almost there, sir. Running silent is slowing me down. Just about…Oh, hell.”
Michael stopped dialing. Oh, hell was not part of the plan. “Trip—explain.”
“Little man, I need you up here.”
Alex Taylor was nearly a foot shorter than Trip. “I know you are not talking to me.”
“Get up here, Shrimp. My shoulders won’t fit through here. I can’t cut it open any further without going electric, and Buckner would be sure to hear the saw.”
Taylor groaned. “You got this?”
Holden answered his new partner. “I’m good. If he cracks those blinds, I’m taking him out.”
“Belay that wish, Kincaid. Wait for my signal,” Michael ordered. His goal was to prevent any casualties, and until he knew the setup of the bomb inside, that meant getting as many innocents out of there as possible before risking the final solution. “Taylor, I want you on the roof now. I need you inside in five minutes. Preferably in one piece.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Delgado—I want you to rig a minicharge that will bring down that window. Then join Kincaid to back him up. That’ll be your best sight line. Trip, I want you ready to go in the instant Taylor can get an access door open for you, and help him get those hostages out. I need eyes on this guy, people. I need eyes.”
Michael punched in the last number and waited for Buckner to pick up on his end.
It rang twice before the man with the bomb and the gun picked up. “Yeah? What do you want now, Cutler?”
Daphne Mullins’s labored breathing tore at Michael’s conscience. But he tuned out her distress and focused on the job at hand. “Buck. I’ve got an old friend of yours here. Your P.O. He says you won’t talk to him. You want to tell me why?”
Five minutes later, the answers Michael needed to hear reported in with succinct, whispered tones in his earphone. The bomb trigger taped to Daphne Mullins’s thumb was a dud. The so-called explosives in Buckner’s bag were nothing more than wires and laundry, according to Taylor and Trip. But the .40-caliber S & W and 9mm Glock he carried were real enough.
Ten minutes later, Buck was still haranguing away about the unfairness of a world that would keep him and Daphne apart while Alex and Trip were silently moving the hostages to the rear exit.
“Captain? The alarm’s going to sound as soon as I open this back door,” Trip whispered.
Michael had already pulled the phone away from his mike. “Understood. Holden? You and Delgado ready up there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“On my mark, take out the window, get the hostages out the back, and Holden, take this guy down.” He inhaled a deep breath for all of them. “Now.”
MICHAEL ESCORTED THE TWO D.B.’S to the medical examiner’s van himself while his men packed up the SWAT truck.
His team had saved nine lives today. Even the banker who’d suffered a heart attack at the beginning of the hostage crisis—when Michael had negotiated his release and begun to think that they might get through this day unscathed—was going to pull through just fine. But it was hard to think of this mission as a success.
Yes, the charge Delgado planted had shattered the bank’s front window and ripped apart the blinds. A split second later, Kincaid’s shot had dropped Buck like a stone.
But not before Dale Buckner had put his Smith & Wesson to his girlfriend’s heart and taken her life with him. Not before he’d pointed his gun out the window and fired a wild second shot.
Daphne Mullins had spent the last few hours of her life living in terror. They’d done everything they could to save her. But in the end, it wasn’t enough. Nobody should have to live in fear of another person like that. They should never have to be afraid of someone who claimed to love them. Not Daphne. Not Jillian.
Michael’s fingers teased the cell phone in his pocket as the M.E.’s van slipped away with its police escort. He should call Jillian, make sure she was all right. Find out if the lock had been fixed on her apartment, if she’d had any more disturbing contacts from Loverboy, if he’d been on her mind even half as much this weekend as she’d been on his.
But she was at work and he was in a mood. No telling what raw, needy thing might come out of his mouth right now. Besides, if he didn’t get his butt in gear and make his report to the commissioner who’d arrived on the scene, then the press would be hounding him and his men for their take on what had happened today.
KCPD commissioner Shauna Cartwright-Masterson was a far better spokesperson for the department than he could possibly be right now. His men were professionals, well trained. They’d risen to every challenge he’d put in front of them today. But it wasn’t their job to handle PR right now. They needed time to themselves to work through their emotions. Taking a life was no easy thing. Losing a life was even tougher. They didn’t need the media in their faces.
They all needed to blow off some steam. Holden would go home to his wife, probably go for a run with their pack of dogs and then do the things Michael remembered newlyweds doing. The other three bachelors needed to get back to headquarters, hit the showers, maybe find some friends and get something to eat or drink. Or they should go down to the Shamrock, pick up some pretty thing and get busy.
Michael needed…An image of long, coffee-colored hair and a beautiful smile flashed through his mind. Ah, hell. He tugged at the Kevlar vest he still wore, aching for some sort of release that he’d kept in check for days now. But just because he was on fire for a woman fifteen years his junior didn’t mean that Jillian Masterson was feeling the same randy, needy, want-to-be-a-part-of-her-life impulses for an old warhorse like him.
“Captain Cutler?” The lady commissioner’s voice cut through his thoughts, forcing him to forget about his own needs for the time being, and concentrate on making his report.
“Commissioner.” Michael fell in step beside her as they moved away from the crowd to the relative privacy of the SWAT van.
“Good work, Captain.”
He wasn’t about to mince words. “Two people are dead, ma’am.”
“Mr. Buckner?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Any of ours?”
“No.” Once she and her uniformed escort were out of sight behind the van, he turned to face her. “But the girlfriend didn’t make it.”
She tucked a swath of silvery blond hair behind her ear and nodded. “It could have been a lot worse, Michael. SWAT Team One secured the scene and rescued nine hostages. You kept who knows how many innocent bystanders from being hurt.”
But he’d lost the girl. The commissioner could probably sense that her reassurances, while true and important to the safety of the community, hadn’t tapped into his gut and eased the sense of failure he felt. Michael’s gaze slid over to his men, silently stowing their gear at the back of the van. “What do I tell them to make this right?”
“This was a tough one, I know, and speculating just how much worse the result could have been if you and your men hadn’t been here doesn’t help right now. I’ll speak to the victims’ families and keep the press out of your hair. Take your men out for a drink tonight, Captain. Then go home and spend time with your son and anyone else you care about. Do something normal. Celebrate that they’re safe.”
Michael breathed a little easier. “Sounds like a plan.”
“I understand you’ve been seeing my sister-in-law, Jillian.”
Huh? The conversation took a sharp left and drove right into a place he wasn’t ready to acknowledge yet. He propped his hand at his hip and straightened. “Jillian works with my son. I’ve seen her at the physical therapy clinic for several weeks now.”
The commissioner’s sharp eyes indicated she knew there was more to the story than that. “Jillian can handle it if you want to talk about today.”