The gunfire ceased, but some kind of commotion was happening beyond the counter.
Matt straightened from Gabe’s hold, gulping a few short breaths, feeling like he couldn’t get enough oxygen.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I will if you don’t cooperate!” Thomas called out. “If every person in this diner has to die before you sick fucks give yourself up, then don’t think I’ll hesitate.”
Oh shit. This couldn’t be happening. Matt felt like he was a second from passing out, his breath coming too fast and head spinning. Beyond Gabe, Jake and Danny were having some kind of quiet but intense argument, and Matt could only assume Jake was intending to hand himself over by the way Danny was clutching his arm and vehemently shaking his head.
A wave of disbelief washed over Matt, making him numb. This wasn’t Thomas. Not his cousin. Not the kid who’d relentlessly collected Spider-Man comics, so Matt had taken him to see one of the movies for his twelfth birthday even though he wasn’t a fan himself. How had that kid ended up here with an assault rifle, holding a diner full of people hostage?
“Matt, just breathe.” Gabe’s voice sounded like it was coming from a lot farther away than right next to him. “The sheriff is outside and Jake said they’ve already called SWAT from Houston. They’re coming in by helicopter. If Thomas hasn’t surrendered by the time they get here—”
“What?” he demanded, though his voice wasn’t any louder than an angry whisper. “They’ll take him out? This is my cousin we’re talking about. Someone texted me, remember? Someone knew he was coming here to do this. Someone else must have convinced him—”
Gabe’s hand closed tightly around his, and Matt didn’t even realize until that moment how badly he was shaking.
“I’m sorry, Matty. Even if someone else put the idea in his head, Thomas is the one holding hostages at gunpoint. Your cousin crossed a line he can’t come back from.”
He closed his eyes, throat swelling as tears threatened. Dammit, Gabe was right. As much as he wanted to deny it, he’d completely lost Thomas. He remembered all the stuff he’d found on Thomas’s social media accounts. Maybe his cousin had been lost a long time ago and Matt had never stood a chance of getting him back.
Those details didn’t matter now. The only important thing he could do from here was make sure Thomas didn’t truly hurt anyone. With that determination settling heavily in his chest, Matt took a breath and stood up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
GABE HAD always thought he was extremely good at reading people, but when Matt suddenly shook himself free of his hold and stood, Gabe didn’t see it coming and definitely didn’t have time to do anything about it.
“Matt!” He wrapped a hand around Matt’s ankle—not that it’d do much to stop him if he decided to walk away, but the need to touch him, to keep some kind of contact with him wasn’t logical in that moment. Jake held his gun ready, looking like he was prepared to jump up and open fire at any second, though Danny appeared to be holding on to the deputy just as tightly.
“Thomas,” Matt said calmly yet firmly. He barely sounded panicked or apprehensive, despite the fact he’d practically been hyperventilating a few minutes ago. “Why don’t you let that guy go and we can talk?”
“Matt, keep out of this!” Thomas snapped in return.
Gabe shared a concerned glance with Jake, who tensed as if he was going to get to his feet. From what Matt had said, it seemed like Thomas had grabbed one of the hostages to hold at gunpoint when Jake and Danny had failed to appear. Gabe pointedly shook his head at Jake, who simply glared back at him.
This wasn’t how he wanted things to play out; he’d rather have Matt out of the line of fire, but maybe he really was the only one who had any chance of talking Thomas down before someone was killed—if they hadn’t been already. When Thomas had opened fire, Gabe had been too busy trying to get Matt behind the solid safety of the counter to take any notice which direction Thomas had been shooting and whether anyone had been hit.
He’d snatched a few glances around the end of the counter but hadn’t seen any bodies, and Thomas had moved farther into the diner by then, putting him out of direct sight without Gabe moving around the edge of the bench to see him. Once again, Gabe was cursing the fact he never carried, but he’d honestly expected to live his life behind a desk and never really thought he’d end up in a situation where he had no backup from his FBI brethren and needed to be armed.
“I’m sorry, Thomas, but I can’t keep out of it. I’m worried about you. I want to help you,” Matt finally replied.
“You want to help me?” Thomas gave a grating laugh. “Then you should have turned around and left town the first time I told you. I didn’t need you here, Matt. I didn’t want you here. But no. You had to stay and stick your nose into things and ruin it all for me. Don’t you get it? As if I want to go back with you. Back to listening to my own mom asking me over and over why can’t I be more like Matthew? Hearing your mom go on and on about how perfect you are. I mean, fuck, they think the sun shines out of your ass. They think there’s nothing wrong with you.”
Matt’s fists clenched, but he otherwise didn’t move. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Yes, there is!” Thomas’s voice was hoarse as he shouted the words.
Gabe tightened his hold on Matt’s ankle, wanting to tug him down behind the counter, terrified Thomas was going to completely lose his shit and shoot Matt without even realizing what he was doing. Or maybe he’d open fire simply because he resented Matt that much.
“You’re wrong!” Thomas yelled. “You and that deputy and the guy who works at the bar. Even that FBI agent I saw you with. You’re letting him fuck you, right, Matt? Letting him bend you over—”
“Enough!” Matt didn’t shout the word, but the amount of anger he put behind it, he might as well have. Thomas fell silent, and not being able to see what was going on was starting to make Gabe lose what little calm he was holding on to.
“You can say whatever the hell you want about me, but don’t bring Gabe into this.” There was a tremor in Matt’s words this time, but it was pure fury and nothing else.
“He should have been the one who ended up in the hospital, not the other FBI woman,” Thomas said bitterly. “I thought for sure he’d come to answer the door and when he was dead, you’d finally go back to San Francisco.”
Matt’s entire body stiffened, and Gabe shifted onto the balls of his feet as Thomas’s words started making things look a hell of a lot different.
“What are you saying?” Matt asked, voice thin.
“I should have known,” Thomas continued as if he hadn’t even heard Matt’s question. “I should have known when the pamphlets and messing up the rental car didn’t work. You always were a stupid asshole, Matt.”
“That was all you?” Matt shuffled back a step, and Gabe couldn’t stay still any longer. He shoved to his feet, steadying Matt in case he was about to go down.
Thomas was standing in the middle of the diner, chairs and tables tipped over, people cowering in corners and in booths when they hadn’t been able to find any other shelter. One guy who couldn’t have been more than twenty-one knelt in front of Thomas, trembling as tears slipped silently down his face while Thomas kept the gun pressed against the back of his neck. The blinds were pulled down, so Gabe couldn’t see what was going on in the street outside.
“How could you do that, Thomas?” Matt asked, nothing but confusion and hurt in his features. Gabe wanted to wrap an arm around him and pull him close, but he didn’t want to set off Thomas, so instead he stood close to Matt’s side, gripping his arm, silently letting him know he was there.
“Because I hate you!” Thomas screamed, leaning forward and forcing the gun harder against the back of the young man’s neck. He fell forward onto his hands and knees, giving him some respite from the bruising press of the gun barrel, but Thomas still had the weapon trained on him. “I came here to make a new start with people who understand me, w
ho see the truth of the world. But you had to ruin it like you ruined my whole life because I was never as good as you!”
A crackling noise sounded outside a second before someone started talking through a loudspeaker with calm instruction for Thomas to release the hostages and surrender.
Gabe carefully eased himself in front of Matt, who was still too busy reeling from Thomas’s shocking revelations to react to Gabe maneuvering him directly out of harm’s way.
Jake shifted into a crouch and crept farther along the counter, palming his gun in a ready hold.
“Thomas, look at me,” Gabe said in a calm voice, even though it felt like his insides had all the consistency of jelly. “Time is up. If you don’t hand over your gun and walk out of here, SWAT will come in and they won’t give you any more chances.”
“You think I care?” Thomas’s eyes shimmered, as if he was on the verge of tears, but then he blinked and shook his head. “I’ll get a few years behind bars, yeah, but this will prove to the ALP that I belong with them. They’ll be waiting with open arms when I get out.”
“You’re doing this for them?” Gabe clarified, watching from the corner of his eye as Jake shifted a few more feet along the counter. He only hoped whatever the deputy planned, Gabe was making the right call to go along with it by keeping Thomas talking and distracted. “You think killing some innocent people will earn their respect?”
“Innocents? No. Killing a couple of faggots? Yeah, it will. I thought the threats and graffiti would be enough, but Billy Raymond got all fucking uptight about the heat he thought it was going to bring down on his father. Wouldn’t even let me speak with Richard so I could tell him what I’d done to prove myself. So I took it to the next level, beat up that illegal fucker good to get Richard’s attention.”
It was the last piece of confirmation Gabe had needed, and even though he’d guessed in the last few minutes it was coming, he couldn’t believe he’d been completely blindsided. They’d been so sure Ferguson was guilty, or maybe even Billy or one of his friends at a stretch. Thomas had never even factored into the equation—he’d totally flown under the radar.
“Did he tell you to do this?” Matt asked from behind him. “Billy Raymond, did he put you up to this?”
Thomas clenched his jaw and Gabe didn’t think he was going to answer, but then he shook his head. “I told him my plan, but he tried to talk me out of it. Coward. He doesn’t deserve to be ALP, just because he’s Raymond’s son—”
“This isn’t the answer, Thomas. This isn’t going to prove anything. It’s only going to get you killed if you don’t put down the weapon.” Gabe pressed Matt back another step as Thomas’s expression darkened. “Don’t do anything rash. I told you the other day I can help you, and I meant it. You let all these people go, give me that gun, and walk out of here with me, I’ll put in a good word for you. I’m FBI, I can do that. I can get you a good deal.”
Gabe slowly moved forward as indecision flashed across Thomas’s face.
“Gabe,” Matt whispered, gripping a handful of his T-shirt at his lower back and not letting him get any farther away. “Don’t put yourself in danger, please.”
The note of real fear in Matt’s voice was almost his undoing. He could have so easily dropped them both behind the counter and let this play out. Let SWAT come in here guns blazing and take care of the situation with deadly efficiency. But in that kind of situation, there was always the risk of an innocent bystander succumbing to friendly fire. No way did he want to see that happen to Matt, Jake, Danny, or any other person who had walked into the diner that morning with no clue where their day was going to end up.
The voice on the loudspeaker outside started up again, the instructions to surrender a little more forceful this time. Thomas glanced over his shoulder, even though there was no way to see outside through the shuttered blinds. His expression tensed, and he shook his head a little.
“No. I know what I need to do.” All emotion shut out of Thomas’s features except for anger with a touch of hatred. “Perez! Show yourself. I’m not kidding around anymore.”
Gabe’s heart pounded to a stop as Thomas’s shoulders tightened, and he knew what was going to happen a split second before the situation went from bad to worse. Thomas squeezed off a single burst of gunfire, but the guy still on his hands and knees in front of him had slowly been edging away while Thomas had been talking. A bullet or two clipped him, making him scream and scramble faster away, leaving a trail of blood.
Jake came up on the other end of the counter and got off a couple of shots as Thomas turned to aim at Jake. A bullet skimmed Thomas’s right arm but didn’t slow him in the least. Thomas let off a sustained spray of ammo, sending Jake ducking behind the counter once again. The deputy’s sidearm wasn’t any match for the multiple rounds per second spitting out of the assault rifle. Gabe could hear Jake swearing as Danny scrambled to the far end of the bench to check on him.
Gabe’s entire body had gone stiff, sure Thomas would turn the gun on him next, but he found himself unable able to move, especially knowing he was the only thing between Matt and a hail of bullets.
Except Thomas lowered the gun slightly, panting, eyes darting over to the young guy on the floor now crying in pain as a pool of blood widened from beneath his right leg. Another guy had joined him, quickly and efficiently working on him in a way that said he had some kind of medical training.
“Matt, get down behind the counter,” Gabe said quietly over his shoulder, voice shaking, not taking his eyes off Thomas so he could gauge whether the guy was going to light up with the assault rifle again.
“But Gabe—”
“Check on Jake for me.” It was a ploy and there was every chance Matt would see right through it, but Gabe wanted Matt out of the direct line of fire more than anything in that second.
He felt Matt finally let his T-shirt go, and then a moment later, he was hurrying in a half crawl, half crouching run along the counter, mumbling apologies as he scrambled over and around other people hiding there to reach Jake and Danny.
Gabe slowly started moving, but Thomas didn’t shift his eyes away from the man bleeding on the floor. The sight of the man’s injuries finally seemed to be the reality check Thomas needed. The day he’d assaulted his first victim, it’d been dark, before dawn, and Thomas probably hadn’t stuck around to see exactly what his actions had wrought. In this instance, there was no getting away from it.
Gabe crouched down on the opposite side of the injured man, catching the eye of the auburn-haired guy treating him, who was wearing an Everness Fire Department shirt and a name badge with Winters printed on it.
“You’re an EMT?”
“A firefighter with EMT training. I’m Jared,” the man said quickly and quietly, glancing up at him, his dark green eyes almost startling in their color.
“Gabe Lopez, FBI,” he murmured. “What’s his condition?”
He set a hand on the injured man’s shoulder in an effort to help keep him calm.
“His fibula is probably shattered just below the knee. Also got a fleshy wound in his thigh on the same leg. Neither GSWs are immediately life-threatening, but he’s going to need medical attention sooner rather than later.”
Jared glanced warily at Thomas before he returned to tending the man’s wounds.
“Working on it,” Gabe muttered as he pushed back to his feet and faced Thomas once again.
“Is he going to die?” Thomas asked, voice thick.
“Not now. Not yet.” The remorse Thomas seemed to be showing gave Gabe a little confidence, and he cautiously shifted forward. “But he’s going to need to get to a hospital soon if we want to keep it that way.”
Whoever was on the loudspeaker outside had fallen silent. Gabe knew the sound of gunfire would have changed everything. SWAT was likely seconds from bursting in here, and if Thomas didn’t relinquish the gun, there was every chance he’d be dead in a few short minutes.
“Just give me the gun, Thomas,” he implored,
knowing he sounded desperate and it was probably going to lose him some footing in the negotiation stakes. “This doesn’t have to go any further. You’re not a bad guy. I know that. But SWAT are coming in here whether you like it or not, and if you’re still holding that weapon….”
He let his words trail off as he held out his hand, the implications clear.
Thomas finally tore his gaze away from the injured man to look at him.
“They’re going to kill me.” His voice was empty, defeated.
“No, they won’t. Not if you put down the gun.” Gabe edged nearer, sensing he was close to getting Thomas to give in. Just another little nudge and he could defuse all this before things really went to hell. No matter what Thomas had done, Gabe knew Matt would never be the same if he had to witness his cousin being killed by SWAT here today.
“It’s what I deserve,” Thomas whispered brokenly, and instead of his grip loosening on the gun, it tightened.
Gabe’s heart skipped wildly as Thomas brought his gaze up to focus on him like a laser. The gun lifted and Gabe saw the truth in Thomas’s eyes a split second before everything went to hell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
MATT FELT like his chest was going to explode from the deadly tension in the diner and fact he couldn’t seem to draw a full breath. He’d checked on Jake briefly as Gabe had ordered, even though he’d totally cottoned on to the fact Gabe was just trying to get him out of the way.
A bullet had grazed Jake’s hip. It was bleeding a little, but Jake had assured him and Danny he’d had worse during his years in the Army. Matt had left Danny fussing over him and continued to the far end of the counter where it ended near the hallway leading to the bathrooms.
No one took any notice of him, too busy focused on the poor guy Thomas had shot. Matt could hear Gabe talking to Thomas again, trying to get him to surrender before SWAT came in. Gabe was right; if the highly trained cops busted in here and Thomas was still holding that gun, they’d probably shoot him without question.
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