Sanderson felt control slipping away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“If we get permission,” Grace yelled to the pilot over the rotor noise, “can you put us down on that golf course?”
“Are you out of your mind?” the pilot yelled back. “It’s like a goddamn war zone down there!”
She looked down. He was right. Everywhere she looked she saw armed men. They surrounded the front door of the house in a semicircle, crouched behind their vehicles. She saw others positioned in a stand of trees across the golf course from the back of the house.
“The cops won’t shoot if we get the okay,” Grace said. “And I know the girl won’t shoot. She needs us. Don’t be such a damn pansy!”
“I’d have to put it down on the green,” the pilot said. “Everything else is too uneven.”
Grace slapped him on the shoulder. She looked over at Wayne. He was checking the battery pack on his camera. He gave her a quick thumbs-up. Grace raised the cell phone back to her ear. “Yes! I’m here!”
“This is Special Agent Sanderson, FBI,” a voice said. “What the hell are you doing, lady?”
“Laurel Marks called me this morning,” Grace said. “She gave me a list…”
“Wait a minute,” Sanderson said. “You knew this was going to happen?”
“No,” Grace said. “She didn’t tell me exactly what she was going to do or when. She said I’d know where to go when the time came. But she said if I didn’t follow her instructions exactly, people were going to die.”
There was a brief pause. Then, “What are the demands?”
“That was one of her instructions,” she said. “I have to deliver them in person. To whoever’s in charge on the scene. Is that you?”
The reply sounded very tired. “Yeah,” Sanderson said. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“I need to land the helicopter,” she said. “Can we set down on the golf course behind the house?”
“I don’t know,” Sanderson said. “That’ll tear up the course pretty bad. I don’t know if I can authorize …”
“Agent Sanderson,” Grace said. “If I don’t get this list to you, in person, that girl in there’s liable to kill someone. Are you authorized to let that happen?”
Another, longer pause. “Okay,” Sanderson said. “But hang on. I have to let the people inside know what’s going on.”
“I’ll wait,” Grace said.
Laurel heard the throbbing pulse of the helicopter getting louder and louder. She smiled. And there they are. The sound kept increasing. Jesus, they’re low, Laurel thought. She felt a moment of apprehension. Maybe it’s not the TV people, she thought. Maybe it’s the cops, maybe they ‘re getting ready to … The noise filled the room, drowning out everything else, blotting out thought. She instinctively looked up. She noticed movement in her peripheral vision and snapped her eyes back down.
Keller was standing up. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling, on the source of the noise. Something was wrong with him. He was shaking all over. His hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“SIT YOUR ASS DOWN!” she screamed at him. She snatched the shotgun she had taken from him up off the couch. She pointed it at him, clumsily holding the short weapon out in front of her with her left hand. “I’LL SHOOT YOU!” she yelled.
The sound of the rotors was diminishing. Keller looked away from the ceiling and down at Laurel. The look in his eyes made her flinch. They were totally flat, dead, like the eyes of a zombie.
“I’ll shoot you,” she said again. “I will.”
“Go ahead,” Keller said, and started toward her. The phone started ringing. Keller ignored it.
Sanderson listened to the phone ringing. “Shit,” he said out loud. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Answer the phone. Answer the phone.”
Cassidey looked alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
“They won’t answer,” Sanderson said. His voice was tight with panic. “Something’s wrong. Get that guy Dockery back. Tell him to get ready to rush the house.”
“But you said … there’s no time to get organized …”
“Do it, Cassidey!” Sanderson yelled. She turned and ran toward one of the parked police cars.
Keller looked down the barrel of the shotgun. The sharp-edged thudding of the helicopter above had gone away, but the echoes were still beating inside his head. The room began to strobe wildly in his vision, images flashing like a television being channel-surfed at high speed by a madman, all the channels broadcasting from Hell.
Choppers over the desert, low and fast… squat, malevolent, ugly, weapons hanging off the sides like the stingers of giant insects … pointed at him … Bodies tumbled like broken dolls, missing heads, limbs… A flash of light out of the black desert sky, the Bradley exploding a few feet away … Men screaming, burning… his own voice screaming, the taste of sand in his mouth …
There was screaming inside, too, Ellen Marks’s voice pleading, the boy on the floor wailing in fear, drowning out the shrill ringing of the phone.
He saw the gun waver. Do it, he thought. Pull the fucking trigger…
The gun moved aside then. Keller stopped, feeling the disappointment go through him like a blade. Laurel pointed the shotgun at the bound figure of her mother in the chair.
“Okay,” she said shakily. “I get it. You want to die that bad.” She laughed. “But you take one more step and they both die. And you don’t. And probably all those cops come bustin’ in when they hear the shot. So what does that get you, Mister Jack Keller?”
Keller’s hands dropped to his sides. His shoulders slumped. Laurel audibly let out the breath she had been holding. “Get the phone,” she said. Keller walked over and picked it up. “Yeah?” he whispered.
“Keller?” Sanderson said. “Keller, where the hell have you been? What’s going on in there?”
“Nothing,” Keller said. He sounded like he’d been drugged. “Everyone’s still here.”
“Look, tell the girl. The reporter she called is here. She’s in that helicopter you’ve probably heard overhead.”
“Yeah,” Keller said. “I heard it.” There was a pause, then Keller said something strange. “I don’t like helicopters.”
“What?” Sanderson said. “Look, Keller, I don’t really give a shit if you don’t like helicopters. Just tell the girl the chopper will be landing on the grass outside the house. The reporter will be coming to me. Tell her not to get too excited or upset. Everything’s fine. Got that?”
“Yeah,” Keller said. “Everything’s fine.”
“Keller, are you …” The line went dead.
“Yes!” Grace yelled. She pumped her fist and grinned at the pilot. “Put it down.”
He shook his head. “You people are not paying me enough for this shit,” he muttered, but he turned the helicopter toward a landing.
“When Wayne and I get out, take off again. Give the station a high shot. Be ready to go live.” The pilot nodded.
Luckily, someone had thought to pull the flag out of the hole. Fine white sand from the hazards around the green blew up in a cloud as the chopper settled onto the flat, bright green surface. As Grace and Wayne exited the chopper, four black-uniformed cops trooped up. They were dressed in body armor and carried stubby automatic rifles across their shoulders. They wore bandoliers festooned with some kind of grenades across their chests. As the helicopter lifted off, they flanked Grace and Wayne, leading them around the building to the semicircle of police vehicles surrounding the house. A tall, dark-haired man in a suit was waiting.
“Miss Tranh?” he said. She nodded. “I’m Special Agent Sanderson.” He looked at Wayne. “I’m sorry, but no cameras.”
“Agent Sanderson,” Grace said. “I’m afraid that one of the demands is that I be able to broadcast.”
Sanderson looked like he was grinding his teeth. “Are we on the air now?”
Grace shook her head. “We’ll let you know. And that red light on the end of the camera, over the lens,” Wayne pointe
d to the tiny LED, “will go on.”
“I knew that part,” Sanderson said. “So what have you got?”
“Well, for starters,” Grace said, “I’m supposed to give you this.” She reached into the equipment bag and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. She handed it to Sanderson.
“What is it?” he said, beginning to unfold it.
“It was e-mailed to me this morning. You remember these people had gotten hold of one of those camera phones. This was apparently taken from inside the house.”
A slender blonde female agent had come up and was looking over Sanderson’s shoulder. “Whoa,” she said.
Grace nodded. “Whoa is right.” She didn’t need to look at the photo again. She didn’t think she would ever be able to forget it. The subject of the photograph, a boy of about nineteen or twenty, had apparently been made to hold the camera himself off to one side, so the picture clearly showed the shotgun taped to the back of his head. The picture was blurry, as if the boy’s hands had been shaking.
“She wanted you to know,” Grace said. “There’s no way for her to miss.”
“Yeah,” the blonde said. “Even if a sniper gets a cortex shot, she could jerk the trigger as she falls.”
“Yeah, okay,” Sanderson said. “So we know she’s serious. What does she want?”
Grace unfolded another sheet of paper. “The Cumberland County Sheriff’s most likely took in a bunch of loose-leaf notebooks from the scene where Roy Randle and those two cops were shot. There were fifteen notebooks in all. She wants you to give me number fifteen.”
Sanderson stared at her. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said. “What’s supposed to be in it?”
Grace shrugged. “I don’t know. Something big, is all she’d say. Something about an old case.”
Sanderson turned to the female agent. “Check it out,” he said. “Call Cumberland County.”
“On my way,” she said and walked off.
Sanderson turned back to Grace. “That all?”
Grace took a deep breath. “No,” she said. “There’s one other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“She wants to talk to me. On camera. Live.”
“Where?”
Grace looked at the house. “In there.”
“No. No way,” Sanderson said.
“Agent Sanderson …”
“We are not sending in another potential hostage.” He looked at Wayne. “Or two. That’s an absolute rule.”
“I won’t be a hostage,” Grace said. “I’ll be—”
“Lady, are you thinking at all?” Sanderson said. “You’ve got a dangerously unstable subject in there. This whole thing may be some weird way to get at you. Some sort of celebrity-stalker-type mania.”
“Thanks for the promotion to celebrity,” Grace said. “But I’m willing to take that chance.”
“Mind if I ask why?”
Grace smiled. “You think Katie fucking Couric ever got to do a story like this?”
Sanderson gestured at Wayne. “And what about him?” he said.
“Me?” Wayne said. “I’m just nuts.”
“You both are,” Sanderson muttered. “But the answer’s still no.”
Grace thought for a moment. “You can’t give her another hostage,” she said. “But you can trade one, right?” Sanderson rubbed his eyes wearily. “Miss Tranh,” he said. “Do not—”
“No, think about it,” Grace said. “I actually want to be in there. And I know she won’t kill me. She wants to use me to tell the world something.”
“And you want to use her to further your goddamn career!” Sanderson sneered.
Grace didn’t flinch. “A fair trade, don’t you think?”
Sanderson thought for a moment. Then he picked up the phone. “Go stand over there,” he ordered, pointing a few feet away. “I’m going to talk to them inside.”
Grace hesitated, then nodded. She and Wayne walked off.
“He doesn’t like you very much,” Wayne observed.
“I know,” Grace said. “So maybe he won’t be so reluctant to let me go in.”
Wayne grinned. “Grace,” he said, “You are one crazy bitch. Will you marry me?”
Grace grinned back. It was an old joke between them. “You’re gay, Wayne.”
“Yeah,” Wayne said. “But I’m not, like, fanatical about it.”
Keller picked up the phone. “Yeah?” he said.
“This is Agent Sanderson,” the voice said. “Put Laurel on the phone.”
Keller held out the phone. “He wants to talk to you.” She hesitated. She still held Keller’s shotgun in her left hand. Reluctantly, she put it down. “Slide the phone over here,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” Keller said. “I’m better. I just got… a little shaken up by the helicopter.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Laurel said. “You don’t like ‘em. Fine. Slide it over here.”
“The phone’s not going to slide too far on carpet,” Keller observed.
“Okay,” Laurel said. “But move slow. You make me nervous.”
“Sorry,” Keller said. He walked over slowly and. handed the phone to her. She put it to her ear. “Yeah?”
Keller could hear Sanderson on the other end. “Which one?” Laurel’s eyes moved to her mother, then to Keller. “I’ve got a better idea,” she said. “You can have ‘em both. Just get the reporter in here.” She pressed the button on the phone to break the connection and turned to Ellen. “Guess what, Mama?” she said. “You’re gettin’ out of here. You and Mister Keller.”
“Okay,” Sanderson said. “There’s three hostages in there with her. Her mother and brother, and a guy named Keller.”
“Who’s he?” Grace asked. Sanderson grimaced. “He’s a bail bondsman. He came to pick Laurel up on a missed court date. Can you believe it?”
“Lucky he didn’t get shot,” Grace said.
“Yeah, lucky,” Sanderson replied.
“Laurel,” her mother said, “what are you planning? What are you going to do?”
Laurel smiled wearily. “Nothin’, Mama. Me and Curt and that nice Chinese lady from the TV are goin’ to have a little chat. Then I’m comin’ out. And after that… well, Mama, I think you pretty much know what’s going to happen after that.”
“Please, honey,” Ellen said, “let Curtis go. He’s sorry, aren’t you, Curtis?”
“I’m sorry,” Curtis said. “Oh, God, I’m sorry.”
Laurel reached out with her free hand and gently ran it through the boy’s thick brown hair. “I know you are, big brother,” she said softly. “I know you are. It’ll all be over soon. All you got to do is tell the truth.” She looked at Keller. There were tears glistening in her eyes.
“There’s a pair of scissors in the drawer of that table,” she said. “Cut her loose. Then you and her get out of here.”
Keller retrieved the scissors. He cut away the duct tape binding Ellen Marks’s hands and ankles to her chair. She stood up unsteadily, rubbing her wrists. “Just put the gun down, honey,” she begged.
“Mama,” Laurel said wearily. “I love you. After all the bullshit that’s gone down, I still love you. But if you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m going to shoot you.”
Tears were running down Ellen’s face as she moved toward the door. She shuffled her feet as if she was unwilling to go. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t leave my child.” But she didn’t stop moving.
“Sure you can, Mama,” Laurel said. “To save yourself? Sure you can. You done it before.”
Ellen cried harder. “I’m sorry,” she wailed. “I’m sorry. I failed. I failed you.”
“Yeah,” Laurel said. “You sure as shit did.” She turned to Keller. “Get her out of here.”
Keller put his hand on Ellen’s shoulder and pushed her in front of him. They walked out, down the long hallway to the front door. When they got there, Keller reached past Ellen and opened the door, slowly. He was looking at the barrels of at least fifty
guns. He raised his hands high above his head. Ellen stood in front of him, as if paralyzed.
“Get your hands up,” Keller hissed. Slowly, she raised her hands. Two people, a man and a woman, detached themselves from the crowd and came up the driveway. The man was carrying a portable TV camera. “Now walk,” Keller said to Ellen as they reached the door, “Go towards the cops.” She began walking, slowly at first, then faster. Keller stayed in the doorway. The female half of the team was a petite Asian woman who Keller vaguely recognized from the TV news. She started to say something, but Keller silenced her with a finger to his lips. As they went in, Keller slipped inside with them and closed the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“What?!” Sanderson said. “What the hell did he just do?”
“He went back inside,” Cassidey said. Her face was slack with shock.
“I know that, God damn it!” Sanderson said. “What the hell for?”
“Maybe he changed sides,” Cassidey said. “Stockholm syndrome.”
“No,” Sanderson said, his lips drawn into a line. “Not Stockholm syndrome. He’s a cowboy. He thinks he’s going to take her down himself. FUCK!” He slammed his hand down on the roof of the car he was standing behind. “All I need is some goddamn amateur in there.” He turned to Cassidey. “How long till HRT gets here?”
She spread her hands. “I don’t know. They’re flying into the local airport. Another hour? Maybe?”
“Get Dockery. Tell him to get his local team, what did he call them, Emergency Response, online. We may have to force entry.”
“What the—,” Grace heard Wayne say. She dug an elbow into his ribs. The tall blond man who had slipped back in with them stood motionless in the shadowed hallway. He didn’t speak, merely gestured with his head toward the end of the hallway. He put his finger back to his lips again. Grace turned and walked down the hall, slowly.
“Laurel?” she called out. Her mind was racing. That must be Keller, she was thinking. The other guy Sanderson was talking about. What the hell is he doing? She had a good idea, however, that the girl with the shotgun wasn’t going to approve of his presence. She decided not to mention him until she knew more.
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