by KG MacGregor
“It’s Afghanistan, isn’t it?” Marleigh murmured, her voice so low it was if she hadn’t intended Zann to hear.
The question shocked her, even if it shouldn’t have. She’d always worried Marleigh would become frustrated with her silence and find a way to investigate her, especially given all the resources she could access through her work at the newspaper. “What makes you ask?”
“You were talking about Hamza in your sleep the other night. He’s the man you killed, right?”
“What did I say?”
Marleigh shook her head. “Just his name. I couldn’t make out the rest. That’s when you woke up.”
Zann remembered it vividly. She was trying to warn Whit that Hamza was inside. “It was just a bad dream…probably because of something we talked about at one of our meetings. I think about that stuff a lot more than I used to.” A superficial explanation, to be sure, but maybe enough to quiet the concern.
“I wish I’d never encouraged you to go. You were in such a good place before.” She urged Zann onto her back and began tickling her chest with obvious intent. “You were wrong, what you said earlier…that I didn’t know you. I think I do. I know it still bothers you that you lost somebody in your unit, and you probably replay that in your head every day trying to figure out how you could have saved her. That’s who you are. You don’t give yourself credit for what you did, how you saved all the others. That’s the woman I fell in love with…she’s a hero. So no matter what you think of yourself, you’ll always be my shining warrior.”
The words cut her like a knife. “Don’t call me that. I don’t like it.”
“Zann?”
Surging with shame, she turned away and drew her knees to her chest. This was exactly why she couldn’t tell Marleigh the truth. She’d pretend to understand, offer some condescending bullshit.
The truth would change everything.
Chapter Eighteen
Present day
Thank God the police had arrived!
Marleigh shook with fear anyway as Zann scooted back into their hiding place.
“Everybody’s okay for now,” she whispered. “The cops are here.”
The thought that Zann could have been killed trying to save Tammy made Marleigh physically ill. In that instant, she’d gotten a terrifying glimpse of what life must have been like for her every day in Afghanistan. No matter what happened next, she wouldn’t let her go out there alone again. If they were meant to die today, they’d go down fighting—together.
Zann found her hand and intertwined their fingers. “We just need to stay cool while they negotiate an end to this. Everyone will be all right.”
David called out what he saw through the glass door. “Three police cars, an ambulance…shit, there’s even a fire truck.” That was practically the entirety of Colfax’s emergency response team.
“There goes one around the back. They’re taking up positions.”
Marleigh knew most of the town’s officers from her work on the crime beat. Which ones had come to their rescue? Pete Nelson, the senior patrolman who weighed over two-fifty? Or maybe Rance Fuller, all of twenty years old. Joey Crisp. Eileen Edwards. They wrote traffic citations and ran kids with skateboards off church property. Was there anyone on the Colfax force with the mettle to negotiate with a gun-waving drug gang for the lives of seven hostages?
“Goddamn it! Goddamn it!” The one they called Scotty was coming apart. “You fucking bitch. You called the cops.”
“No, I didn’t,” Tammy cried. “Please don’t shoot.”
“Scotty! Keep your head, my friend.” Ancil sounded calm for a guy who was surrounded by police.
From the front of the building came the muffled sound of a bullhorn, instructions for the gunmen that Marleigh couldn’t decipher.
“Then how the fuck did they know we were here?” Scotty asked, clearly panicked. “They said your name, Ancil. Shit, they probably know all of us.”
Ancil replied grimly, “It appears I was wrong about Luc Michaux. He does care for you, Bridget. Or perhaps he believes the police will capture us and that he will get away free.”
Marleigh tensed as footsteps grew close. Someone was pacing the break room, probably to check out the situation through the back window. The clicks of a touchpad signaled he was making a call on a smartphone.
“Bobby.” The voice belonged to Ancil. “We are blown, my friend. You must come for us… Okay, fifteen minutes. We will be ready.”
Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes and this nightmare would be over.
Surely Ancil and his friends didn’t expect to waltz out of the building and into their friend’s waiting car. The only way the cops would let them out was if they took someone hostage. Bridget was the logical choice since she was bait for Luc.
As Ancil returned to the lobby, Zann’s smartphone lit with a string of messages from the dispatcher.
Law enforcement has arrived on scene.
Please hold your position.
Do you have an update on the condition of Mr. Teele?
“What should I say?” Marleigh whispered.
“Tell her no change. It’s probably good that nobody’s yelling about it. Maybe they got the bleeding stopped.”
A second bullhorn message was followed by the main phone ringing in the lobby. Ancil calmly instructed Bridget to pick it up.
“This is Bridget Snyder…yes…he’s standing right here.”
It was maddening not to know what the authorities were saying over the phone. Marleigh could only surmise they were verifying the information she’d sent, buying time before beginning the negotiations that would end this.
“They want to talk to you, Ancil…”
“Give it to me,” he stated curtly. Then in a loud voice, he said, “One of the hostages is shot and bleeding. If you want to save him, you will do exactly as I say. I will negotiate only with a federal agent, someone with the authority to guarantee our safe passage out of this building. You will immediately withdraw from this side of the street and wait for one to arrive, or we will shoot someone else and it will be your fault. You have exactly thirty seconds to move before someone else gets hurt. Do I make myself clear?”
After a chilling silence, Scotty spoke again in his agitated state, “What the fuck are we gonna do, Ancil? You said Luc wouldn’t call the police.”
“Relax, my friend. See? They are moving back, just as I instructed. That is because of you, Scotty…because you had the courage to shoot this man. Now they know we mean what we say. They understand there will be dire consequences if anyone causes unnecessary trouble. So it is up to you to keep an eye on them, Scotty. Do you understand?” After a short pause, he said, “David, come with me.”
Moments later, two sets of footsteps entered the break room.
“Your cousin is an idiot. I will not allow him to get us shot by a band of glorified security guards.” Ancil’s angry voice was so close, he could have been standing at the counter not six inches from where they hid.
“All he needs is a bump, man. You holding anything? Doesn’t matter what…just something to take the edge off.”
A bump. So Scotty needed a snort of something because he was coming down from a high. Marleigh had met drug addicts in jail and read their police reports. They were extremely volatile when they reached the point of physical withdrawal, capable of anything.
“So I am expected to carry heroin in my pocket to dole out to imbeciles?”
“I told you he was dumber than shit. There’s half a point in my coat. That ought to be enough to calm him down. But it’s in the bag they took to Chimney Point. We just have to get there.”
Chimney Point was where Highway 17 crossed Lake Champlain into New York. Either someone was picking them up there or they’d stashed a getaway vehicle near the state line. And they were counting on Bobby to get them there. It made sense. There were more routes on the New York side of the lake, untraveled back roads that would take them north to the Canadian border without being se
en.
Ancil snapped, “We are in a pressure cooker with a lunatic who cannot function without drugs.” He paced across the floor and spun around, his shoes squeaking on the tile floor. “I will take care of Scotty. Bobby will be here soon. Be ready to leave. We will take Bridget with us.”
“Why? Luc doesn’t give a shit about her.”
“But she knows where his father lives. That will get his attention.”
These men were ruthless. If they took Bridget, they probably would kill her once she outlived her usefulness. Marleigh messaged the dispatcher again, warning them not to let that happen.
* * *
Zann tried to make sense of their plan. Under the circumstances, the gunmen didn’t seem overly concerned.
The one called David returned to the outer room, while Ancil remained behind in the break room, still close to the counter where she and Marleigh hid. By the sound of pings, he was placing another call.
“Everett…this is Ancil. I am afraid we have encountered unexpected difficulty in our effort to draw Monsieur Michaux out of hiding. The woman is not—”
The man on the other end of the call erupted so loudly that Zann could hear his yell even through the cabinet. She wasn’t able to make out the words, but there was no mistaking his fury toward Ancil.
“He is not picking up his phone, and I am reasonably convinced she does not know his whereabouts at the moment. But we have another way to make her help us.”
Apparently Ancil wasn’t the big shot he made himself out to be, a revelation Zann found interesting. Perhaps he’d been the one responsible for recruiting Luc as a drug mule, and now he was on the hook for Luc’s brazen theft. That was the emerging picture—Ancil had been ordered by someone higher up in the distribution chain to recover whatever Luc had stolen by squeezing Bridget for his location.
His pacing gave away his anxiousness over staying in Everett’s good graces. “No, she will help, I am sure. She has been to the house in Montreal. It is my understanding Luc’s father is in declining health. That should be sufficient leverage to lure him out.”
Ancil seemed dead certain of his escape plan, but he clearly was intimidated by this Everett person, too afraid to confess that his hostage scenario had gone south and the police were waiting at the curb. He also didn’t bother to tell Everett that Bobby was picking them up.
“Very well, Everett. We will be there tonight…give us three hours…yes, seven o’clock.”
Three hours…exactly how long it took to drive across the Canadian border to Montreal, assuming Bobby arrived soon.
The muscles in Zann’s hips and legs screamed for want of a change in position, but she couldn’t risk even the smallest movement as long as Ancil chose to bide his time in the break room. The stillness was almost unbearable.
The loudspeaker outside called again, this time more clearly, imploring him to answer the ringing phone.
When his footsteps faded, Zann peered through a crack in the cabinet and shifted her legs so they pushed into Marleigh’s scant space. “They’re headed to Chimney Point. Be sure you text them that.”
“And that he’s planning to take Bridget hostage,” Marleigh whispered.
“It doesn’t make any sense. The cops aren’t going to let them just march out the door with a hostage and not chase them all the way to the Canadian border.”
“They have nothing to lose, Zann. They already shot Clay.”
And they might in fact shoot someone else to demonstrate the veracity of their threats. That’s the only way the cops would back off—if they showed no qualms about killing hostages.
Their situation reminded her of an incident in Girishk, one of the hairier clashes of her first Afghanistan tour. She and three other members of the FET under her command were pinned behind a pair of burned-out vehicles at the end of an alley while the weapons platoon fired on militants who were unaware of their position. Their only path to escape would have meant revealing themselves to the enemy, something they were ordered not to do. After several hours of crossfire, she and the platoon leader devised a plan to corral the militants in the alley and have Zann’s team close in from behind. It was high risk—the FETs had standing orders to avoid direct hostilities because they lacked the tactical and weapons training of their male counterparts in the infantry. But left with no options, her team executed the plan to perfection, resulting in the killing of four militants and the capture of three.
Could something like that work here? It would be simple enough to coordinate with the officers outside—have them charge through the front door and push Ancil and his friends into the break room, where Zann would be waiting. All she had to do was disarm the first one through the door, something made easier because she’d have the element of surprise.
Scotty was the wild card. In his agitated state, he could start shooting hostages at the first sign of trouble. But if Ancil’s new plan to get out with his friend Bobby still depended on leaving no witnesses behind, they might be forced to take that risk.
No matter what she ultimately decided, she was determined Marleigh would stay safely hidden.
* * *
“No way,” Marleigh whispered. “Our chances will be better if it’s both of us.”
“Negative. You’d just be giving them another target to shoot at. Besides, only one of us is actually trained for this stuff and it isn’t you.”
It was Zann’s commando voice, and Marleigh had teased her for years about the seductive power of authority. Her Captain Zann. But there was no teasing on a day when the stakes were so high.
This was the only time she’d ever witnessed the extent of Zann’s high-level training. It had kicked in the instant the first shots were fired with a move that so far had saved their lives…whereas her own first instinct had been to walk right out there and do whatever she could to help the others. The problem was that Zann seemed to be forgetting that she no longer had two good hands. She didn’t stand a chance against three men with guns.
“I need to set up this plan with the cops outside,” Zann whispered. “Let me see my phone.”
Marleigh snatched it away. “Forget it. I’m not going to hide back here by myself while those bastards are shooting at my wife and trying to kill my best friend.”
“I won’t let that happen, Marleigh. I promise you I’ll do everything I can to save Bridget. But I care a helluva lot more about protecting you. How could you not know that?” She was speaking so forcefully, anyone who happened to be in the break room would have heard.
Marleigh groped for her lips in the dark and pressed a finger against them. “I do know. So we’ll both stay right where we are and save each other. You don’t get to be a hero today.”
Zann released an exasperated sigh, her usual response to being on the losing end of an argument. Marleigh didn’t care how annoyed she was. Either they were going out there together or not at all.
And if they made it through this day, she never wanted to think about the commando inside Zann again.
Chapter Nineteen
November, one month earlier
Zann bagged the last of the season’s leaves from their beech tree in the backyard. Before long, she’d be shoveling snow from the driveway again. At least it gave her something to do.
Her suspension from work was now at four months—the last three unpaid—with no end in sight. Malcolm said his hands were tied by the council…liability concerns. Miles Blake was still holding criminal assault charges over her head as he negotiated with the town for a financial settlement big enough to buy a private island. Meanwhile, she and Marleigh had blown through the last of their savings and were already two months behind on their mortgage. It hadn’t helped that she’d spent thousands on guns and ammo.
As if their financial problems weren’t enough, the solitude of her typical day was maddening. She couldn’t recall a time in her life when she wasn’t surrounded by people, often in close quarters. Now she was lucky to see anyone at all besides Marleigh, who’d taken on fre
elance work for the Burlington paper to bring in extra cash. She left early for work most days and returned home exhausted and ready for bed.
The lonely routine left lots of time for soul searching, much of it still toward making peace with herself over the revelations about Whitney Laird. Some days she managed to convince herself she’d done the best she could under the circumstances. Had she doubted herself and hesitated, Hamza would have killed her too and probably escaped with the explosives meant for the Marine base. If only they hadn’t given her that medal, she wouldn’t feel like such a fraud. No wonder Vanessa and her family had felt disrespected.
None of this new clarity meant she was ready to share the real story with Marleigh, or her parents either. After all the attention her military service record had garnered in Colfax—people still called her a war hero—she couldn’t bear to have her loved ones share her humiliation. It was bad enough they had to defend her over this crap with Miles Blake.
As she climbed the stairs to the porch, her cell phone sounded with a techno trill, the ringtone she and Marleigh used when they called each other. “Hey, babe. I just finished the yard. You on your way home?” No matter how glum she felt, she always tried to be chipper when Marleigh called.
“That’s what I’m calling about. Bridget wants me to go with her for a drink at The Lobby so I can meet her new boyfriend. It’s that day trader from Montreal…Luc somebody.”
Zann played the statement back in her head to see if it contained an invitation to join them. It did not. “I can hold dinner. Any idea when you’ll be home?”
“Go ahead without me. We’ll probably just grab some bar food.” There was nothing subtle about her casual dismissal. Whether deliberate or not, she seemed to have torn a page out of Zann’s avoidance manual, making plans of her own and expecting Zann to carry on as usual. And all the while pretending nothing was wrong.