Exit Strategy

by Jen J. Danna

The baby between them made a small noise and Gemma pulled back far enough to run a hand over the warm, downy head.

  Two lives saved and a family brought back from the brink of devastation.

  Not bad for a Saturday night out on the town.

  CHAPTER 2

  Gemma crowded the last golden ball into the layer of tomato sauce pooled on the platter. “Rachel, the arancini is ready,” she said, turning to face her sister-in-law. “Can you carry it out?”

  The slender blonde shifted to reveal the baby balanced on her hip. His toothless gums gnawed at the tiny hand jammed into his mouth as a long line of drool slid slowly down his chin. “I would, but I’d need two hands for it, and...” Rachel indicated the teething baby with a cocked head and raised eyebrow.

  “I thought Teo was taking him outside.”

  “He was going to, but then Dad grabbed him to help set up the tables.”

  “Well, I’ll swap you this”—Gemma tapped the edge of a large white platter loaded with deep-fried risotto balls—“for him, if you can send the boys back in to help carry everything out. You can nail them with the mom eye and they’ll do your bidding.”

  “I think you’re overestimating the power of the mom eye. Plus, you’ll get soaked.”

  “I’ll love every minute of it. Hand him over. Come on, Nate, my man. You can be my plus one at lunch.” She accepted the baby from Rachel and settled him on her hip. “Now go. I’m not overestimating your power. The men will be back in here inside of three minutes, you just watch.”

  Gemma’s only overestimation was in how long it would take to corral the men back inside. In under two minutes, the kitchen was filled with three rowdy brothers jockeying for who got to take which favorite family dish outside. Just as Gemma was about to pull out a whip and a chair, her fourth brother, Alessandro—Alex—her closest sibling in both age and personality, arrived.

  “Hey, look who’s here!” Joe called out as Alex stepped into the room. “Find any pizza in the subway today?”

  Alex sent him a slitted, sideways glare and flipped him the bird.

  Gemma rolled her eyes hard enough she could have cataloged the spice rack behind her. Three of the four men were NYPD cops; the third brother, Matteo, broke with family tradition to join the FDNY. The cops in the family, especially Joe, the eldest, could be merciless to their youngest sibling. Alex was a member of the Internal Affairs Bureau, or the Rat Squad, as New York’s finest sneeringly labeled it. Thus, the pizza rat smear.

  “Sei tutto idiota.” All eyes swiveled to the sole woman in the room. She might be the only female sibling, but Gemma knew how to manage her brothers. “Enough with the rat gags.” She laid one hand on the top of a covered cake stand. “Or I’m taking my torta setteveli and my cannoli home without you getting even a single taste.” Gemma knew the power of desserts in this family, and her seven-layer, sky-high, chocolate-and-hazelnut seven-veils cake was legendary. No other leverage was needed.

  Groans of dissent were followed by some good-natured grumbling, but they mostly laid off Alex and even helped him with the plates he carried. As they went out the door, she heard Teo ragging on his little brother that Alex’s Hawaiian shirt—jet black with green palm trees and brilliant red-and-blue parrots in flight—was louder than their father’s favorite plaid golf pants.

  They’re such children. They can pick on their little brother, but God help anyone else who does.

  She organized the men and got the food to the picnic tables set up outside. All the traditional Sicilian family favorites were there: pasta alla Norma, with fresh tomatoes and eggplant; scaccia ragusana —a rolled pizza filled with various toppings; stuffed artichokes; stuffed swordfish rolls; the fried risotto balls; and Gemma’s father’s favorite, parmigiana di melanzane—eggplant parmigiana. And, of course, overflowing baskets of fresh Italian breads.

  Cradling a loaded platter of antipasto in her free arm, Gemma stepped from the coolness of the house into the blazing sunshine of her father’s narrow, grassy backyard. It was bedlam around tables loaded with food as Joe’s two boys—holy smokes, had they both grown two inches since she’s seen them last?—chased their grandfather’s dog in circles, and as the men relaxed with beers in hands, or tossed a Frisbee to Mark’s daughters. Already seated at the head of the table, her father directed Rachel to rearrange certain plates, and for Joe to get his kids to the table before he ate it all without them.

  With thumb and pinkie tucked between his lips, Joe gave a piercing whistle that immediately brought his boys bolting for the table, and the girls wandering over at a more sedate pace with their father and Uncle Teo. Rachel relieved Gemma of the antipasto platter so both of her hands were free to settle her nephew into his high chair. After calling their sister-in-law Alyssa over, she and Rachel sat on either side of the wide-eyed baby, leaving the rowdier men and older children clustered together.

  Everyone took their seats around the sprawling tables and started passing platters, which gave Gemma a few moments to sit back and soak in the pandemonium, grateful for the opportunity to spend time with her crazy, raucous, headstrong, loving family.

  It had been a family tradition for years. As first responders, everyone’s schedule was constantly unpredictable. And even with seniority, it was often hard to secure popular American holidays for family get-togethers. So they’d started celebrating August 15, the Sicilian Feast of the Assumption, as a chiseled-in-stone day when they would get together for a midday meal at the Capello homestead in Brooklyn, even when it fell on a weekday, as it did that year. This meant it wasn’t a fight for vacation days for those who were scheduled for duty that day. They were lapsed Catholics since the death of Gemma’s mother, but Ferragosto celebrations were a tradition all the way back to their roots in Siculiana, in the shadow of Mount Etna in Sicily.

  Whatever the reason, it worked for them, giving them a day to connect and strengthen roots.

  Gemma glanced down at the baby beside her. With the next generation filling out the ranks, that was more important than ever.

  Alex nudged her other side and she looked up to find him offering her the platter of swordfish. She grinned at him and helped herself.

  “So, Gemma Elena...”

  Gemma looked down the table to her eldest brother, seated beside their father. “So, Giuseppe Pietro...”

  “A little birdie tells me you had an interesting night on Saturday. A little off-duty work.”

  Their father looked up sharply from his plate, his gaze rapidly surveying his daughter before his shoulders relaxed fractionally.

  “I may have.” Teo held up one of his bottles of homemade red wine and she gave him a nod. “Absolutely. No reason not to enjoy when we’re off duty.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” Teo flashed her a saucy grin and filled her wineglass nearly to the brim.

  “I said ‘enjoy,’ not ‘get hammered.’” But she picked up her glass, and tapped it carefully first to Rachel’s and then Alyssa’s before drinking deeply.

  “I hear you were seventeen stories up and balanced on a ledge overlooking the street without any safety gear,” Joe continued.

  “I was never on the ledge.”

  “I notice you’re not denying the lack of safety gear,” her father said. “Why am I only hearing about this now?” After forty years on the force, and as the Chief of Special Operations, Tony Capello made a point of staying up to date with his children’s careers.

  “Because it’s not a big deal.”

  “Apparently, someone thinks it is a big deal and wants to put your name up for a commendation.” Joe met her eyes from the far end of the table. “I heard the story. You spotted the woman holding her newborn baby before she was even in harm’s way. But you couldn’t physically get to her in time, so you had to talk her off the ledge. Literally. And at potential risk to yourself. She could have gone over and taken you with her.”

  “There wasn’t any other way to handle it. There were only seconds to get her back.”

  Joe nodded.
“I know.” He raised his wineglass to her. “Well done.”

  She saluted him with her own glass. “Thanks.” She met her father’s gaze and held it. Then he gave her an approving smile, and she grinned back at him as he turned to Joe to inquire about a current gang squad case.

  Alyssa leaned in across the table, her brown eyes wide. “You went out on a ledge to keep a new mother from jumping?” She kept her voice low, as if to spare the children from the story, even though they’d just heard it if they’d been paying attention.

  “With her baby?” Rachel inched in closer around the high chair between them.

  “I don’t think I could have done it without having watched you two excellent mothers.”

  The sisters-in-law exchanged puzzled glances. “Us?” Rachel asked. “How did we help?”

  “You were pretty fresh in my mind. Those first days and weeks with Nate? Alyssa, all those years ago with the Sam and Gabe? How tired and overwhelmed you both were.”

  Alyssa groaned and rolled her eyes skyward. “Oh yeah. Those were tough days.”

  “I took one look at her, so incredibly out of place and with a newborn, and knew that was part of the issue. I found out later she’d been suffering from postpartum depression. Her husband just thought she was a little blue, not in serious trouble.”

  “Men.” Rachel cast a dark look toward the far end of the table. “Sometimes they’re so clueless.” She affectionately considered her infant son. “I need to teach you how to understand women better.”

  “If the husband didn’t understand before, it must be absolutely clear at this point,” Alyssa said. “He could have lost everything.”

  “Let me assure you, he has the full picture now,” Gemma said. “Officers responded and arrived shortly after I got her down, but I stayed with her. I didn’t want to leave her until her husband arrived. He was beside himself when he got there.”

  “Angry?”

  “Not at all. Stunned he’d missed the signs, clearly feeling guilty because of it, and ready to do whatever was needed to keep his family together. Then Children’s Services showed up, because the responding officers called them.”

  “Of course, they did.” Rachel reached out blindly to stroke a hand over her son’s head. “Did they take the baby into custody?”

  “I’m not sure. When I left, mom and baby were being taken to Bellevue—mom for a psych evaluation and hold, and baby for an examination to make sure she wasn’t harmed in any way. After that, it’s in ACS’s hands, but the father’s in the picture, so I’m hopeful he’ll get to keep the baby under their supervision.” Gemma took another sip of wine. “But enough about Saturday night. Alyssa, how are Gabe and his Little League team doing?”

  The meal passed pleasantly as traditional favorites were enjoyed and the wine flowed freely. When dessert was brought out, there was as much hooting and cheering from the adults as from the children.

  The excuse was a meal, but the real reason for the day was the brief oasis that allowed them to reconnect at their leisure after too many months of crazy lives, where phone calls and texts stood as their main forms of contact.

  When the insistent peal of a phone ringing from the head of the table broke through the merriment, Tony scowled. The scowl deepened when he glanced at the number. “I told them not to call me today unless the president decided to make a surprise visit. If this isn’t a major event, heads are going to roll.”

  Joe chuckled. “Which guarantees it’s going to be a scheduling issue. Take your call. We’ll be having seconds of cake. If you’re lucky, we’ll leave you some.”

  Gemma watched the exchange with amusement. “Joe, another piece of torta?” she offered loudly, and then laughed when her father jabbed an accusing finger at her as he rose while mouthing “troublemaker.” He pressed the phone to his ear and turned his back to the table.

  “You bet.” Joe passed his plate down the table toward her. “Make it a big one.”

  Standing, she pulled the cake a little closer and picked up the knife. She was just sliding the knife through layers of chocolate when Mark’s phone rang. She froze, her gaze flicking first to Mark and then to Joe. Together, they turned to look at their father.

  Tony stood five feet from the table, turned away from his family, his back ramrod straight and his shoulders locked.

  Alarm flickered over Gemma’s nerve endings. Something’s wrong.

  She studied Mark, who rose to step back from the table. A patrol sergeant with the Fifth Precinct, Marco Capello was experienced, steadfast and capable, and commanded his men with high expectations, but also with compassion and understanding for how hard it was to be a patrol officer in New York City. If anything was going down in his precinct, he’d be looped in immediately.

  She met Joe’s gaze just as his phone rang. She could hear his mouthed expletive as clearly as if he’d spoken it aloud. Whatever was going on, it had a potential or confirmed gang connection if they were calling Joe.

  “Gemma?” Alyssa asked the question from across the table as she stayed focused on her husband. “What’s going on?”

  Gemma set down the knife. No one was going to be eating cake now. “I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s not good. Alex?”

  “I’m in the dark, but I agree—something’s hit the fan.” Alex’s gaze darted from brother to brother. “I can call in and find out.”

  Gemma shook her head. “No need. They’ll let us know as soon as they’re—”

  Her phone rang. She lunged for it and answered the call. “Capello.”

  “I need you down at City Hall now.”

  There was no introduction, but she didn’t need one to recognize the clipped voice of Lieutenant Tomás Garcia. “Sir, what happened?”

  “Intel is sketchy, but we have a hostage situation.”

  “Do you have any details?”

  “Almost nothing. Witness statements report multiple hostages and at least one high-capacity weapon.”

  Gemma looked at the three other cops around the table, who were all on their feet. “What aren’t you telling me, sir?”

  “He may have the goddamned mayor of New York City, Capello. And if he does, he’s going to be the hostage most at risk of a bullet to the back of the head.”

  Gemma surged to her own feet and steadied herself with a hand clamped over Alex’s shoulder. She met his eyes as her commander snapped out his final command.

  “I’m handpicking the team, and I want you. Get down here now.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Once they got past the roadblocks, the streets of Lower Manhattan were eerily deserted.

  “This is all wrong.” Rachel leaned against the steering wheel, peering out at the deserted sidewalks of Centre Street and the surrounding empty roads. “I’ve never seen it like this, not even at three in the morning. There’s always someone on the streets.”

  “They had to clear the area, including shutting down both the Brooklyn Bridge subway station and the bridge itself,” Tony said from the passenger seat. “There was even a big sustainable energy sit-in already in progress on the front steps of City Hall, with a planned march across the Brooklyn Bridge to follow. Luckily, because it was a scheduled demonstration requiring a city permit, the NYPD had extra officers down here for crowd control, so they used those same officers to clear everyone out. Pull over,” he said, pointing at the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building to their right. “We’ve all got our orders and can get where we need to be on foot from here. Teo will want you out of this area right away, so you need to turn around and head back to Brooklyn.”

  “I will.”

  Gemma, Tony, Joe, and Mark had all been called in as news of the hostage taking spread. While they all felt sober after their holiday lunch, none of them wanted to risk being behind the wheel. Rachel—who hadn’t been drinking, as she was still breast-feeding Nate—had been roped into driving them into Lower Manhattan. Once they made it over the Brooklyn Bridge, they’d been stopped by the cop redirecting traffic away from the Civ
ic Center and down to FDR Drive. After a mass showing of badges, he’d stepped back to let them through, with the promise of Rachel’s immediate return.

  Rachel pulled over to the curb and they all climbed out. Gemma met Rachel’s eyes in the rearview mirror and answered her mouthed “Be careful” with a nod. Mark slammed the door shut behind them and rapped his fist twice on the roof of the SUV, sending Rachel on her way. She swung around in a U-turn in the empty street, making her way back to the Brooklyn Bridge and over the East River.

  Father, daughter, and sons took a moment together on the curb.

  Tony made eye contact with each child in turn. “Be careful, every one of you. I know you’re all supposed to be out of harm’s way, but you know how these situations can turn on a dime. This one’s going to be high profile, and we don’t know what kind of splash the hostage taker plans to make. Stay alert and stay safe.”

  Gemma reached up and lightly kissed her father’s cheek. “Same goes for you.”

  She gave his arm a squeeze, exchanged silent nods with her brothers, and jogged away from them down Centre Street, taking care to keep to the far side in the unlikely case the hostage taker was at a window on the near side of the building. She flashed her shield at the cop standing on Park Row at the top of Beekman Street and he waved her through. Only then did she consider herself far enough away from the building to cross the road to enter City Hall Park. As she jogged past the Jacob Wrey Mould Fountain in the middle of the park, she threw a quick glance to her right. City Hall was visible at the end of the path, three stories of graceful marble French Renaissance architecture, blindingly white in the afternoon sun. At its center, the figure of Justice stood atop the domed tower, holding her scales aloft to pierce the cloudless blue sky.

  Somewhere inside, victims are in danger.

  She remembered the frozen terror of staring down the barrel of a captor’s gun, knowing her life could end instantly at his slightest whim.

  Gemma ran faster.

  She arrowed toward Broadway on the far side and the address Garcia had provided for their impromptu negotiation headquarters. As she broke from the park, heading north, she spotted the location across the street. Only months before, it had been a Citibank branch on the corner of Broadway and Murray until the branch moved to bigger quarters; now the deserted space would be perfect for the negotiation team. Close enough to visualize the building, but far enough out of the way that if bullets flew, they’d be safe.