set the phone down and grabbed her roughly by the wrists.
“Don’t pull this on anyone else. Haven’t you really grasped this yet? They’re trigger happy and crazy. Just do as they say. Just find that damned stash!”
Something in her jaw seemed to be working. She looked away from him.
“You found it already?” he said incredulously. “You have, haven’t you? But that’s impossible so fast!”
She didn’t confirm or deny; she gave no answer. He heard a crackle on the phone line and put it back to his ear. As he did so, he looked out the windows.
Dillinger, wielding a semiautomatic, was leading out two hostages carrying Jose Marquez. They brought him close to the gate, Dillinger keeping his weapon trained on them the entire time.
They left Jose and walked back into the house.
Dillinger followed them.
A second later the gate opened. Police rushed in and scooped up the security guard. They hurried out with him.
The gates closed and locked.
“Barrow! Barrow? Hey, you there?”
“Yes,” Nick replied into the phone.
“We have the security guard. We’ll get him to the hospital. What about the others? Do they need food, water?”
Kody was staring at him. He heard footsteps pounding up the stairs, as well.
Dillinger was back.
“Sit!” he told Kody. “Figure out what we need to do in order to get our hands on that stash.”
To his surprise, she sat. She sat—and had the journal up in her hands before Dillinger returned to the room.
“Well?” Dillinger said to Nick.
Nick spoke into the phone. “We’ve given you the hostage in good faith. We really would like to see that all these good folks live, but, hey, they call bad guys bad guys because...they’re bad. So back away from the gates and start making things happen. What about our boats?”
“I swear, we’re getting you the best boats,” Craig said.
“I want them now,” Dillinger said.
“We need you to supply those boats now,” Nick said, nodding to Dillinger and repeating his demand over the phone. “We need them out back, by the docks, and then we need you and your people to be far, far away.”
“The boats will be there soon,” Craig told Nick.
“Soon? Make that six or seven minutes at most!” he said.
He hoped Craig picked up on the clue. Stressing the word told him there were seven in this merry band of thieves.
“Don’t push it too far!” Nick added. “Maybe we’ll give you to ten or eleven minutes to get it together, but...well, you don’t want hostages to start dying, do you?”
Easy enough. That told him there were eleven hostages, including Dakota Cameron, being held.
Dillinger looked at Nick and nodded, satisfied.
“We’ve got one of the boats,” Craig said. “How do I get my man to bring it around and not get killed or become a hostage himself?” he asked.
“One boat?”
“So far. Getting our hands on what you want isn’t easy,” Craig said. “If we give you that one boat, what do we get?”
“You just got a man.”
“We could find a second boat more quickly if we had a second man—or woman,” Craig said.
They had to be careful; the negotiator’s voice carried on the land line.
Of course, Craig Frasier knew that. He would be careful, but Nick knew that he had to be more so. Dakota could hear Craig, as well.
“Please,” she said softly, “give them Stacey Carlson and Nan Masters. They’re older. They’ll just be like bricks around your neck when you need hostages for cover. Please, let them leave.”
“Please,” Dillinger said, mimicking her plea, “find what I want to know!”
“I might have,” Kody said very softly.
“You might have?”
“Give the cops two more hostages. Give them Stacey and Nan,” she said. “I’ll show you what I think I’ve figured out once you’ve done that. Please.”
Dillinger looked at Nick. “Hey, the lady said please. Let’s accommodate her. Get on the phone and tell them to get the hell away from the gate. We’ll give them two more solid, stand-up citizens.” His eyes narrowed. “But I want my boats. Two boats. And I want them now. No ten minutes. No eleven minutes. I want them now!”
He looked at Kody. She was staring gravely at him.
“We have a present for you,” he told Craig over the phone. “Two more hostages. Only we want two boats. Now. We want them right now.”
“And if we don’t get those boats soon...” Dillinger murmured.
He looked over at Kody.
And his eyes seemed to smile.
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