pressing Redial. Concessions were a staple of hostage negotiation. Nothing was ever given to a suspect without law enforcement getting something in return. In one situation she’d worked, the gunman had exchanged two hostages for a carton of cigarettes.
The ringing stopped as the call connected. “John? This is Jolie Conrad, with the Metro PD. We’ve passed your requests on. But we need you to do something for us—”
“What happened to Recker?”
She slid a gaze to Dace, listening at her side. “He’s here, John. Do you want to speak to him?”
Indifference sounded in the man’s voice. “It doesn’t matter. How long before I get that SUV?”
“Like I said, the arrangements are in the works. But you have to give us something, too. Life is a series of compromises, right?” She could almost feel the green intensity of Dace’s eyes boring into her. Too late, she recalled how often she’d heard him utter that particular phrase. “If there are injured people in there, we want to get them out. Get medical assistance for them. You’re not going to miss them. Less people inside to keep track of.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then, “You haven’t moved the perimeter back or provided the vehicle I requested. I haven’t gotten a thing from you yet, so where’s the compromise? Don’t call back until you’re ready to deal.”
The call abruptly disconnected again. The team members took off their headphones and Sharper got up to write notes on the situation board. There was a tap at the back door before it was pulled open. Lewis ducked out to talk to the newcomer. Johnson turned away to summarize the latest conversation to intel over his ear mike radio. A few moments later, Lewis rejoined them. “We’ve got DMV verification for all the vehicles in the parking lot, and positive ID on the owners. One was reported stolen two days ago from a parking garage on Sixty-first and Locust, a Toyota Camry. That’s probably our guy’s ride. We’ve got CSU going over it now.”
“Any ID on the hostage down?” Dace asked.
“Walter Hemsworth, security guard for the bank. He’s still clothed, so he probably tried to stop the gunman shortly after he entered the bank.” Lewis’s voice was dispassionate.
Jolie shifted to a more comfortable position and prepared to wait. At the beginning of any armed situation, the hostage taker was running on adrenaline, certain of his power. The longer the ordeal drew out, the more frayed his nerves became. The more hopeless his situation appeared. But it could take hours, or days, for the situation to reach that point.
Something jogged her memory and she looked at Dace. “The HT said ‘perimeter.’ And again earlier, when he was talking to you. Not move your people back, but ‘move the perimeter.’”
“You think law enforcement? Military?”
“Possibly.” Grabbing the leather clipboard on the table in front of her with the attached SWAT incident report, she flipped to the legal pad beneath and drew a grid, jotting labels at the top of each column. Writing quickly, she began noting details they’d verified, possibilities and unknowns. There was depressingly little to note, but she wrote down impressions of the gunman from their conversations and the make and model of the stolen Toyota in the first column, and then the words perimeter—LEO? Military?—in the second. She’d give Sharper the list to add to the situation board when he was finished with his own notes.
Dace looked on, a thread of amusement sounding in his tone, pitched low enough to reach only her ears. “You and your notes. I don’t know how many charts and lists of yours I ran across when I was packing.”
Her hand stilled. She kept her attention trained on the legal pad, not trusting herself to look at him. “You moved out of the house?”
“Not much use hanging on to a two-bedroom house for one person.” Any trace of humor was absent from his quiet answer. It was as detached as if he were talking to a stranger. Which was exactly what they had become to each other, after…She swallowed. After.
His words had been innocuous enough. They shouldn’t have had the power to carve a deep furrow of pain through her. Questions rose to her lips, questions that she knew she no longer had a right to ask. And as desperately as she’d like the answers, she couldn’t be certain she could deal with that conversation. Especially not here.
She shifted back to the situation at hand. “Who was that on Johnson’s radio earlier? Reporting on the visual?”
“Hmm?” He’d withdrawn a pen for the whiteboard and was completing the portions of the SWAT form she hadn’t finished. “Oh. Couldn’t hear much, but it sounded like Cold Shot. Ava Carter. Lucky for us. She’s the best.”
A sniper then. These operatives usually had the best vantage points from which to gather intelligence for the incident. But she was surprised that the shooter was female. SWAT was still a male-dominated field, and few women possessed the deadly accuracy with weaponry and the desire to apply that skill to high-stress situations like this.
Herb Johnson rejoined the table. “We’ve got a positive count on the number inside. The subject is probably the one man who had his face turned away from the camera going in. By the time he got inside, he had a mask pulled down. Besides the ten employees, we have thirteen customers—four men, eight women and a kid. Looks like a boy. Maybe two, two and a half.”
The news blindsided Jolie with a force that sent her reeling. Nausea rose, and for one dizzying moment she felt as if she was going to be sick. Her defenses were usually strong enough to protect her against the flood of memory, this paralyzing hurt that was brutal enough to melt her entire system into one oozing pit of pain.
But then there’d be a chance resemblance, a careless word, and the floodgates would open, dragging her back to a past that could still throb like a wound.
“Outside. Now.” Dace murmured the order into her ear then got up to head for the doors. Blindly she followed, still stunned.
Once outside he grabbed her arm, pulled her around the corner of the unit so they’d have a semblance of privacy. “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t.”
Helplessly, her gaze met his, lingered.
“We don’t know this boy,” Dace continued. “We’ll do our best for him, and for every other person in that bank. And if you aren’t up for that, tell me now.”
Another would think his tone cold. Unfeeling. Jolie knew Dace was neither. He was, however, a consummate professional. And so was she. The whiplash of his words helped her remember that.
“I’m okay.” But her words sounded weak, even to her own ears. She recognized Dace’s logic. Emotion didn’t belong in a situation like this. The child was a factor in this case, but the boy was a stranger. An innocent carried into the bank, probably with his mother.
He wasn’t Sammy. He wasn’t their son.
They’d buried Sammy nearly eighteen months ago.
Chapter Two
Memories flooded Jolie’s mind, spilling forth in a mental torrent. The look on Dace’s face when the nurse had placed his squalling son in his arms for the first time. Sammy’s sweet baby smell after his bath. The staggering joy at seeing his first toothless smile. The all-encompassing
