by Raina Lynn
“Mr. C., you can’t take money from the cash drawer every time your pocket money is a little low.” Jill truly liked the Casey family. They sold good quality furniture at affordable prices. Unfortunately, their idea of sound business had little to do with making ends meet. By the end of her first week, she wanted to tear her hair out in clumps. “And about the overdue accounts. If you don’t let me lean on some of these people, you’ll never see another dime.”
The older man shrugged. “We’ve been doing business like this for thirty years, Jill. What’s the fuss?”
She longed to be back at the Journal where Mason had a solid business head on his shoulders. “The fuss is that you have a choice. You make payroll, or you cover bills. The bank balance won’t let you do both.”
“Oh.” He sounded like a small child who’d just found out that Christmas elves didn’t make all the toys Santa delivered. “What do you recommend?”
For the umpteenth time, she rattled off a budget that would get the store out of debt, and solvent again.
“If you’re sure.”
Latching onto the concession, Jill sagged into her chair with a heavy sigh. On her new desk sat her farewell present from Vicki, a customized coffee cup that read “Property of Jill Mathesin. Free refills anytime in The Closet.” She could hardly look at it without crying.
Stupid hormones.
“Are you okay, Jill?” he asked. “You look a little blue today.”
“Fine.” She took a sip. “Decaf was invented by a sadist. That’s all.”
He gave her a grandfatherly pat on the shoulder and wandered off. She pulled up the list of the most delinquent accounts and started making phone calls.
Mason shoved the caster back into the chair leg. One wheel had developed the tendency to fall off at the most inconvenient of times. Like just now, when he’d been on the phone with a reporter in the field. Being dumped onto the floor while trying to hold a reasonably intelligent conversation hadn’t done his disposition many favors.
Vicki came in with some letters for him to sign. Shaking her head at finding her boss kneeling on the carpet, she looked down at him. “That chair was old during World War Two. Replace it.”
“Vicki, for three months you’ve invented every excuse imaginable why I need to go to Casey’s Furniture,” he said tiredly. He rolled back on his heels and reined in his irritation. “I assume Jill told you about our...aborted relationship. I admire your loyalty to your friend, but I’m not going over there.” He flipped the chair back around and set it on its wheels. “Not now. Not ever.”
She visibly wilted. “Fine. I’ve done my best to be a good friend to both of you without betraying any confidences. I’m washing my hands of this whole thing.”
“Thank you.”
Glowering at him, she mumbled something under her breath about stupid people. “I’m going to lunch.”
“Have fun.”
An hour later, Mason found himself staring at the letters stacked on his desk. He tried to read the one in his hand, but he couldn’t focus on a single word beyond “Dear Editor.” How much longer would he be reminded of one mistake? As Jill pointed out, they’d been two consenting adults. People had casual sex all the time. No guilt. No looking over shoulders afterward. So why couldn’t he do the same? Why after seven months couldn’t he let go?
He reflected on that a moment and came to the same conclusion he had about other problems in his life. He didn’t know how to let go of anything. Karen’s betrayal ate at him as intensively as it had the night he walked in on her. Only the initial shock had worn off. Acidly, he wondered if he was redefining the term “anal retentive.”
Bobby Creamer tore down the hall, grabbed the doorjamb and skidded to a stop. “Hey, Mason! Does anyone know if Jill still works at Casey’s Furniture?”
“Without a doubt,” Mason drawled. “If Vicki weren’t at lunch, she could give you her work schedule, I’m sure.” When Bobby cocked his head in confusion, Mason realized how sarcastic he’d sounded. “Why? What’s up?”
“Armed robbery in progress.” He shoved his arms into his coat sleeves. “The cops rolled in just as the suspect tried to leave, and they’ve got a hostage situation. The dirt-bag has a gun to a pregnant woman’s head. I’m on it.” He said the last as he turned and left, the photographer on his heels.
The bottom dropped out of Mason’s stomach. It was Wednesday. Jill and Vicki always went to lunch on Wednesdays. Still did. What if this had come down before they’d left? Like an automaton, he reached for his coat and pulled his car keys from his pocket.
Chapter 5
Jill rubbed her bulging stomach in a soothing gesture, praying her baby understood she was trying to protect her as best she could. Just after Vicki had arrived to take her to lunch, a gunman wearing a red ski mask barged in and rounded up employees, customers and Vicki. Then he’d robbed everyone and locked them in the storage room. Jill had hit the silent alarm the moment she saw him clear the door. He’d dismantled the back office looking for cash. There hadn’t been much—something he should have realized. Anyone who would rob a furniture store in the middle of the week wasn’t exactly a mental giant.
The police arrived, and the situation became really ugly. She supposed her obvious condition had made her an attractive target, because he’d separated her from the others, dragging her onto the sales floor where he could keep an eye on the plate-glass windows and the door. Then he’d shoved her into a wing chair where the police could see her, the snub-nosed barrel of a revolver pressed to her right temple. The click of him pulling the hammer back would haunt her for the rest of her life.
“Stop stalling, man!” he screamed into the phone. The police negotiators had been talking to him regularly for the last two hours and had gotten nowhere. “I won’t say it again. I want a helicopter and twenty-thousand dollars in cash. And the pilot better not be a cop, either. I want a real pilot.”
Jill took a long, slow breath. After hours of living moment to moment, her thoughts had become strangely detached. The chances of her dying were all too real. She was due in six weeks. If the bullet struck only her, neonatal care might pull the baby through. The idea that a petty criminal could risk that tiny life infuriated her.
The thought occurred to her that getting shot was a hell of a way for Mason to find out, but Vicki—safely locked in the back room—would make sure he’d know about the baby. The knowledge made for dark comfort.
“Yeah, well you’d better find a way.” The gunman slammed the receiver down, and Jill flinched.
He bent to her, leaning heavily on her shoulder. Jill closed her eyes. “They say they can’t let me just walk out of here. What do you think?”
She swallowed hard, and tried not to move.
“No answer, Little Mama?” His breath reeked of stale beer and bad teeth.
A shudder rippled through her. He laughed, and turned his full attention back to the dozen or so cops watching him from outside. The police had cordoned off the parking lot, and spectators lined the barricade. The gunman adjusted his ski mask and glanced at his watch, nervous gestures that fueled Jill’s terror.
The phone rang. His lips curled into a parody of a smile. The phone rang a second time.
“Think I ought to answer it?” he asked, leaning on her again.
The muscles across her shoulders knotted to the point of pain.
“I asked you a question, bitch!”
Jill recoiled reflexively. A sob escaped, and that made her mad, madder than she’d ever been in her life. Her insides went dead cold. “Depends,” she said with an unnatural calm.
“So,” he drawled. “You can talk.”
“Only when I have something to say.”
“I like that.” Standing behind her, he pressed his cheek against hers. His breath came uneven, like a cornered animal on the verge of taking reckless chances. “So, what do you think? Should I let them lie to me some more?”
“You haven’t killed anyone,” she said, each word spoken
with care. “If you turn yourself in now, you’ll live long enough to get out of prison.”
“Been there before, Little Mama. Not some place I want to go again.”
“A good lawyer might pull that off for you.”
The phone’s shrill ringing had begun to get on her nerves. The gunman didn’t even seem to hear it anymore. The ringing quit, and her pent-up breath eased from her chest. Then the police negotiator dialed again. If the man held true to past patterns, he’d keep trying until the gunman answered.
The robber snatched the receiver off the hook. “What!” He listened a long time. “Maybe I ought to just shoot a hostage or two. Think that’ll make your day?” He ripped the phone from the wall.
Given his state of mind, Jill took the threat as truth. “I have a question.”
Through the eyeholes in the red mask, she saw his surprise.
“How did you plan to get out of here in the first place?”
“Why?”
“Well, they won’t give you the helicopter and the money. You need another plan. I figured it might be a good idea to start with your original one and go from there.”
“My car’s outside.”
She invented as she went along. “A driver or just you?”
His eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“If you had a friend, he’s long gone by now. But if you came alone and you’re parked in a regular parking space, then they might not know which car is yours. They might not have tampered with it. You could—”
“Why are you trying to help me?”
Swallowing hard, she turned her head to look at him squarely. That meant staring down the bottomless barrel of the gun. Somewhere in that darkness rested a bullet. “Because I want this over. Because I want to go home.”
The gun never wavered as he mulled over what she’d said. “I’ll take you with me, you know.”
Keeping her gaze level on him took everything she had. “I assumed as much.”
“Then let’s shake them up a little.”
Terror coursed through her veins. Hold on, sweetheart. She laid her hand on her stomach. Mommie’s trying.
In the nine months Mason had been in Stafford, he’d established a fairly good relationship with the city police chief and was allowed inside the cordon. The chief made it very clear, though, that civilians had to stay at a safe distance. On the way through, Mason had walked past Vicki’s car. Fear sang through his veins. Wilson had gone to the state capital for a school administrator’s conference. Mason tracked him down by phone and promised to stay until the man could get back.
As the afternoon dragged by, he kept telling himself both women were fine. The police believed the suspect hadn’t harmed anyone yet, that everyone except a pregnant woman was safely locked in the storage room and not in any immediate danger. As evening approached, the suspect had broken off negotiations, and the police were getting nervous. The longer the standoff lasted, the greater the chance that someone could get hurt.
Then the door to the furniture store opened, and everything changed.
A single gunman emerged, his arm locked around his pregnant hostage’s throat, a pistol to her head. She held perfectly still, one arm laid protectively across her belly. Her captor surveyed the scene, a dozen rifles trained on him.
On second look, a vague familiarity about the woman caught at Mason. From this distance, though, he couldn’t be sure of anything. She had shoulder-length hair about the color of—
“My God! That’s Jill!” Shock rooted him in place.
The head negotiator had opened his mouth to say something to the suspect, but at Mason’s outburst, he turned around. “That’s your former employee, Mr. Bradshaw?”
Dumbfounded, Mason could only nod.
“It would have helped if you’d told us that’s who he had.” The man’s censure barely registered. “The more information we have to work with, the better our chances of getting people out.”
“I didn’t know.” Not since the night he’d walked in on his wife had his world come apart with such speed and thoroughness. He couldn’t breathe. At that moment, everything narrowed down to two images—Jill’s distended abdomen and the gun against her temple.
“What are you doing now, buddy?” the negotiator asked, his tone conversational.
Mason braced his hand on a patrol cruiser’s trunk lid to keep from falling over. Jill was pregnant. Very pregnant. And that scum might kill her. And their baby. Their baby.
“We’re going to my car. Little Mama here thinks you won’t risk shooting her to get to me.”
The singsong quality to his words made Mason’s blood run cold. That psycho might do anything.
“I think she’s right,” the gunman answered himself. “How about you?”
“I think you need to let the lady go. Do you have any idea what a judge and jury would do to you if you killed a woman and her unborn child? You’d never see daylight again. Right now, things aren’t so bad.”
He laughed. “Maybe from your end of things. Not mine.” He said something low to Jill, who nodded. Together, they began a sideways shuffle down the sidewalk.
“Where’s your car, buddy?” the cop tried again. The gunman stopped. “Let the lady go, and we’ll clear a path to it. You don’t want to hurt anybody.” With a jerk of his head, he indicated the crowd of reporters and onlookers.
Mason couldn’t take his eyes from Jill. Raw emotion flooded through him with such ferocity that he couldn’t begin to sort out any of it. Her point of focus narrowed, and he watched her find him in the crowd. Her lips parted, and he could have sworn she mouthed his name.
“I just want out of here, man.”
“We all do. Now which car is yours?”
“The beige two-door.”
The negotiator scanned the parking lot. “I don’t see it. Could you be more specific?”
At first the man tried to point with the arm around Jill’s throat. He jerked her back and forth like a rag doll. She stumbled, and he dragged her back to her feet. Mason lunged forward, but men on either side of him hauled him back.
“You’re a civilian, Mr. Bradshaw. Stay put!”
Mason clenched his fists by his sides and hung onto every word of the gunman’s exchange with police.
“It’s the car by the light pole.”
“Next to the gray Ford?”
“No, you bastard. That’s brown. I said beige.” He swung the pistol away from Jill to point at his car.
Time dropped into a tableau of slow motion. Jill grabbed his gun arm and shoved it into the air. Cops surged forward in a black-uniformed wall.
The pistol went off. One group of cops ducked, while others made flying tackles on a single point on the sidewalk, burying Jill and the suspect behind and beneath it all. There were shouted orders. Other voices lifted in warning. Mason fought against the hands that restrained him, then forced himself to regain his composure. He could do nothing except get in their way—but standing idle was miserable. More officers poured into the furniture store, guns drawn. Then two cops half carried, half dragged Jill from the tangle of bodies to the protection of the police cars.
Questions peppered her from all directions. “Yes, I’m fine. Yes, I think everyone else is all right, too. Somebody needs to let them out of the back room. Mr. C. is a heart patient. Could one of you get a paramedic to check him over?”
Mason nearly demanded to be let through, but he shook so badly he could hardly stand. He needed time to think.
Jill was safe.
Jill was pregnant.
Someone threw a blanket around her shoulders and led her toward a police car. Dazed, she scanned the crowd, looking for what, he didn’t know. He didn’t mean to step forward out of the crowd. His feet just moved. Hers stopped.
Their gazes met and locked. From the hysteria in her eyes, she didn’t fully comprehend that her ordeal had ended. Her shoulders hunched forward as if she wanted to hide from the world—him in particular—for a while, and one hand came to rest a
gain on her stomach. Her lips moved around his name.
The rest of the hostages ran from the building. Only then did Mason notice the cuffed suspect being marched toward a cruiser. Two of the hostages tried to attack him and had to be restrained by police. Reporters jumped to cover the action. The professional part of his brain registered that his people were on it. They knew their jobs, and he left them alone with it. He had one thought—to reach Jill. But he couldn’t get through the sea of uniforms.
The cop who’d given her the blanket helped her sit down on the back seat of a patrol car. Mason’s gaze locked onto her stomach. She recoiled and turned away.
“Other than being scared, I’m fine,” she told the officer. “I just want to go home.” Her body trembled.
“Just as soon as we get a statement, ma’am. Do you have family that can come pick you up? In your condition—”
“No.” She shook her head. “There’s no one.”
“She has me,” Mason growled loud enough for people on the next block to hear him. A path to her opened. Closing the distance between them, he realized vaguely that his own shock had passed. Rage replaced it and battled with relief that she’d made it through unharmed.
When Jill saw him towering over her, she visibly shrank into herself. A distant part of his mind observed that he needed to back off. After what she’d survived, she didn’t need a confrontation right now.
“What are you doing here?” she squeaked. “How did you find out?”
“I’m the press, remember?” Glancing at her belly again, he told himself that just because he learned the real reason she left the paper didn’t mean he knew it all.
Then Vicki was there, laughing and crying and rocking Jill the way she would a small child. “It’s okay now, girlfriend,” she crooned. “It’s over.” Then Vicki gave Mason a heated look. “If you’d come down here months ago and bought yourself a new damned chair, she’d have been back at the paper where she belongs. Nothing like this would have happened to her!”
Mason exploded. “Why didn’t you tell me straight out that she was pregnant? It would have been a lot easier on everyone!”
