Cold Snap

by Allison Brennan

  Carina was pale, but she hadn’t puked again. Still, the stress wasn’t doing her any good. Lucy knew that she’d had at least one miscarriage two years ago, and her mother had commented that she thought Carina had had another but never told the family. She must be worried sick, but at the same time, she’d risked her life to save these three nurses, and convinced Peterson to release the other two hostages.

  Lucy walked over to Peterson. “I’m done. These are the samples I need to get to the lab.”

  “I appreciate how professional you were with my sister. You treated her with respect. Thank you.”

  “I have a favor to ask.”

  “I’m not releasing a hostage.”

  “A trade. Me for Carina.”

  “No,” Carina said. The handcuffs rattled as she straightened in the chair. “That’s not why I told him you were a pathologist. I don’t want to be traded.”

  Lucy ignored Carina and spoke directly to Charlie, looking him in the eye. “She’s obviously ill. She’s pregnant. This stress isn’t good for her or the baby. I’ll take her place in the chair. The tests will be done in a couple hours, and then we can all leave.”

  “You’d do that for your sister?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation.

  He handed Lucy the keys to the handcuffs. “Let her go.”

  “Dammit, I’m not leaving!” Carina said. “Charlie, come on, this is my little sister—we were talking earlier about how important it is to protect our sisters.”

  Charlie said, “And you’re pregnant. I don’t want you here. Look, I appreciate everything you’ve done to help me get answers. Lucy will wait with me. And then I’ll know what to do.”

  He motioned for Lucy to sit. “Don’t move.” Then he said to Carina, “Pick up the samples.”

  Carina complied. She caught Lucy’s eye and shook her head. “Lucy—”

  “I’m fine, Carina,” Lucy said. She was scared, but she buried it with a deep breath. He hadn’t put the cuffs on her, and that was a relief. She didn’t want to be restrained; it might set off a panic attack even though she’d learned to fight them back. She could think more clearly if she didn’t have to also fight her fears.

  Charlie reset the detonator and told Carina to leave the same way that Lucy had come in. “Good-bye, Carina.” He walked up behind Lucy. Lucy knew the gun was pointed at her head, but she didn’t flinch.

  When Carina hesitated, Charlie said, “If she does what I say, I will not hurt her. I owe you that.”

  Owe? That was an odd choice of words.

  “Charlie,” Carina said, “there is another way.”

  “Not anymore.”

  After Carina left and Charlie checked the bomb, he walked over to drawer 8 and put his hand on the outside, as if saying good-bye. He might have thought watching the autopsy would be clinical, but it had greatly affected him.

  “Charlie,” Lucy began, wanting to keep the conversation going.

  He didn’t look at her. Instead he stared at the three RNs sitting against the wall. “I’m done talking. Now we wait for answers.”

  CHAPTER 30

  As soon as Will started toward the SWAT staging area, he was on his phone. He was several feet ahead of Sean and Dillon, but the expression on his face was stern.

  Something had happened.

  Will started running for the north tower, and Sean was right on his heels. As soon as they reached the main doors, Lucy’s sister Carina stepped out.

  Sean looked around for Lucy, but she was nowhere.

  “Where’s Lucy?” Sean interrupted.

  Two uniformed officers approached Sean, but Will waved them away.

  “Not here,” Will said, his arm around Carina as he led her toward the SWAT truck.

  “Where’s Lucy?” Sean demanded as they walked.

  “She’s still inside,” Carina said.

  “What happened? Why is she still inside?”

  Nick ran up to the group and hugged his wife. Sean stared at them as if they had all lost their minds.

  Anger and a deep fear pulsed through Sean. Dillon put his hand on his shoulder, but Sean shook it off.

  “What did you tell her?” Sean asked Nick. “You said something to her—did you do this?”

  Carina stood between them, her hand on Sean’s chest. “Lucy found out I was pregnant. I didn’t want to leave, but she told Peterson and he agreed to a swap.”

  “No. No!” He turned to Nick. “You told Lucy to trade herself for Carina?”

  “Of course not,” Nick said.

  Will pushed Sean out of the group. Sean was close to hitting him. He clenched his fists as Will jabbed his finger in his chest. “If you don’t get it together, Rogan, I’ll arrest you.”

  “Poke me again, and you’ll have cause to arrest me,” Sean said through clenched teeth.

  Dillon stepped between them. “Let’s figure out what’s going on before we do anything. Sean,” he said firmly. “Lucy knows what she’s doing.”

  Sean didn’t doubt that, but it didn’t make him feel better to know that she was still in the morgue with an armed soldier who had nothing to lose.

  Sean stayed behind the group to put his head together. He couldn’t blame Nick, or Carina, or anyone but Charles Peterson. Lucy had her reasons, but Sean didn’t have to like it.

  Will and Nick walked Carina over to the ambulance that was waiting next to the SWAT truck. Sean trailed behind them. He needed to know what was going on, but Will was grating on him and it was best if he stood back.

  Carina sat on a gurney, clearly frustrated by the attention as a paramedic put a blood pressure cuff around her arm. “I’m fine,” she said.

  Nick kissed her forehead and held her hand. Sean couldn’t be mad at him for wanting to protect his wife and unborn baby. And it was exactly what Lucy would have done. Protect the innocent. Maybe Carina was a cop and willing to risk her own life, but the baby wasn’t.

  Lucy’s been in worse situations. She’ll be fine.

  Sean had to believe that now.

  Carina said, “So you heard everything?”

  “Yes,” Tom said. “The tablet Agent Kincaid brought with her has a one-way audio. We’ve been able to piece together from witnesses that Peterson has a vendetta against the three nurses down there, because of his sister’s death.”

  “No,” Carina said. “Just one. He thinks one of them killed her, and he lured them there.”

  Will said, “They thought they had a training exercise.”

  “How’d he get them down there?”

  “We’re working on it,” Will said. “Rogan found something on the security feed. Peterson met with another nurse last night.” He showed Carina the printout. “Recognize her?”

  “No. But it makes sense that he has inside help. He knew his sister was in the morgue, and he knew which nurses had been on duty the night she died. He’s positive one of them killed her.”

  Tom grabbed the printout. “We need an ID.”

  Will said, “I’m going to talk to the head nurse of the unit again. She pulled all the personnel files of the three hostages, and our people are going through them, but so far there’s no connection between any of them and either Charles or Sarah Peterson. Let me call and have her brought over.” He stepped aside.

  “Carina, are you up for giving us a good visual of the bomb and where everyone is located?” Tom asked.

  “Yes—get me the blueprints.”

  Tom unrolled the plans and said, “We’re working on getting eyes into the room from the ventilation shaft, but it’s a dedicated system and hard to access. We know he’s expecting something, and so we’re having problems—there’s no quiet way to go in there. He shut down the security cameras from the inside—unplugged them. No way to get eyes in there.”

  Sean spoke up. “Is there a computer in the room hooked up to the hospital system?”

  “Yes,” Carina said. “Lucy had one of the nurses retrieve the victim’s medical records.”

  “If
there’s a camera in the computer, I can get access,” Sean said.

  “We have our tech people working on it,” Tom said.

  “I can do it in five minutes.”

  Tom didn’t believe him, but Sean didn’t care. He stood his ground.

  “Sean,” Carina said. “I’m sorry we had to meet like this.” She glanced from Sean to Dillon. “Lucy’s not the teenager who moved away seven years ago. I didn’t know what to expect.”

  “Why did you give him Lucy?” Sean asked.

  “Hey!” Nick exclaimed, stepping up.

  “I’m not accusing you of anything,” Sean said, “I need to know the truth.”

  “Peterson caught me texting Nick. Read the message that said Lucy and Dillon were on their way. Peterson asked, I told him she was a pathologist. Didn’t say she was a federal agent. Then when he was talking about the autopsy, it seemed like the expedient thing to do. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to put her in danger.”

  “Lucy can handle the situation,” Dillon said. “We need information. What is Peterson’s frame of mind? He sounds logical, as if he planned this out.”

  “He did, but not as thoroughly as I would have thought. He seems to believe that if he went through proper channels to request an autopsy that the hospital would cover up the cause of his sister’s death. He honestly believes that if he’s not down there protecting her dead body, they’ll do something.”

  “Paranoid?”

  “Yes, I think so. Why he thinks he has to go to these extreme measures, I have no idea. Something set him on this path, and he believes this is the only way to find out what happened to his sister. He is convinced one of those three nurses is to blame, and I had the distinct impression that he doesn’t believe it was an accident.”

  Dillon said, “He could have made a broad attack against the hospital, but instead chose a focused attack. He only wants to punish the individual he thinks is responsible. Otherwise, he would have killed all three of them.”

  “Maybe he’s not positive one of them is to blame,” Will said. “Our plan will work then. Give him negative results and he’ll see that his sister’s death was simply a tragedy.”

  “Lucy thinks there’s something warranting an investigation,” Carina said. “Your guys, Tom, took the samples she collected, but she wrote instructions on what needs to be done.”

  “We can’t let him control the outcome,” Tom said. “We give him what he wants, every hospital will be vulnerable.”

  “Yes, but something killed that woman. It was probably just the change in meds—cancer treatment is hardly an exact science—and if he knows what it is, he’ll let them go.”

  “You don’t know that,” Tom said. “He could plan on killing them when he gets the answers he wants.”

  Dillon asked, “Is he prepared to die?”

  “Of course he is,” Sean said. “Anyone bringing guns and a bomb into a public place and taking hostages is prepared for whatever comes. I don’t think he expects to get out alive.”

  “Are you a shrink?” Will snapped as he came back to the group.

  Dillon intervened. “I think Sean’s right about this, but listening to Peterson talk with Carina and Lucy makes me believe that he sees Carina as an equal, and Lucy as a superior.”

  “I don’t understand,” Will said.

  “Carina’s a cop, and a lot of soldiers equate themselves in a similar role. They’re equals, basically stopping the bad guys. He thinks Lucy is a scientist, a pathologist, and therefore has an education and background that gives her a unique and specialized skill set. He respects that.” Dillon continued, “He also has no college education, and Lucy has an advanced degree—like his sister. He knows Lucy is Carina’s younger sister, and would automatically be protective of her because of that. If she can keep him calm, I think she’ll be able to talk him down.”

  Will shook his head. “She graduated from Quantico three days ago and is suddenly an expert on hostage psychology?”

  “Not suddenly,” Dillon said, and left it at that.

  A uniformed officer popped his head in. “Detective?”

  Both Will and Carina turned. Will stepped out to talk to him. While he was gone, Tom called in for a status on getting eyes in the room. He must have been disappointed in the answer, because he said, “I’m sending a civilian consultant in.” He hung up and said to Sean, “Get me eyes into that room.” He tossed him a temporary ID. “Don’t abuse it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sean said.

  Will came back and said, “We have an ID on the nurse Peterson was talking to last night. Wendy Parsons. She’s off duty today and no one has seen her, so we’re going to her house, which isn’t far. Dillon, you can come with me.”

  “I want to go,” Carina said. “I’m fine.”

  “Stay,” Will said, “until the doctor clears you. You have a rapport with Peterson, you might need to continue working that angle.” To the cop he said, “Tell the head nurse, um”—he snapped his fingers—“Todd, Marilyn Todd, that I’ll be delayed, but not to leave. We still need her inside knowledge of the staff who worked on Sarah Peterson.”

  * * *

  Sean wasn’t pleased that he had two cops assigned to him—hospital security and one of Tom Blade’s SWAT guys. It was clear Blade told his man to babysit Sean. But he’d worked around smarter tech guys and still gotten what he wanted.

  Sean hated working on any medical system. They were often convoluted, and unless it was a state-of-the-art facility, they’d layer new systems on top of the old, ultimately spending more to force everything to work, rather than using that money on the front end to get a new, better system that would save time and money in the future.

  This was one of those troublesome layered systems.

  He plugged his tablet into the mainframe and rewrote a search program to pull down targeted information.

  “What are you doing?” the security guy asked, suspicious.

  “Running a program to locate the correct computer,” he lied. He didn’t need his tablet to do that. He needed the tablet to download the personnel files of the hostages so he could run faster background checks on them than SDPD could. While SWAT was looking into the hostages, their priority was the rescue, not the whys. He also told the computer to pull down everything on Wendy Parsons and the head nurse, Marilyn Todd. Parsons might be an accomplice, or she might simply have shared information with Peterson to help him with his grief.

  It took him only a few minutes to identify the computers on the network and locate the specific unit in the morgue. Because he was on the mainframe and the computer was hardwired into the system, it was easy to access the hard drive and look at the specs. There was no active camera, but the computer had a dormant web cam built into the monitor. He first disabled the light on the terminal that indicated the camera was active, then he initiated the web cam.

  He sent the feed to his tablet and the mainframe terminal, plus to the SWAT truck. Blade wanted the intel, so maybe he wouldn’t be so irritated that Sean had hacked into the SWAT system.

  SWAT had one objective: rescue the hostages. They didn’t care, at this point, whether Sarah’s death was natural or murder. They only cared that no one lost their life. He had to trust them to protect Lucy, and trust Peterson when he told Carina that he wouldn’t hurt Lucy. But anything could happen—there were three innocent people in that room with his girlfriend, dozens of cops swarming the place, and a live bomb.

  But answers … those Sean could find.

  He informed the SWAT officer that Blade would have access to the computer feed in the truck. The officer seemed pleased—and surprised—and stepped out to call his boss.

  Sean looked at the terminal in the security office. The morgue computer was on a desk in the corner, at an angle so the door couldn’t be seen. The three hostages were partly visible sitting on the floor. Lucy was sitting in the chair. She wasn’t handcuffed, which relieved Sean. Peterson was leaning against the desk, part of his arm visible but that was it. Sean h
ad no audio because the audio had been disabled on the user’s end. He would have had to be at the computer physically to turn it on.

  He hit a button and the screen went blank.

  “Hmm, I don’t know what happened. Give me a minute.” He made sure all the data and security logs he needed had downloaded to his tablet, then disconnected it, typed a code, and the feed came back.

  “There we go,” he said and winked. His phone rang. “Hold on.” He answered the call.

  It was Patrick.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “We just hit the L.A. County line. Jack is hauling ass, but it’s going to be another two hours minimum. What the hell’s going on? First it’s Dad with a heart attack, now Carina is a hostage?”

  “Lucy traded herself for Carina.”

  “What the hell?”

  Sean filled Patrick in on the situation, as much as he could with the cop listening in.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “I can’t really say, Patrick.” He hoped his former partner understood.

  “Oh. Are you in trouble?”

  “No.” Not yet.

  “Do you have anything?”

  “Just a theory, but I’ll know more when Dillon and Carina’s partner, Will Hooper, get back from interviewing a nurse who knows Peterson.” Sean wasn’t ready to share anything, not until he dug deeper into the three hostages’ backgrounds and any deaths that might have occurred at hospitals where they worked previously.

  “Why would Lucy trade herself for Carina?”

  “Carina’s pregnant.” Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t his secret to tell, but then again everyone here knew.

  “Oh God, I didn’t know.”

  “Apparently, she hadn’t told anyone, but Nick told Lucy before she went down to the morgue. Carina thinks that Lucy has a rapport with the bastard, and Dillon thinks that the guy looks up to and respects Lucy as a superior. Some damn shrink reasoning. The bastard has a bomb, he’s special forces, and he’s already ruined his career and his life—he doesn’t have anything to lose. So I’m…” Sean hesitated a second. “I’m doing what I can to ensure that Lucy gets out alive.”