Hostage Midwife

by Intrigue Romance

  They had to get out of there. Kelly wouldn’t let herself believe otherwise. As long as Nick was roaming the building, there was reason to hope.

  With a determined effort, Roxanne started to bear down. The baby’s head was already crowning.

  Roxanne lay back in her husband’s arms and groaned. “I can’t do it.”

  “One more time,” Kelly said. “One more big push.”

  It took three more pushes before the baby emerged into Kelly’s waiting hands. The tiny infant threw back her arms and wailed. She was perfect. Kelly announced, “She’s got a great head of hair.”

  “Give her to me.”

  Through her tears, Roxanne gave a weak smile. The hairdresser had just accomplished a tremendous physical feat under the most intense circumstances imaginable. Kelly gave the baby girl to her mother and whispered, “You’re a hero.”

  In just a few moments Roxanne expelled the afterbirth. All things considered, this had been a textbook-perfect birth.

  Jared called to Kelly. He had Trask’s cell phone. “It’s Nick. He wants to talk to you.”

  She wiped her bloody hands on her jeans as she took the phone. “Roxanne had a baby girl.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  It wasn’t the best time or the best place, but she still felt the impact of those three little words. Nick didn’t make commitments lightly.

  Without hesitation, she said, “I love you, too.”

  “I’m going to get you out of there.”

  “How can I help?”

  “Is Trask working alone?”

  As far as she could tell, Trask was still taking orders from the person on the other end of the phone. “I’ll ask him.”

  She stared into Trask’s angry eyes, the feature visible through the ski mask. “He wants to talk to your boss, the person you’re working for.”

  “Tell him to come here and open the gates for the gold. That’s when I’ll tell him.”

  “Nick is kind of stubborn,” she said. “He’d be more cooperative if you released Roxanne and her baby. I’m sure your boss wouldn’t mind losing one of the hostages.”

  “You don’t know her,” Trask said. Angry, he spewed threats, but Kelly didn’t hear his words. He’d said “her.” The person he’d been talking to on the other end of the phone was a woman.

  To Nick, she said, “He says his boss is determined. She wants the gold.”

  “A woman,” he said. “I understand. Tell Trask to go to the elevators.”

  Trask grabbed the phone from her and yelled into it.

  “He’s gone,” Kelly said, “but he wants you to go to the elevator.”

  She desperately hoped that Nick had a plan. Lauren was clutching her belly and groaning. Another baby was on the way.

  Sunday, 8:02 p.m.

  ON THE SIXTH FLOOR Nick shoved the body of a man in black with a ski mask onto the elevator. A steel arrow protruded from the upper left section of his chest. The wound shouldn’t be fatal, but Nick didn’t care if this man lived or died. His unconscious body was intended as a message for Trask and his men. They weren’t getting out of here alive unless the hostages were free.

  Nick pushed the elevator button for the ninth floor, then he ran back through the offices of the sporting-goods distributor. There was an inner staircase that communicated with the seventh floor of the distributor. Nick took it. He had more to do.

  Trask’s boss was a woman, and Nick had a pretty fair idea of who that was. He placed a call to Julia, praying she’d pick up.

  “Hello, Nick. I’m sorry that you called me.”

  “You thought Samuel betrayed you.”

  “I know he did,” she said. Her voice was hard and bitter, filled with the years of resentment that had driven her to the point of madness.

  “You hired Trask to find out what he was doing and he reported back to you,” Nick said. “But he was wrong. Samuel wasn’t taking trips to Hearthstone to have an affair with Virginia Hancock. They spent the night together as colleagues. She was helping him open the gold mine.”

  “That wasn’t his only betrayal. When I heard the terms of his will, I couldn’t let it pass. I was Samuel’s wife in every way except the marriage certificate, and he left me with a stipend. I should have inherited it all.”

  “And that’s why you’re taking the gold.”

  “I had to get it before Radcliff made a move next week. You can’t negotiate with someone like Barry Radcliff. He’d find a way to take the kilobars.” She paused. “You should be thanking me. At least I intend to keep the Spencer treasure intact.”

  Did she really think she’d get away with this? “The police are already here.”

  “I know. I’m outside watching.”

  He had a bad feeling about why she’d want to be close enough to see the Spencer Building. The ultimate revenge against Samuel would be to destroy the ten-story building that had been his greatest success. “I found the ladder that connected my office to Samuel’s.”

  “You should have known it was there. You worked with Samuel often enough to know he loved his little secrets, but this time the joke was on him.”

  Her hatred for his uncle was darker than he ever would have thought possible. Julia and Samuel had loved each other for years. How did their love become so twisted? “Did you pull the trigger?”

  “I should have let Trask do it. He would have been more efficient. I told Samuel I knew about Hearthstone and the gold, and then I shot him.”

  “And the suicide note? It was his writing.”

  “I’ve been signing Samuel’s name for years.”

  All the pieces had fallen into place. His uncle didn’t die in a complex scheme to take over the business or a million-dollar loan. He’d been killed by love gone wrong. “Let me help you, Julia. We can still make this turn out all right.”

  “I think not. I have everything worked out. With plenty of traveling money, I can start a new life. Nobody will be interested in an old lady on a pension. I don’t need your help.”

  “But you need my fingerprint to get the gold.” This was his only bargaining chip. “If you let the hostages go, I’ll join Trask on the ninth floor. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “Let’s turn that around, shall we? If you go to the ninth floor, I’ll release the others.”

  The lights on the seventh floor went out, and darkness surrounded him. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Standard procedure in a hostage situation,” she said. “The police have cut the electricity to the building. The stairwells are blocked at the ground floor by the explosions. The elevators aren’t running. You’re trapped, Nick. Might as well give up.”

  “Did you ever love him?”

  “Too much,” she said. “Goodbye, Nick.”

  He wasn’t going to let Julia win, and he sure as hell wouldn’t let Kelly die. The thought of losing her was motivation. He wanted a life with her, and he’d do whatever it took to make that happen.

  The emergency lights came on.

  Crossbow in hand, he made his way to the stairwell.

  Sunday, 9:17 p.m.

  LAUREN’S LABOR WAS far different from Roxanne’s lusty yells as each contraction hit. Lauren had struggled gamely for nearly an hour, but she was overcome by fatigue and stress. Lying on the floor, she barely moved. She couldn’t even summon the strength for a whimper. Kelly had seen blood when she checked the cervix and suspected internal bleeding.

  Lauren needed a doctor. Kelly knew how to perform a C-section and had witnessed several emergency procedures, but she couldn’t pull this off by herself on the floor of an office.

  In the glow of emergency lights, she looked to Jared. “She needs a doctor. We need to get her to a hospital.”

  She didn’t need to say anything more. He understood the seriousness of the situation. He spoke to the masked man who was watching them. “I need to talk to the man in charge.”

  “Trask,” Kelly said. There was no need to bother pretending. He knew she’d recogni
zed him. “His name is Trask, and we need to talk to him right away.”

  The masked man stepped out of the office. Though they’d been sequestered here, she had picked up bits and pieces of information. Nick had been on the attack with his crossbow. One of Trask’s men was near death, and two others were injured.

  When Trask entered the room, Jared didn’t waste any time. “My wife needs a doctor. She’s dying. My brother won’t let that happen. He’ll do whatever you say if you let Lauren go.”

  Trask handed over the phone. “Set it up.”

  While Jared made arrangements on the cell phone, Kelly tended to his wife. Though fading in and out of consciousness, Lauren managed to squeeze her hand. “We have to save my baby.”

  “We’re going to get you to a hospital. You and the baby are going to be all right.”

  “I wanted natural childbirth.”

  “Save your strength.”

  One of the other women was beside Kelly. “What’s going to happen to us?”

  “We’ll get out of here.”

  “You can’t promise that,” her husband said.

  Life wasn’t about promises or guarantees. The only thing Kelly could offer was hope.

  The overhead lights went on, and she blinked in the sudden glare. Something was happening. The situation was about to change.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Sunday, 9:32 p.m.

  The negotiations between the police and Trask allowed Kelly to escort Lauren in the elevator to the ground floor, where they would be met by paramedics who would take her to the hospital.

  “Then you get back on the elevator,” Trask said. “You ride to whatever floor Nick Spencer is hiding on and you pick him up. If I don’t see Nick’s pretty face when the elevator doors open, I’m going to start by killing the new mother and her baby.”

  A shudder went through her. “I understand.”

  With help from the others, Kelly loaded Lauren into the elevator. She was so anxious to get Lauren help that every step seemed to be in slow motion. There might have been something clever that she could plan, but all she cared about was saving Lauren and the baby.

  The elevator descended to the ground floor, where she was met by paramedics with a gurney. An officer from SWAT approached her. “You stay here. We’ll go back up in the elevator. We can end this now.”

  “Not without getting all the hostages killed,” she said.

  “I understand your concerns, miss, but you can’t trust hostage takers. Anything you might have negotiated isn’t—”

  She hadn’t gone through hell to be ordered around. Kelly was no longer a doormat, and it was going to take more than a SWAT team to keep her from doing what was necessary.

  She pulled the gun from the officer’s holster and aimed it at his chest. “Back off. I’m going up, and nobody is going to stop me.”

  For two seconds of stunned silence, the policeman stood and stared. It was enough time for Kelly to get onto the elevator and toss the gun out before the door closed. There wouldn’t be a chance to use it against Trask without endangering others, and she didn’t want them to shoot her when they saw a weapon.

  On the sixth floor, it stopped.

  Nick stood before her. He held open his arms, and she ran to him. While they blocked the elevator door to keep the door from closing, she kissed him for all she was worth. “We have to go.”

  “Not you,” he said. “I’m the one Trask wants. I want you to go into the back of these offices and put your head down.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “Not much, I hope. I got all the explosives deactivated.”

  “How do you know about explosives?”

  “I worked construction in the mountains. We have to put it in roads and clear the land. I use explosives. Kelly, it doesn’t matter how I did it. The bombs are cleared, except for the one in my uncle’s office. I had it all set up to rappel down the side of the building, but there wasn’t enough time.”

  “When the bomb goes off, what happens?”

  “It’s not in the right place to take down the building. There’s going to be damage on the ninth floor.”

  “Where the hostages are,” she said.

  The elevator dinged madly. “If they keep their heads down, they’ll be okay.”

  She didn’t want to take that risk. “Let me come with you.”

  “I love you, Kelly.” He stepped into the elevator. “Stay safe. We’ll be together.”

  She watched the door close.

  Sunday, 9:47 p.m.

  BEFORE THE ELEVATOR DOORS opened, Nick made one last call to the detective he’d been talking to. He’d figured that when the vault was finally opened, Trask and all his men would be standing there watching. That was when the police could make their move. He spoke two words into the phone, “Ten minutes.”

  “You got it, Nick.”

  On the ninth floor he faced Trask and four other men. Behind their masks, all he could see was their eyes, but that was enough to know that they all wanted to kill him. He strode past them. “Let’s do this.”

  Trask shoved his shoulder. “You don’t give the orders.”

  “That’s Julia’s job, right? She’s the one who’s been telling you to jump and how high. How did that sweet little old lady get you to play by her rules?”

  “She’s my mother.”

  “What?”

  “Gave me up at birth and kept my younger half brother and half sister. I found her two years ago. We have a lot in common.”

  “Homicidal tendencies are your family heritage?”

  “If you were really as smart as you think, you could have worked it out,” he said. “I use the name Y. E. Trask, an anagram for Starkey.”

  If that wasn’t so sick, Nick would have thought it was clever. All along, Julia had been playing them, laughing at them and keeping her secrets.

  “Trask. Starkey.” Nick shook his head. “Yeah, you’re some kind of genius, all right. And how are you planning to get out of here with the gold?”

  “We load it in backpacks. And then I take a page from your book.” He pointed upward. “A chopper picks us up from the roof.”

  Nick knew Trask/Starkey’s plan would never work; the police already had helicopters in the air. This caper had been doomed to failure as soon as the cops arrived.

  “That’s not all,” Trask said. “I’m setting off explosions in the building as a diversion.”

  “Clever.” But all the bombs were gone, except one. Nick could only hope that the bomb in his uncle’s office wasn’t too powerful.

  Trask grabbed his arm. “Let’s get this gold. I want my payoff.”

  When he saw his brother, Nick gave him a nod. “The paramedics have Lauren. She’s going to be all right.”

  “That’s all I want. For Lauren and our baby to be safe.”

  Their time for arguing was over. Finally the two brothers were on the same page. Nick hoped the bomb in his uncle’s office wouldn’t end their relationship in a hellish blaze.

  Once again, the lights went out. The electricity to the building had been cut.

  Sunday, 9:57 p.m.

  INSIDE THE OFFICES of the sporting-goods distributor, Kelly decided that she couldn’t hide in there when there was something she could do to prevent the hostages from being harmed. Nick said he’d already prepared to rappel down the building to his uncle’s office. She’d watched him do just that a few days ago.

  There wasn’t time for safety equipment. She was good at rock climbing. Her skill would have to be enough. All she had to do was make it to the roof.

  The emergency lights provided enough illumination for her to see what she was doing. She dashed into the concrete stairwell and started to climb.

  Before she reached the top floor, Trask’s men had discovered her. They were in pursuit. She hit the roof and ran to the edge where Nick would have set the equipment to make a descent to his uncle’s office. Grasping the ropes, she went over the edge.

  She rappelled u
sing the belaying rope. It was different without the harnesses. Her arm strength had to support most of her weight, but she had to go only about twenty-five feet.

  Her pursuers were on the rooftop above her, but it didn’t sound as if they’d figured out where she had gone. If they spotted her, they could kill her quickly, using their guns. Or they could disable her rope and she’d plummet to her death.

  At what point had she decided this was a good plan? Nick loved her and she loved him. She had everything to live for. But living wouldn’t be worth much if she let the others die.

  Dangling outside the window of Samuel’s office, she saw the bomb on his desk. The small, innocent-looking package, which was no bigger than a shoebox, didn’t look capable of terrible devastation, but she remembered the earlier explosions that had shaken the ten-story structure.

  The window ledge outside the office wasn’t wide enough to stand on, but she got a toehold to support herself. Earlier, Nick had felt around the edges, trying to find a lever that would open the window, but he hadn’t located any such mechanism. She had to break the glass to get inside, but the noise from smashing through the window would surely draw attention.

  Glancing down, she saw lights from the law enforcement people surrounding the building. The height didn’t scare her, but the thought of falling was a very real fear. She had to do something, couldn’t just hang here like a fly at the end of a spider’s web. Desperately, she pushed against the glass. The window moved.

  Apparently, when she and Nick had been experimenting with the window, they hadn’t fastened it tightly. While supporting her weight with one arm, she used the fingertips of her other hand to pry at the edge of the casement window. It moved again, only an inch, but it was enough to give her hope.

  From the roof, she heard Trask’s men. They’d found her. If she didn’t move fast, they’d either shoot her or unfasten the belaying rope, causing her to plummet to her death.

  She shoved the window open and dove inside.

  For the moment, she had survived. But the threat remained. She confronted the package on the desk. The plain box had a couple of wires sticking out and a cell phone attached by duct tape to the top. It didn’t look like the kind of bomb she’d seen in movies. There wasn’t a red digital clock counting down the seconds until the explosion.