by J. S. Carol
‘Wonder what’s got him all hot and bothered,’ Tara said.
‘Aside from the fact we’re still alive and breathing, I can’t think of anything we’ve done in the last couple of minutes to piss him off.’
Walters pulled up in front of them. His face was hard and unreadable, which was telling in itself. This was a negotiator’s face. The PR man clearly wanted something, and that made Rob very happy.
‘So, what can I do for you, Mr Walters?’
‘This idea of yours for getting King out, will it work?’
‘It’ll work.’
‘And you’re absolutely certain about that? Certain enough to risk King’s life? To risk the lives of the other hostages? Because I want us to be very clear about something, Mr Taylor. If this goes wrong and he dies then I will make it my personal mission, my only mission in life, to make sure that you are held accountable.’
‘It’s a simple piece of TV trickery,’ Tara said. ‘And do you know what the great thing with TV is? People know they shouldn’t believe what they hear and see, but they still go right on believing anyhow.’
Walters fixed her with a hard stare. ‘I hope to God you’re right.’
‘I take it this means that you’re back in touch with King?’ Rob said.
‘This is strictly off the record?’
Rob nodded.
‘Yes, we’re back in touch with him.’
‘Can I ask how?’
‘You can ask, but I’ll politely decline to answer.’
‘Remember, it was you who came to us asking for favours.’
‘And remember, you could be stuck on the other side of the barrier with everyone else, so don’t even think about playing that card.’ A tight smile. ‘Okay, I want you two to wait here. I’ll let you know when we’re ready to do this.’
‘Works for me,’ Rob said. ‘How about you, Tara?’
‘Yeah, works for me, too.’
Walters shook his head, then marched back towards the Mobile Command Unit. Rob waited until he’d got a couple of yards, then called out, ‘One more thing.’
Walters stopped and turned.
‘Does the name Ted Marley mean anything to you?’
‘Never heard of him.’
Walters spun on his heels and carried on walking, and Rob took out his cell phone. He’d been watching the PR guy carefully, looking for any tic or tell, no matter how subtle. Seth answered on the third ring.
‘I’ve got that confirmation you wanted,’ he said. ‘Ted Marley is definitely the bomber.’
8
‘Tell me what happened, Jody.’
‘I can’t.’
The words were barely a whisper. There was no way she was going back there again. It wasn’t going to happen. It had taken a long time and a load of therapy, but she’d eventually managed to move to a place where she could live with the darkness that had followed in the wake of Tom’s death. Life was about light. It was about living. That was her mantra. The room had fallen totally silent. Breathing and movement were being kept to an absolute minimum. It was like being underwater.
‘It’s good to share, Jody.’
‘I’m not doing this,’ she said quietly.
The bomber walked over to Dan Stone and pushed the gun into the back of the agent’s head. ‘Maybe you need a moment to reflect on that. Please don’t take too long, though.’
Stone’s eyes went wide. ‘Jesus, JJ, tell him what he wants to know. For Christ’s sake, just do it.’
‘Careful,’ the bomber warned. ‘Blasphemy’s a sin. It’s right up there at number three on the list. Believe it or not, it comes before “thou shalt not kill”, which has got to tell you something about the Big Guy’s priorities. In my humble opinion, any God who values words more than a life has really lost their way.’
JJ looked down at her hands. Her fingers were knotted tightly together to stop the shakes, but it wasn’t working. So much for being invisible. That spotlight was shining down so brightly it was blinding. Why had he singled her out like this? It wasn’t fair. Then again, life wasn’t fair. She’d learned that one a long time ago. If it had been fair then Tom would still be alive. As to the question of why the bomber was doing this, when it came to his reasons for doing anything, he was a law unto himself. At the end of the day, he was a sadist, and that was all JJ needed to know.
‘You have five seconds starting now,’ the bomber said.
‘JJ, just tell him what he wants to know,’ Stone pleaded. ‘I’m begging you here.’
‘Shut up!’ she screamed back at him. ‘Shut up, shut up! Shut! Up!’
‘This is good, Jody,’ the bomber said. ‘Let it all out, honey. But bear in mind that you’ve only got three seconds left before I pull the trigger and decorate the floor with the contents of Dan’s head.’
‘You bastard.’
The bomber laughed. ‘Sweetheart, believe me when I tell you that I’ve been called a lot worse.’
JJ glared, then looked away. A single candle was still burning on one of the lower-level tables. The flame was flickering orange and yellow and casting graphite shadows that danced on the wall.
‘Three, two.’
The bomber reaffirmed his grip on the gun. His finger tightened on the trigger. Stone had his head in his hands, weeping and blubbering and pleading.
‘It was all my fault,’ JJ said quietly. ‘I’m the reason Tom’s dead.’
9
‘Good to hear your voice again, Alex.’
King pressed the throat mike. ‘And yours,’ he whispered. ‘Over.’
‘It distorts the sound when you press the mike against your throat. And you don’t need to keep saying “over”. They only do that in the movies.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Hey, don’t be. I’ve got some good news. We’ve come up with a plan to get you out of there.’
A surge of hope flooded through King. ‘How?’
‘I don’t want to say too much at this stage.’
King picked up on the reason immediately. If he was discovered back here, then the less he knew, the better. That was the only reason for keeping him out of the loop. What he didn’t know, he couldn’t tell. It was that simple.
‘There’s something we need you to do for us first,’ Carter said.
‘You want me to put the camera back, right?’
‘I’m sorry buddy, but we need to see what’s happening in there.’
King opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. The suspicious side of his mind was suddenly working overtime.
‘You okay, Alex? You’ve gone quiet.’
‘This plan of yours, it doesn’t actually exist. You’re lying to me, aren’t you?’
‘And why would we do that?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Brad. Maybe if I think I’m getting out then I’ll be more likely to say yes when you want me to do something. Like put your camera back. A little hope goes a long way, right?’
‘You’ve got it all wrong, Alex.’
‘Do I? In that case tell me what the plan is.’
Brad sighed. ‘I can’t, Alex. I’ve already told you that. You’ve just got to trust me on this one.’
King snorted. ‘Trust you? Yeah, that’s a good one. The truth is that I’m more use to you in here than I am out there. If I get out, then who’s going to plant your damn devices? That’s what’s really going on here, right?’
‘There is a plan, Alex.’
‘Okay, let’s assume for a second that you are telling the truth. What happens if I don’t put the camera back?’
‘That’s your prerogative.’
‘No, it’s not. If I say no then you’ll drag your heels and I’ll never get out.’
‘That’s not how we work. Our goal is to get everyone out alive. You and all the other hostages.’
‘But to do that you need to know what’s happening in the restaurant, so if I don’t plant the camera, then I don’t get out. That’s the way this works. Then again, if I don’t plant the camera an
d by some miracle I manage to get out of here but the rest of the hostages die, then I’m going to spend the rest of my life wondering if planting the camera would have made a difference.’
‘I didn’t say that, Alex.’
‘You didn’t have to, Brad.’
‘So you’ll put the camera back?’
‘Yeah, I’ll put your damn camera back. If there is a plan, then I’ve got to keep you sweet. And if there isn’t one, then I’m probably going to end up dead, so what the hell.’
‘Thanks, Alex. I really appreciate this. Okay, once the camera’s back in place, I want you to go to the kitchen and wait there. We’re going to get you out.’
‘Whatever, man.’ The “over and out” he tagged on the end was thick with sarcasm.
10
JJ slid back in time as events that she’d tried hard to bury tumbled through her mind. The arguments, the silences. The funeral. The good times, too. There had been plenty of those. Not so many at the end, but lots at the start. Whenever she thought about Tom, the memories she went to were always from the early days. She was staring down at her trembling hands. In her peripheral vision she saw the bomber step away from Stone.
‘I knew he was depressed.’
‘But?’ the bomber prompted. ‘I’m sensing a “but” in there, Jody.’
Tony caught her eye and gave a little nod. The gesture was practically non-existent, but it meant the world. She might be feeling more alone than she’d ever felt, but she wasn’t. Tony was there for her. Just like always.
‘But I was too busy to help him. I was working twelve-hour days, building up my business. He was working fourteen-hour days. We occasionally passed each other over breakfast, and we’d see each other for an hour or two in the evening, if we were lucky.’
‘That doesn’t sound like much of a relationship.’
‘Perhaps, but it was a fairly typical Hollywood marriage.’
‘Did he have any affairs?’
‘A couple that I knew about. There might have been more. There probably were.’
‘And you?’
JJ hesitated. ‘Yes, but only one.’
‘Was it serious?’
‘Not really. It was with someone a lot younger. It was never going to end up being anything.’
‘Why did you do it?’
‘I’m not sure. The opportunity was there, so I took it.’
‘That kind of sums you up, doesn’t it? You’re an opportunist? So what was the trigger? What was it that finally pushed him over the edge?’
‘I don’t know if there was a trigger.’
‘Believe me, there was a trigger. There always is.’
The bomber stared at JJ, and JJ stared right back. He shook his head and aimed the gun at Stone’s head.
‘Okay, okay. Just please lower the gun.’
He pushed the gun into the side of Stone’s head, and kept pushing. The agent’s head slowly tilted to the right. Stone was sobbing, his face filled with fear. She’d thought she couldn’t hate the bomber any more than she already did. She was wrong.
‘About six months before Tom killed himself he got passed over for a promotion,’ JJ said in a dull monotone. ‘It wasn’t the first time. After that he became more and more distant. We’d go for days without talking, and then when we did finally talk, he just kept going on about getting out of LA. He wanted to move to Seattle or Miami, anywhere, really. Except that wasn’t going to happen. We were trapped by debt and our lifestyle. There was no way he was going to get a job outside LA that paid well enough. And my business was just starting to take off, so there was no way I was going to leave.’
The bomber lowered the gun and Stone’s head slowly came upright again.
‘Okay, here’s a question. If you had been willing to give up your life here, do you think your husband would still be alive today?’
JJ glanced at Tony. The nod he offered up was almost non-existent, but it was enough.
‘Every problem has a solution,’ the bomber continued. ‘You could have liquidated your assets, packed your bags, bought an umbrella and headed off to rainy Seattle. You could be living there right now in a little cookie-cutter house. Two point four kids, a dog, school runs, trips to the gym to shift the baby fat. Just think, your husband could still be alive.’
‘Please don’t do this,’ she said quietly. That awful smell had got into her nose again, unsettling her stomach. All of a sudden there wasn’t enough air in the room.
‘Am I getting a little too close to the bone here? Too close to the truth? Am I making you uncomfortable, Jody?’
‘Yes,’ she screamed at him. She glanced down at her knotted fingers, then looked back at the bomber. ‘Okay, I admit it. I killed my husband. Is that what you want to hear?’
‘What I want is the truth.’
‘The truth? You want the truth? The truth is that those last six months were hell. Tom had always been a drinker, but his drinking spiralled out of control. Towards the end I hardly ever saw him sober. I told myself I’d get him help, but I kept putting it off until tomorrow. And then there were no more tomorrows.’
‘You found him, didn’t you?’
JJ nodded. ‘I came back from work one night and found him in the pool. He’d used a bottle of vodka to wash down a load of sleeping pills.’
The bomber went silent, then nodded to himself. ‘He blamed you. That’s why he engineered it so you’d find him.’
JJ felt like an icicle had just been rammed into her heart. Her face was soaked with tears. ‘You bastard,’ she whispered under her breath.
11
Alex King let himself out of the restroom, eased the door shut behind him, then tiptoed along the corridor. His breathing was as loud as a siren and the friction rub of his socks on the wooden floor sounded like a chainsaw. He was still wearing the earpiece and mike because there was nothing to be gained from taking it off. If he got caught, the bomber would search him. He’d find the camera and would want to know all about it, and King would tell him everything.
He reached the wall and crawled behind it. Above his head, the leaves rustled gently. He could make out two voices on the other side of the wall. The bomber’s and JJ’s. It was weird, but the way they were talking, it sounded like they were having a therapy session. Even weirder, it sounded like JJ was crying. The idea of her shedding real tears like a real person just didn’t compute.
King sat with his back hard against the cold wall, the knife pressing into his leg. Just having it there made him feel more in control. He took the knife out and smiled at the smiley face, then turned it over and his smile turned into a frown.
Smiley face, sad face.
Smiley face, sad face.
One thing he’d learned growing up in Cincinnati was that people cheated and lied to get what they wanted. His mom had been an expert at that. It looked like Brad Carter was an expert, too. The FBI guy had to be lying. There was no escape plan. There never had been. Carter had just said that to keep him from going postal and trying to break the door down again. It all came down to the bottom line. It always came down to that. Basically, he was more use to the FBI in here than he was on the outside. No matter how King looked at the situation, there was no getting away from that fact.
But what if he was wrong? What if there was a plan? Another idea occurred to him. A new and different way of looking at things. If the FBI were able to get him out, then that meant they could get their people in. It was possible. Hell, it was more than possible, it was more or less a certainty. And it would go a long way to explaining why Carter was being so cagey.
Up until now, King had been too wrapped up in himself to realise what was actually going on here. The problem with being Hollywood’s man of the moment was that he was surrounded by people trying to convince him that the universe did in fact revolve around him. Hear that enough times from enough people and anyone would become a believer. He’d been thinking about everything from his own point of view, but the FBI would have been looking at thing
s very differently. Carter had told him as much when they last spoke. He’d said they wanted to get everyone out. Everyone. That was their goal, and any plan they hatched would be based around that.
King had made it this far without being caught. He could go that extra yard. All he had to do was get back to the kitchen in one piece and the FBI would get him out. He pulled the camera from his pocket, pushed it between the leaves, then peered over the lip of the wall to make sure it was positioned properly. He shifted it slightly to the left and checked again. It looked okay. He’d got halfway to the kitchen when JJ’s voice stopped him in his tracks. It rang out as clear as if she’d been standing right beside him.
‘If you’re going to shoot me, then shoot me.’
What she was saying was bad enough, but the way she said it made it so much worse. The resignation in her voice was all wrong. It was almost as alien as her tears. The JJ he knew was a fighter. She was scary as hell. King didn’t recognise this person at all.
12
The bomber drilled the silencer deeper into the nape of JJ’s neck and time slowed to a crawl. She was aware of every heartbeat. Each breath seemed loaded with added significance. The bomber leant in closer, invading her personal space. She could smell his aftershave, and the musky animal aroma that lingered below it. His lips brushed her ear.
‘Bang,’ he whispered.
‘Go to hell,’ she whispered back.
The bomber laughed and the solid, insistent pressure of the gun disappeared. He stepped back and a faint trace of aftershave lingered in his wake.
‘Well, you’ve got some balls. I’ll give you that much.’ He turned to Dan Stone. ‘I know Jody’s been hogging the limelight, but rest assured that I haven’t forgotten about you. So where were we before we got side-tracked by Jody’s heart-wrenching story? Ah, that’s right. She’d accused you of being a freeloader. So, what’s your opinion of Jody then? I’m figuring that you’ve got one, so let’s hear it.’
