Jenna tightened her grip on the phone. The fact that she hated his scheme and the thought of him securing immunity was irrelevant. No DA on the planet would go for a deal like that even if she did like the idea. But maybe there was something in there she could use. Anything that would buy her more time—or information—to swoop in and whisk Yancy, Molly, and everyone else out of that room unharmed.
“And if I can’t sweet-talk this magical DA who would have to be high on ecstasy into offering such a deal to a spree killer?” she asked.
Liam grunted a laugh. “Well, then I’ll give you the courtesy of picking which of my guests down here takes the first bullet to the temple before you call Mr. DA back. Hopefully he’ll have enough time while that’s happening to down a few more Scooby snacks and be high enough to keep the second bullet recipient in the on-deck circle. How does that sound?”
“Not nearly as lovely as all of them coming out still breathing,” she admitted.
Her heart beat harder as she imagined Yancy, Eldred, and Molly somewhere behind the office where the SWAT team members waited, holding for orders. God, if only she had a camera on the inside of that room so she could know exactly where everyone was positioned. But she’d already asked on the way in: no point of entry existed other than the crawl space in the closet. No doors, windows, air ducts . . . nothing. Even though a sniper’s bullet could get through that wall, they couldn’t just strafe the room with gunfire in hopes of hitting Liam. They didn’t have a bead on where their target was, where the hostages were in relation, or any other possible obstacles they might encounter. There was no way to get a clue, either. The good guys on the outside were in the dark for the foreseeable future.
Get a clue. Problem-solving. Ripe red grapes.
The day she’d put together the sevens with Molly in this case, she’d done a mental rundown of all of the things different shades of purple represented to her. The Tyrian purple shade of ripe grapes that meant problem-solving had been one of them, but the whole reason her brain had been on that track at the time had been because she’d realized she’d seen Molly herself as purple.
The memory of Yancy’s text flashed in. “Don’t take his word for Molly being okay until you see her or talk to her yourself. Trust me.”
She couldn’t be sure, but something in the pit of her stomach flipped the same way it had last year when Yancy had given her a piece of information so shrewdly disguised it had been what had allowed her to fight Claudia. Maybe he hadn’t been giving her instructions when he’d texted earlier. He wasn’t yet in danger, so if he’d meant it to be a plan, he’d have just flat told her what he was thinking.
But as misleading fuchsia flashed in, Jenna knew that now that Yancy was behind that wall and himself a hostage, he would be racking his brain for what to do. He could and did think under pressure. He’d be sitting in there trying to figure out a way to send her information, when and if he could.
The yellow she associated with Yancy flashed in. It didn’t mean anything specific and yet everything specific at the same time. It embodied everything he was to her and everything she knew about him.
He would remember the text. She knew it.
Asparagus green flashed in as details of a plan took shape in the depths of her mind, the fuchsia of misleading she’d seen moments before driving it. Play it right, and this might actually work . . .
It was a normal request, after all. Most negotiators did ask to speak to the hostages at some point before considering giving into terrorist demands. He wouldn’t suspect.
“Liam, before I can get any ball rolling, I’ll need to talk to my supervisors. Then I’ll have to find a DA who’s willing to hear me out or high or both. But first, I have to make sure that everyone is all right and unharmed. None of those people I just mentioned will budge an inch unless I can offer them that guarantee,” she said, concentrating on keeping her voice from shaking.
Another laugh, and this time the mocking voice returned. “Would you like pictures of everyone holding today’s newspaper?”
Jenna forced out a sardonic chuckle. “I think two minutes on the phone with each will suffice.”
“Two whole minutes, Doctor? That seems excessive . . .”
“Okay, maybe not two whole minutes. But long enough for me to determine that each is the correct person, you haven’t yet harmed them . . . and haven’t assured them you’re going to.”
“Smart girl,” Liam answered. “All right. Sounds like a fair enough arrangement I can give you. Except for Agent Dodd, of course. He’s . . . unable to come to the phone right now. You get the okay from your higher-ups, Doctor. Find that DA, but find him fast, and call me back in twenty. Don’t make it any longer than twenty, Doctor. I’m a busy man.”
They hung up. Saleda immediately launched in, throwing her hands in the air.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Even if there was a DA on earth who would grant immunity to a known serial killer, which there’s not, the Triple Shooter is dead. If we go in there offering this guy a fake deal, it could blow up in our faces in too many ways to count.”
“Would you relax?” Jenna said, but Saleda cut her off.
“If Liam Tyler smells a rat or gets so much as a whiff that the Triple Shooter’s already fertilizer, he’ll kill every single person in that room, including your boyfriend and a six-year-old girl. Or just as good, we promise him a fake plea bargain. He lets the hostages go, hires a lawyer to make O.J. Simpson’s legal team look incompetent, and gets off for every single crime he’s committed, scot-free, all because we handed him the perfect technicality to use against us.”
Jenna grabbed Saleda by the shoulders and forced her to look into her eyes. “Saleda. I know what I’m doing. Trust me.”
She cut her glance over Saleda’s shoulders to check who else was listening. The others in the SWAT vehicle were talking among themselves, each group a few feet away. Jenna lowered her voice. “I have no intention of offering him any deal, Saleda. I just need him to think I’m going to offer it so we can get what we need.”
Saleda bit her lip as Jenna outlined what she planned to do. They took the next moments prepping those around them for what was to come. Orders were issued, and Jenna dialed a third prepaid phone—one held by one of the SWAT team snipers in Liam’s office. Now she would three-way dial Liam’s prepaid cell.
Let this work. It has to work.
“That wasn’t even fifteen minutes, Doctor. You’re an overachiever,” Liam said.
“I aim to please,” she said, smirking.
“So,” he said, and she couldn’t tell whether his voice sounded confident or just steady, “what’s the word?”
“We’re go,” she replied.
He laughed into the phone. “Wow! Ask and ye shall receive, huh? I knew you people could get things done fast, but I never knew you’d let a monster like me run away and disappear that easily.”
“We’re here to serve and protect, Liam. Right now, that means protecting the innocents you have in there with you. We can worry about what that means where you’re concerned later, though I’m sure you’d already thought of that or you wouldn’t have requested what you did,” Jenna said. Make him believe the bureaucracy really would value those lives over his, even if you’re not positive it would’ve. Right now, it’s all about selling what you’ve got.
“So what’s the ol’ district attorney’s ETA, hm?” Liam asked.
Jenna took a deep breath. “He’s standing by awaiting my call, which he’ll receive as soon as I have the evidence I requested from you showing me everything is intact.”
He chuckled again. Damn, she was growing to hate that snicker.
“Don’t you mean everyone, Doctor?”
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Beasley first,” she said, ignoring his jibe.
She could tell he’d extended the phone, because she could hear his voice from a
ways away saying, “Paging Eldred Beasley, paging Eldred Beasley.”
A shaky voice came on the line, and Jenna began talking to the man. She asked him a few questions, tried to calm his nerves with her words. He sounded so confused, but she couldn’t let him go prematurely. The length of each call needed to be similar, lest Liam grow suspicious.
She heard Liam say, “Time’s up. Pass the phone to your right, will you, old man?”
A crackling as the cell phone was transferred between people.
“Hello?” a small voice said.
Molly. This is it.
“Molly, I need you to do something for me, but don’t move much to do it. Tell me the first numbers that come to your head to do with that room, okay?”
Jenna could picture Molly’s pigtails bobbing with her nod as she spoke.
“Yes, I know what that is. That’s the same thing they told me to do when I called nine-one-one. To be brave.”
Jesus. This kid was brilliant. She was confirming they were on the same page—that Yancy had told her what to do.
“Okay. Give me as much as you can, but do exactly what you just did and disguise it as much as possible,” Jenna encouraged. She held her breath.
“Oh, there are lots of happy thoughts I can think about. Like kittens! Mom even says if I pass my spelling test on the thirteenth, she’ll let me get a kitten. But not a black one, because a black cat on Friday the thirteenth is supposed to be unlucky, but maybe a nice . . . I don’t know. I don’t like just plain gray, but if I could find a gray and orange one, it’d be perfect . . .”
A color tried to crowd in at the last word as Jenna’s eyes flitted over the painting of The Last Supper, but she ignored it for the moment. She knew Molly’s reference the moment she’d said the number thirteen was to do with the central figure in the painting. Jesus, the “add-on” to the apostles. Liam had to be right there, behind Jesus on the other side of the painting. But something about the little girl’s tone when she’d kept talking about the kitten . . .
Amethyst flashed in again, the same color that had butted in when Molly said the word “perfect” just now. The color of the gemstone was fairly rare in Jenna’s color lexicon in the way it registered not as the stone’s classic purple pigmentation alone, but as though the color included certain properties of the stone itself. She couldn’t help it. It all played into the color’s meaning for her. The luster drawing the eye, a sheen causing it to glow. A hard, crystalline shell to protect its inner intricacies. Opaque in some places that hid select secrets, but completely clear in others so that light could be reflected through those existing transparencies, projecting the stone’s color out into the world from its many facets. Looking back, the origins of the association with the color—even if at the time she didn’t realize she had made it—happened the day she’d gone to the mall with her best friend and her friend’s mom as a ten-year-old. They’d gone into one of those costume jewelry stores, each picking out a ring. Her friend had chosen sapphire, and she’d bought the amethyst ring. When she’d come home later that day, too scared to go to Claudia, she’d admitted to her dad she’d spent twenty dollars on the ring even though she wasn’t supposed to buy anything. Her dad had told her he understood, then lifted her hand and kissed it right on top of the ring. He winked, their private signal that let each other know that when it came to where they stood as a pair, they were okay.
Then it jumped out at Jenna. The word “perfect” was emphasized, the amethyst further proof Molly had used it to alert her to something important, a beacon to guide her. Her breath was fast and shallow as she scanned the painting of The Last Supper again. The mountains in the distance outside the window behind Jesus. They were gray. Only gray on one side . . .
And gray and orange on the other.
“Molly, I want you to grab Mr. Beasley and move far away from what you just told me. Shut your eyes tight and don’t open them until we talk again. Now tell me . . .”
“Time’s up. Pass it along,” Liam’s voice said.
Jenna jotted the instructions on the paper in front of her, underlining the specific point behind Jesus three times.
Saleda took the paper and, with another cell phone at her ear—this one a direct line to the SWAT teams—moved away from Jenna to give the order.
“Hello,” Yancy’s voice said, so on edge.
God, let him be okay.
“Yancy, if you’re not sitting or crouching, do it now!”
A shot. Then another. Jenna watched on the monitor as the sniper in the office took one more kill shot right past Jesus’s right ear.
“Move in! Move in!” she heard Saleda command the closet SWAT team.
Jenna held the phone to her ear, but Yancy wasn’t on the other end anymore. From the commotion she heard through the receiver, it sounded like his phone had been dropped. She heard the scuffle of the SWAT team entering, their voices yelling the clear for different parts of the room as they swept it. Tears stung her eyes as she waited, hoping. Praying, even. She had to have made the right call.
A sound met her ears, this time over the speaker on the cell Saleda held.
“Target is down. Four packages are wrapped. One package wounded. We need EMTs for officer down.”
60
After word came that everyone else was okay, Jenna ripped herself away from the monitors and headed for the front of the house. She’d nearly reached the porch when a SWAT team member burst through the door, leading Yancy with a hand on his elbow.
Jenna bolted forward, grabbed Yancy hard around the torso. He wrapped her in his arms and squeezed back.
“So you got the message, huh?” he whispered, his breath hot on her ear.
Memories flooded her of Claudia last year, the final struggle that had ended with her mother running and being on the loose once again. The thought made her tense, but she pushed it back. They hadn’t seen a sign of her in almost a year, and the only person who’d tried to find them at all was Hank’s brother, who was trying to keep them safe from Claudia. And right now all she wanted to think of was this man’s—her man’s—arms. Not what he’d done to some dirty cop prostitution-ring leader, not how they had an uphill battle if they were going to deal with whatever the fallout might be or what Victor had done to postpone or keep that fallout from happening, and definitely not her evil mother who, by now, had to be states and maybe even countries away.
Nope, just this man, and just this moment.
Except, of course, for answering his question about getting his message.
“I always do, don’t I?” she whispered back into the soft flesh of his neck.
“Dr. Ramey!”
Jenna opened her eyes to see another SWAT member carrying Molly. “Oh, thank God,” she said.
She let go of Yancy and stepped toward this brilliant, wonderful little girl. The SWAT guy carrying Molly set her down in front of Jenna. She crouched and hugged Molly as tightly as she would her own daughter. Without this kid, none of this might’ve ever happened. But it had, and it wasn’t her fault. More important, though, without her, nothing could’ve turned out this well, ended this clean.
Jenna leaned back from Molly and smiled at her. “Way to go, girl. Perfect ten.”
“I know you told me not to open my eyes until I heard your voice again, but I opened them when the policeman said I could. That’s okay, right?” Molly said.
Jenna grinned. “Like I said. Perfect ten.”
“Molly!” Jenna heard from back near the command center.
She tilted her head toward the holler. “I think I’d better move out of the way. Someone more important needs a word with you.”
Molly smiled and scampered past Jenna toward her own mother, who was running across the grass, having finally been turned loose by the policemen who’d forced her to sit with them during the negotiations.
Jenna watched Raine scoop Molly in
to her arms and clutch her like a life raft. She knew that feeling all too well.
To the right of the porch, Jenna saw CiCi Winthrop touch her hand to her father’s confused face, like she could hardly believe he was alive in front of her. She recognized that one, too.
Dodd.
“I’ll be right back,” Jenna said to Yancy.
She trotted toward the ambulance, where medics were loading Dodd into the back on a stretcher.
To her surprise, the agent opened his eyes wearily. He blinked.
“Dodd!”
He managed a weak grin. “I’m all right. Not as bad . . .” He winced. “As he thought. I was playing possum.”
“Sounds like you,” Jenna said. “Just letting us think you were a goner, I mean.”
“Had to. He’d have shot me again. I’m crazy and old, but I’m not entirely stupid.” He frowned as he said the words. “Well, not always entirely stupid, anyway. I figured it out in the end. Got some records while I was away that uncovered a relationship between a person who might’ve been Liam Tyler and the man we’d . . . well . . . convicted. I wasn’t sure, so I came back to check. Remembered you telling me about those rock molds in his office . . . thought they might be the footprints . . .”
Jenna moved toward the ambulance as the paramedic started to close the doors, and she put one hand up to stop them. She leaned far in and took one of Dodd’s hands, gave it a squeeze.
“We can’t always be superhuman, you know,” she said.
He choked out a scratchy laugh. “Not all of us anyway. But I’ll take closure.”
She let go of his hand. “Speaking of, better get that bullet removed and that hole sewn up. That’s the best kind of closure for you right now. I’ll come see you soon.”
He nodded, and the paramedic shut one door of the ambulance.
As he reached to shut the second, Dodd gave her a wave. “Thanks, Doc.”
Double Vision Page 33
