The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 4
Page 90
“No tickling or I’ll…Did you hearthat ? Is that someone shouting?”
“I don’t hear anything but my own heart begging yours for a little more sugar. Now come on, honey, let’s—”
This time it was Lo who broke off at the crash outside the cabin. “Stay right here.”
He leaped up and, buck naked, strode out of the bedroom.
When Reece burst in, he could only cross his hands over his privates and say, “Well, Jesus Christ!”
“He’s got Brody. He’s got Brody. He’s going to kill him.”
“What, what? What?”
“Help. You have to help.”
“Reece?” Linda-gail fought to wrap a sheet around herself as she came out. “What in the world’s going on?”
No time, Reece thought. Brody could already be bleeding, dying. As she’d been once. She spotted the rifle in a display case. “Is that loaded?”
“That’s my granddaddy’s Henry rifle. Just a damn minute,” Lo began, but Reece rushed to the case. She gave the lid a jerk, found it locked. She spun, grabbed the bear pole lamp and shattered the glass.
“Chrissake, chrissake, my ma’s going to kill us both.” Even as Lo made a dash for her, Reece yanked the rifle out, whirled around with it.
Lo stopped dead in his tracks. “Honey? You want to be careful where you point that thing.”
“Call for help. Call the state police!”
Leaving them both gaping behind her, Reece streaked for the door.
Reece prayed Lo’s reaction meant the rifle was loaded. That if it was, she could figure out how to work it. She prayed harder still that she wouldn’t have to.
But it wasn’t fear, that familiar burn in her throat; it wasn’t panic, with its sharp, fluttering wings in her belly. It was rage she felt, the hot, bubbling gush of it pumping through her blood.
She wouldn’t lie helpless this time, not this time, while someone she loved was taken from her. Not this time, not ever again.
She heard Rick shouting her name, and forced back the tears that wanted to blur her eyes. Brody hadn’t stopped him.
So she stopped, closed her eyes and ordered herself to think. She couldn’t go running back to the cabin. He’d hear her, see her. And he would end it. He might very well end up killing Lo and Linda-gail as well.
Circle around, she decided. She could do that. He’d think she was still running, or just hiding. He wouldn’t expect her to come back to fight.
“No place for you to go, Reece,” Rick shouted. “No place I can’t find you. This is my land here, my world. I can track you as easy as I can walk down the street in the Fist. You want me to finish Brody here and now? Is that what you want? Want me to put a bullet in his head while you’re hiding like you did back in Boston? Think you can live through that one again?”
In front of the cabin, Rick dragged a bleeding Brody to his knees. And pressed the gun to his temple. “Call her back here.”
“No.” Brody’s heart squeezed as the barrel pressed hard against his temple. “Think about it, Rick. Is that what you’d do if it was your woman’s life on the line? You killed to protect someone you love. Wouldn’t you die for her?”
“You’ve known her a couple of months, and you want to tell me you’d die here for her?”
“It only takes a minute. When you know, you know. She’s it for me. So pull the trigger if that’s what you have to do. But it’s ruined for you now. That’s your service revolver you’re holding, not Joanie’s gun. How are you going to explain Reece shooting me with your service weapon?”
“Adjust. I’ll adjust. I’ll make it work. You call her back. Now.”
“You hear me, Reece?” Brody shouted. “If you hear me you keep running.”
When Rick kicked him down, he landed on the arm where a bullet was lodged. It screamed.
“I’ve got no choice,” he said to Brody, but now his face was pale and ran with sweat. “I’m sorry.”
He lifted the gun.
Struggling not to shake, Reece brought the rifle to her shoulder. She sucked in a breath, held it. And pulled the trigger.
It sounded like a bomb. It felt like one had exploded in her hands as the recoil slammed into her. She fell back, fell down. And because she landed flat on her back, the shot from Mardson’s revolver flew over her head.
Still she scrambled up. When she did, she saw Brody and Rick struggling on the ground, the gun gripped in each of their hands.
“Stop it.” She rushed forward. “Stop it. Stop it.” Pressed the barrel of the rifle to Rick’s head. “Stop it.”
“Hold on, Slim,” Brody panted out. He shifted to get a better grip on the gun. Rick rolled into Reece, knocking her down as he yanked it clear. As he turned it toward his own temple, Brody plowed his fist into Rick’s face.
“It won’t be that easy,” he told him, and crawled over to retrieve the gun that had fallen out of Rick’s hands. “Point that thing somewhere else,” Brody told her.
She sat where she was a moment, the rifle still clutched in her hands. “I ran.”
“Yeah, you did. Smart.”
“But I didn’t run away.”
Because he was tired, hurt and queasy, Brody simply sat beside her. “No, you didn’t run away.”
Lo and Linda-gail, the first in only jeans, the other in a trailing sheet, rushed over. “What in the name of Christ is going on?” Lo demanded. “Jesus, Brody. Jesus! You shot?”
“Yeah.” Brody pressed a hand to his arm, studied the palm that came away wet and red before he looked up at Reece. “Something else we’ve got in common now.”
Between them, Rick lay as he was, and he covered his face with his hands and wept.
AT DAWN, Reece helped Brody out of the car. “You could’ve stayed in the hospital for the day. A couple of days.”
“I could’ve spent a couple hours banging a bedpan over my head. I didn’t relish either experience. Plus, did you see that nurse they sicced on me? She had a face like a bulldog. Scary.”
“Then you’re going to do what you’re told. You can have the bed or the sofa.”
“Where will you be?”
“In the kitchen. You’re not having coffee.”
“Slim, I may just be off coffee for life.”
Her lips trembled, but she firmed them against a sob. “I’m making you some tea, and some soft scrambled eggs. Bed or couch?”
“I want to sit in the kitchen and watch you cook for me. It’ll take my mind off my pain.”
“You wouldn’t have pain if you’d take the drugs.”
“I think I’m off drugs for life, too. Felt like swimming through glue back there at Rick’s cabin. I could hear the two of you talking, but couldn’t compute the words, not at first. All I could do was play possum and hope for a chance to take him down.”
“While you were tied to a chair and dopey with pills, he might’ve killed you.”
“He might’ve killed both of us. Would have,” Brody corrected, “but you didn’t run like a rabbit when you had the chance.” He let out a long breath when she eased him into a chair at the kitchen table. “Hell of a night. Reece?” he said when she kept her back turned and said nothing.
“At first,” she began, “when I first ran out, that’s all it was. Fight or flight, and boy, it was flight all the way. Run and hide. But…it changed. I don’t even know when. And it became run and find something so you can fight. I guess I scared a couple of decades off Lo and Linda-gail.”
“Something to tell their grandchildren about.”
“Yeah.” She put on water for tea, got out a skillet.
“You figured it out before I did. I’m the mystery writer but the cook figured it out first. I walked right into it.”
He’d never forget, never, swimming through the drugs and hearing her voice. He’d never forget that marrow-deep terror. “My walking into it might’ve gotten you killed.”
“No, he might have gotten me killed. You walked into it, Brody, because he was your friend.”
“He was.”
She got out the butter, sliced off a hunk for the skillet. “I don’t know what’ll happen to Debbie and those kids. How will they get through this? Nothing will ever be the same for them.”
“Nothing was the way they thought it was before this. Better to know, isn’t it?”
“Maybe. That’s a thought for another day.” She broke eggs, began to whisk them with a little fresh dill and pepper. “He really believed all he was saying. That he was protecting them, doing what he had to do. That Deena left him no choice. He thinks he’s a good man.”
“Part of him is. And part of him split off, took what he should never have touched. It cost him, Slim. It cost Deena Black.”
“He killed her. Buried her body, covered his tracks, hid the motorcycle until he could use it to go back to her apartment and get her things—cover those tracks, too. He did all that, kept absolutely calm, even when we called him and reported what I saw happen.”
“If he’d managed to scare you off, or make you doubt yourself, he’d have gotten away with it.”
“If you hadn’t believed me, that’s probably what would have happened. I think, getting through this, it’s pulled me back from an edge I kept sliding toward.” She scooped his eggs onto a plate, set it in front of him. Then touched his face.
“I’d have gone over it without you, Brody. I’d have gone over it if he’d killed you. So”—she bent down, touched her lips to his—“thanks for staying alive. Eat your eggs.”
She turned to finish making his tea.
“There was an edge for me, too. Do you get that?”
“Yes.”
“One question. Why don’t you push?”
“Push what?”
“Me. You’re in love with me—do I still have that right?”
“You do.”
“We’ve just been through a near-death experience together; you probably heard me say something about being ready to die for you. But you don’t push.”
“I don’t want what I have to push out of you, so this is fine.” She set his tea on the table, then frowned at the knock on the front door. “Already,” she stated. “I imagine we’re going to have a lot of visitors, a lot of questions, a lot of people wanting to know exactly what went on.”
“No big deal. No, I need to get that,” he said and grabbed her hand before she could turn from the table. “I’m expecting something.”
“You’re supposed to rest.”
“I can walk to my own damn door. And drink that prissy tea yourself. I’ll wash down the eggs with a Coke.”
She shook her head as he walked out, but decided to indulge him. Taking down a glass, she filled it with ice, took out a Coke. After pouring it out, she picked up the tea he didn’t want.
She paused with it halfway to her lips as he came back into the kitchen. Carrying a load of tulips in the cradle of his good arm.
“You never said what color, so I got all of them.”
“Wow.”
“Favorite flower, right?”
“It is. Where’d they come from?”
“I called Joanie. If you really need something, Joanie’s your girl. You want them or not?”
“I certainly do.” Her smile was luminous as she took them, as she buried her face in them. “They’re so pretty and simple and sweet. Like a rainbow after a really bad storm.”
“Hell of a storm, Slim. I’d say you deserve a rainbow.”
“We both do.” She lifted her head to grin at him. “So, are you asking me to go steady?”
When he said nothing, nothing at all, her heart began a slow, steady thud.
“I’m going to be buying the cabin,” he told her.
“You are?”
“As soon as I talk Joanie into it. But I can be very persuasive. I’m going to add on to it some. Bigger office, deck. I see two chairs on that deck. I see tulips outside—spring, right?”
“They would be.”
“You can cook at the diner, go into business and run your own kitchen. You can write cookbooks. Whatever suits you. But you’re going to have to stay, and sooner or later, we’re going to make it legal.”
“Are we?”
“You love me or not?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“I love you right back. How about that?”
With two quick whooshes, her breath came in and out. “How about that?”
He curled a hand around the back of her neck, bringing her toward him, taking her lips with his as the tulips glowed between them. “I’m where I want to be. Are you?”
“Exactly where.” Everything inside her settled when she tipped her head back, looked into his eyes. “Exactly where I want to be.”
“So. Want to sit on the deck with me one of these days,” he asked her, “look out at the lake, see the mountains swimming in it?”
“I really do, Brody.” She pressed her cheek to his. “I really do.”
“We’re going to make that happen, you and me.” Now he drew back. “For right now, why don’t you do something about those flowers? Then get another fork. We ought to share these eggs.”
So the morning bloomed bright with hints of summer that would stretch through to fall. And they sat at the kitchen table, a vase of rainbow tulips on the counter, eating scrambled eggs that had gone cold.
HIGH NOON
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England •Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2007 by Nora Roberts
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roberts, Nora.
High noon / Nora Roberts.
p. cm.
ISBN: 1-101-14719-9
1. Hostage negotiations—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3568.0243H54 2007 2007001054
813'.54—dc22
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
For Amy Berkower,
the negotiator
Contents
Initial Phase
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Negotiation Phase
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Termination Phase
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
INITIAL PHASE
Do not forsake me, oh, my darlin’.
—“HIGH NOON”
1
Jumping to your death was a crappy way to spend St. Patrick’s Day. Being called in on your day off to talk someone out of jumping to his death on St. Patrick’s Day wasn’t exactly green beer and bagpipes.
Phoebe weaved and dodged her way through the crowds of Savannahians and tourists thronging streets and sidewalks in celebration. Captain David Mc Vee thought ahead, she noted. Even with a badge, it would’ve taken precious time and miserable effort to get through the barricades and mobs of people in her car. But a couple blocks east of Jones, the revelry thinned, and the booming music was only a throb and echo.
The uniformed officer waited as ordered. His gaze skimmed over her face, down to the badge she’d hooked on the pocket of her khakis. Cropped pants, sandals, shamrock-green T-shirt under a linen jacket, Phoebe thought. Not the professional look she worked to foster on the job.
But what could you do? She was supposed to be standing on the terrace of Mac Namara House, with her family, drinking lemonade and watching the parade.