Terms Of Surrender

“He made them undress,” she said and saw Dace nod. “He’s been planning this for a while. Figured out the best way to control a group of people was to strip them, figuratively and literally, of all outer trappings of position.”

“And keep them preoccupied with more basic issues than escape,” Ryder put in.

If that were the strategy, it would be crudely effective. But, more important, it gave them critical details about the gunman they were dealing with. His choice of words, during the short time they’d had him on the phone, had depicted a man of some education. Unless he’d had a sexual motive for stripping his hostages—which Jolie doubted—they now knew the gunman had an underlying understanding of basic human nature and how to manipulate it.

Which meant he might be smart enough to see through attempts to manipulate him, as well.

Sharper traced the blueprint with a blunt-edged finger. “He’ll keep them all together. Only places available would be a restroom—tight fit for all those people—these two offices or the vault.” He reached up to wipe his broad forehead. The air-conditioning in the NOC unit was notoriously unreliable.

Jolie studied the diagram more closely. The vault would be the obvious choice, since it would allow the greatest security, and give the HT a way to lock the hostages inside. But was there room? It was a sizable space, but she had to assume the money and bonds that a bank kept on hand would take up a great deal of that room.

“Any hope for witness identification on the gunman?”

Lewis shook his head in response to Dace’s question. “Not yet. The good news is that the security video streams to an outside company, so we should be able to clearly see all the customers and employees walking into the bank. Mendel is waiting for the feed now. He’s got it figured as a robbery gone bad.”

It was the most obvious motivation, but Jolie had learned never to assume anything in these situations. It could just as easily be a disgruntled former employee. Or someone who’d been turned down for a loan, or one with any number of grudges against someone inside.

Dr. Ryder turned to study the notes Jolie had jotted down. Dace got up to attach the blueprints to the situation board with magnets. The team debated the best approach to take in the next conversation.

Several minutes later, they reached consensus. “Then we’re agreed,” Lewis said, sending a look around the table. “We play to the HT’s need for control while we work the exchange angle.”

“You might want to see if he responds differently to Jolie,” Dr. Ryder suggested. “It’s early enough in the process that a rapport hasn’t been established yet. And if he’s as driven by control as we think, he may believe a female is easier to manage.”

Dace shrugged. “Try him again. See what he’ll give up.”

Jolie nodded, already pressing Redial. Concessions were a staple of hostage negotiation. Nothing was ever given to a suspect without law enforcement getting something in return. In one situation she’d worked, the gunman had exchanged two hostages for a carton of cigarettes.

The ringing stopped as the call connected. “John? This is Jolie Conrad, with the Metro PD. We’ve passed your requests on. But we need you to do something for us—”

“What happened to Recker?”

She slid a gaze to Dace, listening at her side. “He’s here, John. Do you want to speak to him?”

Indifference sounded in the man’s voice. “It doesn’t matter. How long before I get that SUV?”

“Like I said, the arrangements are in the works. But you have to give us something, too. Life is a series of compromises, right?” She could almost feel the green intensity of Dace’s eyes boring into her. Too late, she recalled how often she’d heard him utter that particular phrase. “If there are injured people in there, we want to get them out. Get medical assistance for them. You’re not going to miss them. Less people inside to keep track of.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then, “You haven’t moved the perimeter back or provided the vehicle I requested. I haven’t gotten a thing from you yet, so where’s the compromise? Don’t call back until you’re ready to deal.”

The call abruptly disconnected again. The team members took off their headphones and Sharper got up to write notes on the situation board. There was a tap at the back door before it was pulled open. Lewis ducked out to talk to the newcomer. Johnson turned away to summarize the latest conversation to intel over his ear mike radio. A few moments later, Lewis rejoined them. “We’ve got DMV verification for all the vehicles in the parking lot, and positive ID on the owners. One was reported stolen two days ago from a parking garage on Sixty-first and Locust, a Toyota Camry. That’s probably our guy’s ride. We’ve got CSU going over it now.”

“Any ID on the hostage down?” Dace asked.

“Walter Hemsworth, security guard for the bank. He’s still clothed, so he probably tried to stop the gunman shortly after he entered the bank.” Lewis’s voice was dispassionate.

Jolie shifted to a more comfortable position and prepared to wait. At the beginning of any armed situation, the hostage taker was running on adrenaline, certain of his power. The longer the ordeal drew out, the more frayed his nerves became. The more hopeless his situation appeared. But it could take hours, or days, for the situation to reach that point.

Something jogged her memory and she looked at Dace. “The HT said ‘perimeter.’ And again earlier, when he was talking to you. Not move your people back, but ‘move the perimeter.’”

“You think law enforcement? Military?”

“Possibly.” Grabbing the leather clipboard on the table in front of her with the attached SWAT incident report, she flipped to the legal pad beneath and drew a grid, jotting labels at the top of each column. Writing quickly, she began noting details they’d verified, possibilities and unknowns. There was depressingly little to note, but she wrote down impressions of the gunman from their conversations and the make and model of the stolen Toyota in the first column, and then the words perimeter—LEO? Military?—in the second. She’d give Sharper the list to add to the situation board when he was finished with his own notes.

Dace looked on, a thread of amusement sounding in his tone, pitched low enough to reach only her ears. “You and your notes. I don’t know how many charts and lists of yours I ran across when I was packing.”

Her hand stilled. She kept her attention trained on the legal pad, not trusting herself to look at him. “You moved out of the house?”

“Not much use hanging on to a two-bedroom house for one person.” Any trace of humor was absent from his quiet answer. It was as detached as if he were talking to a stranger. Which was exactly what they had become to each other, after…She swallowed. After.

His words had been innocuous enough. They shouldn’t have had the power to carve a deep furrow of pain through her. Questions rose to her lips, questions that she knew she no longer had a right to ask. And as desperately as she’d like the answers, she couldn’t be certain she could deal with that conversation. Especially not here.

She shifted back to the situation at hand. “Who was that on Johnson’s radio earlier? Reporting on the visual?”

“Hmm?” He’d withdrawn a pen for the whiteboard and was completing the portions of the SWAT form she hadn’t finished. “Oh. Couldn’t hear much, but it sounded like Cold Shot. Ava Carter. Lucky for us. She’s the best.”

A sniper then. These operatives usually had the best vantage points from which to gather intelligence for the incident. But she was surprised that the shooter was female. SWAT was still a male-dominated field, and few women possessed the deadly accuracy with weaponry and the desire to apply that skill to high-stress situations like this.

Herb Johnson rejoined the table. “We’ve got a positive count on the number inside. The subject is probably the one man who had his face turned away from the camera going in. By the time he got inside, he had a mask pulled down. Besides the ten employees, we have thirteen customers—four men, eight women and a kid. Looks like a boy. Maybe two, two and a half.”

The news blindsided Jolie with a force that sent her reeling. Nausea rose, and for one dizzying moment she felt as if she was going to be sick. Her defenses were usually strong enough to protect her against the flood of memory, this paralyzing hurt that was brutal enough to melt her entire system into one oozing pit of pain.

But then there’d be a chance resemblance, a careless word, and the floodgates would open, dragging her back to a past that could still throb like a wound.

“Outside. Now.” Dace murmured the order into her ear then got up to head for the doors. Blindly she followed, still stunned.

Once outside he grabbed her arm, pulled her around the corner of the unit so they’d have a semblance of privacy. “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t.”

Helplessly, her gaze met his, lingered.

“We don’t know this boy,” Dace continued. “We’ll do our best for him, and for every other person in that bank. And if you aren’t up for that, tell me now.”

Another would think his tone cold. Unfeeling. Jolie knew Dace was neither. He was, however, a consummate professional. And so was she. The whiplash of his words helped her remember that.

“I’m okay.” But her words sounded weak, even to her own ears. She recognized Dace’s logic. Emotion didn’t belong in a situation like this. The child was a factor in this case, but the boy was a stranger. An innocent carried into the bank, probably with his mother.

He wasn’t Sammy. He wasn’t their son.

They’d buried Sammy nearly eighteen months ago.

Chapter Two

Memories flooded Jolie’s mind, spilling forth in a mental torrent. The look on Dace’s face when the nurse had placed his squalling son in his arms for the first time. Sammy’s sweet baby smell after his bath. The staggering joy at seeing his first toothless smile. The all-encompassing anguish of watching his tiny casket lowered into the earth.

Those memories could nearly suffocate her, weight her down under a heavy blanket of sorrow that made a mockery of hope. Long practice had her slamming the door on those images, shoving them aside to focus on the here. The now.

Dace was right. Neither of them knew the child in the bank. But there was no denying the boy’s presence there upped the ante dramatically.

She nodded jerkily, started back for the doors.