Keeping Caroline

“I wanna talk to my wife!” The voice on the other end of the phone rose to a disturbing tone of shrill. From the series of dull thuds he was hearing, Matt guessed the H.T. was kicking the walls again. Punching doors. “Get the bitch here. Now!”

Little Jasmine’s terrified cries pierced the static in Matt’s ear. His stomach lurched. If he’d eaten anything in the last fourteen hours, he might have lost it then. “You think killing your kids is going to make you feel better, James?”

“If I can’t have them, at least that bitch won’t have them, either.”

Matt rolled his shoulders, willing himself to relax. Let the H.T. scream, tremble, sweat all he wanted. It was the negotiator’s job to stay calm. Steady. And Matt was the best at containing the turmoil around him, inside him. “You don’t want your ex-wife to have the kids?”

“She won’t let me see them, man. She cut me off. Got a court order.”

Matt validated the man’s feelings, as he’d been trained. “It’s important to you to see your kids.”

“’Course it’s important. She’s got them. I ain’t got nothing.”

“It’s lonely without your family, huh?”

The H.T. muttered something unintelligible, then swallowed audibly. “It’s like livin’ in limbo, man. An livin’ in limbo ain’t really living at all.” The H.T. was sobbing now. “You don’t know. You just don’t know.”

The hell he didn’t. Matt knew enough about limbo to teach a graduate course. “Maybe I do.”

“You got a family?”

“Not anymore.”

“What happened? Some bitch leave you, too?”

Matt gave up pacing and sat on the bench seat beneath the window. “Something like that.”

He pried up the shutters on the window. Down the block the H.T.’s house sat quiet. Almost peaceful-looking.

“She take your kids?”

He let the shutters fall back in place. “No. That isn’t it.”

Caroline hadn’t taken his son. God had.

Matt propped his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands. “Death is awfully final, you know James?”

Were the kids hearing this conversation? Were they scared?

Sure they were. Hampton was using the speakerphone in his ex-wife’s home office. The kids could hear every word, just as Matt could hear their frightened whimpers. They knew the score—and the stakes of the game.

Hampton sniffed. “No more final than what she’s done. Moved half across the country, where we can’t even try to work things out. You know what that does to a man?”

“It’s tough.”

The H.T. sniffed, mollified. “Your wife run off on you, too?”

Matt shrugged, knowing Hampton couldn’t see him. Caroline hadn’t so much run off as he’d driven her away. “She moved back home. She’s got a little farm just outside a small town a few hours west of here. Sweet Gum. Ever heard of it?”

“Naw, naw. I’m from Iowa, remember?”

“I remember.” Even if he hadn’t, the dossier the intel officers had already put together on Hampton would have reminded him.

“At least she’s close enough you can go see her. Talk to her. You should go talk to her, man.”

“Yeah, maybe I will,” Matt said noncommittally. “After all this is over.”

“My wife don’t want to talk to me. She took my kids away.” The H.T.’s sniffing grew more ragged. “Took them where I can’t see them again, ever. I just couldn’t let that happen, you know?”

Matt knew. He would do anything to see his son again. Anything. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pushed Brad’s image from his mind. More than miles separated him from his son.

“I just wanna ask her why she did it,” Hampton continued. His sniffles broke down into sobs. “Please, can I just talk to my wife.”

Matt opened his eyes. “That’s not so easy, you know? There are regulations—”

“The hell with regulations!” The H.T. let out a high-pitched groan, like wrenching metal. “Get the bitch here now!”

Jasmine wailed—a pitiful, keening cry.

“Shut up! Shut up, Jazzie.”

The more the H.T. yelled, the louder the girl cried. The older brother shouted in the background.

“James? Talk to me, man! Come on, I want to help you.”

No answer. Matt’s gaze landed hard on the hostages’s pictures pinned on the negotiation room wall. The girl, Jasmine, eight years old and her brother, James Junior, sixteen.

Just a few years older than Brad would have been now, if he’d lived.

Matt severed the thought in one brutal mental swipe. He didn’t have time for personal baggage right now. If he didn’t get this H.T. out soon, the guy was going to hurt those kids. When he did, there wouldn’t be any more negotiating. The tactical team would take over. All hell would break loose. Who knew who would get caught in the cross fire.

Matt couldn’t let that happen.

“James, I got an idea. An idea how you can talk to your wife.”

“Send her in here.”

“She’s not on scene,” he lied. “But I got an idea how you can talk to her. Let me run it by command and see if we can set it up, all right?”

“You’re stalling again!”

“These things take time, James. There’s logistics. Give me a few minutes to set something up.”

“Five minutes,” the H.T. yelled into his ear. “That’s it.”

“Might take a little longer, but I’ll try. You’re going to wait for me, right? Stay right there and do not do anything until you hear back from me?”

Three choppy breaths sawed across the line. “I’ll wait.”