Escape (38 page)

Five minutes passed, then ten, and the only one who showed up was Amelia. More discreet than her son, she parked at the end of the line of cars. Vicki was with her, both of them out by the time I reached them.

“Jude called,” Vicki explained. “Anything happening?”

I shook my head and led her back to the cruiser. Side by side, we
watched the house. Two of the patrolmen had gone through the trees to keep an eye on the back, but they reported seeing nothing. Jude did find an abandoned car on the far side of the woods. He gave the plate number to the chief.

Another fifteen minutes passed. I could only imagine what James was doing or saying—or worse, what was being done or said to him.

Vicki wrapped an arm around me. “He’ll be fine.”

“We take things for granted. Who’d a thought it, here in Bell Valley?”

The police chief must have agreed. Never having experienced anything like this, he called in the state police.

“SWAT team” was what he murmured when he joined us again.

“SWAT team?” Jude asked in affront. “I can handle this. It’s only one guy.”

“He has a gun,” I argued. “And my husband. And Lee.” I didn’t like the idea of a SWAT team either, but mostly because it said that the situation was as dangerous as I feared.

“I can
handle
it,” Jude insisted.

The chief held him off. “Wait. It’s only been an hour.”

Another thirty minutes passed. The state police arrived, two unmarked cars, followed by a SWAT van. Then the media. Then the neighbors.

It was after eight by then, and the light was fading fast. I made Vicki sit in the cruiser. After a few minutes, I climbed in behind.

“How do you feel?” she asked softly.

“Lousy.”

“You look green.”

“I feel it.”

“We need food here.”

“We need this
over
,” I remarked.

Jude caught that. Bending in with a hand on the door frame, he said, “I can make it happen.”

Oh yes, he would storm the house in a heartbeat if given the word. But at what price?

“Not yet,” I was saying when I saw movement at the door. Nudging Jude aside, I scrambled out of the car and watched James come toward us. Somber but unhurt, he was holding his phone up, letting us know that the man inside was listening.

It wasn’t a bad thing. It simply meant that we had to watch what we said.

Cameras clicked and whirred. The local police moved bystanders back, but the media held their recorders high to catch every word as the state police closed in around James. I was slim enough—determined enough—to snake my way through to the front.

“Do we have a hostage situation here?” the state captain asked.

“We do,” James said with a glance at the men in SWAT gear, “but he isn’t irrational. He isn’t making wild threats. He’s just nervous.” He spoke in the same low, keep-it-calm tone that I imagined he had used inside. “Lee is fine. He says he won’t hurt her if we play our cards right.”

“Who is he?”

“A friend of her late husband,” James said, shooting me a look that said he doubted it. “I don’t know his name.”

“John Laughlin,” Bell Valley’s chief offered, wanting the hostage-taker to know that we did have resources. “The car’s a rental from Nashua. He gave a Durham address.” He shook his head to indicate that the name and address were likely phony.

“What’s his gun power?” the state captain asked James.

“He has one handgun. I don’t see anything else.”

Silent now, the captain pointed at duffel bags near the SWAT team members.

James shook his head. No duffel bags with extra guns. “He’s not holding the gun to her head. I don’t think he plans on harming her. Right now he’s more pissed at me—us—everyone here.”

“How big is he?” Jude asked—looking in that instant, I swear, like a cat at the Refuge, puffed up and ready for a fight.

James was debating how the question would be perceived inside. Finally, judging as I did that it was strictly factual, he said, “Six foot, maybe six-one, two hundred pounds.”

“What are his demands?” the state captain asked.

“He wants you all to clear out. He says he won’t even talk until that’s done.” He looked at the cruisers, the Range Rover, our BMW. His eyes touched me before returning to the captain. “I said I could make that happen.”

His credibility rested on it. That went unsaid. Lowering the phone, he backed away and, to the snap of cameras, returned to the house.

The police talked briefly, then pointed us all to our cars. I followed the others, driving only far enough down the street to suggest we were leaving. Two local cruisers kept the noise going by continuing on. They would park on the back street and return through the woods.

I had a fleeting thought that if John Laughlin, or whoever he was, was really into hostage-taking, he might take Lee or James back there with a gun to their heads and be infuriated when his car wasn’t alone.

But the police guarding the back would be discreet. I kept telling myself that as I followed the rest on foot. We stopped at a spot where the trees were dense, though twilight alone would have kept us hidden. The SWAT team was gearing up—masks, vests, guns. The prospect of violence made my stomach churn.

Lights had gone on in the house, a vague tracing around each window. The state police had binoculars, but couldn’t see through the blinds.

“You holding up okay?” Jude asked softly, coming to my side.

I nodded. “Your mom took Vicki home. She doesn’t need the tension.”

“Neither do you.”

“He’s my husband. Where else would I be?”

“Does he know about the baby?”

“Of course.”

“And he’s risking his life in there? That’s a dumb thing to do.”

My eyes flew to his. “I don’t think it’s dumb. He’s good at this.”

He stared at me, at the house, at the SWAT team. He was walking off when my BlackBerry vibrated.

“Emily,” James said. “We’re having a little problem here. He’s watching TV and knows you’re all out there. So here’s Plan B. First, put me on speaker.” I did. “Is the captain there?”

“Right here,” the man said.

“He feels this has gotten out of hand. He doesn’t want anyone hurt. He just wants to be allowed to leave.”

“All he has to do is come out with his hands up.”

“He’s preparing a statement. He says that as long as the press is there, he wants the world to hear it.”

A murmur slid through the media.

“Fine,” the captain said. “We can read it.”

The call ended. Another ten minutes passed. The cruisers had returned to the front of the house. I was leaning against one, arms around my middle as I watched the door, when Jude came over and said, “What do you think he’s doing in there?”

I had asked myself that dozens of times in the last five minutes. “Probably helping write the statement.”

“Why would he help the guy do anything?”

I sighed wearily. “Jude, we want this done. If the man needs help writing a statement that will end it, let’s help him. For all we know, he’s illiterate.”

“How long does it take? It’s almost nine, and nothing’s happening.” Slapping a hand on the top of the cruiser, he walked off.

I was as frustrated as he was. The wait seemed endless. When my BlackBerry rang again, I jumped a mile. Heart pounding, I put the phone to my ear.

“Okay, here’s the thing,” James said, not bothering with speaker-phone. “He just got a call from someone who’s been watching this all play out on TV and is now forbidding him to make a statement.”

“Who—”

“So I’ve talked him into coming out with me and turning himself
over. I’ve guaranteed him safety, but he’s skittish. I want you to tell the Staties—” There was a crash in the background and an alarmed “What the—Jude,
wait
—Don’t—” His voice gave way to sounds of a struggle, then the crack of a gun, then a cry that was raspy enough to have come from James, though I wasn’t sure, since I had never, ever heard him make any sound like it before.

Chapter 24
 

The phone connection held. As we raced toward the house, we heard coarse swearing and sounds of a struggle, then Jude yelling, “The front, the front, open the front.”

Driven by raw fear, I barged through with the first wave. My periphery took in Lee frozen in shock and Jude sprawled over the gunman, but my attention was on James. Still clutching the phone, he was sprawled on his side on the floor. He was covered in blood—his shirt front and back, shot straight through—and the blood continued to spread.

I touched his face. He opened his eyes. Frantic, I pressed his side, front and back, not so much to stop the blood as to push it back inside.

“Ambulance is on the way,” said a trooper, coming down beside me and replacing my hands with pads that he held tightly, while a second trooper cut away the shirt.

Wiping my hands on my skirt, I moved up to his head and cupped his face. His eyes held mine for a second before they closed.

“Pulse is low, but his airways are clear,” a second trooper reported.

Vaguely aware of Lee beside me now, I put my mouth to James’s ear and whispered, “Hold on, babe, help is coming, you did so good.” When he didn’t respond, I shot a frantic look at the troopers. “He’s breathing, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Why is he unconscious?”

“Shock. Loss of blood.”

Hands framing his face, I stayed by his ear. “You will be fine, you will be fine, I need you,
we
need you.” I repeated it over and over until the ambulance arrived, pausing only while they shifted him to a stretcher and carried him out, and even then I held his hand. Though I gave the paramedics room, I wasn’t letting go. James needed to know I was there.

Once the ambulance was wailing through the night, there were questions about allergies, medications, last food that he’d eaten. Though I answered them, I felt totally helpless. They hooked up an IV and oxygen, and continued to compress the wound, but he was too pale, too quiet. Through an endless ride, my eyes swung from his face to theirs and back, watching for change in any of them that would suggest he was doing worse.

Later, I would be told that we had reached the hospital in record time and that a full team of trauma doctors had been waiting. At the time, all I saw was James being whisked away. Agonizing in the waiting room while he was in surgery, I imagined every possibility—his being fine, his being maimed or permanently in pain, his dying—and I felt totally at fault. I kept thinking that this wouldn’t have happened if he’d been in New York, that a second-best life was better than no life at all and that I would give anything,
anything
to have that old life back if it meant that James would be well.

Lee was quiet beside me, possibly feeling more guilty than me. Amelia arrived with Vicki, who had threatened to drive herself if left behind. A member of the Bell Valley force showed up to report that by all accounts the gun had accidentally fired during the scuffle between the suspect and Jude, and while that sounded innocent enough, my husband remained in surgery.

Someone brought coffee, but I couldn’t drink. Vicki talked softly, and when I couldn’t answer, simply held my hands to warm them up.

“I’m sorry,” Amelia said as the minutes stretched on. She sounded
defeated. “I kept hoping he would change—you know, that he would see that there were good things he could do here. He’s never been able to follow direction.”

I couldn’t console her, not when my husband’s blood remained on my skirt. The standoff had been about to end when Jude had barged into that house. If maybe, just maybe, he had been more rational and less impulsive for once—if he had put his own need for heroics behind our need for caution, James would be well and intact.

But Jude had needed to prove himself. To me? Amelia? The town?

I didn’t know and, just then, didn’t care. “If onlys” were no good. I couldn’t turn back the clock.

And that clock crept. It wasn’t until two in the morning when a doctor finally showed up at the waiting room door and gestured me to join him in the hall. Heart pounding, I was on my feet in a flash.

“He’s a lucky man. The bullet grazed a rib but didn’t hit anything vital. We had some cleanup to do, but he’ll be fine. He’s in the recovery room. Do you want to sit with him there?”

I didn’t have to be asked twice, though I didn’t expect to promptly pass out. Something about seeing him attached to needles and tubes and totally out of it—something about the reality of what had happened, the fear of what might have been and the relief of what
was
, must have done it. I had no sooner taken his hand when I heard a buzz and saw white.

There was a distant “Ooops, wait, catch her.” The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the chair with my head between my knees and a none-too-gentle hand kneading the back of my neck. A cold pack replaced the hand.

“Breathe deeply,” came another voice. It was female and pleasantly commanding.

“I’m
sorry
,” I whispered.

“Don’t be. You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last. When loved ones are nervous—”

“I’m pregnant.”

There was a pause, then “Well, there you go, you were nervous for two. Do you want to see a doctor? Maybe lie down?”