Hostage Taker (18 page)

T
hirteen minutes passed in a blur of screeching sirens and dashing paramedics. Eve was aware of serious blue eyes watching as she sipped ice water, sagged against a makeshift wall of coats in the deserted MRU annex.

Those blue eyes confused her. And memory merged with reality all over again. She fought back tears.

“I’ve got questions,” Haddox said soberly.

“A pint of Guinness. A fast car. A room at the Four Seasons.”

Haddox shot her a quizzical look.

“You’re the one who told me those were all the answers you’d ever need.”

“Right. Usually they are.” He half smiled at the memory. Then immediately grew serious again. “You were thinking of Zev out there.”

She nodded. Her whole body seemed to sway with the motion. “Hard not to. Did anyone—”

“Notice?” he finished for her. “Only me and Mace. Everyone else was a little preoccupied. What day is it?”

“Excuse me?”

“Just making sure you’re here. Not off in some other place.”

“Don’t be absurd,” she snapped.

“Because for a few minutes there, I lost you.”

“I’m fine.”

“But you haven’t been fine,” he insisted. “Not for a while, luv. Am I right?”

“It’s nothing.”

“When was the first spell?”

Rome,
she thought.
Two boys—one in a blue-striped shirt, one in yellow—playing in the Piazza Navona. Giggling. Teasing each other. Then suddenly standing up and running away—as the firecracker candle they’d lit flew thirty feet into the air. She’d heard the noise. Smelled the smoke. She had practically fallen into the Fountain of the Four Rivers—and emptied the contents of her stomach into its waters.

Haddox was talking nonstop, not even waiting for her answer. “It’s why you didn’t come back to work, isn’t it? Too many potential triggers.”

“You’re overreacting.” This wasn’t about her—or his appraisal of her during the past three months.

“Your leaving me in Rome? Your nonstop tour of the world?” His brow furrowed. He was making the connections.

Time to end this discussion. “Maybe your ego just can’t accept that I left you.”

Haddox raised his chin. “You’d never have left without a damn good reason, luv.”

“Because what woman would leave you without one?” she mocked him.

“You said it, not me,” he replied with a careless grin.

“Chalk it up to commitment issues,” she said, finding a smile. “Mine.”

“More like trust issues.”

“You can’t complain. You’re the guy who doesn’t stick around in one place, since the wrong people might find you. Who won’t keep a regular cellphone, since the government might track you.”

“Not might,
would,
” he corrected her. “Besides, life is short—and best spent on the move. How about we debate this over dinner tonight? When the crisis is ended?”

“That sounds overly optimistic.”

“That you’ll have dinner with me? Or that the crisis will end?”

“No chance this crisis will be over.”

“But if it is?”

“My answer’s still no. Maybe we’ll talk when you stop calling me ‘luv.’ ” She turned serious. “Did either of the agents surrounding the hostage make it?”

Haddox shook his head.

Her heart sank with a thud. She had known it; after all, they’d borne the brunt of the blast, saving others. But it still hurt, hearing it. “Omega Team?”

“All members safely back at home base.”

“What puzzles me is this: He didn’t shoot this time. Why change his methods?”

“Your sharpshooters had uncovered his position. So he changed his tactics.”

She took a few seconds to think about it. “He cheated, you know.”

“Who?”

“The Hostage Taker. We did what he asked. We recalled Omega Team.”

“He didn’t give a tinker’s damn.”

“He wouldn’t answer my call.”

“You broke his trust.”

“He’s a terrific shot. If Omega Team’s breach was what bothered him, why not take one of them out? Why punish his hostage?”

“Because your Special Ops forces put their lives on the line all the time. It’s their job. Whereas killing a hostage—an ordinary civilian? That makes headlines.”

Stubbornly, Eve crossed her arms. “He cheated another way, too. The victim was counting down—but never made it to
one.
”

“Kinder that way, don’t you think?”

Mace poked his head in the door. “All good?”

Eve managed a wobbly smile. “C’mon in. Tell me what you wanted to, before, about the weapons taken from the Midtown West storage lot.”

“Gotta get one thing off my chest first. No disrespect, Eve—but after what just happened, do you really think you’re gonna be able to talk this motherfucker down?”

Am I?
she wondered.
When the connection I thought I’d made was just undone in a blast no one saw coming?

“There’s still a chance,” she said.

“ ’Cause if we end up needing to get inside that Cathedral, I’m thinking you gotta call Frankie.”

Frank García—whose PTSD terrors from service overseas had landed him in treatment.
A smile played on her lips. “You—asking for García?”

“Don’t get me wrong: I can’t stand the guy. Don’t want to work with him, don’t want to be in the same room with him. But he’s the only bastard I can think of who’s got the chops to get into that Church without the Hostage Taker noticing.”

Eve squeezed her eyes shut. What Zev’s violent death had done to unsettle her, she wouldn’t wish on anybody. Whatever haunted Frankie, she knew, was much worse.

Then she remembered how the hostage had trembled.

How the Hostage Taker hadn’t taken her last call. She’d been foolish to think she could trust him; she’d been arrogant to believe she could predict his moves.

Omega Team had failed. If Eve and those helping her were going to succeed, then she needed someone whose abilities were as unpredictable and unconventional as her adversary’s.

She turned to Mace. “You’re right. We need García on this one. I’ll handle it.”

I
have their undivided attention now. I feel like an orchestra conductor, making sure each different instrument in my symphony performs its individual role. Ensuring that the whole will be far greater than its parts.

From my perch on high, in the great choir loft over the front portals, this Cathedral spreads before me. An entire city’s block of stone and stained glass, sheathed in scaffolding. I can’t see them all, but I know the people I’ve positioned are waiting beneath.

They have no choice.

I reach into the back pocket of my pants and draw out a narrow vial of powder, sprinkling some on my hands, creating a perfect circle pattern. I rub my hands together, grab the nearest scaffolding pole, and begin climbing.

I go higher and higher, above the massive organ’s thousands of brass pipes, until I reach a part of the wall where I know there’s a gap. I peek through and see Fifth Avenue. It’s closed to ordinary citizens, but NYPD and FBI and emergency responders are everywhere, like crazed ants.

Traffic uptown and downtown must be a nightmare. A mind-boggling standstill. Families will be disappointed—there will be no tree lighting at Rockefeller Center tonight.

A group of officers stares up—but I know they can’t see me. They are watching the scaffolding. Maybe even admiring the twin spires of Saint Patrick’s.

The world outside is chaos.

The world in here is peaceful.

My own eyes drift up the wall, focusing on each individual block of stone. Each layer of mortar binding them together.

I imagine my father’s grandfather hard at work here with his brothers and cousins. All of them stonemasons from County Cork who came to a land of golden opportunity—and a city rising as fast as immigrant labor could raise it. My great-grandfather watched as the cornerstone of Saint Patrick’s—now missing—was laid.

I wonder if I will be remembered for rediscovering that lost cornerstone. If they fail to follow my instructions, it may reveal itself.

Amid the rubble.