Double Vision (31 page)

T
hey put down the chopper on a high school baseball field a few blocks down from where the action was currently taking place. Jenna exited the chopper and jogged down the street toward the Tyler home just in time to see Victor coming out the door of the SWAT command center. He stretched his hand toward her, and she realized it held a cell phone. She took it from him as she and Saleda ran in his direction, away from the helicopter.

As soon as they could hear again, Victor said, “He'd only bite for prepaid, still in plastic. So that's what he got. I'm good at following instructions.”

Jenna nodded as she climbed the steps, following Victor into the armored vehicle that was serving as the current SWAT command center. Inside, she could see views of several places in the house on computer monitors, and one showed Liam Tyler's office. Two SWAT team members stationed there, two more in the closet, ready for action.

She looked to Saleda. “Any last minute thoughts?”

Saleda just gave her a nod. “Go get 'em.”

Victor had already dialed the prepaid phone's number, so Jenna pressed send.
If there's a God in heaven, he wouldn't let a little girl die at the hand of her stepfather. Even if he is a cold-blooded, murdering sociopath.

The ringing at her ear stopped. Breathing.

“To whom am I speaking?” Liam Tyler's voice asked.

“This is Dr. Jenna Ramey, FBI. We've met before,” she said, heart thumping in her chest.

“Oh! Dr. Ramey. So good of you to call. I'm glad you weren't with Special Agent Dodd this time around. It didn't turn out so well for him, so better for you to be out than in.”

Jenna held back her gasp, but wildly gestured to Saleda for a pen and paper. The items were passed to her, and she scribbled as she talked. “What is Special Agent Dodd's current condition, Liam?”

She finished writing, “Dodd down there,” and pointed emphatically at her note as if Victor and Saleda weren't already angling for position, trying to read.

“Maybe dead,” Liam said matter-of-factly, his voice ambivalent. “Either is or will be. Shot was good. Sorry about that, Doctor. I do know how you folks hate to lose your own.”

Jenna took in a calming breath. She couldn't let him get to her. Not now. Too much was riding on what she did next. Too many people needed her to keep cool.

“And you have other folks down there,” she said, her best attempt at pretending his statements about Dodd didn't affect her. “What will it take for us to get them out in better condition?”

This time her question was met with a laugh. “Oh, Doctor. You know as well as I do that this won't end well for me.”

So why are you holding hostages instead of popping them and then trying to take as many of us down with you as you can when we come for you?

But Jenna already knew the answer, and so did Liam, even if he said one thing to her and thought another. He was a narcissist. So while he was smart and maybe even realistic at times, he hadn't given up on finding a way out. He was holding the hostages to guarantee some time to think and some leverage if he came up with a plan.

“If you'd decided that already, we wouldn't be talking, would we?” she asked, even though it wasn't a question.
Talk to him as though you're on his level. He'll underestimate. What
he'd be underestimating, exactly, Jenna wasn't sure. She didn't have a plan, either. Yet. “So now that we've cleared that up, any ideas so far?”

Quiet met her ears.

Then Liam spoke again. This time, the mocking in his tone from before had evaporated. “I want complete and total immunity.”

Jenna couldn't stifle a laugh. “Oh, yeah? And onion rings on the side?”

Liam Tyler clicked his tongue. “Actually, Doctor, this is pretty straightforward, and everyone makes it out happy. We both know I can't escape without it getting messy, and the messy half of the equation is the part you don't want. Stepping over bodies of friends and children is never fun. However, we can avoid that altogether. You find me a nice DA, introduce us. He makes me a little deal. I cooperate and give you everything you need to know about the Triple Shooter—he is, after all, a very bad boy. You'll put away an unstable killer who has wreaked havoc in this area for months, your friends will walk away from this crawl space room without bullet wounds, and we can all call an end to the day. In exchange for all of my help, I'm presented with my stay-out-of-jail-free card. I mosey on my way, and none of you have to hear from me again. Now doesn't that sound lovely?”

Jenna tightened her grip on the phone. The fact that she hated his scheme and the thought of him securing immunity was irrelevant. No DA on the planet would go for a deal like that even if she
did
like the idea. But maybe there was something in there she could use. Anything that would buy her more time—or information—to swoop in and whisk Yancy, Molly, and everyone else out of that room unharmed.

“And if I can't sweet-talk this magical DA who would have to be high on ecstasy into offering such a deal to a spree killer?” she asked.

Liam grunted a laugh. “Well, then I'll give you the courtesy of picking which of my guests down here takes the first bullet to the temple before you call Mr. DA back. Hopefully he'll have enough time while that's happening to down a few more Scooby snacks and be high enough to keep the second bullet recipient in the on-deck circle. How does that sound?”

“Not nearly as lovely as all of them coming out still breathing,” she admitted.

Her heart beat harder as she imagined Yancy, Eldred, and Molly somewhere behind the office where the SWAT team members waited, holding for orders. God, if only she had a camera on the inside of that room so she could know exactly where everyone was positioned. But she'd already asked on the way in: no point of entry existed other than the crawl space in the closet. No doors, windows, air ducts . . . nothing. Even though a sniper's bullet could get through that wall, they couldn't just strafe the room with gunfire in hopes of hitting Liam. They didn't have a bead on where their target was, where the hostages were in relation, or any other possible obstacles they might encounter. There was no way to
get
a clue, either. The good guys on the outside were in the dark for the foreseeable future.

Get a clue. Problem-solving. Ripe red grapes.

The day she'd put together the sevens with Molly in this case, she'd done a mental rundown of all of the things different shades of purple represented to her. The Tyrian purple shade of ripe grapes that meant problem-solving had been one of them, but the whole reason her brain had been on that track at the time had been because she'd realized she'd seen Molly herself as purple.

The memory of Yancy's text flashed in.
“Don't take his word for Molly being okay until you see her or talk to her yourself. Trust me.”

She couldn't be sure, but something in the pit of her stomach flipped the same way it had last year when Yancy had given her a piece of information so shrewdly disguised it had been what had allowed her to fight Claudia. Maybe he hadn't been giving her instructions when he'd texted earlier. He wasn't yet in danger, so if he'd meant it to be a plan, he'd have just flat told her what he was thinking.

But as misleading fuchsia flashed in, Jenna knew that now that Yancy was behind that wall and himself a hostage, he would be racking his brain for what to do. He could and did think under pressure. He'd be sitting in there trying to figure out a way to send her information, when and if he could.

The yellow she associated with Yancy flashed in. It didn't mean anything specific and yet everything specific at the same time. It embodied everything he was to her and everything she knew about him.

He would remember the text. She knew it.

Asparagus green flashed in as details of a plan took shape in the depths of her mind, the fuchsia of misleading she'd seen moments before driving it. Play it right, and this might actually work . . .

It was a normal request, after all. Most negotiators did ask to speak to the hostages at some point before considering giving into terrorist demands. He wouldn't suspect.

“Liam, before I can get
any
ball rolling, I'll need to talk to my supervisors. Then I'll have to find a DA who's willing to hear me out or high or both. But first, I have to make sure that everyone is all right and unharmed. None of those people I just mentioned will budge an inch unless I can offer them that guarantee,” she said, concentrating on keeping her voice from shaking.

Another laugh, and this time the mocking voice returned. “Would you like pictures of everyone holding today's newspaper?”

Jenna forced out a sardonic chuckle. “I think two minutes on the phone with each will suffice.”

“Two
whole
minutes, Doctor? That seems excessive . . .”

“Okay, maybe not two whole minutes. But long enough for me to determine that each is the correct person, you haven't yet harmed them . . . and haven't assured them you're going to.”

“Smart girl,” Liam answered. “All right. Sounds like a fair enough arrangement I can give you. Except for Agent Dodd, of course. He's . . . unable to come to the phone right now. You get the okay from your higher-ups, Doctor. Find that DA, but find him fast, and call me back in twenty. Don't make it any longer than twenty, Doctor. I'm a busy man.”

They hung up. Saleda immediately launched in, throwing her hands in the air.

“What the
hell
do you think you're doing? Even if there was a DA on earth who would grant immunity to a known serial killer, which there's
not
, the Triple Shooter is dead. If we go in there offering this guy a fake deal, it could blow up in our faces in too many ways to count.”

“Would you relax?” Jenna said, but Saleda cut her off.

“If Liam Tyler smells a rat or gets so much as a whiff that the Triple Shooter's already fertilizer, he'll kill every single person in that room,
including
your boyfriend and a six-year-old girl. Or just as good, we promise him a fake plea bargain. He lets the hostages go, hires a lawyer to make O.J. Simpson's legal team look incompetent, and gets off for every single crime he's committed, scot-free, all because we handed him the perfect technicality to use against us.”

Jenna grabbed Saleda by the shoulders and forced her to look into her eyes. “Saleda. I know what I'm doing. Trust me.”

She cut her glance over Saleda's shoulders to check who else was listening. The others in the SWAT vehicle were talking among themselves, each group a few feet away. Jenna lowered her voice. “I have no intention of offering him any deal, Saleda. I just need him to
think
I'm going to offer it so we can get what we need.”

Saleda bit her lip as Jenna outlined what she planned to do. They took the next moments prepping those around them for what was to come. Orders were issued, and Jenna dialed a third prepaid phone—one held by one of the SWAT team snipers in Liam's office. Now she would three-way dial Liam's prepaid cell.

Let this work. It has to work.

“That wasn't even fifteen minutes, Doctor. You're an overachiever,” Liam said.

“I aim to please,” she said, smirking.

“So,” he said, and she couldn't tell whether his voice sounded confident or just steady, “what's the word?”

“We're go,” she replied.

He laughed into the phone. “Wow! Ask and ye shall receive, huh? I knew you people could get things done fast, but I never knew you'd let a monster like me run away and disappear that easily.”

“We're here to serve and protect, Liam. Right now, that means protecting the innocents you have in there with you. We can worry about what that means where you're concerned later, though I'm sure you'd already thought of that or you wouldn't have requested what you did,” Jenna said.
Make him believe the bureaucracy really would value those lives over his, even if you're not positive it would've. Right now, it's all about selling what you've got.

“So what's the ol' district attorney's ETA, hm?” Liam asked.

Jenna took a deep breath. “He's standing by awaiting my call, which he'll receive as soon as I have the evidence I requested from you showing me everything is intact.”

He chuckled again. Damn, she was growing to hate that snicker.

“Don't you mean every
one
, Doctor?”

“I'd like to speak to Mr. Beasley first,” she said, ignoring his jibe.

She could tell he'd extended the phone, because she could hear his voice from a ways away saying, “Paging Eldred Beasley, paging Eldred Beasley.”

A shaky voice came on the line, and Jenna began talking to the man. She asked him a few questions, tried to calm his nerves with her words. He sounded so confused, but she couldn't let him go prematurely. The length of each call needed to be similar, lest Liam grow suspicious.

She heard Liam say, “Time's up. Pass the phone to your right, will you, old man?”

A crackling as the cell phone was transferred between people.

“Hello?” a small voice said.

Molly. This is it.

“Molly, I need you to do something for me, but don't move much to do it. Tell me the first numbers that come to your head to do with that room, okay?”

Jenna could picture Molly's pigtails bobbing with her nod as she spoke.

“Yes, I know what that is. That's the same thing they told me to do when I called nine-one-one. To be brave.”

Jesus. This kid was brilliant. She was confirming they were on the same page—that Yancy had told her what to do.

“Okay. Give me as much as you can, but do exactly what you just did and disguise it as much as possible,” Jenna encouraged. She held her breath.