Guilty Page 6

  “For example, if you let me walk out of here now, I can one hundred percent guarantee you that I can fix it so you won’t face the death penalty.”

  “Don’t give me that. You can’t guarantee shit.” His fingers tightened on the neck of her jacket, and his gun jabbed into her spine. Her back curved in a reflexive attempt to escape the pain—without success—as she winced. “And if you don’t shut your fucking mouth so I can think, I’m going to kill you right now.”

  O-kay. Deep breath.

  So much for trying to talk her way free. She kept walking forward, her heart thundering as the reality of her situation hit home. If this thug didn’t get the helicopter he wanted—and he wouldn’t, she knew how the whole barter-a-helicopter-for-the-hostage thing worked—or if something else didn’t happen that would allow her to escape, she was dead meat.

  After the carnage in the courtroom, he clearly knew that he had nothing to lose. He was already looking at the death penalty probably six times over. One more corpse—hers—wouldn’t make a particle of difference to what happened to him.

  And he clearly wasn’t a fan of prosecutors.

  Please, God, don’t let me die.

  Unbidden, Ben’s face rose in her mind’s eye again. At the thought of how destroyed her son would be if something happened to her, she once more felt the hot sting of welling tears.

  Man it up, she told herself fiercely. It was more Ben-speak, and realizing that just twisted the vise that was squeezing her heart a little tighter. Blinking rapidly to dispel the tears before they could overflow, she forced all thoughts of Ben from her mind. To have any hope of surviving, she was going to have to keep her mind clear and focused and in the present.

  Make like Winnie-the-Pooh and think, think, think.

  They had just reached the first cell when its doorknob rattled. Jumping a little, eyes widening in surprise, Kate saw a face pressed to the grille in the door. It was a man with deeply tanned skin and a shiny bald head, his features faintly distorted by the glass. What was clear, however, was that he was looking at them as he tried without success to open the door.

  “Fuck.” Her captor sounded angry. “Open the door.”

  This was addressed to her, and she did as he told her.

  There were dead-bolt locks on each cell door, but the latches were on the outside. Of course. The prisoners needed to be locked in. In all likelihood, there weren’t locks on the inside.

  Her stomach knotted as she realized just how close she had come to making a fatal mistake.

  She was just registering with some confusion that the dead bolt didn’t seem to be engaged after all when the door was thrust open and the newcomer pushed through it. He was, she saw, a little taller than her captor, maybe five-eleven or so, with an unnaturally muscular, wide-bodied upper torso that told her he was a fan of steroids and he’d had plenty of time to work out—probably in prison. His orange jumpsuit strained at the shoulders and around the sleeves. His biceps bulged. His neck was as thick as a bull’s. He had bushy, dark brown eyebrows above smallish brown eyes; a meaty, triangular nose; and a thin-lipped mouth wrapped in a neatly trimmed dark brown mustache and goatee.

  There was a big black pistol in his hand.

  “The hell happened to you? And where’s Newton?” Her captor growled, pushing her face-first against the wall as he spoke. As the cell door closed right beside her nose, she got a glimpse inside before it clicked shut. Three men sprawled motionless on the floor. She could see only the legs of two: One was wearing an orange jumpsuit. The other was a blue-uniformed deputy. The third man was another deputy. Unnaturally pale, he lay facedown, dead or unconscious, she couldn’t be sure which. He had short, thick black hair and was thin and looked young.

  “Newton’s in there, dead. Damned deputy who brought him over from the jail still had a shot left in him. We were on our way out when Newton bought it. I stopped to finish the deputy off, and the damned door jammed.” In contrast to her captor’s obvious agitation, this guy sounded untroubled. Kate stayed where she had been shoved, cheek and palms pressed against the smooth, cool wall, heart thundering like a herd of wild horses. Now she had two armed murderers to contend with, and nothing even resembling a plan. “Couldn’t believe it. Damned door wouldn’t open for nothing. I was stuck as a duck.” His tone changed. “It went to hell, huh?”

  “Hell, yeah, it went to hell. You think I’d be back in here if it hadn’t gone to hell?”

  “Pack and Little Julie?”

  “Dead, both of ’em. Meltzer never showed with the truck, damned unreliable shit. Maybe he couldn’t get through. There was po-po everywhere, all around the building, already there when we shot out the window, like they’d been tipped off or something. Little Julie jumped anyway, and they tore him up. Pack bought it in the courtroom. I grabbed her”—Kate could feel them looking at her—“the hot little pro-se-cu-tor”—he drew the word out mockingly—“and . . .”

  He broke off as the phone at the end of the hall began to ring.

  The shrill peals made all three of them start and look toward the source.

  “Who’s that?” There was an anxious edge to the new guy’s voice now.

  “How the fuck should I know? Wait—maybe it’s the cops. Maybe they got the helicopter.”

  Up until that point, nobody had made a move to answer the phone, which continued to ring imperiously. Now a hand closed around Kate’s arm: Orange Jumpsuit swung her away from the wall and shoved her toward the phone.

  “Move your ass,” he said to her as she stumbled in her thrice-damned shoes before finding her footing.

  “Helicopter?” the new guy inquired.

  “I gave ’em fifteen minutes to get me a helicopter or I pop her.” Orange Jumpsuit sounded proud of himself. “Hey, Miss Prosecutor, what time is it now?”

  Kate didn’t want to know, but she looked at her watch anyway.

  “Nine-twenty,” she answered.

  “They got eleven minutes left, then.”

  “You think that’ll work?”

  “How do I know, shit-for-brains? If they want her alive, it’ll work.”

  “You sure she’s a prosecutor?”

  “Hell, yeah, I’m sure.”

  The phone was still ringing as they reached it. Kate was first, with Orange Jumpsuit right behind her and the new guy behind him.

  Orange Jumpsuit shoved her against the wall beside the phone. It rang again just then, setting her teeth on edge. Doing her best to tune it out, she rested against the cool plaster and tried to concentrate on getting her heart rate and breathing under control. Hyperventilating would do her no good at all. She had to keep her mind clear so she could come up with another plan.

  Then, despairingly, she realized that a clear mind wasn’t going to help her one bit because the sorry truth was that she was fresh out of ideas.

  “Don’t you even think about trying nothing,” he said to her, letting go of her arm. The gun moved. Cold and hard and terrifying, its mouth nestled against the vulnerable side of her neck just below her jawline. She closed her eyes as he picked up the receiver, silencing the phone at last.

  “Yeah?” he said into it. Then, a moment later, “Don’t give me that crap. You ain’t getting more time.”

  “Tell ’em you need money,” the new guy said behind them. He was antsy now, jiggling on the balls of his feet.

  She could sense the movement, hear the rustle of his clothing. “A hundred thousand dollars, along with the helicopter.”

  “I want money, too,” Orange Jumpsuit said into the phone. “A hundred thousand dollars. In cash, unmarked bills no bigger than twenties, waiting in the helicopter.

  And you’re under ten minutes now.” He listened, then said, “Sure. Talk to her. Long as you remember the clock’s ticking.”

  Talk to her. Kate’s eyes flew open.

  Orange Jumpsuit pressed the receiver to his chest and glared at Kate.

  “Says he wants to make sure you’re alive,” he said, trailing the mouth
of the gun across her skin until it nestled below her ear, where her pulse beat against the bruising metal like a small, trapped bird. Her eyes were wide as they met his. She was breathing too fast, through parted lips. The feel of the gun against her skin was making her dizzy. One slip of his finger, or a single quick, deliberate squeeze, and she was history.

  Will it hurt?

  “Watch yourself, bitch, ’cause I’m watching you,” he said.

  Then he held the receiver to her ear.

  Please, God. Please.

  “Hello.” Wetting her parched lips, she spoke into the phone.

  “Kate White?” a man asked in her ear. It was the cop from the courtroom, the one with the calm, reassuring eyes. His voice was calm and reassuring, too. She latched on to the steady strength he projected at her like a lifeline.

  Must stay calm, must stay cool . . . Her knees went weak. Oh, God, don’t let me die.

  “Yes.” She didn’t know how long she would be allowed to talk, and she wanted to make sure she got the essentials across first. “I have a little boy.” Despite her determination to remain cool and calm, her voice was no longer even. It was hoarse and cracked with fear, and her breathing was ragged. “I’m a single mother. Please give this man what he wants.”

  Orange Jumpsuit nodded at her approvingly.

  “We’re going to do our best to get you out of there in one piece,” the cop said. Orange Jumpsuit watched her intently. She thought that he could hear only her side of the conversation, but she couldn’t be sure. “Are you the only hostage?”

  “Yes.” She thought of the bodies lying in the holding cell, and the other holding cell that she hadn’t seen the inside of. “I think so.”

  Orange Jumpsuit frowned.

  “That’s enough.”

  He pulled the phone away from her. The gun dug in deeper. She could still feel her pulse beating frantically against the hard little metal circle. Taking a deep, shaken breath, she rested her cheek against the plaster and closed her eyes once more.

  Please. Please. Please.

  “You heard her: She’s a single mother,” he said into the receiver. There was a taunting undertone to his voice. “You call me back when you get that helicopter. And the money. And remember, tick tick.”

  As he hung up, Kate could hear the cop talking on the other end of the phone.

  “You ain’t going to get that helicopter,” the second guy said.

  Her eyes opened.

  “What do you mean? Why the hell would you say a stupid-shit thing like that?” Orange Jumpsuit whipped around to face the speaker so fast she felt a breeze from his movement. Either he was so agitated he forgot about her, or he figured she wasn’t a threat and was going nowhere because there was nowhere to go, because his gun went with him. Kate let out a silent breath of relief now that it was no longer pressing into her flesh.

  “They’re just yankin’ your chain.” The second guy stood his ground. “You ain’t going to get it.”

  “They’re not yankin’ my chain. The helicopter’s coming. They know I’ll kill her.”

  “And if you kill her, what good does that do, huh? That doesn’t get us out of here.”

  There was no good answer to that. Orange Jumpsuit knew it as well as Kate did, apparently, because he paused before answering. She could sense the sudden uncertainty in him, the anger, the rising fear. Tension between the two men electrified the atmosphere.

  “They want her alive. They’ll give me what I want.” But he no longer sounded sure.

  “Say you get the helicopter. How you gonna get to it?”

  “What?”

  “How you gonna get to it? Where’s it gonna be?”

  “I told ’em the roof.”

  “There’s a helipad up there.” The second guy seemed to be thinking aloud, weighing the possibilities. “But how you gonna get to the roof without them offing you?”

  “I’m gonna use her like a fucking shield, that’s how.

  And I’m gonna tell ’em if I see a cop, if I even so much as smell a cop, I’ll blow her head off.”

  The second guy shook his head. “Not gonna work.” “What the hell do you mean ‘Not gonna work’?”

  “Too far to go. Gotta get to the elevator, go up to the roof, get out and get across to the helicopter. With her. They’ll for sure get you with snipers.”

  Orange Jumpsuit practically vibrated with rage and frustration. He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet and flung out his arms in challenge. “You got a better plan? Huh? You got a better plan? If you do, let’s fucking hear it.”

  “Yeah, I do,” the second guy said. “I got a way better plan. For me, that is.”

  Kate never even saw his hand move. There was an ear-splitting crack, and Orange Jumpsuit smacked into the wall right beside her, hitting so hard the back of his head bounced off the plaster. Her heart leaped. Screaming, she jumped back out of the way. Eyes huge, jaw dropping, her scream still echoing off the walls, she watched with disbelief as his mouth opened soundlessly, like he wanted to scream but couldn’t. Then he slid down the wall as bonelessly as a rag doll until he was sitting on the floor with his legs splayed out straight in front of him. His eyes were still open, and so was his mouth. His head slipped sideways until it rested limply on his shoulder. Even before she saw blood spilling from his mouth and more blood pouring down the front of his jumpsuit, she knew he was dead.

  Her stunned gaze flew to the second guy’s face. He was looking down at Orange Jumpsuit with a twisted smile, still holding the just-fired gun. The smell of cordite and fresh blood hit her nose at the same time as his eyes rose to lock with hers.

  Her blood froze. She stopped breathing.

  “Hey, there, Kitty-cat,” he said. “No need to look so scared. What, don’t you remember your old buddy Mario?”

  Chapter 6

  TOM’S HAND WAS ROCK-STEADY as he picked up the receiver. His breathing was under control. His legs never quivered, he didn’t blink, and he wasn’t sweating. There was nothing about his appearance to give away the sick feeling he was experiencing in the pit of his stomach, the heavy thudding of his heart, the surging adrenaline that pumped through his veins.

  They—the small group of cops and sheriff’s deputies clustered with him around the bailiff’s phone, which the courtroom used for communicating with the deputies guarding the prisoners—had just heard the muffled sound of a gun going off inside the secure corridor. Tom thought of Kate White, slim and lovely with her Scandinavian blond hair, flawless pale skin, and wide blue eyes, helpless as a mouse between the paws of a hungry cat in her current situation, and felt his gut clench.

  Was she dead?

  What about Charlie, whom he hadn’t been able to locate yet? If Charlie was anywhere in the Justice Center where he could get to the heart of the action, he’d be with them already.

  Was Charlie dead?

  The possibility was making Tom crazy. The dispatcher in the subbasement had thought, but wasn’t sure, that after logging his prisoner in, Charlie had escorted him on up to the second floor. Instead of taking the same labyrinthine secure corridors that his brother had used, which he didn’t have clearance for anyway, Tom had opted for the easier, civilian route to the second floor in pursuit of Charlie. He had just leaped off the elevator with a pair of deputies alerted by Johnson in tow when he’d heard the first shots being fired in courtroom 207. He’d had to battle his way through the stampede of people exiting the building, exiting the courtroom, running for their lives. In the midst of all the carnage, he still hadn’t found Charlie, and his bad feeling about that was growing exponentially.

  But at the moment, his first duty was to Kate White.

  “If he won’t put her on the phone, we got to assume he probably shot her, right?” Mitch Cooney asked. The pudgy, balding, fiftysomething deputy was gray-faced. The massacre of so many of his friends and fellow officers had hit him hard. But like the rest of the group around Tom, he was still standing, still serving, still doing his duty,
semper fi.

  “He’d be stupid to kill her. Then he’s got nothing. No bargaining power.” Police Corporal LaRonda Davis, a petite black woman with a bodacious figure that made even her uniform look good, sounded shaken. She was part of the group huddled around the phone because she’d been on her way to an adjoining courtroom to testify when the shooting had broken out.

  “Shut up, everybody. I’m calling in now.” Tom pushed the button that rang the secure corridor.

  “We got nothing. What are you going to say?” Police Officer Tim Linnig sounded on the verge of panic. The truth was, none of them felt qualified to be the ones responsible for nurturing the complex web of greed, hope, and stupidity that was all that might be keeping Kate White alive. But unless and until somebody with better qualifications showed up, the motley crew now gathered around the phone was all she had.

  “I’m gonna ask to talk to the lady again,” Tom said grimly. “If he puts her on the phone, I’m gonna lie like a mother, tell him he’s getting everything he wants. If he doesn’t—well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  The call went through. In his ear, he could hear the phone in the secure corridor start to ring. Every nerve in his body was on edge as he listened.

  Brriing . . .

  He waited. The suspense was making him as jittery as a caffeine addict outside a closed Starbucks. Determined not to let it show, Tom set his teeth.

  Brriing . . .

  Four minutes were left before the fifteen-minute deadline Nico Rodriguez had given them ran out. The helicopter—they were getting Rodriguez the helicopter he’d demanded, but he wasn’t going to be flying away in it; it was basically bait to lure him into the open—was at least ten minutes out. The hundred thousand dollars—which, again, he wasn’t going to be going anywhere with—was still being assembled, just in case Rodriguez had the time and smarts to check the money bag. The SWAT team, with its contingent of crack snipers, was on the way: ETA three minutes. So was a hostage negotiator. So was the bulk of Philly’s police and sheriff’s departments that weren’t already on the premises.