Crossfire

“If you’re doing this just to get back at me—”

She laughed and shook her head, eyeing him as if she couldn’t believe him. “You haven’t changed a bit. You still think everything is about you.”

“Damn it, Anna, you’re wrong. I’m concerned as hell for you. You have no idea what you’re up against. I can just imagine what my men are going to think of a paramedic on the team—let alone a woman—let alone you, my ex-fiancée.” He tried to imagine this being any worse and couldn’t.

“You are underestimating your men,” Anna said coolly. “In my experience, the men follow the lead of their commander.”

He laughed. She’d just put it all on him. Anna had always been good at turning the tables on him. He glared at her, wanting desperately to take her in his arms and to kiss some sense into her. If only his love for her was enough that he could talk her out of this.

But it hadn’t been enough five years ago and it sure as hell meant nothing to her now.

“So, is there a man in your life?” he heard himself ask, and mentally kicked himself.

“I think we should keep our personal lives out of the office,” she said.

He wanted to laugh again. “Is that a yes or a no?”

“I’ve been busy the last five years. I really haven’t had time to—” She seemed to catch herself. “What about you?”

He raised an eyebrow. Did she really care one way or the other? “I guess we’ve both been too busy.” He looked into her eyes, searching for just a little of what they’d once had together.

She was the first to drag her gaze away. She brushed a hand through her hair. He couldn’t help but remember how her hair had felt in his fingers. He wondered if it would feel the same.

He turned away, unable to look at her as he found himself drowning in memories of the two of them together, laughing late at night, walking the beach as the sun rose over the city, talking for hours on the phone, making love—oh, lordie, yes, making wonderful, passionate love.

“Flint, this has been my life’s dream,” she said behind him. “This job. I’ve trained for years for it. Isn’t it possible that I just want to help people, that I want to make a difference?”

He felt anger bubble up inside of him as he turned to look at her again. “Being the mother to our children wouldn’t have made a difference in the world? No, sorry, that job wasn’t exciting enough for you.”

“That’s a cheap shot even for you,” she said. “I was twenty-four years old. I had worked hard to become a paramedic. I wasn’t ready to quit a rewarding, exciting job to become a mother yet. But after a while I would have loved to have been the mother of our children. You were the one who said I had to choose. Either I stayed home and started a family right after we were married, or I could pursue a career—without you.”

He shook his head. He hadn’t meant to take that position. He’d regretted it for years. “We could have worked it out if you’d given us a chance. Instead you threw the engagement ring at me and walked out, left town and obviously never looked back.”

“You mean, the way we’re working it out now?” she asked with an exasperated sigh.

“Damn it Anna, I know what it was like to grow up without a mother, remember? I didn’t want that for my kids. Is that so hard for you to understand?”

“No, but it was all right for their father to be a cop?” She narrowed her gaze at him. “I thought you were going to be a cop who used his brain and wasn’t risking his life all the time. What changed?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now, does it. We have no kids to worry about, and it seems we both think we can take care of ourselves just fine.” She was right. They never could have worked it out. He didn’t want his wife risking her life at her job. He wanted her at home with their kids.

“Flint, I had hoped you might understand.”

He shook his head. “This has to be the worst decision you’ve ever made, but then, I thought leaving me was the worst, and obviously you’ve proven me wrong. You seem perfectly happy with your decision.”

She raised her chin, that defiant, obstinate look in her eyes. “I am.”

“Then we have no problem,” he said, and opened the door. “Let’s get this over with.”

CHAPTER THREE

7:32 a.m. Friday

LEE HARPER had been feeling odd all morning. Now as he glanced around the main floor of city hall, everything had a surreal feel to it. He and Kenny were on the ground floor at the back of city hall and they had their hostage. Kenny’s plan had worked.

“Could you help me over here?” Kenny snapped.

He turned to see Kenny wrestling with the woman. Lorna Sinke. That was her name. She was a tiny little thing, thin with brown hair and a small face that made her dark eyes seem larger. He’d seen her when he’d come to the city council meetings. She reminded him of Francine.

“Lee? Could you get your ass over here?”

He shook himself. “Sure.” He moved, feeling bulky in the large, cumbersome police jacket.

Kenny had her down on the floor but she was fighting him, kicking, scratching, biting him.

“Get my gun,” Kenny ordered. “Shoot the bitch.”

“You said no one would get hurt.”

“Shoot her, damn it! Or I’ll shoot you!”

Lee picked up the assault rifle, which Kenny had dropped, and walked over to where the two were struggling on the floor. The woman’s eyes were on him. She looked more angry than scared.

“Who are you fools?” she cried. “What do you think you’re doing? This is a city building on the historic registrar.”

“Shut the hell up,” Kenny said. “Shoot her, damn it!”

Lee just tapped her with the butt of the rifle, a light tap that connected with her skull. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she quit fighting. “Did I kill her?” he asked, feeling sick and confused. “I didn’t mean to kill her.” He was having trouble remembering what he was doing here.

Kenny snatched the rifle from him. “I told you to shoot her.”

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Lee said.

“Yeah. Sure. You got the cuffs on you?”

Lee frowned, then felt in the pocket of his large jacket, producing one of a half dozen pairs. He remembered Kenny saying there could be cleaning people or repairmen in the building. Better to be prepared than not. Or maybe he’d said that. Not that it mattered. He handed a set of handcuffs to Kenny.

Kenny was looking oddly at Lee’s big police coat. He shook his head and slapped one end of the handcuff on Lorna’s wrist. She was coming around, only dazed, not dead. Lee felt a surge of relief. Francine wouldn’t like it if anyone got hurt.

Yes, he recalled now. The handcuffs had been his idea. “Easy and faster than rope,” he’d told Kenny, who hadn’t been that impressed. Kenny had liked it, though, when Lee had told him about the Internet supply shop he’d found where they could get real police handcuffs. “They even have police uniforms and badges.”

Kenny had gotten excited then. “Lee, you’re a genius. We’ll dress as cops. It will make it that much easier to get the old broad to let us in.”

“The old broad,” as Kenny called her, was wide awake again. Lee could feel her gaze on him as he glanced up. He thought he heard a sound from one of the floors above them. The building should have been empty this time of the morning on a Friday. But he would have sworn he heard a door open upstairs.

7:37 a.m.

LORNA MEMORIZED the men’s faces. If she were called in for a lineup, she wanted to identify these two without the slightest hesitation. The younger of the men grabbed her shoulder and tried to flip her over onto her stomach, no doubt so he could cuff her wrists behind her. He appeared to be in his thirties; his face was thin, hair dishwater-blond, and he looked slovenly even in the police uniform. Especially in the scruffy sneakers. He held some sort of assault rifle in his free hand, his fingernails grimy.

“Help me roll this bitch over,” he ordered the older one, his breath smelling of garlic and alcohol.

With the handcuff dangling from her wrist, Lorna gripped the canvas bag with her purse, lunch and the cookies inside. Her cell phone was palmed in her other hand where he couldn’t see it. She lay perfectly still, hardly breathing as he turned to the other man, the soft-spoken elderly man who’d first approached her.

“Lee? Are you going to help me over here or not?”

Lee was in his late sixties, early seventies, neat as a pin. Even his black lace-up leather dress shoes were shined, creases ironed into his uniform pants. He wore a large, bulky-looking uniform jacket, which, now that she thought about it, was far too heavy for Southern California. He was still kind of slumped over a little, looking uncomfortable, still giving her the impression that he was in pain.

But she thought she remembered where she’d seen him. Wasn’t he the man who had come to the council meeting the last two months? Something about his wife.

“Wait a minute,” the young one said, straightening as he stared back at the man. “Where the hell is your gun, Lee?”

“You said to bring firepower, Kenny.”

“Yeah, so where is your firepower?”

Lee carefully unzipped his coat.

“Holy Mother of—What the hell is that? A bomb, Lee? You got a friggin’ bomb taped to your chest?”

“An explosive device, yes,” Lee said.

“Why the hell did you do that? Jeez. What if it goes off before you want it to?”

“Little chance of that,” the older man said.

“Unless you get shot or fall down?”

“I have to discharge it with this switch,” Lee told him, calmly pointing to a hole in the green-colored plastic explosives.

The hole was just large enough for his finger and a small red toggle switch. Lorna knew the switch was attached to a series of colored wires that ran to a digital watch and a blasting cap. She had recently watched a show on TV about bombs, curious how they worked. But she’d decided bombs were messy and too obvious. She preferred a more subtle approach.

Kenny was shaking his head and running his free hand through his hair. “Oh, man, you’re crazy, you know that? Beyond postal.”

From what Lorna had seen, they both fit in that category.

Kenny was so upset he wasn’t paying any attention to her. His kind took one look at her and saw a forty-something old maid, a woman afraid of her shadow, no threat at all.

His kind deserved everything they got.

“Never mind,” Kenny said. “I can do this by myself. I don’t want you blowing me up because you accidentally flip that damned switch while you’re helping me.” He put down the rifle, though not within her reach, and turned back around to her on the floor.

As he straddled her and started to reach down to try to roll her over again, she kicked him in the groin.

His knees buckled and she had just enough time to pull her legs to her chest and roll away. Scrambling to her feet, with her bag and the cell phone, the handcuffs still dangling from one wrist, she ran toward the front of the building and the staircase.

Kenny let out a howl that echoed through the rotunda. She raced up the wide central staircase, looking down through the railing only once, with satisfaction, to see that her kick still had Kenny on his knees.

“Get her, damn it!” Kenny wheezed. “Don’t just stand there, Lee! Get her!”

Lee was handicapped by the bomb on his chest and his age. Lorna, on the other hand, took all three flights of stairs every day, many times. She hated elevators and closed-in spaces.

She bounded up the stairs. She could hear Lee laboring up the steps behind her. He was breathing heavily and falling behind.

On the second floor she looked up and was shocked to see a group of people coming out of the meeting room, obviously to see what the racket was about. What were they doing here? Lorna thought as she recognized three of the city council members: Gwendolyn Clark, Fred Glazeman and James Baker, along with District Attorney Henry Lalane and City Attorney Rob Dayton. A secret meeting?

They all seemed surprised to see her running up the stairs with a handcuff dangling from one wrist.

“What is going on?” Gwendolyn demanded. She was a frumpy matronly type, with a round face and a large mouth that dominated her face. It didn’t help that her mouth was usually open.

Lorna could have asked her the same thing, but it seemed pretty obvious. The city councillors were having a “secret” meeting, and there was only one topic Lorna could imagine they would be talking about: her.

“Why is that policeman chasing you, Lorna?”

For just an instant Lorna was too stunned to answer. Gwendolyn had called a special “secret” meeting with these council members to try to get her fired? Lorna should have known the woman would pull something like this.

Lee’s labored steps behind her brought her back to the present problem. “That’s not a cop chasing me. He has a bomb taped to his chest. There’s another one down below with an assault rifle. They’re taking city hall hostage. Get back into the meeting room. Now!”

Lorna herded everyone back down the hall to the meeting room, Gwendolyn arguing all the way. Lorna shoved her into the room after the others, closed the door and locked it. Lee had been only a few yards away. She leaned against the door and looked at the others.

She’d worked hard for these councillors, and here they were, meeting in secret to get rid of her. The traitors. She almost wished she’d left them all outside the door for whatever those two men had planned for them.

Except for Fred, she thought, letting her gaze fall on her favorite councilman. He wasn’t like the others. He was kind and intelligent. A nice man. But Lorna knew that Gwendolyn had been trying to turn him against her.

“Barricade the door,” Lorna ordered. She’d have to deal with that problem later. Right now, there was something more pressing to take care of. “Barricade the door!”

For a moment no one moved. They all just stared at her as if she was the crazy one. D.A. Lalane started to call someone on his cell phone. “Don’t touch that cell phone. It might set off the bomb. Barricade the door, then get back from it. The man on the other side of this door has enough explosives taped to him to take out this entire room.”

She could hear Lee outside the door, trying the knob, kicking the door, then turning and retreating back down the hall.

Gwendolyn let out a shriek. “Oh, God, we’re all going to die.” She began to cry loudly. But it got the rest of them moving. D.A. Lalane pocketed his cell phone and ordered the others to help him with the large conference desk. Fred, of course, joined in to help Councilman James Baker and City Attorney Rob Dayton. Gwendolyn stood in the center of the room, wringing her hands and crying.

Lorna’s fingers were trembling, but more out of anger than fear as she carefully turned off her own cell phone. Two crazy men had barged their way into her city hall while upstairs a secret meeting had been in session to get rid of her. She didn’t know which made her angrier.

The law required all city council meetings to be public—unless the meeting was about personnel. If it had been about city personnel, the city manager would have been here. And since Lorna was the council’s only aide and Gwendolyn was dead-set on getting her fired, that definitely narrowed down the agenda of this meeting.

Tossing down her purse and the bag with her lunch and the cookies, Lorna picked up the meeting room phone, hoping the land line wouldn’t set off the bomb as she tapped out 911.

7:48 a.m.

KENNY CURSED THE WOMAN who’d kicked him and mentally listed all the things he was going to do to her when he caught her. And he would catch her. She couldn’t get out of the building and there wasn’t anyone around to help her. All he had to do was trap her on one of the upper floors.

He was so sure they were alone in the building that he was startled by the sound of raised voices overhead. A woman let out a shriek. Not the woman who’d kicked him. Then he thought he heard several men’s voices. What the hell?

He listened to the sound of voices, then footfalls upstairs, a door slamming, locking. He swore under his breath. Where the hell was Lee? Why hadn’t he stopped the woman?

This should have been a piece of cake. They were supposed to overpower the Lorna Sinke woman. Hell, as small and frail-looking as she was, it should have been a cinch.

Once he had a hostage and city hall, Kenny thought he’d be calling the shots. He could hear Lee’s arduous footsteps coming back down the stairs. He’d never expected the damned fool to show up wearing a bomb.

As Kenny got to his feet, he told himself that this wasn’t going as he’d planned, and it was all that damned Sinke woman’s fault. He swore he could hear her upstairs giving orders. The bitch.

He looked up at the sound of Lee’s shuffling feet.

“They all went into a room and locked the door,” Lee said.

“They all?” Kenny demanded.

“I recognized most of them. Three city council members, the district attorney and city attorney.” Lee nodded. “I think that was all. I only got a glimpse of them before they closed the door. Ms. Sinke was with them.”

Ms. Sinke? Lee was calling the bitch Ms. Sinke? Kenny swore. He was going to kill Ms. Sinke. The only good thing was that it sounded like he had some more hostages he could use as leverage. He didn’t need Sinke anymore.

As he turned toward the front of city hall and the wide staircase, he heard a sound that made him freeze and the hair stood up on the back of his neck. It was the click of a door opening.

Spinning around, Kenny brought his rifle up, shocked to see that Lee hadn’t locked and barricaded the door as Kenny had told him to.

A man in his middle forties, dressed like an undertaker in a dark suit, came walking in with an air about him as if he owned the place. Who in the hell was this? He looked vaguely familiar in a way that made Kenny nervous.

What were all these people doing here?

The man was so preoccupied he didn’t see them at first. He stopped when he did, not showing any concern at first to see two policemen in city hall before it opened for the day.

But then his gaze took in the assault rifle in Kenny’s hands. Kenny pointed the barrel at the man’s chest.

“Well, if it isn’t Judge Lawrence Craven,” Kenny said, and laughed, finally recognizing him. He looked different without his robe on and that bench in front of him.

Craven studied him for a moment. “Four years for burglary.”

Kenny smiled. “You remembered. I’m touched. What the hell are you doing here before city hall opens, anyway?”

Craven glanced toward the stairs but didn’t answer.

Obviously he’d come by to see someone, but he didn’t want to say who. Now why was that?

Not that it mattered. This was a stroke of luck. “Lee, we just got a real break. This hostage is better than your Ms. Sinke or all the councilmen and lawyers in the world. Make sure no one else can come through that damned door and let’s go see what other hostages we have.”

7:54 a.m.

AS ANNA WALKED with Flint down the hallway to the briefing room, she couldn’t have been more aware of him. After all these years, they were here together. Only not together. Not even close.

When she thought back to when they’d first met…She shook her head. What happened to those two people who were so head-over-heels in love?

She smiled to herself at the memory of the first time he’d asked her for a date. She could practically smell the salt, hear the Pacific breaking on the sandy beach, feel the sun on her back. She’d been coming out of the water, her surfboard tucked under her arm, happy in her element, when she’d seen someone waiting for her.

She’d squinted into the sun, seeing first the dark silhouette of a man, then the uniform. A cop. Her heart sank. Bad news. Something to do with her family?

“Hi,” he said. “You probably don’t remember me.” He seemed so different in the uniform, sand sticking to his freshly polished black cop shoes, and looked as out of place and uncomfortable as anyone she’d ever seen.

“You’re a cop,” she said, relieved and yet feeling foolish. Of course he was a cop. She knew that. She’d just forgotten that part and hadn’t recognized him in uniform for a moment. He hadn’t been in Southern California long; his skin was not yet tanned. His hair was straight black. One errant lock hung down over one dark eye.

How could she have forgotten that deep, wonderful voice? Or that boyish face? Or that bump on his forehead?

She reached out to gently touch the knot on his head. “I see some of the swelling has gone down.”

He grinned. “You remember me, I guess.”

“How could I forget?” she joked, remembering the huge bump he’d gotten on his head from being hit by a fly ball during a cop tournament baseball game, then the crazy ambulance ride to the hospital, where the doctor had assured them both that it was only a slight concussion. And all the time, the guy’d been trying to get her home phone number.

He’d insisted she not leave his side, even with the entire police department baseball team packed into the hospital emergency room, all laughing as Flint pleaded his case for her phone number, saying it was her fault he got hit by that fly ball. If he hadn’t been admiring her….

She’d finally given him the number. But he’d never called.

Instead he’d shown up at the beach, and he was so shy, so sincere, so nervous he seemed like a different guy.

“You saved my life,” he said.

Right. “It wasn’t quite that dramatic.”

“You’re wrong.” He settled those dark eyes on her. “It was for me. It was the luckiest day of my life.”

That day at the ballpark he’d been wearing the T-shirt she’d carried around with her for the last five years. His lucky shirt, he used to call it. Lucky because he’d been wearing it the day he met her.

She normally didn’t date his type. Jocks. Stars of one sport or another. The kind of guys her sister Emily always dated. And ended up marrying.

Anna had only given him her number that day at the hospital to shut him up. She’d never expected him to call. If he had called, she would have turned him down. And saved them both a lot of grief. Instead he’d shown up at the beach, looking sweet and shy and anxious as he asked her to dinner.

And fool that she’d been, she’d said yes. Look where that had gotten them, she thought now, dragging herself out of the memory as Flint halted at the door to the briefing room.

He opened the door and stood back to let her enter.

“After you,” she said. “Just one of the team.”

He made a face. “Right.” He turned and entered the room ahead of her.

She braced herself. There were always a few men on a SWAT team who had trouble accepting a woman among them. Fortunately most of the men were younger, more in tune with the times. Flint, she hoped, would prove to be the exception rather than the rule, since the Courage Bay SWAT team was all men.

As she stepped into the briefing room, she heard a male voice ask, “You are aware that the last time a paramedic went in with us, she was injured?”

There was some grumbling agreement.

“That’s why I’ve gone with a paramedic with SWAT training and experience,” Max answered. “Anna can handle herself under pressure. She knows the danger. She’s going to surprise you all.”

Anna flushed. “Thank you, Chief Zirinsky,” she said, moving out from behind Flint to meet a lot of very male faces.

To her surprise, Flint stepped to her side. “Gentlemen, this is Anna Carson, our new SWAT team paramedic. Anna, if you will,” he said, giving her the floor.

She looked at the men, then laid it out for them in a flat, no-nonsense account. “I am SWAT trained, second in my class. I spent three years on a Washington, D.C., SWAT team. I received several medals for bravery and dedication to duty. I have been involved in tactical situations from bank robberies and terrorist attacks to domestic disputes and hostage-suicides.” She stopped before adding, “I’m honored to be part of your SWAT team, and I look forward to working with all of you.”