“We didn’t know what we’d find here.”
Tom felt panic kicking like a crazed animal in his chest. Having lived through last night, he didn’t fancy dying here, and he couldn’t live with Melba’s death on his account.
“Where’s my nurse?” he shouted. “Bring her out here where I can see her!”
As he stared down the hall, waiting, the man raised his right hand as though trying to calm him down. While Tom’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, he realized there was another man standing behind the first, and he held a large bulbous rifle in his hands. A sniper rifle.
“Who’s your senior officer?” Tom called.
“I am,” said the man with his arm up.
The animal in Tom’s chest was kicking harder. With every passing second he became more certain that he had no way out of this situation—not alive, anyway. He heard a sliding sound from down the hall behind him. He turned, careful to keep his gun at the masked man’s head, and saw Melba Price lying motionless on her side while a SWAT trooper dragged her across the carpet. They were trying to hide her body from him!
“You sons of bitches!” he yelled, nearly pulling the trigger on the man under his power. “You killed her!”
“No!” shouted the commander. “She’s not dead. We just darted her.”
“Bullshit!” Tom screamed.
“I swear to God, Doc! We’re just here to pick you up, to deliver you to Colonel Knox—alive. He wants to talk to you.”
“That’s a lie! That wasn’t the deal. The deal was that if he wanted to talk to me, he’d call off the APB first. I saw the news twenty minutes ago, and they’re still running an alert!”
“I don’t know anything about that,” the commander shouted, his hand still in the air. “But you’ve got to see there’s no point shooting anybody. Just put down your gun and go take the woman’s pulse.”
“Sure,” Tom said, almost unable to think. “And this bastard breaks my neck on the way down the hall.”
“Take him with you. Keep your gun on him.”
“Why are you holding your arm in the air?” Tom asked, sensing something wrong. “Is that some kind of signal?”
When the man didn’t answer, Tom turned to try to gauge his chances of dragging his hostage down the hall to check Melba’s pulse.
He’d never make it.
The sight of her prone body brought tears to his eyes. “Bring her to me!” he yelled. “Tell your man to drag her down here, or I pull the trigger. I’ve got nothing to lose. I’m going to die anyway.”
His hostage shouted, “He won’t kill me, Major. Take him!”
Tom moved the gun two inches to the right and fired a round into the ceiling. His hostage screamed and recoiled, but before he could break away Tom stabbed the gun barrel into his neck again.
“Next one goes into your brain,” Tom said, his whole arm alive with energy.
“Don’t move, Sergeant,” called the commander. “I know that tone well. Doc, you take it easy. I’m going to take off my helmet so you can see my eyes.”
Tom heard the sliding sound behind him again. When he turned, he saw the trooper at the other end of the hall dragging Melba out of sight. A wild emotion he’d never experienced surged through him.
“Stand down!” shouted the commander. “Let that woman lie!”
Grief and fury had taken possession of Tom. Whirling back toward the commander, he felt his gun hand tense to pull the trigger. But even as he did, the commander dropped his right hand, and a flash blanked out Tom’s dilated eyes. Pain exploded in his right shoulder, and his gun arm went limp as boots pounded toward him. His hostage twisted the .357 from his hand, then propped him up before he could fall.
“Target taken!” shouted the commander. “Air one, exfil at the front crescent.”
Tom blinked again and again, his thoughts scrambled into chaos.
“Get everything he had!” someone yelled. “Clothes, drugs, phones—everything.”
“What about the nurse’s car?”
“Leave it.”
In the confusion of Tom’s mind, one clear image rose: Melba lying motionless while men leaped over her as though she were no longer worthy of notice. Pain radiated through him like arcs of fire, and when he looked down, he saw a single bright bloom of blood on what had been his good shoulder. Someone jammed two fingers under his jaw to feel his carotid, but by then his last reserve of strength had given out, and everything went black.
CHAPTER 43
CAITLIN WAS WORKING alone in her office when Jordan Glass knocked, then slipped inside with two go-cups from Hammer’s Drive-Thru in Vidalia.
“Vodka and cranberry,” she said. “You up for it?”
Caitlin hesitated, suddenly remembering her pregnancy, but a perverse instinct, combined with her deep anxiety, made her reach for the sweating plastic cup with the colored umbrella sticking out of it.
“How’d your errand work out?” Jordan asked.
“Awful and wonderful at the same time, I’d say. Does that make sense?”
“In my experience, it’s always that way. Nearly every great photo I ever shot cost me dearly, one way or another.”
“This is costing me, all right. I’ve never been as torn about something as I am tonight.”
“Should we go back to the ladies’ room?”
“No need. I just had this room swept by someone who knows what he’s doing.”
“Good. So . . .” Jordan slid into the seat opposite Caitlin’s desk. “You’re holding things back, right?”
Caitlin hesitated, then nodded.
“From John and the Bureau? Or from Penn?”
“From everybody.”