“He won’t go down without killing her first,” I said.
“They know that,” she replied. “That’s why no one has entered the building yet.”
“Osthoff just told me they have a SWAT entry team standing by,” Ben told us. “They should be rolling any minute.
“I’ve been in there,” he added. “It’s at Second and Ashley. Back when I was in uniform, I chased this little prick into it after he had tried to break into a place a coupla’ blocks over on Broadway.” He shook his head and noisily sucked on his teeth as he pondered the screen. “There’s a whole lotta places to hide in there. And in the dark on top of it? Shit…”
Ben’s cell phone pealed, and he turned it up in his hand to inspect the display. With a disgusted grunt, he stabbed the device with his thumb then placed it against his ear. “Yeah, this is Storm. What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”
The languid pace of the drama on the television screen prompted the station to cut from the scene and back to the studio. The transition was a sudden switch to a groomed man behind the news desk who was staring at an angle off camera as he began speaking.
“We will now return you to network programming…” The reporter did a quick double-take motion with his head and then suddenly shifted a quarter turn toward the live camera with only a slight stutter.
I ignored the segue back to the sitcom and focused my attention on the side of Ben’s conversation that I could hear.
“Yeah, we’ve got it on the TV right now,” he said into the phone then waited.
Constance, Felicity, and I watched him as he frowned and rocked in place. He brought his free hand up to smooth back his hair, winced, shot it a disgusted look, and then went ahead with the mannerism anyway.
“Yeah, well I don’t really think you can blame Rowan for you bargin’ in here,” he said with a note of irritation. “You wasted your own time, Lieutenant, not him.
“Uh-huh…Yeah…Uh-huh… Well, trust me, we weren’t plannin’ on goin’ anywhere at the moment anyway, so I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about.”
“That woman is a real piece of work,” Mandalay muttered.
“Aye, I was thinking more like she’s an oinnseach,” Felicity remarked.
“What’s that?”
“An idiot.”
Mandalay smirked at the insult. “I’ll agree with you there.”
“Yeah, well, you can…” Ben barked suddenly and then paused for a moment to regain his composure before continuing in a restrained tone. “Yeah, well you’ll just have to tell him that yourself. Yeah. Fine.”
My friend ended the call without ceremony and then terminated the connection with a pair of clumsy thrusts from his thumb against the keypad. He looked up at us while shaking his head in an animated arc. “Jeezus H. Christ on roller skates!”
“What did she say?” Mandalay asked him, then added, “Like we can’t guess.”
“Well,” he huffed. “She started out by blaming Row for her wasting time here, but I guess you prob’ly caught that. Other than that, she told me she’s en-route to the scene and has officially ordered us to stay put until we hear from her.”
“What are you supposed to tell me?” I asked.
“Let’s not go there, white man.”
“Ben…”
“Just the same shit, Row,” he growled. “She’s all about saying that you’re responsible for whatever happens to Sullivan.”
“Well,” I returned, “I am.”
“Look, Row,” he said. “What I was saying earlier, forget it. You went with your gut, and you kept him on the line long enough to peg a location. You made the right call, and you aren’t responsible for what this wingnut does.”
“I won’t argue it with you, Ben,” I answered. “I know what I have to own up to in the end.”
“You won’t have to,” Constance offered. “It won’t hold up in court. There’s no way.”
“That’s not where I will have to face it. Anything you do comes back to you,” I told them, then recited a snippet of the Wiccan Rede as explanation. “Mind the threefold law ye should, three times bad and three times good.”
“Aye,” Felicity spoke up. “Don’t you start quoting like Eldon Porter now. The law of three would not apply here.”
“I won’t debate it with you, either,” I told her gently. “I deliberately antagonized him, and I just might have made the wrong choice.”
“Stop second guessing yourself, Rowan,” Ben instructed. “Albright’s wrong. That’s all there is to it. End of story.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Ain’t no remains to be nothin’,” he spat. “She’s wrong, so drop it.”
Across the room, the bell on the telephone sprang to life, jangling out an angry-sounding demand to be answered. We all froze, staring at one another with shared trepidation. I started to move toward the kitchenette just as the ringer belted out its noise for the third time.
Behind me, Mandalay’s cell phone began to chirp. By the time I brought my fingers to rest on the handset in the kitchen, Ben’s phone had added itself to the fray, forming a discordant trio of chaotic tunes.
CHAPTER 28:
My stomach was starting to churn as I lifted the receiver and placed it against the side of my head. Bouncing around inside my skull was a desperate fear that I was about to become wholly responsible for Eldon Porter taking the life of a young woman who was associated with me by only tenuous threads at best. The concept of guilt by association was abhorrent enough, but this was virtually a case of guilt by future association.
It didn’t matter how much reassurance I was given by Ben and Constance; the fact remained, in my mind I would hold myself accountable. I would experience a threefold return for my actions; there was no doubt. It was a foregone conclusion. And, I knew that if nothing else, it would be self-imposed. If it came to that, the payback would be harsh, and worst of all, inescapable.
My brain tabbed through the possible greetings, both appropriate and not-several of which I desperately wanted to snarl. I wanted to scream each of them at Porter in unending succession, backed with every thread of anger I could muster; anger was something I had in abundance right now.
However, at the same time the fire raged inside me, I was fully aware that even a single one of the phrases might possibly seal Star’s fate the moment it was uttered. I simply didn’t know what would push him over into the red zone, and I didn’t want to find out. I forced myself to draw in a deep breath and search once again for center.
I don’t know how long I actually stood there with the handset to my ear, staring off into space, completely mute. What I do know is that the pause was long enough for my choice of greetings to become inconsequential. As a fleeting moment of calm passed before me, I reached out for it and made a desperate grab.
My shoulders involuntarily relaxed as the person on the other end of the line spoke.
“Hello?” A confused, feminine voice flowed into my ear. “Anyone there? Rowan? Felicity?”
“Yeah, Cally,” I answered with a slow sigh. “Yeah, I’m here.”
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine, Cally,” I told her. “Listen…”
“Do you have the TV on?” She began her excited query before I could finish. “They’ve got someone trapped in a warehouse. It’s on all the stations. Is that him?”
“Calm down, Cally,” I told her. “I know. We’ve been watching. And yes, it’s him. So, listen…”
“I knew it!” she exclaimed, barreling over me once again. “I could feel it. I told everyone here that it had to be him.”
