Shoot / Don't Shoot

Nodding woodenly, Joanna stood up. She walked across the room feeling like she was bal­ancing on a tightrope hundreds of feet above the ground—a tightrope with no safety net. A monster chess-master held Jenny’s life in his hands and he was using her as a sacrificial pawn. Carol Strong would never agree to a deal. She couldn’t possibly. But with Jenny’s and Cecelia’s very survival hang­ing in the balance ...

It took forever for Joanna to fumble a quarter out of her purse. Then, when she tried to put it in the coin slot, her hand trembled so badly, it was all she could do to make it work. And even after she finally heard the buzz of the dial tone, she could hardly force her fingers to do the dialing.

“Detective Strong, please,” Joanna said. At least her throat and voice still worked. That in itself seemed amazing.

Expecting to be told Carol wouldn’t be in until after four, Joanna was surprised when the clerk said, “Who’s calling, please?”

“Joanna Brady,” she answered. “Sheriff Joanna Brady.”

Carol Strong came on the line a moment later. “Thank God it’s you,” she said breathlessly. “I’ve been calling your room every five minutes. I didn’t want to leave a message on the voice mail for fear Jenny, not you, might pick it up. I think we’ve got him, Joanna. I should have figured it out lots sooner than this. I mean it was right there in front of me all along, but until I talked to Serena’s attor­ney just now—”

“Larry Dysart has Jenny,” Joanna interrupted. “Jenny and Ceci Grijalva both. He told me to call you and tell you he wants a deal.”

Carol stopped abruptly. “You know about Larry Dysart?” she asked. “You say he has Jenny?”

“Yes.”

“Damn! What kind of a deal is he looking for?”

“He says he wants to leave town with no reper­cussions. He wants us to let him go.”

“Where are you?” Carol asked.

“At the hotel. In the lobby. We’re sitting right in front of the fireplace.”

“I can be there in five minutes. I’ll call in the pecial Ops boys—”

“A SWAT team?” Joanna almost screeched into the phone. “No way! Are you crazy? The hotel is full of people. Someone would get hurt. Not only that, he says that if anything happens to him, the girls will die.”

“He’s bluffing.” Carol Strong’s answer was firm and brisk, but that was easy for her. It wasn’t Carol Strong’s daughter who was missing.

“Carol,” Joanna insisted. “Listen to me. He’s got the girls. This isn’t a bluff!”

There was a long pause. “Get a grip, Joanna,” Carol ordered.

“Get a grip?” Joanna echoed. “What the hell do you mean, ‘get a grip’?”

“I mean stop thinking like a mother and start thinking like a cop. What if it’s already too late? What if he is bluffing and the girls are already dead?”

The stark words hit Joanna with the force of a smashing fist to the gut. The sheer pain of it almost doubled her over. Nausea rose in her throat. She fought it down, but somehow the terrible shock of hearing those words vaporized her rising sense of panic.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked finally.