“Anything I can do before Hostage Rescue goes in?”
Baxter shakes his head. “He’s using the only phone, so we can’t call and ask him to come out. I don’t think I would anyway. He might do the hostage.”
Lenz nods. “Mr. Cole and I need to speak privately. Any chance?”
I can’t believe Lenz is this persistent. Baxter motions for us to follow him through a narrow door at the end of the aisle. Beyond it is a dim room with six bunks shelved up the walls in groups of three and a microwave kitchenette between.
“I want you with me when they go in, Arthur,” Baxter says. “If our UNSUB is as smart as he’s been so far, he may catch on and barricade himself.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” says Lenz.
When the door closes after Baxter, the psychiatrist takes a seat on one of the bottom bunks, pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lights one, which must be breaking about a dozen rules in this high-tech government vehicle. No alarm goes off. He blows smoke away from us and says, “You talked your way in. Let’s finish up.”
“Doctor, nothing I could tell you has anything to do with the EROS murders.”
“Then the sooner you tell me, the sooner you’ll be in the clear.”
My eyes remain on his face, but my mind is far away.
He takes another drag in silence, then gets up from the bed and squats before a small refrigerator. The opening door fills the room with sickly fluorescent light. “Eureka,” he says in a deadpan voice. “It seems that Daniel’s boys share your taste for orally administered carcinogens.”
Lenz holds a pink Tab can covered with icy condensation over his shoulder. I take it, pop the top, and suck down half its contents in four quick swallows. The peppery sting of caffeine-spiked carbonation burns my gums and throat and makes my eyes water. I feel twice as good as I did ten seconds ago. I want to tell Lenz that there is no secret, that I’ve never done anything to really be ashamed of, but of course that would be absurd. He knows there’s something there. He knows there’s always something.
“You still don’t understand what’s happening, do you?” he says, sitting back on the bed with a bottle of Evian.
“I know a woman’s life is at stake.”
His face is a gray outline behind gray smoke. “That’s not what I mean. Something’s eating you up inside, Cole. I’d say it’s been eating at you for a long time. You
The maddening thing is that Lenz is right. I don’t especially want to tell
“Relax,” he says. “I carry more secrets around in my head than any ten priests. There’s hardly room in there for sins like yours, between the rapes and the child abuse and the murders.”
“None of those give you leverage over me,” I point out, my voice brittle.
He smiles a little at that. “You think I don’t have leverage now?”
I shrug.
In that moment Lenz’s eyes look older than any I’ve ever seen. Older than the eyes of crooked black women in the Delta, older than the eyes of men who’ve survived combat. “It’s your wife’s sister,” he says softly. “Isn’t it.”
No feigned reaction will deceive those eyes. Fury at Miles boils like acid up into my chest.
“Don’t blame Turner,” Lenz says gently. “He doesn’t even know he knows. I think he’s half in love with the girl himself.”
I say nothing.
Lenz takes a drag from his cigarette. “I know you’re no murderer.” He laughs. “Your sense of guilt is far too well developed for that. What do you think? I’m fishing for information to ruin your marriage? To force you to work for me? Like the threat of arrest or ten years of tax audits wouldn’t be enough?”
He stands suddenly and pats me on the shoulder. “Take it easy, Cole. Let’s go watch some TV. One way or another, everything’s going to look a lot different in a few minutes.”
With that he opens the door and leads me back into the main room. A small crowd has gathered around the video bank, but it parts like the Red Sea for Lenz. I slipstream behind him.
One of the nerds has taken up station in a chair before the monitor bank, a headset over his ears, both hands on control knobs. I hear a burst of static, then a Southern-accented voice saying, “This is Deke Smith, Dallas SWAT, advising Hostage Rescue has arrived.”
The acknowledgment is lost beneath Daniel Baxter’s “Okay, let’s do it.” He nods anxiously at the screens. “Did they lock and load in the van?”
The nerd in the chair repeats the question like a submarine officer relaying the orders of his captain. He listens to his headset, then replies, “Locked and loaded. Approaching the local command post.”
“Damn it, I want to hear everything,” snaps Baxter. “Put it all on the squawk box.”
The nerd flips a couple of switches, and suddenly the trailer is alive with the voices of the Dallas FBI SWAT team, the Dallas police, an FBI command post, and the wireless communications of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team.
“Bravo Leader, checking in. Testes, testes, one, two.”
Someone behind me emits a truncated laugh.
“That’s Joe Payne, Hostage Rescue commander,” Baxter says, either for my benefit or Lenz’s. “They’re Bravo Team.”
The remainder of Payne’s unit checks in, which sounds like between eight and twelve men. It’s hard to tell because they all talk at once.
“We live to Alpha?” someone asks over the radio. Payne, I think.
Baxter hits the nerd on the shoulder. The nerd mutters into his headset mike. Someone on-site tells Payne he is live to Alpha.
“Are we Alpha?” I ask.
A tech opposite me rolls his eyes.
“Is the target still on the phone?” asks Payne.
Someone farther along the trailer yells, “Affirmative. An EROS tech in New York confirms UNSUB interacting with a female subscriber.”
“Prospective victim number eight,” says Baxter.
“No point in waiting,” crackles Payne’s voice. “Can’t see anything through the windows. Let’s mount up.”
“What about video?” asks Baxter. “You got a camera going in?”
The nerd relays the question, and Payne says, “Camera goes in right after the guns.”
Unable to bear the delay, Baxter yanks the headset off the nerd’s head and puts it on. “Joe, this is Dan Baxter. You don’t want to slip a pinhole camera under the door and check the layout?”
“Not this time. Dallas P.D. did a good job staying out of sight. I don’t think this guy knows the cavalry’s here. I don’t want anyone approaching that door until we go up with the sledgehammers.”
“The manager wouldn’t give up a key?”
“Sledgehammers are faster,” says Payne. “We’re busting off the hinges in case he has hardened dead bolts. I’m holding a floor plan now. Last-minute advice?”
Baxter turns to Lenz. “Arthur?”
“Whoever’s in there,” says Lenz, “I’d like to see them get out alive. We could learn a lot.”
“I heard that,” says Payne. “You tell your shrink no guarantees. This guy throws down on us, we take him out.”
“Can they go for a disabling wound?” asks Lenz.
Baxter starts to explain something about body armor, but Payne’s reply drowns him out. “If my men shoot, they shoot for the head.”
“Good luck, Joe,” says Baxter.
“I’ll watch the reruns with you tonight,” says Payne. “You bring the beer.”
“You’re on.”
Suddenly the camaraderie is gone. Now the radio exchanges sound like snippets from a World War II combat movie. Curt questions, clipped replies. I hear several sighs of satisfaction around me as a third video screen lights
