“I forgot to tell them about Covey!” she says. “They’re going to need to know about that.” She checks her watch. “Tommy’s stepmom will be here anytime. We—I mean, they—will need tofigure out how to go about letting Tommy see the dog. We—I mean, I—promised him that.”
She quickens her pace. Hope hopes that agreeing to the dog was the right thing to do. She’s counting on the dog to break something open in Tommy, to pave the way toward the resolution they all need. If she’s right, she’s a hero. If she’s wrong, she’s an idiot.
“You negotiated that,” Bo says. “You need to be here when it happens.”
She shakes her head, insistent. “They’ll handle it.”
She expects him to argue with her, but he says nothing, just keeps his head down as he trudges to the NOC, to the people inside it waiting to take over the negotiation.
Inside the post office the hostages use the boredom to their advantage, hoping and praying that Tommy will do as Nadine said and fall asleep. They talk in low tones about boring things on purpose. They do not make jokes so there are no loud outbursts of laughter. Sylvie asks Nadine a lot of questions about the post office rules and regulations just to increase their odds. When Nadine starts to tell a story about the time someone tried to mail live chickens, Sylvie shakes her head, a quick, subtle redirection. No funny stories.
The mood is deliberately quiet and subdued. So much so that they feel themselves getting sleepy. So surely Tommy must be as well. Tommy, sitting where Nadine told him to, has eaten a whole pizza by himself. Finished, he leans his head back, resting it against the cabinet. They take turns glancing at him. They notice his eyelids growing heavy. He has to work to keep them open.
They all think,Any minute now.
Sure enough, there finally comes a time when Tommy’s eyes close and do not open again. Nadine silently pumps her fist in the air as they all exchange smiles, their heads swirling with the thought of the freedom that awaits. They find themselves leaning forward as they look to Nadine, expecting her to get up and run to the door like they’d talked about. But instead, they watch, their faces contorted with confusion, as she crawls toward Tommy. Blythe wants to cry out, “No! This isn’t what we agreed on!” but she cannot say a word. She has to sit silently as Nadine reaches for the gun that rests in Tommy’s lap.
She’s going to get that gun and shoot him with it, thinks Blythe. She can’t say that she would blame her. But Nadine is potentially risking their freedom for the sake of revenge. Blythe claps her hand over her own mouth to keep from calling out as she watches Nadine use her pincer fingers to slowly, gently slide the gun from his lap. The room holds its collective breath as she inches it across the fabric of his jeans.
Tommy’s eyes fly open and his hand clamps down on Nadine’s at the exact same moment. Then everyone is hollering—Tommy hollers at Nadine, Nadine hollers at Tommy, and Blythe, Morrow, and Sylvie just holler, whether in fear that Tommy will shoot them or in outrage that they are not free doesn’t make a difference. They had a chance, and now that chance is blown.
Blythe wants to yell at Nadine too. She wants to scream out, “Why didn’t you just unlock the door like we planned?” But to ask that in front of Tommy is to divulge that they had a plan, which would only anger him further. And it would reveal that Nadine has her own set of keys, which he still doesn’t know. Maybe at some point she will get the chance to ask Nadine what she was thinking, but now is not the time.
She thinks of her own impulsivity in attacking Tommy when he had her package. That wasn’t smart either, but she got her package back. She looks to it, as if to confirm that it is still there, tucked under her stool. She goes and picks it up, brushes her fingers across the seam, smoothing down the little tear that Tommy made. In the midst of the melee, she thinks about Murphy and how glad she is that she is keeping all of him all to herself.
Chapter 30
The hostages’ yells erupt over the speaker as the incoming team scrambles to place their first call to the suspect even as the SWAT commander insists they can enter through the back and put an end to this with minimal risk. SWAT likes to end things with force, but negotiators like to end things with words. Sometimes it seems that the two sides are at odds, but they are all fighting the same battle. Usually they find a way to meet in the middle.
Pushed to the side, Hope and Bo watch them search for that middle, Hope silently fearing that any ground they’ve gained today is now lost. Until the screams erupted it had been silent. Whatever just happened inside the post office has shifted the environment from quiet sanity into mad uproar. If they’d had eyes and not just ears on the situation, they’d know what happened. Now that the county is here, they will likely be able to use drones or robots. Or maybe the dog could have a camera mounted on his collar? She will mention this to the team as soon as she can. But first they need to make contact. She watches as they make several failed attempts to contact Tommy. They try his cell phone and the post office landline to no avail.
The hope is not so much leaking out of the room as whooshing out of it like a tire blown. She could leave, but she needs to tell them about the dog first. She wants to explain to them whatCovey means to the suspect. She will refer to him as the suspect because, to them, he is still just that. But in the last few hours he’s become Tommy to her. Tommy who asked for his dad, the one thing he knew he couldn’t have. She understands this better than most people. She wants to make sure that Tommy gets to see the dog. As unconventional as it is, it makes sense to her. She just hopes she can communicate this in a way that will make sense to them.
Beside her, Bo shifts his weight from side to side. She can almost hear his old bones protesting as he does. He probably shouldn’t be on his feet for too long. “You could go, you know,” she whispers to Bo.
She watches his face harden as he shakes his head. A single muscle in his jaw flinches. “I’m staying put.”
Hope doesn’t argue further. She looks away, sees Adam from the county team looking at her with his finger crooked, beckoning her. “I’ll be right back,” she says to Bo.
Adam is all business. “It’s kind of tight in here,” he says. “I think we’ve got it under control if you’d like to take off.”
“Oh, I know.” Hope can take a hint. She would feel the same if she’d relieved someone but they kept standing around in the close quarters inside the NOC, which is growing warmer by the minute from all the body heat. “I just wanted to tell you before I go—I almost forgot about the dog.”
“The dog?” asks Adam, narrowing his eyes. Hope sees him motion for his other team members. As they walk over, Bo does as well. She appreciates the gesture of solidarity.
With everyone looking at her, she finds herself fumbling with her words. “Tommy—the suspect,” she corrects herself, “asked to see his father, which turned out was just a bluff. His father is deceased. But I didn’t find that out until I tried to get in touch with him. I did speak with the stepmother, and when she foundout what was happening, she offered to bring the father’s dog here, in case that would help.”
As she speaks she recalls the earnestness in the woman’s voice. She’d wanted to do something, to help somehow, like so many people want to do in cases like this. In police work it is expected to see the worst of society. But Hope has also seen the best of it too. At times it is easy to forget one and dwell on the other.
“The suspect is apparently quite close to the dog. It seems that after his father died, he really wanted to have the dog come live with him. There was some sort of custody battle over the dog, for lack of a better term. And there was some bad blood between the stepmother and the suspect as a result. I think her offer to bring the dog is her way of trying to mend fences.”
The group nods and Hope continues. “The trouble is the dog is all the way in New Bern, and she had to get ready, then drive more than two and a half hours.” Hope shrugs. “At the time I honestly thought the situation would be resolved before she got here. But it seemed like she needed to make the effort as much as the suspect needed to hear that she was bringing the dog. So I went along with it.”
Chris wrinkles his nose like he has caught a whiff of something foul. “I’m not sure I feel comfortable with him having access to the dog. Especially if there’s bad blood between him and the stepmother. He could be setting up some sort of revenge ploy. And even if he isn’t, it could provoke him further. The emotions this could trigger feel too loose.”
The teammates exchange glances. “We run a tighter operation than that,” Adam adds, siding with his teammate because of course he is.
“I get it,” says Hope. “No pun intended, but I don’t have a dog in this fight. Not anymore.” In her peripheral vision she sees Bo frown as she adds, “But I truly didn’t think it would go this far.”
