“And if it did, you knew you’d already be gone.” Adam pretends to say this under his breath, but it is loud enough to be heard by everyone standing there.
Hope feels a flash of anger but wills herself not to show it. She knows it’s the right thing to allow Tommy to see the dog—she feels it deep inside—but gut instincts are hard to explain. She must be willing to stand up to the scrutiny of her decision.
And then she can go home. Well, she corrects herself, not home.
More and more, she wants to go home-home, not just to Alex, but back to her team in Pennsylvania, who would have her back the same as this team has one another’s. She can’t blame them for their unity. She’d be the same with her team.Except, she thinks,you left them behind.She blamed the work for what happened and abandoned her job, which included the people she’d worked side by side with for years. Driven by grief and plagued by PTSD, she ran away, sought shelter here.It was supposed to have been safe, she thinks.That was why I came.
“She shouldn’t leave,” Bo speaks up, interrupting her thoughts and making her heart rate hitch at the same time.
Adam turns on Bo. “Remind me again what department you’re with?” he asks, crossing his arms and squinting at him.
Nonplussed, Bo answers, “I’m retired FBI, here of my own volition, with the authorization of the Sunset Beach police chief.” He gives Hope a sideways glance, then returns his gaze to Adam. “I came to act as a consultant since the situation here was sort of... unprecedented.” He rocks back on his heels. “I’ve met the chief a few times, and when I heard about this, I gave him a call, offered my services. He was glad for the assistance, especially since your team had... delays.” He reaches over and pats Hope’s shoulder. “Turns out I wasn’t really needed. This young lady had it all under control without me.” Hope notices he’s still not using her name and wonders if he still can’t recall it.
Adam frowns. He opens his mouth, perhaps to argue some more, but he is silenced by the interruption of a ringing phone.
“I guess that’s for you,” says Bo, looking in the direction of the back of the truck where Adam and Chris are to sit for the negotiation, one to talk, one to coach. They nod and rotate on their heels at the same time, moving toward the ringing and into their positions. Hope reaches for Bo’s sleeve and pulls him with her, getting out of their way so the team can work.
She moves until she can go no farther, resting her aching back against the walls of the semi. She watches the negotiation from a distance, feeling detached from what is happening. She should just leave already. In truth she is relieved to be relieved. Though nothing really bad has happened so far, she knows all too well that things can go sideways without warning. She would rather be back at 108, relaxing with Rufus, if it does. Caught between the team’s desire for her to go and Bo’s insistence that she stay, she stands immobile.Just wait a bit longer, she tells herself.Appease Bo. And then you can go.
Chapter 31
“Who is this?” Tommy shouts the question instead of a greeting into the phone. He is back to using the post office phone, his cell phone shoved into his back pocket and his gun tucked into his waistband. The women are grateful it is no longer in his hand. He’d been so angry over what Nadine did—the kind of angry that can make a person do reckless, regrettable things. They’d feared—real, certain fear, unlike anything they’d felt up to that point—that he would kill her.
Instead, he’d just paced and cussed, paced and cussed, ignoring the ringing phone, intermittently talking to himself. “They’re back there trying to get in. I can hear them.” He walked over to the counter, stepped behind it, and craned his neck to see into the back part of the building, looking backward and forward, from his hostages to the area where—he wasn’t wrong—they could all hear people doing something to the building.
If they gained access and came in, the women wondered, would he shoot them? Himself? Was that the way this would end? The thought brought on more fear. Sylvie thought of Robert. Morrow thought of Maya. Blythe thought of Aaron. Nadine thought about her secret, of dying without ever telling it.
They were all lost in their private thoughts when Tommy moved to the phone, picking it up like it was what had wrongedhim as he waited for someone to answer. When he yelled, “Who is this?” they all jumped in unison and looked wide-eyed at one another before looking to Tommy. Now they watch him listen to whoever is speaking, each one still trembling and rattled. They don’t want anything else to set him off.
“Where’s the girl?” he asks, spittle hitting the receiver. He is holding the phone so tightly his knuckles are white. They cannot hear what is said in return. It was better when he was using his cell phone; they could at least sort of hear what the person on the other end was saying. “I’m talking about the girl I’ve been talking to all day,” Tommy says. There is more silence as he listens again. “I ain’t talking to you, dude. I want the one I’ve already been talking to. I need to speak to that girl.”
He needs Hope, Sylvie thinks.We all do.
Outside, in the NOC, thanks to the technology available to the new team, everyone has listened to Tommy’s ravings through the speaker, the escalating anger they tried and failed to talk him down from. Finally, Chris gives up further attempts at discussion and turns to scan the outer area, finding Hope on the back wall. With a frown on his face, he waves his arm to summon her.
She goes to take a step toward him, but Bo places his hand on her arm to halt her. “I told you,” he says. “Rapport. It’s not easy to establish, and it isn’t something you can just hand off to someone else.” He raises his eyebrows at her. “Now you just need lady luck on your side.”
Hope hums the Sinatra song as she walks away from him and enters the back area to take Chris’s seat. Across from her, Adam watches as she puts on the headset. She has done this many timesbefore, in a different NOC, with a slightly different setup, with a different face across from her. And though she ran away from it, she can do it again.
“Hello, Tommy?” she asks. She is pleased there is no waver in her voice. There is, she realizes, no waver inside her at all. A resignation, a determination, has replaced all nervousness. She has been assigned a task, and the task is to see this thing through.
“What’s the deal?” Tommy asks. “They said you’re leaving?” Tommy doesn’t have a waver in his voice either. But he does have anger with an undercurrent of desperation.
“There’s another team here now,” she explains. “From the county. They are more... set up to handle things than we are.”
“Seemed to me we were doing just fine without the county,” Tommy huffs.
“Well, if that were true,” she says, “then your hostages would already be released.”
There is a silence. Then, “And I’d be in jail for the rest of my life.”
This she remembers how to deal with, her training ingrained in her no matter how long she has ignored it. Time to minimize. “You won’t go to jail for the rest of your life. Not if I have any say about it.” She pauses. “And I do. I will.”
“If you don’t mind me saying, you didn’t have any say about whether you got to stay here and talk to me. So I’m not sure you’ve got much say in what they do to me after this.”
“Actually, there’s lots we can do. And the sooner we resolve this, the more bargaining power we have.”
“Who’s we?” Tommy asks.
