Or.
Hugh could say something,dosomething, that would make George realize he was not stuck. That there was a way out.
He stared at Quandt, silently begging the man for a grace period. But the SWAT commander took off his headphones and turned to rally his team.
“You told me you started this for your daughter,” he said to George. “Now end it for her.”
Three p.m.
HUGH STARED AT THE WINDOWS OF THE CLINIC, MIRRORED LIKEaviator sunglasses. He assumed they were a later addition, when the protesters grew in number. This gave the women inside a sense that once they crossed the threshold, their business was their business alone. Those windows were meant to protect, but today, they were obstacles. No one knew what was happening inside those walls.
He glanced at the phone in his hand, the line dead. One minute he’d been talking with George, seemingly making progress, and the next, he had been disconnected. He dialed again, and again, but there was no answer. His heart was racing, and not just because he’d lost contact with the hostage taker. The last sound he’d heard before George hung up on him was Wren’s voice.
Which meant— Oh fuck, he didn’t even want to go there.
He opened to the text thread he’d had with his daughter.Wren,he typed.?
R U OK
He held his breath, and the three telltale dots appeared.
She was responding.
She was all right.
He sank into the folding chair someone had brought him a couple of hours ago, holding the phone between his hands and willing the response to come faster.
“Hugh?”
At the sound of Chief Monroe’s voice, he slipped his phone beneath a stack of papers. He could not let on that Wren was inside. That heknewWren was inside. The minute he did, his neutrality was compromised. “Yeah, Chief?”
He looked up to see a guy in camo approaching. “This is Joe Quandt,” the chief said. “He’s the SWAT commander. Joe, this is Detective Lieutenant Hugh McElroy.”
Hugh recognized Quandt; they’d worked together before.
Quandt held out his hand. “Sorry for the delay,” he said.
It was not unusual for a countywide SWAT team to take a bit of time to congregate. The individuals constituting it came from all over the state and after receiving the call of a crisis in progress, had to converge upon it. Hugh had had three hours on his own to manage the situation, but now that Captain Quandt had arrived, there would be a struggle to see who would actually be in charge.
Hugh immediately began to give a rundown of the past three hours. If he acted like he was in charge, maybe it would remain that way.
“Have you got aerial photos?” Quandt asked, and Hugh nodded. It was one of the first things he’d asked for, so that when the SWAT team needed to get snipers into position, they’d know where to place them. He shuffled through the materials on his command desk, surreptitiously glancing at his phone as he did so. Those dots were still there, but no message yet.
...
...
“I’ve already instructed my team to take the perimeter,” Quandt said. Hugh knew this was a relief to the chief, who didn’t have the manpower to block the clinic entrances, restrict the media, and reroute traffic. “We’ll be ready to go in in about fifteen minutes.”
SWAT teams existed to back up the negotiator, but they also itched to do what they were trained for—end the showdown by force. Negotiators wanted to do what they were trained to do—negotiate.
“I don’t think that’s wise. He’s got the hostages in the front waiting room,” Hugh said, “and he can see you coming through the mirrored glass, but you can’t see in.”
“We could pump tear gas in…”
“There are injured people in there,” Hugh said, his voice even.And my kid.
The chief turned to Hugh. “So what’syourplan?”
