“Did he hurt you?”
“No.” A pause. “Is Aunt Bex—”
“She’s going to be fine,” Hugh said, although he did not know this for sure. “I want you to know I love you,” he added, and he could practically hear the panic rise in his daughter.
“Are you saying that because I’m going to die?”
“Not if I have anything to do with it. Would you ask George,” he said, and then he swallowed. “Would you ask him if he’d please speak to me?”
He heard muffled voices, and then George’s voice was on the line. “George,” Hugh said evenly, “I thought we had a deal.”
“We did.”
“You told me you’d release the hostages.”
“I did,” George said.
“Not all of them.”
There was a hitch in the conversation. “You didn’t specify,” George replied.
Hugh curled his body around the phone, like he was whispering to a lover. “You want to tell me what’s really going on, George?” A pause. “You can talk to me. You know that.”
“It’s all a lie.”
“What’s a lie?”
“Once I let your kid go, what happens to me?”
“We’ll talk about that when you come outside. You and me,” Hugh said.
“Bullshit. My life’s over, either way. Either I go to jail and rot there forever or they shoot me.”
“That won’t happen,” Hugh promised. “I won’tletit happen.” He glanced down at the notes he’d scribbled after his last discussion with George. “Remember? You end this, and you get to do the right thing. Your daughter—hell, the whole world—will be watching, George.”
“Sometimes doing the right thing,” George said quietly, “means doing something bad.”
“It doesn’t have to,” Hugh said.
“You don’t get it.” George’s voice was tight, distant. “But you will.”
That was a threat. That definitely sounded like a threat. Hugh glanced at the SWAT team commander. Quandt was staring at him from the corner of the tent. He lifted his arm, pointed to his watch.
“Let Wren go,” Hugh bargained, “and I will make sure you come out of this alive.”
“No. They won’t shoot me as long as I’ve got her.”
What Hugh needed to do was offer a viable alternative, one that did not involve Wren, but let George still believe he was protected.
Just like that, he knew what to do.
Hugh looked at the captain. There was no way Quandt would go for this. It was too risky. Hugh would lose his job—maybe his life—but his daughter would be safe. There was really no choice.
“George,” he suggested, “take me instead.”
—
BEX WAS DEAD.SHE HADto be dead, because everything was white and there was a bright light, and wasn’t that what everyone said to expect?
