“Come on in,” Catherine Siskel called out, waving a hand. “Our visitor is about to leave.”
The door opened and Alvarez came through with her team, owl-eyed and hesitant, trooping behind her.
“Jake.” DeLuca’s staticky voice cut through the rustle of desk chairs being wheeled into place and the metallic squeaks of the swivels as their occupants reclaimed their desks. Someone coughed. Another sneezed. A phone jangled. “What if our guys need help?”
Three-friggin’-ring circus, Jake thought. He had to extract the info on the Finnerty girl from Tenley. He had to make sure Hewlitt didn’t slip away from them. But dammit, he wished he could head to that hotel lobby. If a child had been threatened by a stranger, and that stranger was in custody, Jake would like nothing better than to race down there and handle it. Take the asshole in for questioning. See if he was a sex offender. See if there was more to it than just some pervert scouting for tourist prey. Disgusting.
He checked the surveillance screen. D was still on the corner. The Isuzu was still in place. The only puzzle pieces he could reliably control were Catherine Siskel and her daughter.
“Do not move, D,” Jake ordered. “I’m on the way down there. One minute. Less.” Real police work was about real life, down on the street, not from an ivory tower view of the action. You could know what was going on only if you were in the midst of it, seeing it, hearing it. He’d been so mesmerized by his vantage point he’d forgotten about reality. Where he should be right now.
He saw Catherine Siskel still protecting her daughter, shielding her, one arm clamped over her shoulder. Tenley seemed absorbed by the activity on the street below. Or the black Isuzu, maybe. He pointed his radio at the Siskel women. “And you two. Don’t-”
“I understand, Detective.” Catherine Siskel sounded ever so slightly sarcastic as she looked him in the eye. “We won’t leave town.”
“Jake!” DeLuca’s voice cut through the moment, his tension blasting unmistakably over the staticky radio. “Shots fired!”
47
“Do it, do it, do it!” the beefy security guard had ordered, grabbing Jane by one arm, essentially dragging her across the floor toward that unmarked metal door, her black flats scuffing when they hit the strip of ugly carpeting that ringed the marble center.
“Hey!” She’d tried again to get his attention, also attempting to untangle her feet. She looked longingly toward the front entrance to the hotel and its revolving door to freedom. “Sir? I don’t think you can do this, you know? I’m Jane Ryland, ask anyone, they’ll tell you. That girl is my-”
The more she protested, the more they demanded, the beefy guy showing off his muscles by clamping even harder on the top of her right arm. Jane’s tote bag banged against her side, the leather strap twisting tighter around her shoulder.
No way. She sure as hell was not going to be shoved into some probably windowless office to face these two steroid-guzzling rent-a-guards. She’d done nothing wrong. She understood their concern, sure. She could even imagine how it must have looked on surveillance, with no context, but this was a mistake, a misunderstanding, a misinterpretation. Nothing civilized people couldn’t work out in a civilized-dammit.
She stiffened her body, resisting. “You can’t do this!”
“Watch me!” Beefy was even stronger than he looked. He pulled her arm behind her back, moving her, against her will, across the floor. During all her years of journalism experience, she’d been in tough situations before, even dangerous ones, but this was the most absurd. She couldn’t even figure out what her rights were. She heard sirens outside, approaching. They had called the police? About her?
“Hey, that hurts!” And it did, it really did, but she had been so angry it almost didn’t matter. Could they do this? Take a person into custody? They weren’t even cops. She waved her free arm, tried to, at least. “I’m Jane Ryland. Ask the desk guy. Ask the manager. Ask anyone.”
“Ask me if I care,” Beefy said.
She was a few steps away from the front exit, but also a few steps away from captivity. Three steps from that unmarked door. Must be the security office, their private lair. Where they probably tortured people. No windows, no phone. Jerks. Yeah, they were doing their job, but they were doing it ridiculously. She wished she could get at the Quik-Shot in her tote bag. She should be taping this. She was either outraged or terrified, and either way, there should be a record of it. This was unfair. Absurd.
“Sir? Sir?” She kept trying to talk, get through to these thugs, but it didn’t matter. They were on a mission and she was it. In two seconds they’d be in that back room, and not a person in the lobby was moving to help her. Some jerk had actually applauded. Well, yeah, she was the child molester, after all. She’d only been trying to-
“Hey!” She’d tried to twist herself out of this guy’s grip. “Hey! I want to make a phone call!”
“Police! Freeze!”
Four Boston cops, uniforms, but guys she didn’t recognize, powered though the revolving front door, heading across the expanse of lobby, almost past the fountain and onto the carpeting. Coming right toward her.
Her captors stopped. They backed her against the white stucco wall beside that unmarked door. “Over here!” Beefy yelled. He yanked her, hard, keeping her in place.
“Under control!” The other guard called out. “Got her!”
Got her? Fine. You know what? Bring ’em on, Jane thought. The police might even help her. At least they’d be sane, unlike these creeps. The police would know her. If they didn’t, she could drop Jake’s name. Which would be unfortunate, but holy crap. She squirmed, flexed her shoulder, trying to loosen this moron’s grip. This was ridiculous. Ridiculous.
The first blue uniform got halfway across the room. At least it would be over soon. How had she ever gotten drawn into this?
Then she heard the shot. One. Then another.
Gunshots? Definitely. Shots. She ducked, instinctively, even pulled herself closer to the hulking security guard. Who was shooting? At who? The hotel lobby exploded into a chaos of screaming.
“Gunshots!”
“Run!” someone yelled.
And now every scream was contagious, each setting off a cacophony of others, as fear and terror filled the room, echoes clattered off the double-tall windows, amplified and intensified. Four police officers, as one, drew their weapons, held them at their sides, racing toward the sounds of the shots.
Over past the elevator? Jane felt her heart pounding, felt her fear stealing her breath. Gunshots. From where? Upstairs? It was hard to tell. Where was Gracie?
The guards exchanged looks, then Beefy dropped her arm, swearing, leaving her, and ran toward the cops, his colleague speeding after him. Jane sank to her knees, sliding her back down the nubby wall, trying to figure out what to do. If someone was shooting-which they were, or had been, there didn’t seem to be any more shots but who knew what was about to happen-the security guards’ unmarked office might be exactly the right place to be. On the other hand, any way she turned, any way she ran, might be exactly the wrong way.
Or-hell no.
She dug into the tote bag, got out the Quik-Shot, flipped up the screen, hit Video, pushed the green button. She was getting this on camera.