Crossfire. B.J. Daniels
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letting her gaze fall on her favorite councilman. He wasn’t like the others. He was kind and intelligent. A nice man. But Lorna knew that Gwendolyn had been trying to turn him against her.
“Barricade the door,” Lorna ordered. She’d have to deal with that problem later. Right now, there was something more pressing to take care of. “Barricade the door!”
For a moment no one moved. They all just stared at her as if she was the crazy one. D.A. Lalane started to call someone on his cell phone. “Don’t touch that cell phone. It might set off the bomb. Barricade the door, then get back from it. The man on the other side of this door has enough explosives taped to him to take out this entire room.”
She could hear Lee outside the door, trying the knob, kicking the door, then turning and retreating back down the hall.
Gwendolyn let out a shriek. “Oh, God, we’re all going to die.” She began to cry loudly. But it got the rest of them moving. D.A. Lalane pocketed his cell phone and ordered the others to help him with the large conference desk. Fred, of course, joined in to help Councilman James Baker and City Attorney Rob Dayton. Gwendolyn stood in the center of the room, wringing her hands and crying.
Lorna’s fingers were trembling, but more out of anger than fear as she carefully turned off her own cell phone. Two crazy men had barged their way into her city hall while upstairs a secret meeting had been in session to get rid of her. She didn’t know which made her angrier.
The law required all city council meetings to be public—unless the meeting was about personnel. If it had been about city personnel, the city manager would have been here. And since Lorna was the council’s only aide and Gwendolyn was dead-set on getting her fired, that definitely narrowed down the agenda of this meeting.
Tossing down her purse and the bag with her lunch and the cookies, Lorna picked up the meeting room phone, hoping the land line wouldn’t set off the bomb as she tapped out 911.
7:48 a.m.
KENNY CURSED THE WOMAN who’d kicked him and mentally listed all the things he was going to do to her when he caught her. And he would catch her. She couldn’t get out of the building and there wasn’t anyone around to help her. All he had to do was trap her on one of the upper floors.
He was so sure they were alone in the building that he was startled by the sound of raised voices overhead. A woman let out a shriek. Not the woman who’d kicked him. Then he thought he heard several men’s voices. What the hell?
He listened to the sound of voices, then footfalls upstairs, a door slamming, locking. He swore under his breath. Where the hell was Lee? Why hadn’t he stopped the woman?
This should have been a piece of cake. They were supposed to overpower the Lorna Sinke woman. Hell, as small and frail-looking as she was, it should have been a cinch.
Once he had a hostage and city hall, Kenny thought he’d be calling the shots. He could hear Lee’s arduous footsteps coming back down the stairs. He’d never expected the damned fool to show up wearing a bomb.
As Kenny got to his feet, he told himself that this wasn’t going as he’d planned, and it was all that damned Sinke woman’s fault. He swore he could hear her upstairs giving orders. The bitch.
He looked up at the sound of Lee’s shuffling feet.
“They all went into a room and locked the door,” Lee said.
“They all?” Kenny demanded.
“I recognized most of them. Three city council members, the district attorney and city attorney.” Lee nodded. “I think that was all. I only got a glimpse of them before they closed the door. Ms. Sinke was with them.”
Ms. Sinke? Lee was calling the bitch Ms. Sinke? Kenny swore. He was going to kill Ms. Sinke. The only good thing was that it sounded like he had some more hostages he could use as leverage. He didn’t need Sinke anymore.
As he turned toward the front of city hall and the wide staircase, he heard a sound that made him freeze and the hair stood up on the back of his neck. It was the click of a door opening.
Spinning around, Kenny brought his rifle up, shocked to see that Lee hadn’t locked and barricaded the door as Kenny had told him to.
A man in his middle forties, dressed like an undertaker in a dark suit, came walking in with an air about him as if he owned the place. Who in the hell was this? He looked vaguely familiar in a way that made Kenny nervous.
What were all these people doing here?
The man was so preoccupied he didn’t see them at first. He stopped when he did, not showing any concern at first to see two policemen in city hall before it opened for the day.
But then his gaze took in the assault rifle in Kenny’s hands. Kenny pointed the barrel at the man’s chest.
“Well, if it isn’t Judge Lawrence Craven,” Kenny said, and laughed, finally recognizing him. He looked different without his robe on and that bench in front of him.
Craven studied him for a moment. “Four years for burglary.”
Kenny smiled. “You remembered. I’m touched. What the hell are you doing here before city hall opens, anyway?”
Craven glanced toward the stairs but didn’t answer.
Obviously he’d come by to see someone, but he didn’t want to say who. Now why was that?
Not that it mattered. This was a stroke of luck. “Lee, we just got a real break. This hostage is better than your Ms. Sinke or all the councilmen and lawyers in the world. Make sure no one else can come through that damned door and let’s go see what other hostages we have.”
7:54 a.m.
AS ANNA WALKED with Flint down the hallway to the briefing room, she couldn’t have been more aware of him. After all these years, they were here together. Only not together. Not even close.
When she thought back to when they’d first met…She shook her head. What happened to those two people who were so head-over-heels in love?
She smiled to herself at the memory of the first time he’d asked her for a date. She could practically smell the salt, hear the Pacific breaking on the sandy beach, feel the sun on her back. She’d been coming out of the water, her surfboard tucked under her arm, happy in her element, when she’d seen someone waiting for her.
She’d squinted into the sun, seeing first the dark silhouette of a man, then the uniform. A cop. Her heart sank. Bad news. Something to do with her family?
“Hi,” he said. “You probably don’t remember me.” He seemed so different in the uniform, sand sticking to his freshly polished black cop shoes, and looked as out of place and uncomfortable as anyone she’d ever seen.
“You’re a cop,” she said, relieved and yet feeling foolish. Of course he was a cop. She knew that. She’d just forgotten that part and hadn’t recognized him in uniform for a moment. He hadn’t been in Southern California long; his skin was not yet tanned. His hair was straight black. One errant lock hung down over one dark eye.
How could she have forgotten that deep, wonderful voice? Or that boyish face? Or that bump on his forehead?
She reached out to gently touch the knot on his head. “I see some of the swelling has gone down.”
He grinned. “You remember me, I guess.”
“How could I forget?” she joked, remembering the huge bump he’d gotten on his head from being hit by a fly ball during a cop tournament baseball game, then the crazy ambulance ride to the hospital, where the doctor had assured them both that it was only a slight concussion. And all the time, the guy’d been trying to get her home phone number.
He’d insisted she not leave his side, even with the entire police department baseball team packed into the hospital emergency room, all laughing as Flint pleaded his case for her phone number, saying it was her fault he got hit by that fly ball.