LITMIR.BIZ

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out, the more frayed his nerves became. The more hopeless his situation appeared. But it could take hours, or days, for the situation to reach that point.

      Something jogged her memory and she looked at Dace. “The HT said ‘perimeter.’ And again earlier, when he was talking to you. Not move your people back, but ‘move the perimeter.’”

      “You think law enforcement? Military?”

      “Possibly.” Grabbing the leather clipboard on the table in front of her with the attached SWAT incident report, she flipped to the legal pad beneath and drew a grid, jotting labels at the top of each column. Writing quickly, she began noting details they’d verified, possibilities and unknowns. There was depressingly little to note, but she wrote down impressions of the gunman from their conversations and the make and model of the stolen Toyota in the first column, and then the words perimeter—LEO? Military?—in the second. She’d give Sharper the list to add to the situation board when he was finished with his own notes.

      Dace looked on, a thread of amusement sounding in his tone, pitched low enough to reach only her ears. “You and your notes. I don’t know how many charts and lists of yours I ran across when I was packing.”

      Her hand stilled. She kept her attention trained on the legal pad, not trusting herself to look at him. “You moved out of the house?”

      “Not much use hanging on to a two-bedroom house for one person.” Any trace of humor was absent from his quiet answer. It was as detached as if he were talking to a stranger. Which was exactly what they had become to each other, after…She swallowed. After.

      His words had been innocuous enough. They shouldn’t have had the power to carve a deep furrow of pain through her. Questions rose to her lips, questions that she knew she no longer had a right to ask. And as desperately as she’d like the answers, she couldn’t be certain she could deal with that conversation. Especially not here.

      She shifted back to the situation at hand. “Who was that on Johnson’s radio earlier? Reporting on the visual?”

      “Hmm?” He’d withdrawn a pen for the whiteboard and was completing the portions of the SWAT form she hadn’t finished. “Oh. Couldn’t hear much, but it sounded like Cold Shot. Ava Carter. Lucky for us. She’s the best.”

      A sniper then. These operatives usually had the best vantage points from which to gather intelligence for the incident. But she was surprised that the shooter was female. SWAT was still a male-dominated field, and few women possessed the deadly accuracy with weaponry and the desire to apply that skill to high-stress situations like this.

      Herb Johnson rejoined the table. “We’ve got a positive count on the number inside. The subject is probably the one man who had his face turned away from the camera going in. By the time he got inside, he had a mask pulled down. Besides the ten employees, we have thirteen customers—four men, eight women and a kid. Looks like a boy. Maybe two, two and a half.”

      The news blindsided Jolie with a force that sent her reeling. Nausea rose, and for one dizzying moment she felt as if she was going to be sick. Her defenses were usually strong enough to protect her against the flood of memory, this paralyzing hurt that was brutal enough to melt her entire system into one oozing pit of pain.

      But then there’d be a chance resemblance, a careless word, and the floodgates would open, dragging her back to a past that could still throb like a wound.

      “Outside. Now.” Dace murmured the order into her ear then got up to head for the doors. Blindly she followed, still stunned.

      Once outside he grabbed her arm, pulled her around the corner of the unit so they’d have a semblance of privacy. “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t.”

      Helplessly, her gaze met his, lingered.

      “We don’t know this boy,” Dace continued. “We’ll do our best for him, and for every other person in that bank. And if you aren’t up for that, tell me now.”

      Another would think his tone cold. Unfeeling. Jolie knew Dace was neither. He was, however, a consummate professional. And so was she. The whiplash of his words helped her remember that.

      “I’m okay.” But her words sounded weak, even to her own ears. She recognized Dace’s logic. Emotion didn’t belong in a situation like this. The child was a factor in this case, but the boy was a stranger. An innocent carried into the bank, probably with his mother.

      He wasn’t Sammy. He wasn’t their son.

      They’d buried Sammy nearly eighteen months ago.

      Chapter Two

      Memories flooded Jolie’s mind, spilling forth in a mental torrent. The look on Dace’s face when the nurse had placed his squalling son in his arms for the first time. Sammy’s sweet baby smell after his bath. The staggering joy at seeing his first toothless smile. The all-encompassing anguish of watching his tiny casket lowered into the earth.

      Those memories could nearly suffocate her, weight her down under a heavy blanket of sorrow that made a mockery of hope. Long practice had her slamming the door on those images, shoving them aside to focus on the here. The now.

      Dace was right. Neither of them knew the child in the bank. But there was no denying the boy’s presence there upped the ante dramatically.

      She nodded jerkily, started back for the doors.

      “Jolie.”

      Dace’s voice, his expression when she flicked a glance at him, was soft. Her heart stumbled in her chest. She couldn’t recall the last time he’d looked at her that way. But it had been well before she’d left him and this city behind. It had been before she’d gone into the nursery one morning to find their son still and cold.

      “You sure you’re okay?”

      “I’m fine.” She heard her own oft-repeated phrase on her lips, saw it have the predictable effect on the man beside her. His expression closed and although he didn’t move, a part of him shifted away.

      And that, too, was familiar.

      When they reentered the NOC unit, strategy was being discussed for the next phone call. And when Jolie established contact, she had herself firmly under control again.

      “John. How are things going in there? I’m here to help you in any way I can.”

      “Where’s the SUV I requested? How long am I going to have to wait for it?”

      There was a new edge to the man’s tone. She glanced at Ryder, saw that he’d caught it. The psychologist would help monitor the man’s mood to better predict his actions. But before they could do that with any certainty, they needed to learn more about him.

      “These things take time,” she said easily. “I’m still working on it, though.”

      “Then we have nothing else to discuss.”

      From the corner of her eye she saw Dace gesturing but didn’t need the reminder to keep the man talking. “Sure we do. Something made you walk into California National Bank this morning. Hard to believe it was just to get the chance to speak to me. You wanted something. Tell me about that.”

      “That’s easy,” came the disembodied answer. “This is where they keep the money.”

      She heard voices coming from Johnson’s headset, and the man moved away from the table so the gunman wouldn’t overhear. “So that’s what this is about? The money? Why’d you choose this bank?”

      “It was here. I was here. Seemed like fate. Do you believe in fate, Jolie?”

      “I believe in personal responsibility. In doing the right thing. It’s not too late for you to do the right thing, John. Things haven’t gone so wrong yet that you can’t walk away from this. I want to help you with that.” She didn’t mention the dead security guard. If they were to convince the gunman

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