Hostage Zero Read online

  Her years at Security Solutions working with Digger Grave had taught her that when the stakes were as high as Digger ratcheted them, outcome often trumped means. When the prize was important enough, any law was expendable if it stood in the way of justice. They were in the business of reuniting families, after all, and for Digger and Boxers, shattering rules was a part of the game that energized them. Venice could intellectualize immorality as necessity, but she’d never be able to fully embrace it.

  That’s part of the reason why Jonathan called her the soul of the team.

  With sleep out of the question, she’d spent the last half hour rechecking her connections to the Basin, Virginia, jail. Unlike Jonathan, whose ground-level view saw only one-third of the building, she was responsible for controlling the whole thing. The jail’s graveyard shift, which started at ten and would run until six o’clock the next morning, consisted of six deputies who divided their time between the front desk and the three cell blocks, all of which were connected by a series of steel security doors.

  Looking at the plan view she’d pulled up on her center screen, she once again noted the important landmarks. The adult portion of the detention facility resembled a wide, asymmetrical V, with the men’s cell block taking up the longer left leg, and the women’s portion the shorter right leg. The two legs joined at the administrative section of the facility, where the admissions desk and the main security air lock were located.

  The hallways through the cell blocks were further controlled by intermediate security doors which, in the event of a prisoner uprising, could isolate the event to one-third of either wing. Guards who were not patrolling the hallways worked at a warren of desks in the heavily secured apex of the two wings.

  Watching her screens, she could see every corner of the jail, including the insides of the cells if she were so inclined-which she was not. There was nothing remotely engaging in watching men and women in their alone times, especially at night.

  When the balloon went up on this operation, she was going to have a lot to do in a very short period of time, with no room for error. She’d programmed all the appropriate commands and committed them not only to memory but to a list that lay beside her keyboard, and in these final moments, she waved her fingers over the keys, practicing the strokes the way a piano player will silently practice a concerto before stepping onto the stage.

  Finally assured that she’d done everything she could, she pulled up Spider Solitaire in a separate window on her computer and stacked up four wins.

  At 01:45, she donned her headset with its boom microphone and waited for the boss to check in. Knowing Jonathan and Boxers, they’d probably spent the last three hours at a restaurant somewhere having a nice meal before another day at the office.

  Her earpiece crackled, “Mother Hen, this is Scorpion. Are you there?”

  Relief. Then the flutter of anxiety. “I’m here,” she responded. “What about Big Guy?”

  “I’m on the Net,” Boxers replied.

  “What are your screens showing?” Jonathan asked.

  “Just a boring night at the jailhouse,” Venice said.

  “Any questions on the plan?”

  Venice resisted the urge to answer quickly. “I’ve run every scenario I can think of, and I think we’re ready,” she said. Never mind that every plan goes to the dogs five seconds after it shifts from theory to reality.

  The movie screen in her mind played the images of blood-spattered walls again. “Hey guys?” she said. “Get this son of a bitch, okay?”

  Jonathan and Boxers exchanged glances in the darkened van. “Did Venice just cuss?” Boxers gasped. It was the equivalent of a Muslim taking a drink. It just didn’t happen.

  “Yes, I did,” said the voice in their ears. “And I’m sorry, but I just…” Her voice trailed off.

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Jonathan said. “Let’s do it, then.”

  The dome light had been disabled, so when Jonathan opened the passenger door and let himself out, the world around them remained dark. He addressed Boxers’ silhouette. “Be patient, Big Guy,” he said. “Trust twenty-first-century solutions.”

  “I always do,” Boxers replied. “But I’ll never stop trusting nineteenth-century backups.” Boxers felt a deep love for blowing things up.

  If everything went according to plan, Venice would be the key player in this op, controlling all the moving parts from her computer terminal sixty-plus miles away. Jonathan didn’t understand the technical details, but he’d witnessed Venice’s skills enough times in the past to trust that she could perform every task she had promised.

  Boxers’ point was a valid one, though: If things went to shit, a great big boom would be their only escape.

  Jonathan followed his footsteps from before, even duplicating his gait. As he approached the front desk, it occurred to him that this was all feeling very easy.

  In his line of work, that was never a good thing.

  Granville George caught action out of the corner of his eye-movement on the one video monitor that rarely showed anything but a still life at this hour, and he knew right away that it was the FBI agent from earlier in the evening. Granville had read Bill Diane’s entry in the logbook after shift change, and he’d heard a personal account from Battles in the locker room when they were changing out. What was it about these federal guys that made them be such pricks all the time? He figured there had to be special courses on ego inflation at the FBI Academy.

  No Fibbie would ever believe it, but Granville wouldn’t trade places with a fed for anything, doubled salary included. He liked living on the water in a community where the spectrum of crime was more or less the same as you’d get in a big city, but at a fraction of the scale. His current penance of jail duty-the mandatory six-month sentence for wrecking a police cruiser in a high-speed chase-would be fulfilled in another fifteen days, and then he’d be back on the streets, doing what he loved.

  He glared as the man in the suit crossed the waiting room to the reception window.

  “I’m Agent Harris, FBI,” he said, producing the obligatory credentials case. “I need to speak with Jimmy Henry.”

  Granville took the black leather folder from him and examined it-not because he had to, but because he could. The weight of it told him that the man was legit. Fake IDs were rarely made of the same quality of metal as the real thing. “A little late, isn’t it?” he grumped, returning the creds to their owner.

  “The law never sleeps,” the agent said.

  Granville rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well our inmates do, and rousting them at two in the morning is a good way to start a riot.”

  “That’s what locks are for,” the agent said with a smirk. “I really need to talk with him.”

  “About what?”

  “About things that are confidential. Now can you please wake him?”

  Granville sighed to signal what a pain in the ass it was to do this, and then he stood from his chair and pointed toward the door to his left, his visitor’s right. “Wait for me over there.” Technically, it was within his power to make the agent cool his heels until 6:30 wake-up, but he couldn’t see any good coming from returning shittiness with shittiness. He’d already pissed off his bosses enough to get jail duty for half a year; it made no sense to piss them off more.

  Venice waited for the guard to leave his desk and then counted to five before she went to work. With everything cued up ahead of time, it was just a matter of a few keystrokes. The video monitors at the front desk went black for an instant, and when they returned to life, they showed Jonathan dressed just as he was right now, being let in through the security air lock, just as he was right now. Except the pictures were all about six hours old.

  She’d rerouted everything she’d recorded earlier to their respective monitors. All but the camera facing the lobby and the front desk, which would continue to project a live feed. It wasn’t a foolproof plan, but given the short time they’d had to put it together, she thought it was pretty darn
good.

  Jonathan followed the second deputy-a blond string bean of a man whose tag read R. SHENTON — to the interview room and walked with a determined gait to the waiting table.

  “I’ll be back with the Henry boy in a minute,” Shenton said before leaving. Jonathan noted that unlike his evening-shift colleague, he did not lock the door behind him.

  “He’s walking toward Jimmy Henry’s cell,” Venice said in his ear. When Jonathan didn’t reply, she added, “The guards are all watching camera loops. The audio in the interview room is down.”

  He nodded. “Thank you,” he said, and then added, “I don’t need to know what’s going right, only what’s going wrong.” He hated radio chatter.

  Unlike his last visit when he was performing for the camera, Jonathan didn’t bother to sit. He paced the strip of tile between the door and the table. When it came time to react, he was going to have to move quickly.

  A glance at his watch confirmed that it had only been two minutes, but it felt like fifteen. He understood that Shenton needed time to shackle Henry up and shuffle him down the hall, but knowledge did nothing to move the hands on the clock faster.

  “They’re in the hallway, coming at you,” Venice said. “Give it ten seconds.”

  Jonathan turned toward the door as it opened and stepped aside to greet his guest. Jimmy Henry wore the shackle rig as before, with his hands cuffed to his waist and his ankles hobbled by a three-foot chain. The defiant swagger from earlier had been replaced with a pale, meek aura of fear.

  “Put him in the chair,” Jonathan instructed. He gestured with an outstretched arm the way a maitre d’ would show a guest to his table. It was a presumptuous thing to do in the deputy’s own house, but nowhere near as rude as what was coming next.

  He let the prisoner pass, and then, just as Shenton came into range, Jonathan launched an open-handed punch, nailing the deputy with the heel of his hand at the spot where his lower jaw hinged with his upper jaw. It was the sweet spot that every boxer aims for, and Shenton was out cold before Jonathan had even finished the punch. Jonathan caught him under the arms as he spiraled toward the floor.

  “Holy shit!” Jimmy shouted, jumping back and then tumbling over his designated chair. “Holy fucking shit!”

  “Shut up,” Jonathan hissed. He dragged the deputy to the bolted-down table and gently laid him on the floor in front of it. Moving smoothly, as if in one continuous motion, he produced a pair of handcuffs with a flourish and attached Shenton to the table leg.

  “Did you kill him?” Jimmy said as he tried to find his feet again. “Jesus, he dropped like you killed him.”

  “I didn’t kill anybody,” Jonathan said. He just hoped he hadn’t broken Shenton’s jaw. He stooped to go through his pockets.

  “So what do we do now?” Jimmy asked. He darted to the door and leaned out, looking both ways down the hall.

  “Get inside and close the door,” Jonathan commanded. He found a ring of keys in the deputy’s front pocket and shuffled through them. He saw a standard Schlage key, probably for his house, plus a Honda key and another for a Ford. None looked like it was made for a high-security lock. He did find a handcuff key, though, and that was enough of a reason to slip the ring into his suit-coat pocket.

  “There!” Jimmy said, pointing. “You just had it. That was the key to these fucking things.” He raised his hands as best he could and rattled his chains.

  Finished with the unconscious guard, Jonathan stood and thrust a forefinger at Jimmy Henry. “Listen to me,” he said. “This is my op, not yours. I don’t need suggestions, and I don’t need advice. My job is to get you out. Yours is to do exactly what you’re told. Tell me this isn’t too complicated for you.”

  Jimmy reared back, clearly insulted. “Dude, there’s no reason to be hostile.”

  Jonathan stepped forward until their noses were nearly touching. “I’m breaking you out of prison, shithead. There are armed guards everywhere, and I want very much to wake up alive tomorrow morning. There is every goddamn reason to be hostile.”

  The prisoner jingled as he took a step backward. “Really, dude-”

  Jonathan silenced him with a raised finger. “Remain silent, do exactly what you’re told, and don’t do anything I don’t tell you to do. Remember that, and we’ll be just fine.” He waited for the nod that confirmed that his words had penetrated. “Good. Now when we get into that hallway, we’re going to head left, and we’re going to keep going till we’re outside. Then we’re going to catch a ride out of here.”

  The prisoner cocked his head. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  His earbud popped. “Scorpion,” Venice said, “we have a problem.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  For not being hungry, Jeremy Schuler faked it well. The way he wolfed down the mac and cheese, he was lucky he didn’t lose a finger. Ditto the baked beans and the orange pound cake. Skinny thing that he was, he scarfed more calories in a single sitting than Harvey consumed in an entire day. Clearly, he was a kid who didn’t go wanting very often. In Harvey’s experience, people who understood scarcity ate with more appreciation.

  “That was really good,” Jeremy said as he licked the last of the cake from his fingers.

  “Glad you liked it.”

  “Is there more?”

  “Not tonight.” As he spoke the denial, Harvey was half prepared for an argument, and surprised when it didn’t come. The kid merely nodded, and put his plate on his lap.

  Harvey picked up the plate and poured some boiling water onto it from the pot on the burner. With the water balanced in the center, he used a ratty dish towel to clean it off. Through it all, Jeremy said nothing. But he stared a lot, and that was annoying.

  “You got something on your mind, son, it’s best to get it out,” Harvey said.

  The observation seemed to startle the boy. “I want to go home,” he said.

  “I imagine you do,” Harvey said. “Where is home?”

  “I go to a school in Fisherman’s Cove. I live there. It’s called Resurrection House.”

  Harvey had heard of the place. It was affiliated with St. Katherine’s parish, the very one that had given him tonight’s dinner. Except he’d always thought it was an orphanage. “Well, let’s take that on in the morning. It’s a long walk, and I don’t have a car. It’s even longer in the dark.”

  “But what if they come back for me?”

  Now that was the panic-inducing question, wasn’t it? “I wouldn’t worry about that,” Harvey said. “They’ve had all day to come back for you. If they were coming, they would have come then.” Maybe if he said it definitively enough, Harvey would believe it himself. The simple truth of the matter was that Jeremy wasn’t yet ready to make that kind of trek.

  Jeremy thought for a while before asking, “Don’t you want to know what happened?”

  “Of course I do. But only if you want to tell me.”

  “I got… kidnapped,” he said. He stumbled on the last word, and in the uneven glare of the lantern, Harvey could see Jeremy’s eyes glistening.

  “A bunch of men crashed into my room.” Jeremy struggled to keep his tone even. “They tied up Anthony, and then they…” His voice trailed off, but then he settled himself with a deep breath. “And then they killed Mr. Stewart.”

  A knot formed in Harvey’s belly. “Who’s Anthony?” he asked.

  Jeremy covered his eyes. “My roommate,” he squeaked.

  Harvey’s head swam. This was worse than he’d thought. “A bunch of men came into your room and took you away?”

  Jeremy let his hands fall away, and nodded as he pulled his legs up into the chair Indian style.

  “And who is Mr. Stewart?”

  Jeremy answered to his lap. “The janitor. He was my friend.”

  “Why would someone do that?”

  “They took other kids, too,” Jeremy said. “At least one.”

  “Are you sure?”

  As he sat there in the camp chai
r, Jeremy seemed to shrink, as if growing younger and smaller. His shoulders slumped, and his head drooped. For a few seconds, Harvey thought maybe the boy had fallen back to sleep.

  But then he looked up again. He drew a huge breath, and he told his story.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Granville George looked up from his daily log reports and leaned back in the medieval torture device that posed as his chair. He swore that the sheriff had specially ordered this uncomfortable piece of crap just to make his six-month sentence as miserable as possible. As if the mind-numbing work weren’t painful enough.

  As he arched his back and stretched, he caught a glimpse of himself on the security monitor. Without paying attention, he scanned the other monitors as well. In the women’s wing he saw Terry Milan strolling her patrol, just as she was supposed to, while in the men’s wing, the hallway remained empty-not unexpected, given the fact that Rob Shenton would be babysitting Agent Harris for the time being. Meanwhile, three other guards attended to their various admin duties in the center security section.

  But that didn’t really add up, did it? Granville shifted his gaze to the interview room, and sure enough, there was the Henry kid sitting at the interview table across from his Fibbie visitor. So where was Rob? He must have been standing in the corner where there was no camera cover.

  Only, that didn’t make sense either. Chase Battles had told him during shift change that the asshole from the FBI was very specific about wanting to talk to his prisoner alone.

  In fact, there was Chase Battles on the screen right now, leaving the interview room and beginning his patrol.

  Not Rob Shenton. Chase Battles. From evening shift.

  “Oh, shit!” Granville spat. “Oh, fucking shit!” He snatched the phone from its cradle and mashed the emergency alert button with his palm.

  Venice knew something was wrong from the way the desk attendant launched upright. She shot a look to the feed monitor, and right away saw what had happened. He recognized the guard.