A Spark of Light(8)

Captain Quandt approached once again, blocking Hugh’s path. “Okay, I’m done waiting. He released most of them. Now we’re flushing him out.”

“You can’t do that.”

“The hell I can’t,” Quandt said. “I’m in charge, Lieutenant.”

“Only on paper.” Hugh stepped closer, inches away from him. “There’s still a hostage. Goddard doesn’t know you from a hole in the wall. You go in there and we both know how this will end.”

What Hugh didn’t say was that it might still end that way. What if George had agreed to release the hostages, planning all along to go back on his word? What if he wanted to go out in a blaze of bullets, and take Wren with him? Was this going to be his ultimate fuck-you to Hugh?

Quandt met his gaze. “We both know you’re too close to this to be thinking clearly.”

Hugh remained immobile, his arms crossed. “That’s exactly why I don’t want you blasting through that goddamn door.”

The commander narrowed his eyes. “I will give him ten more minutes to release your daughter. And then I will do everything in my power to make sure she is safe … but we’re ending this.”

The minute Quandt walked away, Hugh picked up his cellphone and dialed the clinic number, the same one he had been using for hours now to speak to George. It rang and rang and rang. Pick up, Hugh thought. He had not heard any gunshots, but that didn’t mean Wren was safe.

After eighteen rings, he was about to hang up. Then: “Daddy?” Wren said, and he couldn’t help it, his knees just gave out.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said, trying to tamp down the emotion in his voice. He remembered when she was a toddler, and she had fallen. If Hugh looked upset, Wren would burst into tears. If he seemed unfazed, she picked herself up and kept going. “Are you all right?”

“Y-yes.”

“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’t let it 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 HAD to be dead, because everything was white and there was a bright light, and wasn’t that what everyone said to expect?

She turned her head a fraction to the left and saw the IV pole, the saline dripping into her. The light overhead was fluorescent.

A hospital. She was the very opposite of dead.

Her throat tightened as she thought about Wren and about Hugh. Was her niece all right? She imagined Wren, knee bent, drawing on the white lip of her sneaker. She pictured Hugh leaning over her in the ambulance. That was how Bex saw the world, in images. Had she re-created it in her studio, she would call it Reckoning. She would highlight the cords of tension in Hugh’s neck, the vibration of Wren’s moving hand. The background would be the color of a bruise.