The Hollow Ones(78)

“She’s drawing you in,” said Odessa. “She wants this.”

“Holy Christ,” said the man with the headphones. “Who is this now?”

Odessa scanned the monitors until she saw what he was referring to. A person was walking down the middle of the street from the barricade heading toward the bank. A person wearing a finely tailored dark suit.

“Shit—”

Odessa burst out of the police van, racing around it, cutting between two blue sawhorses, running toward Blackwood before the police gunned him down. She waved her credentials wildly, hooking Blackwood’s arm and yanking him back.

“What the hell are you doing?” she said. “They’re going to shoot you.”

“I’m the only one who can stop this,” he said.

“I know that,” she said, tugging on him, though he wouldn’t budge. “She’s asking for you. It’s asking for you.”

Blackwood was not surprised. “Yes,” he said. “It drew us here.”

“Drew us…?” said Odessa. And then, further refining her confusion, she clarified, “Drew us?”

The sound of shattered glass turned their heads toward the bank—and then two loud and brilliant detonations staggered them.

Flash-bang grenades led the charge into the bank. A phalanx of Emergency Service Unit tactical officers advanced on the doors with a battering ram, forcing their way inside the smoke-filled bank. The ensuing gunshots and screams were barely audible under the ringing in Odessa’s ears caused by the concussive grenades. Uniformed officers spilled into the street from the barricade, prohibiting any further advance by Odessa or Blackwood.

Smoke streamed out. No other people exited the bank. Then the news arrived, relayed to police officers via their radios: “Shooter down! Shooter down!”

Odessa and Blackwood had to wait while the incident scene was secured and the smoke was ventilated. The street filled with police personnel. The injured would be evacuated, and then the crime scene processing would begin.

“What do we do?” asked Odessa. “Is it jumping into someone else?”

Blackwood said, “Most likely.”

“It could be anyone,” she said. “How can we know? What do I look for?”

Blackwood said, “I will sense it.”

Odessa pushed forward, getting them as close to the bank as possible. FBI agents clustered on the street outside the entrance, waiting for the air quality inside to improve. Odessa had to stay back from them.

ESU members began to exit onto the street. They removed their helmets once they got outside, many of them coughing, chugging bottles of water to clear their throats. This gave Blackwood a clear line of sight to their faces.

Odessa didn’t know what they were going to do if he identified the body the Hollow One had seized. Especially if it had jumped into a tactical agent with an assault rifle—as she assumed was its goal. She didn’t even have a handgun with which to defend herself. She was looking back and forth between their faces and Hugo Blackwood, awaiting some reaction from him.

The ESU members regrouped, then began filing out for a debriefing. Blackwood watched them go with concern.

“Nothing?” Odessa said.

“No,” he said. “We have to get inside that bank.”

“Never going to happen,” Odessa told him.

They moved up another few steps, Odessa looking in past the breached front doors, through the ATM vestibule into the main lobby. The smoldering pile of scorched cash had been soaked with water, many thousands of dollars mutilated and irredeemable.

Straining, she eyed the teller windows, and the open gate through which the bank manager had moved back and forth with cash. She saw what could have been an arm and a shoulder of the dead manager. A dark patch of blood on the floor struck something in her.

“Where are the wounded?” she said.

They had been so focused on the weapons-toting tactical officers, she hadn’t seen the wounded tellers and customers being brought out.

She and Blackwood hurried wide around the edge of the perimeter, finding some of the exhausted hostages seated on the sidewalk curb, telling their stories to police detectives, a few being treated for cuts and bruises.

But nothing more serious than that. Odessa spoke to a young female EMT taking a middle-aged man’s blood pressure. “Were there wounded customers?”

“Two customers and a teller,” she said. “Nothing life threatening.”

“Where are they?”

“Ambulance,” she answered. “Already en route to the hospitals.” Odessa glanced back at Blackwood. He was concerned.

Odessa said, “‘Hospitals’ plural?”

“Three ambulances, three hospitals.”

“Which ones?”

The EMT was getting annoyed at her. “The three nearest ones. That would be Flushing, Jamaica Heights, and NewYork-Presbyterian.”

Odessa straightened. “Presbyterian Queens?”

“Of course,” said the EMT.

The hospital they had just left.

The hospital where Earl Solomon was a patient.

She looked at Blackwood. He didn’t have to say anything. His earlier words came rushing into her head.

No coincidences. Everything is connected.

“Oh my God,” said Odessa.