23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale(104)

But she knew it wouldn’t happen that way. It couldn’t.

The phone kept ringing next to her left elbow. “Shut up!” she howled, but that was pointless. Finally she picked up the handset and lifted it to her ear. “Hsu here,” she said, thinking that was a stupid way to answer the call. The fire department wouldn’t know who she was—

“Clara?”

“Jesus. Oh my God. Is that you, Glauer?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m so glad—you’re okay, right? You’re alive in there? Oh, boy am I glad to hear it. Fetlock and I have been sitting out here in the trees for hours now, wondering what the hell was going on inside.”

“You’ve been there for hours? Didn’t you hear me telling you it was time to move in?” Clara demanded.

“We did, but Fetlock—”

“You son of a bitch! People have died in here because you didn’t listen to me. You were supposed to storm the place. You were supposed to come in here and save me! I am not a field agent. I am not equipped for what I just went through, do you understand? It is not acceptable to ask me to deal with this shit!”

“You’re alive. Is Caxton alive?”

Clara squeezed her temples. “Yes. For now.”

“Then I guess you did okay. Listen, I wanted to attack as soon as we got here. I promise. But Fetlock held me back. He’s got every SWAT team from every town from here to Baltimore assembled out here. Right now we’re just scooping up the prisoners as they try to escape.”

Well, at least that was something. Something to assuage her guilty conscience.

But not enough. “I could already be dead and you wouldn’t even know it!”

Glauer sounded like he was in physical pain when he responded. “I wanted to go in there alone. Just me and a gun to get you and Caxton out. But he wouldn’t let me. He gave me his big speech again. About how the SSU can’t afford public scrutiny how we can’t make any mistakes. You know that speech.”

“Yeah,” Clara said.

“I listened patiently and then I waited for him to turn around and then I tried making a run for it. I was going to come in anyway. He had me arrested. I guess technically nobody’s got me in handcuffs right now. But he’s made it clear that if I make a move without his authorization, I’ll be going to jail. And we’ve seen what he does with his agents when they break the law.”

“Christ. You did what you could, I guess—”

Glauer was still talking. It sounded like a confession now. “I wasn’t the only one. The SWAT teams wanted to move in hours ago. So did the local cops. But Fetlock called the governor’s office to make sure he had proper approval first. Big mistake. The governor sent down word that nobody was to make a move. That this was a hostage crisis, and that he was going to get the FBI to send trained negotiators down here. If anybody moved before the negotiators arrived, they’d lose their jobs. What I’m trying to tell you, Clara—”

“Is that Fetlock screwed us over good.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Yeah. But listen, that’s all changed now—the hostage negotiators got here a couple of minutes ago. They took one look at the situation and gave up. Said they should never have been called in—that things are too far gone for them to help.”

“Fetlock. That stupid dick,” she said. “He’s afraid of his own shadow, and they put him in charge of vampire cases.” She was angry. She was, to be honest, righteously pissed. But even so, she could recognize the logic. Fetlock’s orders always made sense, in an abstract fashion. They usually ended up in people getting killed, but they made perfect logical sense.

“I need you to tell me anything that can help us raid this place,” Glauer said.

“Alright. Alright! Fine! Listen. We’re down to two vampires in here. The half-deads are all, well, full-deads now. Laura’s alive but unarmed, and Malvern is going to kill her on sight.” She went on for a while providing a full situation report, telling him everything she knew about the gang wars and what was happening in the cafeteria. When she finished she took a deep breath. “How does Fetlock want to proceed?”

“We’re moving in en masse, as fast as we can. We’ll take the yard first, then secure the facility wing by wing. You stay put. We’ll extract you as soon as it’s safe.”

“Okay,” Clara said. “Thanks.”