Hostage Taker (2 page)

8:17 a.m.

Good news for your morning commute, New Yorkers: Rain and fog should be lifting within the hour. We’ll have gray skies most of the day, with a slight chance of snow showers by this evening.

But if you’re headed downtown to work, you might want to avoid Fifth Avenue below Fifty-seventh. We’re receiving reports of police activity in that area…

A
hundred blocks uptown, in the downpour that drenched New York City, Eve Rossi placed a stone on top of her stepfather’s grave. It was a custom—albeit one that she didn’t understand. She’d been told that the stone symbolized her memories, durable and everlasting. She’d also heard that it kept demons away. One superstition even held that the stone’s weight would keep the dead man’s spirit grounded in this world. As if Zev Berger would ever have wanted to stick around as a ghost.

Eve believed none of it.

Still, Zev had followed certain traditions, so Eve honored this one now. Instead of an ordinary stone, she’d chosen a clamshell from Zev’s favorite beach—a secluded spot on the South Shore of Long Island where piping plovers nested and rough waves crashed into a black rock barrier.

Clamshells were beautiful, but not in a traditional way: Their irregular purple-and-cream stripes appeared textured. She always expected to
feel
those brilliantly colored ridges—and yet the shell was perfectly smooth to her touch. Not unlike Zev himself, a tough CIA veteran who never stood for being crossed—but who had always yielded to Eve or her mother.

Eve stood motionless in the rain. She didn’t pray or talk. But she
remembered.
And if she imagined that she and Zev had a wordless conversation, that was only because she had once known him so well. Under the bleak December sky, her past and present bled together.

She’d made it through four of the five stages of grief. She had denied it, ranted at Zev, bargained with a God she wasn’t sure she believed in, and learned to live with her dark thoughts. Now all that was left was acceptance.

Acceptance is a gift not always granted,
a man in New Delhi had told her
.

Eve didn’t know about that. But her every instinct was to avoid accepting that Zev was forever gone. She couldn’t face setting foot in Zev’s home. Or returning the probate lawyer’s calls. After Zev’s funeral three months ago, she’d boarded a flight leaving JFK for Rome and kept on moving.

It seemed Zev had died holding a Scheherazade’s store of secrets—and she was resolved to uncover the important ones. She
wanted
to understand his life; she
needed
to understand his death. So she started in Rome and Madrid. Then Paris and Bruges. Followed by Munich, Prague, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and eventually Athens and Shanghai. It was only after she’d reached Hong Kong—and felt the twist in her throat, watching men in the park play mah-jongg, as Zev had once done—that she realized the answers she needed were at home.

So she returned to New York. She visited this cemetery. That had to count for something.

She closed her umbrella and turned away from the grave. The morning’s teeming rain had finally stopped, but a thick fog filled the air and the temperature was dropping. Shivering, she pulled her gray jacket tighter around her and started walking north alongside the Riverside Drive retaining wall.

The huge cemetery had been deserted, except for her. Now she noticed two men approaching through the mist.

No reason to think they were a problem. There were plenty of graves in this cemetery. Plenty of potential mourners. So what if a couple had decided to show up for an early-morning visit?

Nevertheless, she quickened her steps. Pushed her tangled blond hair away from her face. Took a closer look.

The men were walking south from West 155th Street.

She headed east toward Broadway.

From the corner of her eye she saw: They switched direction and went east as well.

Definitely not here to pay respects.

Her eyes scanned the landscape. No one was around. Just her—and these two.

She picked up her pace. They followed. Closing in fast.

She cut an angle toward the southeast. Used her peripheral vision to observe them.

They walked with a straight bearing. Authority in every step. A slight bulge near each of their waists betrayed the weapons they carried. Law enforcement, she decided.

What did they want with her?

She walked faster. Still watching. Still wary.

The one on the left, she determined, was plainclothes NYPD. He had gone days without shaving. And while once he might have had the body of a linebacker, he was now starting to go to seed. But he walked with swagger and confidence—still the man on the field, despite his lack of uniform.

The man on the right was smooth-shaven and clean-cut. He walked a half-step behind his partner. Because he had been trained to blend in, not stand out. FBI, definitely.

Two men working together—a model of interagency cooperation. The new norm in a post-9/11 world.

She wished they would just go away. But she knew they had to be dealt with—so she slowed and allowed them to catch up with her.

The NYPD officer arrived first. “Special Agent Rossi? I’m Rick Connor, and this is Special Agent Chris Anders.” Connor thrust his NYPD ID in front of her. Anders flashed his FBI shield. “We need you to come with us.”

Eve stopped abruptly. “I’m on leave.”

“This is important.”

“I’m on leave,” she repeated. “Bereavement. You need to ask someone else.”

“Director’s orders,” Anders persisted. “He wants to see you.”

“Henry?” Eve raised an eyebrow. Her attitude toward a command from FBI assistant director in charge Henry Ma was no different from her view about stones on graves. She would follow the custom—or the command—only as she saw fit. Not because she lacked respect for the job Henry did or felt that his work was unimportant. But the man was a political schemer who couldn’t be trusted. “Tell Director Ma that I’m sorry, but I’m not available.” She started walking away from them.

“It’s an emergency.”

Eve’s heartbeat quickened. They didn’t mean a personal emergency. She was the only child of now-deceased parents, responsible for no one. Anders hadn’t bothered with pleasantries or wasted words, so Eve didn’t, either. “What kind of emergency?”

“A woman is dead.”

“There are other profilers—”

“It has to be you. I’ll explain on the way to the car.” He indicated an unmarked sedan parked just up the hill. It was scarcely visible through the fog.

“How did you find me?” Eve didn’t move.

“It’s our job. Now we need you to do yours.”

“I’m not on payroll.” The government offered thirteen days of paid leave. Eve had already taken six times that amount, unpaid. And she fully intended to take more. “I’ve also got an appointment downtown.” She made a point of glancing at her watch.

Connor found a cigarette in his pocket, lit it, and sucked in deeply. Like he was more desperate for nicotine than air. “There’s more at stake than the dead woman. Director Ma said your presence was critical.”

“Why?” Eve demanded.

“Hostages. We think the victim was a hostage. We’re worried there are more like her.” Except Connor didn’t sound concerned. He was the kind of cop who had lost all ambition. She knew the type well. He performed his duty and counted down time: the minutes until quitting time, weeks until vacation time, and years until pension time.

“If you’re worried, then you’re not sure.”

“It’s complicated.” Connor stood, smoking, staring at Eve like
she
was the problem.

Eve shook her head. She didn’t want anything complicated. She had even less interest in a crisis involving hostages. Maybe at one time she would have been considered the top hostage negotiator in New York’s FBI field office.

Not now.

She’d left that work for a more unconventional assignment, put it behind her. No, this was a situation she wanted no part of.

“I haven’t worked a hostage case in over a year.” She turned away from them. “Pick someone currently on HRT.” The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team was top-notch. So was the NYPD’s.

This time it was Connor who spoke. “This is going down at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.”

In spite of herself, Eve felt a prick of curiosity—but she trained a blank expression on the NYPD officer. “I heard nothing on the news.” In her home, growing up, at least three televisions had always been on so Zev could monitor the different news channels. Another family tradition she now followed.

“The media haven’t broken the story. But you should have received an encrypted message with the particulars.”

Eve’s fingers reached into her pocket for her phone—and she saw to her surprise that Connor was right. Even though this phone received only personal email. She opened the first page and swiftly scanned its contents. The spare words of the official report grabbed her interest and held it. This was complicated.

She looked up. “How long since the Hostage Taker barricaded the Cathedral?”

“Initial report came at seven-oh-nine a.m. After the first victim was killed.”

“How?”

“Gunshot. We took a preliminary suspect into custody—but looks like he’s clean. The shot was fired from high in the Cathedral scaffolding—which is a patchwork of steel and wood, in the process of coming down.” Connor dropped his cigarette butt to the ground. It sparked until he squashed it under his heel.

“The area’s contained?”

“Completely. NYPD and a half-dozen officers from HRT have established a perimeter. No one inside is getting out.”

“Victim ID?

“Still working on it.”

Her interest flickered again—but Eve dropped her phone back into her pocket. “I’ve been out of the game for too long. Besides, I’m too busy.”

“Because that seven-mile run you’ve taken the past three mornings can’t wait? Sounds a little selfish to me.” Connor’s smile mocked her.

She turned to Anders with a cold stare. “Since when does the FBI spy on me?”

“Since early November,” the agent answered with a shrug. “That’s when the top brass started wondering if there was a problem. Why you were visiting so many foreign countries. If you were ever coming back.”

“Give the lead negotiator my number. I’ll share my thoughts if anyone needs some support,” she lied. She had no intention of getting involved.

Anders wouldn’t let it go. “You’re not understanding us. It’s possible that Ma will need
you
to be lead negotiator.”

“Out of the question,” Eve said firmly. The last time she’d worked a hostage case, she’d made the wrong call—and people had died. Eleven in all, including children. It was not an experience she cared to repeat.

Connor fixed her with a withering stare. “There may be a number of people inside Saint Patrick’s this morning who need you to reconsider your answer.”

“Sorry.” Eve started back up the path.

“The Hostage Taker left a message.”

“Give it to someone else.”

“Can’t,” Connor called out after her.

“Why not?” She threw the words over her shoulder, still walking.

“He asked for you by name, Agent Rossi.”