Hostage Taker (39 page)

All eyes went there. Searching.

“That woman! That bag! Right there!” One of the cops pointed to a woman in a cream coat who looked completely bewildered. Who had an olive-colored gym bag sitting by her feet.

“You’re right!” A man with an egg-shaped shiny head opened the bag. Revealing something electronic inside.

Panic consumed the room. The warning that the bomb would go off if anyone moved was forgotten. A crush of people moved toward the door.

Twenty-three. Twenty-two.

“JUST SHOOT ONE OF THE DAMN WITNESSES!” The egg-headed man charged, tried to take the gun from the officer nearest him. Another cop tackled him. They ended up flailing on the floor.

The mayor’s team was pushing forward. Eve could no longer see Henry. Three of the witnesses were trying to join the mass exodus—except the room was bottlenecked.

Only Vanderwert still stood—trembling, completely paralyzed.

The texts were still coming.
Nineteen, eighteen.
But the shouting and screaming were now so loud, no one could hear the chirps that announced them.

People were pushing. Everyone was trying to flee. This had all the hallmarks of a stampede.

Except Eve noticed: One person was moving differently
.

“García,” she breathed. “Do you see what I see?” She was remembering what Sean Sullivan had said.
Not the obvious answer.

Sean had been right—though not quite in the way Eve had imagined.

One person was moving toward the lectern
.
Eve recognized the haircut and bearing as military. She saw the steady sense of purpose amid the panic. But that didn’t explain it. There was something more.

In the corner of her eye, Eve saw Mace angling for position, trying to see what still eluded him.
Do you see a gun? A detonator? What kind of threat are we looking at?

“It’s in the body language
,
” Eve replied. She knew what she saw, but how could she put in words what she understood? Some mental leaps were a matter of intuition—made in the space between the mind and the gut.

I’ve got the shot,
García confirmed.

No, Eve—not again,
Mace warned.

She ignored him. García understood. “Take the shot,” she ordered.

Eve forced herself to focus on the moment.
This
moment. Ignoring past decisions that went wrong.

The mayor’s security team was moving. The hostages were moving. The witnesses were moving.

Across the room, she looked and saw the metal glint from the gun in García’s hand.

There was a chorus of screams. People shouting
No! He’s going to shoot a witness!

A lone voice countered
LET HIM!

Four witnesses shrunk into the wall. There was no escape.

García fired.

The sound was amplified by stone walls, and the flash was brighter than a camera’s.

One of the hostages fell to the ground.

And the Cardinal’s Residence erupted into a panicked exodus.

E
ve went from standing still to moving faster than lightning. She fought her way through the panicked crowd. She flashed her FBI shield at the security detail who’d closed ranks around the mayor.

The hostage’s body had jerked backward from the impact. It landed just eight feet away from the mayor.

Eve heard the sound of running feet. In the tight quarters of the Cardinal’s Residence, it sounded like a thousand steps.

Someone was yelling commands—ordering paramedics and summoning an ambulance for another victim with a GSW.

There was a scuffle ongoing in the west side of the room. It took five guards to subdue García. He wasn’t taking it well.

“What the hell, Eve?” Henry Ma’s face was twisted with fury. “
Your
guy was the shooter? The ex-Ranger—the one who’s lost his marbles?”

“You can thank me later, Henry,” she said, her eyes scanning the floor.

“
Thank
you?” he sputtered.

“For giving the order that saved lives.” Eve searched behind the lectern.

“You
never
shoot one to save the many.” The vein running across Henry’s forehead was throbbing, threatening to pop. “You
never
take a nutjob demand like that seriously. García shot a
hostage.
”

Eve saw cords and mikes and news camera cables. Hidden among them, she found the proof she wanted.

She didn’t touch it.

She pointed it out to Henry and the mayor’s security detail.

“Bring the Bomb Squad over here,” she ordered. “The woman’s bag out there? It’s just a distraction, probably filled with trace explosive.
This
is the real thing. Get this building cleared.”

“What the hell?” The mayor had elbowed his way through the crowd.

It was a detonator. Of a slightly different style than the others used throughout the Cathedral.

“You’re saying someone tried to kill me?” The mayor was ashen.

“No more than anyone else,” Eve replied. She was so cold, she felt she might be shaking. “The goal was to make us all bystanders. To make us literally
stand by
—and witness our own deaths.”

“I don’t follow,” Henry said.

Eve was just putting it together herself, but she understood now. The hostage-taking—and the bringing of witnesses—had been a play. Sean Sullivan had been cast as the sacrifice. And it had all been designed for this moment—this scene. In order to replay a crisis where the Bystander Effect would come into play. Just like on the subway platform—with the same witnesses on hand to see it. With even higher stakes: the lives of the mayor and city leaders and hundreds of onlookers.

Not just to punish those original witnesses—the ones who refused to help.

Not just to illustrate a moral lesson for the world—which was corrupt and unfeeling.

But because re-creating the pain—and sharing it with the world—was the only way to manage an unbearable hurt.

“Who is she?” Mace was now right at her side.

Eve almost answered
The sniper.

Or
The person who kidnapped Sullivan’s daughter.

Or simply the name on the woman’s New York State Driver’s License.
Ellen Hodge.

Instead, she answered, “A Trojan horse.”

As Eve said the words, Ellen Hodge lifted a bloody hand and wiped the scar that ran across her cheek.

I
nside the ambulance, Ellen Hodge was hovering at the edge of consciousness. The attending medics shook their heads when Eve approached. The prognosis was not good.

But Eve didn’t need much time. This wasn’t going to be a long discussion. She had no interest in the woman’s justification or rationale. She didn’t care that Hodge was mumbling something about sins of omission and commission.

Eve just had one question. “Where is the girl?”

“Why should I tell you?” The words slurred together.

“Absolution. For all you’re guilty of.”

“Don’t need it. Don’t want it.”

“Not from the Church. From Society.”

Ellen Hodge tossed, moaning. In extreme pain.

“Tell me where the girl is,” Eve repeated, “and you’ll be the hero you wanted to be. The headlines will affirm it. That you stepped up, and didn’t just stand by. Isn’t that what you want?”

The only answer was a hoarse, choking sound.

A remembered phrase echoed in Eve’s mind. “Otherwise, what will
you
be guilty of?”

Ellen Hodge tilted her head toward Eve. She opened her mouth to say something. But no words came out, only a bright trickle of blood. Her eyes went blank.

After Midnight

We return to our continuing coverage of the astonishing hostage drama that unfolded today at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

The source who had identified New York Police Captain Sean Sullivan as the Hostage Taker responsible for today’s events has since retracted his statement. We await further word on the person or persons responsible.

In a situation that may or may not be related to the crisis, we are receiving reports that several streets in a Queens neighborhood have just been evacuated, as SWAT teams converge on a residence there.

There continues to be no word as to when the area around Fifth Avenue in the Fifties will reopen to the public. Stay tuned, right here, for all the latest developments.

E
llen Hodge’s house in Queens was on a street filled with small Cape Cods, Queen Annes, and Tudors—almost all of them decorated for the season with lights and green wreaths. But this house was a forlorn place—surrounded by skeletal trees and neglected flower beds.

Eve and Haddox watched via live video feed as officers in protective gear opened doors, foraged closets, and explored the attic.

They watched together in silence. There was no audio. The only sound Eve heard was the thump of her own heartbeat.

Haddox kept one eye on the video feed. Another eye on the in-depth background profile he was generating. “She was forty-seven. A widow; her husband died in Afghanistan. Awful situation—she was deployed with him.” He went on to explain all the details.

“So when Stacy Hodge died, and nobody stepped up to save him—when even
she
wasn’t able to save him—Ellen became obsessed with the failings of bystanders,” Eve surmised. “The incident following the subway mugging tipped her over the edge: Suddenly she was a victim who needed help, and no one stepped forward to help
her.
”

The search team smashed open a basement door secured by a padlock. The door swung wildly on its shattered hinges.

Inside, the stairs were dark. Mops and brooms and dustbins hung on the wall.

At the bottom, the floor was nothing but compacted dirt.

The search team split into three groups.

“Looks like Hodge’s family was connected to Saint Patrick’s,” Haddox explained. “Her father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all laborers—stonemasons who worked to build the Cathedral.”

“Explains why she chose it,” Eve agreed.

“Why did she choose Sullivan?”

“Ellen knew that it was only a matter of time before we’d uncover the link among her witnesses—how they were all bystanders who witnessed that subway mugging where she was the failed hero. To ensure their connection didn’t point to her, she must have researched all the investigating officers. In Sean, she found the perfect pawn. He had a young daughter she could use to control him. And she
did
control him—he was all hers, at her beck and command, from the moment she took his child. He was a combat veteran like her, with enough military expertise that we’d believe him capable of handling a rifle and explosives. Best of all, he already had significant personal and professional problems—which made him easy to frame when she stole the weapons-grade materials she needed.”

They watched as one team probed the storage area, filled with stacks of old board games, plywood, tar sealant, and a wet/dry vacuum so ancient it probably no longer worked.

Another scoured the utility room, searching behind the boiler, the washer and dryer area, and the massive oil tank.

“One other thing I still don’t understand,” Haddox said. “Why did Ellen Hodge ask for you?”

“I don’t think she did,” Eve answered. “Best I can tell, that was an ad lib on Sean Sullivan’s part. Sean trusted me to find the real truth—and rescue his daughter. Somehow he sold Ellen on the idea.”

The team began using their crowbars, shovels, and giant irons. They were going to pull down a wall.

Behind the wall there was a hidden room.

Inside the room was a cell.

Inside the cell huddled Sean Sullivan’s daughter Georgianna—alive and unharmed. But Georgie had company. A sixty-seven-year-old woman who gave her name as Muna Hodge.

Muna told her rescuers that her son, Stacy, had been killed fighting overseas. And that her daughter-in-law, Ellen, had been unhinged by that loss.

Ellen Hodge was going to get her headlines.

But not the way she wanted.