My Hero (16 page)

A little authority was a dangerous thing for Jimmy Lee. The 5'7” deputy was usually quite literally in the shadow of Honeycomb's big, ham-fisted police chief, Vernon Bates. The duo gave a pretty good impression of Mayberry's finest, with Jimmy Lee perfectly cast as Barney Fife. But Sheriff Andy was on vacation in Alaska at the moment, and Barney was squatting down behind the open driver's door now, his service revolver drawn, using his damn bullhorn when a shout was all he needed to make contact with Kin Presley, barricaded with his runaround wife and a few unlucky customers inside the café.

Jimmy Lee had recently attended a seminar in San Antonio on Suicide by Cop. At this point, he was more than willing, even eager, to oblige the poor, cuckolded son of a bitch.

The last thing Kin had yelled was that he'd hand over his hostages in exchange for a car with a full tank of gas.

The wiry deputy lifted his bullhorn and boomed back. “It's not the policy of the Honeycomb P.D. to negotiate.”

“Jesus, Jimmy Lee,” Cal groaned. “Give the guy a fucking vehicle and get this over with.”

“If I need federal intervention, Cal, I believe I know how to go through the proper channels.” He shot a glare across the cruiser's front seat. “You're not even carrying, are you?”

“I usually leave my Uzi at home when I work out.”

The deputy's eyes widened. “You got one of those babies back at the ranch? I'd sure like…”

“What about it, Jimmy Lee?” Kin yelled out. “How about it? You gonna get me that car?”

Then, just as the deputy was reiterating the Honeycomb P.D.'s stance on hostage negotiations, Cal caught a glimpse of blond curls out of a corner of his eye.

Jesus H. Christ. Holly was coming down Main Street, slipping cautiously from doorway to doorway along the block, apparently oblivious to the fact that each doorway was a clean shot from the window of the Longhorn across the street. The closer she got, the cleaner each shot became. What the hell was she thinking? Every muscle in Cal's body tightened. Every nerve ending snapped. The headache he'd been coaxing to the back of his brain sallied forth in all its splendor as he placed a hand on the door's armrest and pushed himself up.

“What are you doing, Cal?” Jimmy Lee exclaimed. “Get down. Get down.”

Just what
was
he doing? Cal wondered as he walked across the street to the barbershop doorway where a certain strawberry blonde was trying pretty unsuccessfully to make herself one with the aluminum siding.

Her green eyes were about the size of crab apples as she watched him approach.

“I think I've done something pretty dumb here,” she said, her voice wavering with false bravado. “Something amazingly stupid, actually, and I'm not exactly sure…”

No shit, Sherlock.

“Do what I tell you to do,” he said, dispensing with any preliminaries or good cheer, positioning himself between her and Kin's rifle while he swung slowly around in order to keep an eye on the window and door of the café as well as the cruiser with its flashing lights and flung-open doors.

Behind him, Holly's response was immediate and smart. “Okay,” she said. “Tell me.”

“Try the door. If it opens, get inside, lock it behind you, then go to a back room, away from the street.”

He heard her jiggling the knob and swearing softly. “It's locked,” she said. “Oh, God. I can't get it open.”

“Okay,” he said, keeping his voice absolutely level while he watched the barrel of Kin Presley's rifle poke out the café door once more. “We'll just go to Plan B.”

Cal dragged in a deep breath and nudged his headache farther back in his skull. And just what
was
this Plan B? His assessment of the situation so far was that it wasn't lethal, but he knew only too well how things could go sour in the blink of an eye, with the twitch of a finger on a trigger, with a single inept word from an angry spouse or a deputy going for glory.

He didn't have any authority here, but by God, with Holly in jeopardy now, he had reason enough to take charge of the situation. There weren't too many options. He could screw around and try to find an open door for Holly on this side of Main, or he could just bring the whole incident to an end right now. All his training and experience screamed, “Shut it down.”

“Plan B?” she gulped.

“Just do what I tell you to do, Holly.”

“Okay.”

Oh, man. Well, of course she'd agreed to do whatever Cal told her. He was the expert here, after all. She wasn't stupid, despite the fact that she had stupidly blundered into the middle of a hostage situation. But Holly thought Plan B would involve getting
away
from the situation, not walking
toward
it.

“Stay close behind me,” Cal had told her. “I mean close as in inches and completely behind me. Keep your eyes on the spot right between my shoulder blades. Do not even think about peeking around my shoulder to see what's going on. You got that?”

“Okay, but…”

“Don't argue. Just do it.”

His voice was so level and calm, he obviously knew what he was doing. Right? His blue eyes had burned with such determination that she had to trust him. Didn't she?

He'd told her to stay close, and she was doing her best, practically plastering her boobs against the middle of his back, measuring her stride to fit his as they crossed the street, but even so, managing to step on the heels of his running shoes every now and then.

“Watch it,” he growled.

“Sorry.”

As instructed, she was keeping her gaze on the gray sweatshirt fabric between his shoulder blades, but in her peripheral vision she could see people peeking out of doorways up and down the street, then quickly ducking their heads back.

Dammit. She wished she had a camera. The most exciting drama in her life, and she was
in it
instead of
all over it
like a proper journalist. She wished she had grabbed her tape recorder or a notebook. She wished she could see something other than the damp gray spot on Cal's back.

“How many hostages are inside?” she asked.

“Dunno,” he snapped, still moving forward.

“Any idea?”

“Ssh,” he hissed.

Holly was attempting to curb her curiosity when the deputy's bullhorn boomed. “Step out of the street, Cal. I repeat, step out of the street.”

That wasn't such a bad idea, actually. Cal obviously didn't think so, though. He just kept walking toward the Longhorn Café.

Then he stopped, and Holly ran right into him.

“Kin,” he called out. “It's Cal Griffin. You can take my car. Let all those people walk out the door, and then I'll hand over the keys.”

To their right, the bullhorn squawked. “You don't have the authority to—”

“Put a sock in it, Jimmy Lee,” Cal growled.

Directly ahead, from behind the door of the café, a voice called out. “The Thunderbird?”

“That's right. It's parked right out here.”

Holly didn't see it, but neither could Kin.

Now she heard the door creak open and the hostage-taker ask in a sort of baffled tone, “You're letting me take your T-bird?”

Cal reached slowly into the pocket of his sweatpants and came up with a set of keys, which he jingled. “Yep. Let those people all come out and I'll give you these. The tank's three-quarters full and the last time I had it on the highway, I had the needle up to one-twenty.”

“I'm taking Trisha with me,” the man said.

“Trisha comes out with the rest,” Cal responded calmly. “Otherwise, no deal.”

“Lemme think about it.”

“You've got two minutes,” Cal told him.

“Two minutes,” the deputy croaked on the bullhorn.

Silence descended upon Main Street. Holly could almost hear herself sweat. The sun was throwing knives at the top of her head, so she leaned forward, pressing her forehead against Cal's back.

“How're you doing back there?” he asked quietly.

“Fine,” she said, “for an imbecile.”

He felt him chuckle. “This'll all be over in another minute.”

“One way or another,” she groaned.

No sooner had she said those words than Holly heard the door of the café open. She recognized Kin Presley's voice when he called, “They're comin' out, Cal. All of 'em. Just like you said.”

“Here we go,” Cal murmured.

“Oh, thank God,” Holly breathed. “Should I…?”

“Stay behind me, just like you are.”

Then she could hear the quick footsteps of the newly released hostages as they hastened out the door, and their voices tumbling over one another.

Hurry up now, sugar.

Thank you, Jesus.

That durn fool.

Watch the door now.

“Let's go, folks,” the deputy ordered via the now thoroughly unnecessary amplifier. “Keep moving. Let's go. Let's go.”

Holly leaned a little to her right and glimpsed them around Cal's upper arm. She recognized Coral, the waitress with the blond beehive. If this were New York, there would be a slew of reporters waiting to pounce on these people. She only hoped, since she couldn't play journalist herself, that some enterprising young scribe from the
Honeycomb Gazette
was appropriately positioned with notebook and pen in hand.

“That's all of 'em, Cal,” Kin Presley called. “Gimme those keys. And tell that idiot Jimmy Lee to keep back.”

“Stay with me now,” Cal told Holly under his breath as he started forward again. “Stay close.”

“Oh, God,” Holly gulped. “What now?”

“Shove the rifle out on the sidewalk, Kin,” Cal called to the man still inside, “and I'll turn over the keys.”

“You said the hostages, Cal. You didn't say anything about the rifle,” the man yelled.

“No rifle, no T-bird,” Cal said.

“Aw, hell. Okay.”

A moment later she heard the rough clatter of a firearm on the sidewalk. Then, with Holly still plastered to his back, Cal stepped forward to kick the weapon out of reach.

Kin Presley stomped out the door muttering, “You ain't really gonna give me those keys, are you?”

“Nope,” Cal drawled.

“I didn't think so. Well, hell. Just tell Deputy Dawg over there to keep his pistol packed, will you? I don't trust Jimmy Lee any farther than I can throw him.”

Holly, feeling relatively safe now, peeked out from behind Cal's back in time to see the erstwhile hostage-taker and T-bird driver hold out his arms, hanging his head and proferring his wrists for handcuffs, as if he'd been down this road before.

“Jimmy Lee,” Cal said to the approaching deputy. “Kin's turning himself in and he wants to make a call to his attorney. You make sure he has access to a phone, you hear?”

“I believe I know the law, Cal,” the deputy said with a sneer as he slapped a pair of cuffs on Kin, and then gave his prisoner a shove toward the cruiser. “Get in the car, you lame brain.”

It was at that point that half the town surged forward in their Sunday best and bathrobes, to shake Cal Griffin's hand and pat him on the back, gradually but effectively moving Holly farther and farther away from him, the way a strong tide moves a swimmer farther and farther from the beach. She didn't really mind. It gave her a moment to catch her breath, to think about what had just happened.

Her knees had begun to tremble a bit in a delayed reaction to events, so she sat down on the curb in front of the barber shop.

Rufus panned the street, and the tape in Holly's head started rolling.

On a Sunday morning in Honeycomb, Texas, rifle shots rang out along with church bells. What could have been a tragedy was averted when a tall man in gray sweats…

No. Wait.

…when a hero in gray sweats…

Taking his cue from her script, Rufus zoomed in on Cal, who at that precise moment turned, head and shoulders above the crowd, and found Holly with his heavenly blue eyes.

Her heart did a sort of half gainer within her chest. Then all of a sudden she was dizzy. She was hot as hell, melting, and she could hardly breathe. The tape in her head started
thwap thwapping
and her vision blurred.

Chapter Ten

I
t was the damnedest wallpaper Cal had ever seen. When he'd first looked at it on Friday in a blur of vertigo, he thought he'd never see it again. But then he'd awakened to the big, white, man-eating roses yesterday morning, and now here he was again, back in the nineteenth-century floral nightmare on Ellie's second floor.

When the dust had settled on Main Street a while ago, Holly had passed out cold. Whether it was from the heat of the day or residual terror, he wasn't sure. She'd been pale as a fish and her skin had felt clammy so, over her weak protests, he'd carried her back to this godawful room, laid her on the big four-poster bed, and put cool washcloths on her forehead and neck.

While she rested, Cal sat on the hardwood floor rather than ruin Ellie's little flowered armchair with his damp sweatclothes. He sat, stared at the white-petals-on-bubble-gum wallpaper, and wished this whole hero business would just go away.

In spite of the non-violent outcome, the drama at the Longhorn Café had been a debacle in Cal's eyes. The cardinal rule of law enforcement may have been take control of the situation, but there was nothing in the rule book about being a hot dog. Which was what he'd been this morning. A real, prize-winning, ballpark frank. In hindsight, he knew he could have hustled Holly down the street to safety, well out of harm's way. Why the hell hadn't he done that?

He'd already come up with one reason, which was that he'd wanted to keep the little producer close to him, as close as his own skin. It wasn't such a strange reaction from someone trained to be a protector. It might have been egotistical, but it wasn't out of bounds.

The other reason, though…the one that kept cropping up, only to be shunted aside. The one that kept knocking on his consciousness like a very unwelcome guest. The reason he didn't want to think about had something to do with this hero business. And someplace in the back of his brain Cal was ashamed to think he'd handled the situation the way he had this morning in order to impress the producer of Hero Week, to show her he wasn't some useless, washed-up Fed, some has-been who'd be collecting a pension pretty soon.