Six minutes, she noted as she rushed out. Six minutes until noon. Maybe they weren't too late.
"Hey, buddy, when are you guys going to get the word that deliveries are supposed to come in first thing in the morning, before the customers?"
"Just following orders." He rolled in the dolly with its three large boxes. He turned deliberately into Arnie. "Just like you're going to do, unless you want to take a bullet in the belly. Lock the door, asshole," he ordered as he clamped a hand over Arnie's weapon. "I've got an S-and-W nine shoved right into your navel. The bullet's going to make a hell of a hole out the other side of you, if you don't do now and think later."
"What the fuck do you… I know you."
"Yeah, I used to be a cop, too. Let's do it this way." Lifting the gun, he whipped it across Arnie's face and sent him down. Even before the first scream, he was turning, both weapons in his hands. And he smiled as, right on schedule, right according to plan, some good employee hit the alarms that set them shrilling. And locked the place down. "Everybody on the floor. Now! Now!" He put a series of rounds in the ceiling, shattering crystal. There was plenty of screaming as people dove for cover or simply dropped to huddle together on the floor. "Except you, Blondie."
He aimed the nine at Patsy. "Over here."
"Please. Please."
"Die there or come here. Five seconds."
With tears already streaming out of her eyes, she stumbled toward him. He hooked one arm around her neck, put the gun to her temple. "Want to live?"
"Yes. God. Oh God."
"Anyone in the back? Lie to me, and I'll know, and I'll kill you."
"I… Mr. D." She sobbed it out. "Mr. D's in the back."
"He's got monitors back there, right? He can see us right now.
You'd better call out, Blondie. Because if he isn't out here in ten seconds, he's going to lose his first employee."
"There's no need." Mark stepped out of the back room, hands high.
He was a small-framed man in his early sixties, with a dapper white mustache and a head of waving white hair. "There's no need to hurt her. No need to hurt anyone."
"That'll be up to you, for a start. Over here, cuff your boy, hands behind his back."
"He's hurt."
"He'll be dead, you don't get it done. I want everyone to empty their pockets-one at a time-starting with you." He kicked the shoulder of a man in a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts. "Everything out, turn the pockets inside out. Anyone reaches for a cell phone, a weapon, a fucking stick of gum, I shoot. What's your name, honey?"
"Patsy. It's Patsy."
"Cute. I shoot cute Patsy in the ear. Pockets, now," he snapped.
"He needs medical attention," Mark said as he knelt beside Arnie. "I'll unlock the cases. You can take whatever you want. The police are on the way. The alarm."
"Yeah, it's handy." He heard the sirens already, cutting through the high ring of the store alarm. Quicker than he'd thought, but that was fine. "You're going to turn off the alarm, Mark, but you're not going to abort the lockdown. You got that? Screw it up, and Patsy's brains are going to be all over your nice, shiny floor. You." He kicked the first man again. "Up. Roll that dolly to the northeast corner."
" I… I don't know which is the northeast."
Walken rolled his eyes. "Right rear, fuckhead. Move! You, you, drag that worthless dick back there with it." He back-walked with Patsy, then shoved her to her knees. "Get some shopping bags, Patsy. You're going to pick up all this junk people carried in here, put it in shopping bags and put the bags on this counter. Everybody else, facedown. Oh, not you, Mark, sorry. Northeast corner. I'm watching you, Patsy. You be good, now. Pick up the phone, Mark." He nodded toward the one on the desk. "Call nine-one-one. You're going to say exactly what I tell you to say. Nothing more, nothing less. Understood?"
"Yes."
"Good." Walken tucked Arnie's weapon in his belt, ripped open the top box on the dolly. "You see what's in here, Mark?"
Mark's white face went gray as he looked in the box. "Yes."
"Plenty more where that came from. Make the call."
Chapter 30
Phoebe was minutes from the jewelry store when the alarm went off. She stood within sight of it, with the crisis team already moving men and equipment into positions when the nine-one-one call was relayed to her.
This is Mark D, and I have an emergency. There is an armed man holding me and sixteen other hostages inside my store. He has guns and explosives. He says if he doesn't receive a call from Lieutenant Phoebe MacNamara within five minutes from the end of this call, he will shoot one of the hostages. For every minute beyond that five-minute deadline, he will shoot another. If anyone other than Lieutenant MacNamara attempts to contact him on this phone, or any other, he will shoot a hostage. If there is any attempt to enter this building, he will detonate the explosives. Lieutenant MacNamara has exactly five minutes from now.
She reached for her cell phone. "Give me the number inside."
"Communications is nearly set up," Harrison told her.
"I don't want him to know that, or that I'm already here. The less he thinks we know, the longer we can stall." She punched in the number passed to her, sucked in a breath, then punched to call.
"This better be Phoebe."
Answered first ring, she noted, and scribbled down eager/anxious to get started. "It's Phoebe, Jerry. I'm told you want to talk to me."
"You and nobody else. Anyone else calls in here, somebody dies. That's the first term."
"No one else calls you, talks to you, but me. I understand. Will you tell me how everyone's doing in there?"
"Sure. Scared spitless. Got us some criers. One guy's going to have a hell of a headache when he comes to. If he comes to. Hey, I think you know him, Phoebe. Arnie Meeks? You've danced with him before, right?"
Her rapidly scribbling hand jumped. "Are you saying that Arnold Meeks is one of the hostages, and that he's injured?"
"That's what I'm saying. He's also wearing an accessory. Just like the one I made for Roy. You remember Roy."
Not someone she loved this time, she thought, but someone she detested. And a damn clever, vicious way to up the stakes. "Are you telling me that you've rigged explosives on Arnold Meeks's person?"
"Oh yeah. A whole shitload of them. Any move on the building, and I blow him and a hell of a lot of others to hell. I don't figure you'll mind much about old Arnie, right? Guy messed you up, didn't he? Coward's way. How about if I pay him back for you?"
"You don't sound as if you want to do me any favors, Jerry. Can we talk about you and me, and what you do want?"
"We're just getting started. You'd better get things set up fast, Phoebe. I've got a little work to do in here. You call me back in ten."
"Get the com up," Phoebe snapped. "Commander, I need Mike Vince here, right here."
"Done." He ordered it. "We've got a partial visual, a count often hostages on the floor. We can't confirm if there are seven more. Internal security has locked down the building. There's a device rigged to the rear door with trip wires."
"Don't try to defuse, please. He'd know. It would give him the ex cuse to kill a hostage, or set off the rig he has on Meeks. What he wants most is to play me, to pay me back. We need to let him do that, as long as we can."
He'd left a tidy house, she thought, and roses for Angela. "Commander, he's not planning on coming out of there alive. It's a suicide mission for him, his sacrifice. And his way of paying me back. The loss of seventeen hostages, including a man who injured me. I know what he's doing. I need time to wind this out."