Frank said, "The hospital isn't."
"Fuckers," she said, wondering how anybody could do that job. They were vultures, and the people back home who watched it all live were no better than animals themselves.
Frank lowered his voice, saying, "We gotta keep in control here."
"What does that mean?"
"With Jeffrey gone…" Frank stared out into the street. "We gotta keep our people in charge."
"You mean you?" Lena asked, but she could read on his face that he hadn't meant it that way. She asked, "What's wrong with you? Are you sick?"
He shrugged, wiping his mouth with a dirty-looking handkerchief. "Me and Matt ate something bad last night." She was startled to see tears in his eyes at the mention of Matt. Lena could not imagine what it had been like for him to watch his friend die right in front of his eyes. Frank had been Matt's supervisor when the younger man first came onto the force. Almost twenty years had passed since then and they had spent just about every working day in each other's company.
Frank said, "We know Nick. We know what kind of guy he is. He needs all the support we can give him."
"Is that what you were talking about in the office?" Lena asked. "It didn't seem like you were so hot on supporting him five minutes ago."
"We have a difference of opinion about how this should go down. I don't want some bureaucrat walking in here and fucking things up."
"This isn't a cowboy movie," Lena countered. "If the negotiator knows what he's doing, then we should follow his lead."
"It's not a guy," Frank said. "It's a woman."
Lena gave him a scathing look. Frank had made it clear from Lena's first day that he did not think women belonged in uniform. It must have burned him up knowing that a woman was coming down from Atlanta to take charge.
Frank said, "It ain't about her being a female."
Lena shook her head, pissed off as hell that he was worried about something as stupid as this. "You don't get into the freaking GBI baking cookies."
"Nick trained with this gal when he first joined up. He knows her."
"What'd he tell you?"
"He won't talk about it," Frank said, "but everybody knows what happened."
Lena bristled. "I don't."
"They were holed up in a restaurant outside of Whitfield. Two idiots with guns looking to score off the lunch crowd." He shook his head. "She hesitated. The whole thing went bad in less than a minute. Six people died." He gave her a knowing look. "We got our people in there praying for a savior," he jabbed a finger at the station, "and she ain't got the balls to do it."
Lena stared across the street. They only had six people left in the squad room.
She looked back at Frank. "We need to find out what's going on in there." There were parents and wives and boyfriends who were left hanging, waiting to find out whether or not their loved one was living or dead. Lena knew what it felt like to lose somebody, but at least she had found out Sibyl was dead fairly fast. She hadn't had to wait like the families were doing now. Jeffrey had told her, then they had gone to the morgue. That was that.
Frank asked, "What is it?"
She had let her thoughts get away from her, remembering all the second chances Jeffrey had given her, including this one today. No matter what stupid thing Lena did, he never stopped believing in her. There was no one else who would ever do that again.
Frank repeated, "What?"
"I was just thinking…" she said, but the sight of a helicopter swooping over the college stopped her. Lena and Frank both watched as the big black bird hung in the air over the college, then touched down on the roof of the Grant County Medical Center. The building was little more than two stories of old brick, and Lena half expected it to buckle. It obviously held, because a few seconds later Nick Shelton's phone rang. He opened it, listened for a couple of beats, then shut it.
He said, "Cavalry's here," but there was no relief in his voice. He motioned for Lena and Frank to follow him outside the back of the cleaners, and they all made their way toward the hospital, the heat bearing down like a sauna.
Lena asked Nick, "Is there anything we can do?"
He shook his head, saying, "This's their show now. It's got nothing to do with us."
Lena tried to get confirmation on Frank's story. "You trained with this woman?"
His tone was clipped. "Not long."
"She good?" Lena prodded.
"She's a machine," Nick said, but it did not sound like a compliment.
They were silent as he led them past the shops on Main Street. They reached the hospital in under five minutes, but with the heat and anxiety, it seemed like hours. Lena did not know what she had been expecting when they reached the hospital, but it was not the elegantly dressed woman who threw open the back exit door and walked toward them with a purposeful stride. Behind her were three burly men dressed in the requisite shirts and chinos of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. They wore huge Glocks on their sides and walked like they had brass balls. The woman leading them was small, around five three with a slight build, but she walked toward Nick with the same swagger.
"Glad you could get here," Nick said, a tone of resignation in his voice. He made introductions, telling Frank and Lena, "This is Dr. Amanda Wagner. She's the GBI's chief negotiator. She's been doing this longer than anybody in the state."
Wagner barely acknowledged them as she shook Nick's hand. She did not bother to introduce the three men she'd brought with her, and none of them seemed too upset about it. Up close, she was older than Lena had first thought, probably in her fifties. She had clear polish on her fingernails and little makeup. A simple diamond ring was all the jewelry she wore, and her hair was cut in one of those flyaway styles that took forever to fix. There was something calming about her presence, though, and Lena thought that whatever had gone on between the negotiator and Nick must have been personal. Despite what Frank had said, there was nothing hesitant about Amanda Wagner. She seemed more than ready to jump into the fray.
Wagner spoke in a cultured drawl, asking Nick, "We've got two adult male shooters, heavily armed, with six hostages, three of them children?"
"That's correct," Nick said. "Phones and utilities are controlled. We're monitoring for cell transmissions, but nothing's come out yet."
"This way?" she asked. Nick nodded and they walked back toward the cleaners as she questioned him. "Car been found?"
"We're working on it."
"Entrances and exits?"
"Secured."
"Sharpshooters?"
"Standard six-point formation."
"Minicams?"
"We'll need them from you."
She glanced behind her, and one of the men got on his cell phone. She continued, "The jail population?"
"Evacuated to Macon."
Overhead, the helicopter that had brought them here took off. Wagner waited for the roar of the blades to die down before asking, "Have you established contact?"
"I got one of my men on the phone. They haven't picked up yet."
"Is he trained in negotiation?" Wagner asked, though surely she knew the answer. Nick shook his head, and she said, "Let's hope they don't answer, Nicky. The first contact is generally the primary negotiator throughout the entire siege. I thought you'd learned that lesson." She paused a moment, but when Nick did not respond, she suggested, "Perhaps you could stop him and get me the number?"
Nick took his radio off his belt. He walked ahead of them, relaying the order. When he called out the station's phone number, one of the men from Wagner's team dialed it into a cell phone and held it to his ear.
"Who've we got inside?" she asked as they started walking again. "Run it down for me one more time."