"No," he interrupted her, his voice excited. "The drop ceiling goes the whole length of the station. You could just climb over that back wall and drop down and -"
"End up killing everyone in there," Wagner finished. "We're far from last resorts at this point, Detective Wallace. What we want now is video and sound coming out of that room. Our first step toward controlling the situation is knowing what they're up to."
Wagner motioned her team closer, and they bent over the map, planning their point of entry. Lena watched them for a few minutes, trying to follow their jargon as they ran down the supplies they would need. She noticed Nick standing to the side, a hard look on his face. How he had left this kind of action was beyond her. There had to be more to the story of the Whitfield hostage situation than Frank knew. There was always a darker truth behind those sorts of rumors. God knows what kind of shit people had made up about Lena when she left the force.
Beside her, Pat Morris shifted against the table holding the coffee machine. He whispered to Lena, "You following anything they're saying?"
She shook her head.
"They seem to know what they're doing," Morris told her, and though Lena agreed, she did not comment.
"It's so weird," Morris continued, his voice still low. "The shooters, they can't be much older than my little brother, and he's still in high school."
She turned to him, warning bells going off in her head. "You're serious?" she asked. "How young? How young did they look?"
He shrugged. "They gotta be older, but they looked eighteen at the most."
"Why do they have to be older?" Lena asked. She noticed that Wagner and her team had grown quiet, but she didn't care. "Slight builds? Androgynous?"
Morris shifted uncomfortably under the pressure. "I don't know, Lena. It happened so fast."
Wagner broke in. "What are you thinking, Detective Adams?"
"The last case I worked on before I left," Lena said, the lump rising in her throat making it hard for her to speak.
Nick slammed his fist into the table, saying, "Goddammit," and Lena imagined the horror on his face mirrored her own. He had worked the case, too, and seen the damage firsthand.
"Oh, no," Molly said. "You don't think…"
Wagner's tone said her patience was running low. "Let's cut the suspense, folks."
"Jennings," Lena finally said, the name bringing the taste of bile to the back of her throat. "A pedophile who's good at getting young men to do all the dirty work."
Chapter Eight
Monday
Jeffrey helped the paramedics carry Robert down the front steps. He was still refusing to get onto a stretcher for his own hardheaded reasons, and every time Jeffrey tried to talk to him, Robert just shook his head, as if he could not speak.
Jeffrey offered, "I'll be by the hospital as soon as Hoss gets here."
Robert shook his head for the hundredth time. "No, man. I'm okay. Just make sure Jessie gets to her mama's."
Jeffrey patted his shoulder. "We'll talk tomorrow when you're more up to it."
"I'm okay," Robert insisted. Even when they loaded him into the back of the ambulance, he only said, "Make sure you look after Jess."
Jeffrey walked back to the house, but he did not go in. Instead, he sat on the front steps, waiting for Hoss to show up. Clayton Hollister was the town's sheriff – had been as long as Jeffrey could remember – and when he'd called about the shooting, Jeffrey had learned that the old man had literally gone fishing. Hoss was heading back from Lake Martin, which was about half an hour's drive away. When Jeffrey had offered to go ahead and help process the scene, his old mentor had told him to hold up. "He'll still be dead when I get there."
Two sheriff's deputies stood outside talking to Robert's neighbors, both of them knowing better than to go inside the house until the boss arrived. Hoss ran his force with an iron fist, a management style Jeffrey had never taken to. Jeffrey knew the old man would be doubly attentive on this one; Robert and Jeffrey would likely be career criminals right now except for Hoss's early intervention. He had ridden them hard when they were teenagers, hawking their every move. Even when Hoss wasn't around, his deputies knew that the two boys were his special project, and they were just as vigilant as the sheriff, maybe even more so.
At the time, Jeffrey had resented the man's prying – he already had a father, even if Jimmy Tolliver spent more time in jail than he did at home – but now that he was a cop himself, Jeffrey understood the favor Hoss had done him as a kid. There was a reason both Jeffrey and Robert had chosen law enforcement as their careers. In his own way, Hoss had led by example. Though who knew what the hell Robert was up to now.
Sitting on the front porch watching the deputies, Jeffrey kept running back over Robert's story, trying to make sense of what he and Jessie had said. Something wasn't adding up, but that shouldn't have been surprising, considering Jeffrey was back in Sylacauga. He hated this Podunk town, hated the way every second that passed here seemed to be sucking the life out of him. He had been an idiot for coming back, and even more stupid for dragging Sara along with him. Nothing here had changed in the last six years. Possum and Bobby were still spending every Sunday together, waxing nostalgic by the pool while Jessie got drunk off her ass and Nell added her bitter quips to the mix. Sara being here had made things worse than he could have imagined.
Despite his idiotic admission last night, Jeffrey could not decide exactly how he felt about Sara. She had managed somehow to get under his skin, and part of him had asked her to go to Florida in the hopes that he would be able to fuck her out of his system once and for all. Normally, the women he dated bent over backward to please him, which generally got old after a few months and became a good justification for moving on to the next one in line. Sara was not like that. On the surface, she was the kind of woman he always thought he would end up settling down with: a perfect combination of sexuality and self-confidence that made it impossible for him to get bored. It was a case of being careful what you wished for, though, because underneath it all, she was a lot of work. She had her own opinions about things and her mind was not easily changed. To make matters worse, her mother obviously thought he was the Devil incarnate and her sister had pegged him instantly for the kind of player he'd been all his life. She had actually laughed in his face when she opened the door to Sara's house yesterday, giving him a knowing up-and-down look, telling Jeffrey his reputation preceded him.
His gut reaction was to prove them all wrong. Maybe that was the problem – and the root to his attraction. Jeffrey wanted their approval. He wanted people to think he was a good guy, the kind of guy who came from a nice middle-class, God-fearing family that stood on the right side of the law. That seemed like a lost cause now. Sara was looking at him the same way everyone else in Sylacauga did, like he was just as bad as his father.
"Hey," Sara said, sitting down beside him on the steps.
He moved away from her. "How's Jessie?"
"Passed out on the couch," Sara told him, folding her arms around her knees. Her tone was reserved, like they were strangers.
"Is she on something?"
"I think her adrenaline gave out and whatever she took earlier finally caught up with her." She stared at him, seemed to be studying him.
"What?"
"We need to talk."
Dread washed over Jeffrey, but of the thousand things that came to his mind, what she actually said was more shocking than any of them.
"You changed the crime scene."
"What?" He stood up, putting himself between Sara and the crowd on the street. He knew he had done nothing wrong, but still he felt defensive. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"You left the door open."