Chapter Seven

Jenny gasped and took a step backwards as fear knifed her. She bumped into the desk behind her. Donna’s face contorted in sudden panic, and she lifted her hands.

“James, no,” Donna said, the terror in her voice soft but razor-sharp.

James took another step forward, completely ignoring Jenny. Time seemed to slow and fragments of wishes and memories launched through her mind. Uppermost in her thoughts lingered Greg’s kiss. So damned tender and so filled with aching promise. Please, please let me make it out of this alive. She wanted more of his kiss. She wanted more him, more of life.

He turned toward Jenny and everything inside her seized with heart-stopping fear.

“You,” he said. “Sit behind your desk and don’t do anything stupid.”

Donna’s eyes widened even more, the fear so stark in her face Jenny wondered if the older woman would pass out. And then she did. She fell straight back, bounced off her chair and went head first into a filing cabinet with a sickening crack.

“Oh, God!” Jenny gasped out, covering her hand with her mouth.

Jenny stood without thinking, ready to help Donna.

“Sit! Down!” James turned on her, the gun in Jenny’s face.

The barrel almost touched Jenny’s nose, and rather than look at the weapon that might prove to be her end, she looked to the side and tried not to choke on the fear.

James cursed creatively, mixing combinations she’d never heard before. He went to where Donna had fallen and looked down at her. “Well, she’s got a good dent in her head. I think the bitch might be dead.” He snorted. “At least they can’t blame this one on me.”

Although it was probably seconds, she had a chance to assess the man nearby. James had lost a lot of weight over the last few months. She hadn’t seen him many times and whenever she had he always seemed pissed off and not interesting in talking with anyone. His scrubs looked wrinkled as if he’d wadded them or slept in them. His short beard and mustache held hints of gray, and his blue eyes seemed sad.

Ten years of marriage had flushed down the toilet when Donna had found a ton of porn on his computer. Jenny imagined more than just porn had screwed up their marriage. Donna was no prize herself. Yet Jenny would never condone what James had done busting into the office with a gun.

Jenny had enough of an imagination she’d thought of what she’d do if she found herself in a hostage situation. Gut-hollowing fear made her feel hot, disoriented, and a lot stupid. Her mind didn’t want to work.

Come on. Come on, Jenny. You need to get out of here alive. Think. Think.

“Let me help Donna,” she managed to squeeze through her tight vocal chords.

“Hell, no. I think she’s beyond that.” He laughed. “So what are we going to do about this, Jenny?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you could leave and I’ll give you some time to get away. I won’t call the cops.”

He snorted again. “Bullshit. I guess we’ll just have to die by cop.”

Her breath seized. “James, no. You don’t have to do that.”

“Yeah, I have to do that.”

In her imaginary hostage situation, she’d thought of so many ways she could talk down the suicidal person. So many ways to get out of this situation alive. Words failed her big time when reality arrived. She swallowed hard.

“Look, James. I’m not going to be brave. I’m telling you right now I’m scared shitless. I just found out today that I’m falling really hard and fast for someone and I want to live long enough to find out what’s going to happen between us. I want that chance. Please give me that chance.”

James appeared thoughtful for a moment, as if he considered her request interesting and reasonable. Then he pointed the gun at her.

* *

“What?” Greg said into his cell phone. He wasn’t sure he’d heard Jax Mallory correctly.

“Station 58 was just called to Dallas Emergency Hospital,” Jax said. “Shots have been fired and the word is that someone’s been hurt or killed.”

No. Fucking. Way.

Greg struggled to understand what he’d heard. His heart banged in his chest and his breathing shortened as every horrible thought he could imagine slammed him. Jenny. Jenny hurt. Dead.

“What the fuck, Jax? Is Jenny…is she all right?”

“I don’t know. I heard what was going on from the news. I’m home with Skye. I’ll meet you at the hospital if you want.”

Greg was already moving, the Marine in him kicking into high gear. “No, that’s okay. I’ll let you know what’s happening as soon as I know.”

He tried calling Jenny as he jumped into his SUV, but it went straight to voice mail. He used his hands free system to try and call her as he was driving and got the voice mail again. This time he left a message.

“Jenny, it’s Greg. I heard about the hospital shooting. Call me when you get this so I know you’re all right. I’m coming to the hospital.”

When he hung up he almost choked on the combination of anger and anxiety riding him like a bronc rider on a bucking horse. In battle he’d managed to control apprehension and fear to do the mission. Right now he had very little control as it twisted his insides.

Greg tried not to speed or do something crazy like run a red light. Yet at every red light, the freaking traffic seemed determined to keep him from getting to Jenny, and his heart and mind screamed at him to drive faster. What he could do, he didn’t know. It wasn’t like the police would let him participate in bringing down the perpetrator.

Given half a chance I would take the guy down with everything I’ve got.

Of course, he knew he couldn’t march in there and save the day. Anger hit him at the same time. Why did these assholes take out their anger, pain and fucked up attitudes on the innocent? He guessed it might be Donna’s ex doing this stupid shit, but who knew?

You couldn’t save your father. You can’t save Jenny.

Painful thoughts haunted him, seized him by the balls and hung on.  If he lost Jenny…

He sucked in a ragged breath. He couldn’t allow that fear to make him crazy. Jenny might already be outside the hospital and safe. Apprehension rode him hard as he parked as close to the barriers as he could. He encountered the cops at road blocks, and when he showed his fire department identification, they cleared him to go through. Station 58 and another set of rescue personnel from a different department waited just within the road blocks in case they might be needed. Greg could venture no farther. He could see from the huge crowd, many of them dressed in scrubs, that many people had already escaped the building. There also had to be a lot of people still locked down in the hospital.

A firefighter from a different station told Greg, “We heard a cop say shots fired and SWAT is moving into the building soon.”

“Any word on casualties?” Greg asked.

“No.”

Time crawled as Greg scanned the crowd for any sign of Jenny. Jax and Dane showed up. They had the same day off but here they were to support Greg. Definitely a band of brothers to keep him from going insane.

“Why are you guys here?” Greg asked through a tight throat.

Jax clapped him on the shoulder and held on. “Because we know what it’s like to have the woman we love in danger. It scared the fuck out of us, so we figured we’d better get down here and see if we could help you.”

Greg shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do.”

Dane said, “Then we’ll do nothing together.”

A moment later the chain of voices reached them, and they heard the news. The hostage taker was James Herald, Donna Colton’s ex-husband.

“Fuck,” Greg said under his breath.

“That could mean…” Dane said.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Jax said. “Jenny could still be in the crowd here and we haven’t seen her yet.”

Jax’s reassurance did nothing to soothe the rampaging fear for Jenny or Greg’s desire to rip off James’s face.

Greg’s made fists, his body reacting with a need to fight. “She would’ve called me. She would’ve called Lexi or someone else to let them know she was safe. That cocksucker has Jenny.”

* *

For those seconds when James turned the gun on Jenny, she thought she’d bought the proverbial farm. Tears threatened, but she found her anger at the situation overwhelming the gut-hollowing fear. She wanted to scream, wanted to rip James a new one and do anything she could to torpedo his idiotic plan.

“Sit in that chair,” he said.

She sat in the chair behind her desk, thankful for at least that.

Her cell phone in her purse rang once and went to voice mail. When it rang a second time not long after, she heard the notification indicating someone had left a message. The phone on Donna’s desk went ape shit. It rang and rang until James decided to answer it.

“What the hell do you want?” James almost yelled into the phone.

From that point forward, the negotiation process went the way she imagined it always did. With the Dallas PD doing what it could to talk the shooter out of doing more damage. James hung up a considerable time later with no promise to surrender.

Jenny made a plan to say what she meant, to speak as honestly as she could to the man in front of her. If he thought of her as human, maybe he’d give her a chance, and perhaps she could survive this situation. Even if that meant making nice with James.

“What’s your plan?” Jenny asked softly.

He leaned his rump against Donna’s desk, and he partially obscured her view of Donna’s body. “I could shoot you.”

Jenny’s blood ran to ice. “Why would you do that? I’ve never treated you with anything but respect.”

He smirked. “You’re just collateral damage in all this. Don’t you get that? Wrong place, bad luck.”

What could she say to that? She switched gears, the terror in her threatened to derail her ability to speak coherently.

“All right. Even if you kill me, what do you plan to do next?” she asked.

“Kill myself. Maybe suicide by cop.”

She swallowed, her throat so tight now she could barely squeeze words out. “Look, I just met this wonderful man last week. He saved me from the tornado.”

“So?”

She could’ve been braver, perhaps. Had more bravado in her speech. Been more clever. She decide bald honest might get her some points.

“I’m already falling for him, and I don’t want to lose him now. Okay? It’s…I want to live.”

She didn’t know what would happen next. Would he decide to go out in a hail of bullets? Would he decide peace was better and let her go? In the back of her mind, a few words repeated themselves over and over.

I just want to be in Greg’s arms. Now. Now.

“You know, you’re all right.” James’s voice was quiet as he put his gun down on Donna’s desk.

She hadn’t expected that, either. She stared at the gun and then snapped her attention to his face. “Thank you.”

“When I’ve come in the office you never treated me like a piece of shit. That counts for something.”

“I try to treat everyone with respect, James.”

“Why aren’t you asking me why I did this?”

“Would it matter?”

“Probably not.”

“Okay, I think I can guess a little of why you felt it was necessary. You hate Donna?”

He snorted. “Yep. Hate her guts. I’m glad she’s dead.”

“Okay. You’re so angry at what she did to you, that you think she deserves to die.”

“Exactly.”

“You couldn’t just stick with the divorce and just leave it as is?”

His face hardened, and for a terrifying second, she wondered if she’d screwed her chance to escape death.

“I just don’t give a shit about my life any more, Jenny. So this kills two birds. Donna and me.”

“You don’t have to die.”

“I think I do.”

The phone rang, and she startled. He let it ring twice more before answering.

“Yeah,” he said into the phone.

She couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation.

James said, “Yeah. Yeah. It’s over, man. You ought to hire Jenny Hannigan as your negotiator. I’m done here. She just convinced me not to shoot her.”

Jenny’s heart about stopped as relief and suspicion battled for control inside her. She didn’t know whether to believe him or not. This had been too easy, right?

“Yeah. Okay. Doing that right now,” James said.

After he hung up, he also retrieved the gun. Her stomach clenched in anxiety. He stood.

“I just told them I’m coming out of the building right now. They said you should stay here. Don’t leave this office.”

He walked to the doorway, and she understood a second later that he had to know the cops were in the building already. He opened the door and walked out, closing the door behind him. Without thinking, she ran to Donna in case she was still alive. Like clockwork Donna moaned. Relieved, Jenny leaned over Donna and checked for a pulse in her neck. It was faint. Jenny grabbed her phone from her handbag. Before she could dial 9-1-1 to let them know Donna was alive, she saw that Greg had left a voice mail.

Tears followed, rolling down her cheeks. She heard loud voices and commotion outside. The shouting became louder. Within a few moments the door popped open and three armed SWAT officers came in the room, weapons up.

On instinct she put her hands up. “Thank God. Help me, she’s still alive.”

One of the SWAT officers knelt beside Donna and immediately started first aid.

Another officer touched Jenny’s shoulder. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

She nodded. “I’m fine. He didn’t hurt me. Did he hurt anyone else?”

“No,” the man said. “He seemed to target just this office.”

In the jumble of minutes that followed, she learned that James had surrendered without incident. He hadn’t provoked suicide by cop. Hospital operations would ramp up again as soon as possible. Most people had stayed sheltered in place, and hordes of cops went door to door announcing that all was clear. The P.A. System announced the same. The lockdown was over.

“Please, I’d like to get out of here,” she said to one cop.

“We need to take you downstairs for debriefing. Sorry about that, ma’am. I know you’d like to be reunited with friends and family,” the young man said. “A detective will need to take your statement.”

Tears were still falling—she couldn’t seem to control the shivering that wracked her body. “I understand.”

She almost forgot to take her handbag with her. The same SWAT officer escorted her out of the building just as paramedics rushed inside. There were still masses of people outside the building. She scanned faces, looking for Greg. She knew without a doubt he’d be there looking for her. She saw fire trucks and ambulances across the parking lot but had no time to see if Greg might be there before a detective waylaid her. He took her into the SWAT mobile command center, and for the next thirty minutes she answered questions. She got the good news that Donna was in better shape than expected, although she’d been taken to the hospital with a concussion.

Just after the thirty minutes passed, a SWAT officer cleared his throat and announced to the men in the command center, “Miss Hannigan? There’s a guy out here who says he knows you. Been insisting that he see you.”

“Greg Falk?” she asked in happiness and anticipation.

“That’s him.”

“Are we done here?” she asked detective.

“For now, yes. You’re free to go. Thank you, Miss Hannigan.”

She managed a lopsided smile, and within a moment she saw Greg outside of the command center standing between two SWAT cops, his face unreadable. No, that wasn’t exactly true. He looked mad. Ready to eat bear. She could see it in the tightness of that handsome mouth and the heat in his eyes.

She left the command center and hurried toward him just as he started for her. His face eased into a brilliant smile as she rushed into his arms.

He cupped her face just as he had earlier in the day. “God, Jenny. That scared the shit out of me. I—are you okay?” He drew back just enough to look her up and down. “Did James hurt you?”

“No. He didn’t hurt me. I’m fine. I’m fine.” Tears started to flow again.

“Oh, God, I thought…a couple of times I thought…” He brushed her tears away, then kissed her forehead.

“I know. Me, too. Can we get out of here?”

He supported the back of her head as she pressed her face to his shoulder, his other arm banding around her tightly. He held her while the tears flowed.