FOUR THIRTY THURSDAY MORNING, and FBI Special Agent April Ramos battled depression. She should be in bed after the earlier ordeal, but sleep evaded her. The walls of her cubicle seemed to close in, strangling her with memories of the 1 a.m. crime. Fresh. Raw. Unbearable in every sense of the word.
She’d handled a hostage negotiation, and it ended in tragic shootings. If the young mother survived, she’d face the rest of her life in a wheelchair. The shooter, the woman’s husband, had sent a bullet into her spine and turned the gun on himself. A two-year-old saw the burst of insanity unfold. April hoped the little boy could erase the tragedy from his mind forever.
She doubted she’d ever forget how a few choices caused a child to lose both parents. In the six years she’d worked hostage negotiation, she’d lost only two people. This morning’s shooting might have been prevented if she’d arrived on the scene a few minutes earlier.
She’d walked into the situation with a man wielding a gun while his wife screamed for him to put it down. April’s attempt to talk the wife and husband down met with disaster. The limited SWAT team had her back —great people whom she loved —but she’d hesitated, thinking her skills controlled a favorable outcome. Lack of time had been her adversary, preventing her from digging deep for the man’s emotional label, from keeping the dialogue flowing. A solid psychological assessment never happened.
Normally she negotiated from the office via phone. This morning she not only worked alone without a complete NOC —Negotiation Operation Center —but in person. Why hadn’t she let the SWAT commander take over?
“Need to talk?” Special Agent Simon Neilson stood at the opening of her cubicle, his premature white hair depicting wisdom.
“I’ll be okay.”
“Sure you will.”
She forced a thin smile. “Time is a healer, and experience limits future mistakes.” She shook her head. “Wish I could believe my own advice. Any word on the woman’s condition?”
“The doctor says she’ll pull through.”
For what? To raise her son without showing him how to skip and run? She’d never be able to teach him how to swim or play ball. Abhorrently unfair, and the searing through April’s stomach proved it. “Does she know her husband’s dead?”
“Her father will tell her once she’s stabilized.”
“After she’s aware of her husband’s suicide, I’ll visit her.”
“We can go together. How many times tonight have you heard this wasn’t your fault?”
“A lot.” She’d been trained in defusing volatile people. Her documented success rate was excellent until a few hours ago. A dead victim, his wife permanently disabled, hit way too hard.
“April, I know you’ve heard this before. He had a choice.”
“Choice is a complicated word. It includes mine. Taking the stairs to the apartment this morning instead of the elevator slowed me. The lapse interfered with me encouraging the shooter’s wife to grasp control of her emotions. My request for a partial SWAT team to stay out of view and wait for my determination —”
“You’re not God.”
“Trust me, I’d ensure life around here operated differently.” She grabbed a few seconds for positive self-talk, but guilt tossed ugly accusations. “When the man bent to drop his gun, I thought I’d gained his confidence. But he hesitated and turned the weapon on his wife, narrowly missing his child, then on himself. I hadn’t evaluated him sufficiently to sort out how best to talk him down.”
“You care too much.”
“It’s who I am.” Compassion for others was etched in her DNA.
“I hope it doesn’t get you killed.”
“If it does, my parents will gladly confirm they were right about my job.” They much preferred her using her doctorate as a university professor.
“Your goal is not to prove them right. Go home and get some rest. How about dinner with me and the wife tomorrow evening, providing we aren’t all blown away or flooded out?”
November was really late in the season for a hurricane. But why talk weather when her mind raged over this morning’s situation? “Dinner? Only if you two come to my place.”
He moaned. “The last time I couldn’t move for twenty-four hours. Chicken adobo?”
“Of course.” She grappled with her turmoil. “Thanks. Simon Neilson therapy always makes me feel better.”
Her phone buzzed with a call from their SAC. “April, we have a reported hostage situation. Jason Snyder escaped jail in Sweet Briar after being arrested for murder. His twelve-month-old daughter is missing, and the county sheriff believes Snyder nabbed the child from her grandparents. The fugitive is emotionally unstable, and the sheriff fears for the child’s life. We’ve been asked to assist, and we only have you and Simon to take the lead on this. Snyder has to stop sometime and then we can proceed with negotiations. With the sporadic power outages, you’ll need to conduct another face-to-face without a NOC. The hurricane still has many of our SWAT people trapped. The team is ready to go.”
The SAC didn’t need to say more. She understood. “Where is Snyder now?”
“According to telematics, he’s driving a 2018 green Chevy pickup truck from Tyler County. I’ll text you the plates and a pic of Snyder.”
She ended the call and peered up at Simon. “Want to be my negotiation partner for another case?”