HOSTAGE HEART
Chapter one
I could hear the clock ticking with my heart beating wildly in my chest. His words conveyed a seriousness that I had heard before. This wasn’t my first rodeo. I had been on leave. This was my first day back. Losing one was always hard. It led me down a dark and lonely road filled with regret and heartache.
“I swear I will kill her if anybody comes close to the house. I’m not going back to jail. Give me what I want and stop stalling for time.” I was playing devil’s advocate for an ebony man holed up inside his home during a domestic dispute.
The police sirens were giving off this weird glow of red splashing against the windows. They were gun happy and looking for any reason to end this standoff. The captain was waiting for me to confirm whether or not I could talk him down from the metaphorical edge.
“I’m sure things are not as bad as you think they are. You just got out and there had to be something you were waiting for on the outside. You must have realized life still moved forward without you.” I was wearing a flak jacket. He was pacing back and forth in front of the window with a shotgun in one hand and a young terrified woman in the other.
Her flaming red hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Her face was streaked with the tears of her mascara. I could see that she was pleading with him for mercy, but he wasn’t listening.
“I want a car with $1,000,000 in the back seat. Don’t test me. I might have loved her in the past, but she means nothing to me now.” There was always a stressor and I was beginning to get a better outlook on the situation.
“Let me guess, she wasn’t as faithful as she pretended to be. Are you really going to give her the kind of power to put you back behind bars? You haven’t killed anybody and I can talk on your behalf to make sure the sentence is light.” I did have some pull with the district attorney. We had been lovers in the past.
“You can’t fool me. The only thing you want is for me to put down this gun and that’s not going to happen. Power comes from the weapon you wield in the palm of your hands. Without this, I become nothing more than collateral damage for your gun-toting police officers.” I had to make him see giving up was preferably over getting one between the eyes.
“I’m going to be perfectly honest with you. There are people out here waiting for the right time to strike you down with the hand of God. They don’t see you as anything more than an inconvenience to their day. I’m the only one working in your best interest. This doesn’t have to end with bloodshed. You can still get out after a year with good behavior.” He hadn’t fired on the police officers or shown to be any kind of threat to their safety.
“Bridget, I’m not sure that I agree with your technique, but I will bow to your expertise in this matter.” Captain Anders was a man well acquainted with his fair share of doughnuts and coffee. The spread around the middle made him proclaim to have a dad body.
I put my hand over the receiver so Tyrone wouldn’t overhear our conversation. He had to believe I was on his side. I wanted an outcome that I could live with without regret. They pretended not to notice the underlying reason for this situation, but I could read between the lines better than anybody.
“He’s living with the premise that he’s going back to jail, but I need to mitigate his fears to show him a way out of this without doing anything rash. He already knows he’s going back behind bars, but the length is going to determine whether or not he can live with his actions.” There was a sharpshooter in the trees ready to be given the green light.
My blonde hair was tickling the back of my neck. I could feel a bead of sweat rolling down the small of my back into the crack of my ass. I always did get a little overanxious during moments of tense negotiation. The byproduct of such a symptom was to grab some unsuspecting young man and put a smile on his face.
“I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but I’m getting a lot of heat from upstairs to finish this quickly. The governor’s family lives in the area.” There was always some kind of public scrutiny and political fallout to worry about.
My chest was thrust out against the white tee shirt and flak jacket. My nipples were hard enough to cut through glass. My legs were trembling with this thrill running through my veins. I’d gotten into this line of work to help people, but the sexual component was hard to ignore.
“I don’t tell you how to do your job and I don’t want you to tell me how to do mine.” I could see through Tyrone’s eyes in the window there was an ounce of pain for finding her in another man’s arms.
The flapping curtain billowing outside the bathroom window confirmed my suspicions. Somebody had made a hasty exit and left behind his pants hanging out of the window. It was almost laughable to think of somebody running around in their underwear.
“I don’t think you understand the scope of the situation. I have a shotgun against her head. One wrong move and my itchy trigger finger is going to set it off. I might die, but I will gladly take her with me into the afterlife.” Tyrone was bald and had the kind of muscles to enforce his will on anyone. He towered over the innocent looking lamb with 6 feet of fury and 250 pounds of dominance.
“I know things can happen in the heat of the moment. Everybody makes mistakes. I’m not immune to doing something I never want to see the light of day.” The night I lost an innocent was met with flailing arms and legs in a seedy motel where there was an hourly rate for unseemly behavior.
“It was my brother. In hindsight, it was probably not a good idea to ask him to keep an eye on her for me. I thought he was above reproach, but he proved that he was not immune to her charm.” He had no shirt on and there were streaks of blood running down his chest from his nose. The altercation between him and his brother must’ve gotten physical before he grabbed for the equalizer of the gun.
The green house was badly in need of a paint job with flecks of the old paint trying to bleed through. The red door was meant to be an accent to attract the eye.
The beat down relic of a truck not much more than a skeleton of its former greatness was sitting in the driveway leaking oil. The white paint was not a custom made order in any shop. It was done by hand and most likely with a spray can of some sort.
“You don’t need them. They deserve one another for treating you like garbage. I’m sure you’ve heard of female pen pals. I can get you in touch with one of them or many of them depending on your state of mind. You don’t need this drama when you’re trying to get your life back on track. They are only pulling you down. Don’t make me live with your death on my conscience.” My tight jeans were painted on my 5’4 frame and 120-pound body.
“In retrospect, I’m sure what you’re saying is true, but my mind is still trying to wrap itself around the fact that my girl and my brother were together. I will consider coming out and giving myself up on one condition. I want you to visit me once a week. I would also like to request that you do get me in touch with someone who I deserve. I’m through letting others dictate my destiny.” He had her by the hair. He pulled out the shells of the shotgun and dropped them on the floor.
“I know this is a scary proposition, but I will be with you every step of the way. Let her go and then come out with your hands interlocked behind your head. Don’t make any sudden moves and get down on your knees.” The door swung open and he shoved the woman until she was stumbling across the brown lawn.
The door remained open and I could see a big screen television with some children’s cartoon playing in the background. The mood was silenced with a sense of anticipation in the air.
“I’m coming out and I’m not carrying. The shotgun is lying on the sofa and the shells are on the floor. There’s no reason to shoot me down like a dog in the street. I’m giving myself up without resisting.” He was making sure the innocent bystanders were hearing every word in case something bad happened.
“I’m here and you don’t have to worry about anybody taking a shot at you. They will have to go through me to get to you.” My green emerald eyes were what made every man fall to their knees victim to my sexuality.
“Bridget, I know you have no reason to follow through on what you promised, but I hope you do. I would really like to think of us as friends. It might seem foolish, but you were the only one willing to listen to my side of the story.” It was my job to empathize and being a hostage negotiator was never easy.
Unfortunately, I had a tendency to get emotionally invested in those I helped.
“I can’t be with you during your interview and processing. It’s not like you haven’t been here before. You’ve made a career out of bad decisions. This might be your last chance to clean up your act. I will come to visit you once a month until you walk out a free man.” I was giving him a glimmer of hope and once a month was far more than he deserved.
“I want to tell you that you are a testament to your profession. One mistake should never define you.” I had given him ammunition against me to personalize my approach.
“I really don’t want to talk about it, but I see what you’re saying. Life is about changes and nothing stays the same. Mistakes are there to learn from so that you never make the same one again.” I felt victimized by those in the press who castrated my attempt to get a little boy out of harm’s way.
“Everybody makes their own decisions. I should have known better than to trust a slut like her to be faithful. She was never able to keep it in her pants. I think she was born the wrong gender. I thought her insatiable appetite for sex was something we shared. I couldn’t expect her to keep her legs shut for 18-months. I should have married her so that we could at least have conjugal visits. Live and learn.” They had him handcuffed and was putting him in the back of the squad car with a grin of satisfaction on his face.
“Tyrone, I promised I would talk to the district attorney and it’s a promise I intend to keep. You won’t spend any unnecessary time behind bars. I will get you the best deal possible. It bodes well that you never fired the gun. I should be able to work that in your favor.” I felt like the weight of the world was coming off of my shoulders.
“I guess I’m an old softy at heart. I didn’t want to do anything to ruin your first day back. I could tell from the tone of your voice you weren’t lying about that.” He was easy to talk to and I found our interaction pleasant despite the circumstances.
I sat against a nearby police car and I saw him watching me from the corner of his eye. He was a member of the SWAT team. Solomon Grady was a mistake, but he was never going to be forgotten.