Delores Fossen - The Baby's Guardian

“Did you know Sabrina was in there?” Harris asked, placing his hand over the receiver so the gunman wouldn’t be able to hear the question.

Shaw shook his head. Sabrina had her regular prenatal checkups at a clinic in the hospital, but she wasn’t scheduled for anything this week. Shaw knew that because she always sent him the dates and times of her appointments. Not that he’d ever gone with her to any of them. But he knew she wasn’t scheduled for anything until the day after tomorrow.

So, why was she there?

“Ask to speak to her,” Shaw instructed.

Harris nodded. “I want to talk to the hostage to make sure she’s okay,” he relayed to the gunman.

The gunman didn’t respond right away, and with the binoculars pressed to his eyes, Shaw watched. Waited.

The seconds crawled by.

Then, much to his surprise, he saw the gloved hand jut out and give Sabrina the cell phone.

Because Shaw was watching her so closely, he saw her look in the direction of that hand. The gunman’s hand. Shaw could hear the man give her whispered instructions, but he couldn’t make out what the guy was saying. It was almost certainly some kind of threat.

“Captain Shaw Tolbert?” she said.

That sent another hush around him. Inside, Shaw was having a much stronger reaction than a hush. Why the devil was she asking for him? If the gunmen knew her association with the captain of the SAPD, things could get even worse for her.

And the baby.

“Yes?” Shaw answered, trying to sound official and detached. Judging from the sound of her voice, the call was on speaker at Sabrina’s end, which meant the gunmen were listening to his every word. He certainly didn’t want to let them know that he knew her name, just in case he could salvage this situation.

“They read my medical records,” Sabrina explained. She swallowed hard. “They know you’re my emergency contact.”

Shaw choked back a groan. By knowing that bit of information, the gunmen had already guessed that Sabrina and he had some kind of relationship. Heck, her records might even say that he was the baby’s father. If so, the gunmen had some serious leverage.

Both Sabrina and the baby.

“Are you … all right?” Shaw asked.

“She is, for now,” the gunman answered for her. “You’ll need to do some things to make it stay that way.”

Even though he could clearly hear the man, Shaw took Harris’s phone and brought it closer to his mouth.

“What things?”

The gunman grabbed Sabrina’s phone as well, but she stayed in the window, staring down at the crowd. He saw her pick through the faces until she spotted him. Shaw looked away. He needed to focus, and he couldn’t do that if he was looking at her. Because looking at Sabrina only brought on those haunting images of his wife.

A man didn’t forget watching his wife die in his arms.

“My partner and I are ready to get out of here,” the gunman announced.

Shaw didn’t celebrate either silently or aloud because he knew this was just the first step to ending this, and every step afterward would be even more dangerous than the present situation.

“We’re coming out through the front entrance,” the gunman continued. “And we’ll have a hostage with us.”

They were probably planning to take Sabrina, unless Shaw could get them to change their minds.

“So, no tricks,” the gunman warned. “Have your officers back way off and have a car waiting for us out front. We’ll give the driver instructions as to where we need to go.”

Shaw sandwiched the phone between his shoulder and his ear so he could motion for one of his men to spring into action. They’d anticipated the car request and had one ready. A vehicle with not one but two hidden GPS trackers that would allow them to find the guys.

Well, maybe.

There was something not quite right about all of this.

The gunmen hadn’t requested money or any other form of ransom. That wasn’t just unusual, it was downright unsettling. After all, the men had just spent hours holding the hostages, and they’d done that without saying why this situation had started in the first place. A hospital maternity ward wasn’t the setting for many hostage standoffs, especially since this didn’t seem to be personal.

At least it hadn’t been until now.

Had the gunmen gone after Sabrina in the first place, or had that happened only after they’d learned about her connection to an SAPD police captain? Maybe the plan was to take her to a secondary location and ask for ransom?

That theory would have held some merit if Shaw had been a rich man. He wasn’t.

So, what did the men want?

Drugs, maybe. That was always a possibility when it came to hospital robberies. Maybe that was all there was to it. They’d wanted drugs and now they had them and needed to get away. That didn’t lessen the danger, but it would make the investigation a little simpler.

The officer parked the car in front of the hospital, and Shaw motioned for everyone to move away. He would pull all his men back onto the sidewalk of the building across the four lanes of St. Mary’s Street. The SWAT team would stay in place on the rooftops. Because the surrounding buildings were taller than the hospital, Shaw didn’t think the gunmen had actually seen the SWAT team. But still, they must have known they were there. This hostage situation was all over the news, and the world was watching. The gunmen must have realized that every conceivable measure would have been taken to apprehend them.

“The car’s in place,” Shaw told the gunman over the cell.

“Good. We’re coming out. Remember, no tricks.”

“My advice? Don’t take one of the new mothers or pregnant women hostage. Too much trouble, and too many things can go wrong. Take me instead.”

“No, thanks. I got my own ideas about how to handle a hostage.” And the gunman hung up.

Shaw didn’t have time to react to that bold threat because movement caught his eye. A gloved hand reached out and grabbed on to Sabrina’s arms. She snagged Shaw’s gaze then. For just a second. And the gunman yanked her out of sight.

It sickened Shaw to think of the stress this was creating for the baby. And the danger. No unborn child or pregnant woman should have to go through this, and Shaw had to make sure this ended now.

Shaw relayed the information he’d just learned to one of the uniforms who would pass it on to the other officers posted at various points around the building. He handed the phone back to Harris, and he drew his gun while he moved back across the street with his men. He kept his attention fastened to the front of the building. Watching. Bracing himself for whatever was about to go down.

When the gunmen came out, it was possible the SWAT team would have clean shots, but if that didn’t happen, the plan was to let the gunmen drive away and have plainclothes officers in unmarked cars follow in pursuit. Then, he could get his men inside the building to assess the damage. It was entirely possible they would have dead bodies or injuries on their hands. Ambulances were waiting just up the street since the hospital itself had already been evacuated, and the staff inside might need medical attention of their own.

Shaw wouldn’t be able to hold back the lieutenant whose wife was inside, so he hoped this departure ended with the gunmen being killed.

If not, well, the night was just starting.

“Smoke!” Harris shouted.

Shaw looked in the direction of Harris’s pointing finger. Oh, mercy.

What now?

It was smoke all right, and it was coming from a window on the fourth floor where the hostages were.

There was a fire engine standing by, and Shaw motioned for it to get in place. It was a huge risk. The gunmen might not come down to the car if they saw the fire department responding, but Shaw couldn’t take the chance of leaving those hostages trapped on the floor with a raging fire.