John Gilstrap - Hostage Zero

Measuring every motion, Harvey gently rolled from his back to his stomach and pushed up to his haunches, where he froze again to reassess. Except for the slapping of the moored boats and the occasional sound of laughter from Jimmy’s up the street, all seemed silent. All seemed normal.

The way things always seemed to victims in the moments before an ambush.

Where had Denim gone? Harvey had expected to find him two slips over, peering over the side into the water, waiting for him to rise and give himself away, but now he realized that it wouldn’t make sense. Whole minutes had passed since Harvey’s headlong dive. The smart move for Denim would be to pull back to a place that allowed the best recon and allowed him to set up the ambush that Harvey had been dreading. But where?

Careful to move only his head, Harvey scanned the marina, looking for any anomaly that might give away the presence of his enemy. But he saw nothing.

And then he did.

As if reading Harvey’s mind, Denim had taken a position in the middle of the very stairway that Harvey had planned to use as his escape route.

Harvey cursed under his breath. When hunting, you wait at the spot where your prey must sooner or later go. He was screwed.

“Stop it,” he said aloud. It was just a whisper, but the sound of his own voice startled him. “Grow a pair, pussy.” The phrase made him smile. It brought him back to a memory of Mike Brown, one of his closest friends over in The Sandbox. He could almost hear Mike speaking the words.

Yeah, grow a pair.

He lowered himself back below the level of the rear gunwale and copped a squat. Okay, we know what’s broken, he thought. What’s working?

One: Denim clearly didn’t know where he was. As long as Harvey remained invisible, he continued to have options-even if he didn’t yet know what they were.

Two: Denim had taken a defensive position, betting that Harvey would ultimately make a break for it. If Harvey waited him out, maybe time would make it all go away.

Three: Well, he couldn’t think of a third.

Harvey rose again for another peek, just to make sure that the status still remained quo. Sure enough, his enemy hadn’t moved. He was ready to wait-

A steadily burning red LED light caught Harvey’s attention. He saw it through a window to the boat’s cockpit, which itself was locked up tight.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he whispered. The boat had a burglar alarm. And why not? Sitting out here unattended, probably for weeks at a time during the slow months, you’d want to have some deterrent to keep kids from breaking in, wouldn’t you?

Kids and homeless guys named Harvey. “Consider the pair grown,” he whispered, smile blooming.

He pulled himself over the gunwale, grabbed the rail, and rolled on his belly over the rail onto the padded bench, and from there onto the wooden deck. It was all noisier than he wanted it to be-noisy enough that he feared he’d alerted Denim to his presence. He didn’t dare peek to see if he had.

Instead, he started kicking the door to the boat’s cockpit. On the first blow, everything held strong. On the second, he heard something crack, and on the third, it all came apart.

Then the alarm went off.

Oh, my, the alarm.

Jonathan kept his stride slow and casual as he made his way up the hill to Fisherman’s Cove Police Headquarters. From the snippet he’d received over the phone from Chief Doug Kramer, there was a big-game hunter on the loose in their little town, and Jonathan was likely on the endangered species list. He’d learned a long time ago that the slower you moved, the more aware you were of your surroundings.

As usual, his. 45 rode high on his hip, concealed by the jacket he wore specifically for that purpose, despite the withering heat.

The police station was an unassuming place, built of brick and taking up an entire short city block. It sported two stories above ground for offices and various administrative functions, and five basement holding cells that at first glance looked like throwbacks to Inquisition torture chambers. Jonathan had visited the cells a few times over the years, and he often wondered if a night or two in there wasn’t enough in itself to put the common street criminal on the straight and narrow.

He let himself in through the door to the street and smiled to Rachel, the civilian clerk who’d been in the job for at least twenty years. She smiled back through the bulletproof window and buzzed him in through the inner door.

“Hi, Digger,” Rachel said with a cheery wave as he crossed the threshold. “I haven’t seen you in a long time.” She pointed to the far left-hand corner. “Chief Kramer’s in his office. He’s waiting for you.”

On a different day, the station would have been empty at this hour; but on the heels of the kidnapping, the place was hopping, with starched and pressed strangers mingling among the familiar locals. Jonathan figured they had to be FBI. A few of them looked up as he entered the space, but went back to work after assessing him to be a nonthreat.

Jonathan wove his way through the jumble of desks and chairs and rapped on Kramer’s door. He let himself in without hearing the invitation to do so. Doug held his telephone to his ear with his shoulder, but beckoned Jonathan closer. As he cleared the door, Jonathan saw that Harvey Rodriguez was in the room, too, seated in one of the folding metal seats that served as guest chairs. His hands were cuffed, and his soaked clothes stuck to his skin, but aside from that, he looked to be as comfortable as conditions would allow.

“I’m impressed,” Jonathan said. “It didn’t take you long to get in trouble.”

“Better in trouble than dead,” Harvey said.

Doug hung up the phone and stood to greet Jonathan with a handshake. “So, you really do know him?”

“He’s staying at the mansion,” Jonathan explained. “And he’s safe enough not to need the cuffs.”

“His court records say otherwise,” Doug said. “He’s not supposed to be within two thousand feet of a children’s gathering place.”

“He’s my guest,” Jonathan said.

“Doesn’t change anything.”

“Is that why you have him in custody?”

Doug hesitated. “No.”

Jonathan held out his hand, gesturing for the cuffs key. “Let’s take the offenses one at a time, then, okay?”

Doug screwed up his face and cocked his head. “Since when do you have a soft spot for child molesters?”

Harvey inhaled at that, but he didn’t say anything. This was exactly the scenario he had predicted.

“I don’t have a soft spot for child molesters,” Jonathan said. “Which is why I’d like you to trust me on this and give me the key.”

Doug held Jonathan’s gaze, then begrudgingly fished the tiny key out of his pocket and handed it across the desk.

Jonathan unfastened Harvey’s hands, and handed the hardware back to the chief. “Thanks, Doug. So, why is he in custody?”

“Well, according to Harvey, somebody’s trying to kill him. When he got cornered down on the marina, he says he broke into a boat specifically to sound the alarm and bring attention. That last part worked. One of our patrolmen happened to be less than a block away.”

Jonathan shot an admiring look to Harvey. “Yeah?”

Harvey shrugged and rubbed his wrists.

“Good thinking,” Jonathan said. “And the bad guy?”

“Poof,” Doug said. “No sign of him.”

“Tell him the rest,” Harvey prompted. “Your guy saw my guy running away after the alarm sounded.”

Doug confirmed with a shrug and a nod. “Absolutely true.” He pointed to one of the other metal chairs. “Have a seat, Dig. I’ve learned over the years that shit like this doesn’t happen in this town unless your DNA is on it somewhere. Tell Uncle Dougie what’s going on.”