Nora Roberts - High Noon

She could remember how horrible it was. The screams, the gunfire. "Vendi's father was career army until his recent retirement. He has, always, disavowed her actions, and cannot be placed in Savannah nor in Hilton Head during the time frame. However, there would be any number of military connections there, and further connections to Vendi from any remaining members of the disbanded Sundown organization." She pushed at her hair. "I've asked the FBI to look into this angle.

I know," she said, reading the expressions. "This is our case. But the Bureau's resources for this kind of investigation are wider and deeper than ours."

"Next is Delray, Phillipa, who was killed during a carjacking. Her five-year-old daughter was in the car, and was then taken by the two carjackers as hostage. They were pursued to a garage on the west side, managed to get inside. Negotiations were successful, the child released and the two men surrendered. Delray's brother was in the army, serving in Germany at the time of his sister's death. He now lives in Savannah, as does Delray's husband. Delray's brother, Ricardo Sanchez, is with the mounted patrol."

"I know him." The uniformed officer held up a hand. "I know Rick Sanchez. He's a good guy."

"I hope you're right, but he'll have to be interviewed."

Didn't sit well, she could see that, just didn't sit well for cops to poke at another cop. "I'll be speaking to him myself," she decided on the spot. "We then have Brentine, Angela, killed during an attempted bank robbery. Her injuries were received during the initial phase, and initial attempts to secure medical attention for her were refused. She succumbed on the way to the hospital during hour four of negotiations, when we were able to secure her release. Her husband, Brentine, Joshua, was in New York on business. He remarried nineteen months after his first wife's death, since divorced. He has never served in the military or in any law enforcement capacity. Angela Brentine has no living male relations." "There was a lot of press on that one," Sykes remembered. "Not only the bank-robbing spree that ended here, but Brentine's wife. He's old Savannah, money and status. Rumors floated around, as I recall, that her dying saved him a messy divorce."

"I'll be talking to Brentine very soon. Officer Landow? I'd like you to re-interview Reeanna Curtis, from the Hitch Street incident. Any details she remembers before, during, after she was evacuated. Talk to neighboring apartments as well. Take another officer of your choosing. I'll authorize it. Detective Sykes, I'd like you to reach out to members of the tactical team on that same incident. I believe they'll be more… relaxed with you than with me. I'm not looking to cause trouble for any of them. I want to know if anyone caught so much as a glimpse of another officer-uniformed or just badged-that they might not have recognized right off. If anyone is reluctant to speak about this, I'd suggest you show them a couple of the crime-scene photos of Bonaventure. After Roy Squire was blown to pieces."

"I'll take care of it, Lieutenant."

"Thank you." She nodded because she saw Dave step in. "Let's get started."

When Dave gestured to her office, she walked into it ahead of him. "You've got a lot laid out in a short time, Phoebe. Get any sleep in there?"

"Some. Truth? It kept coming back when I drifted off. Roy chained on that grave, the explosion. I was better off awake and doing. I'm not so scared when I'm doing as I am when I stop."

"Your family?"

"I don't know. How long can I keep them shut up in that house?

Fine for my mother," she said with a tired laugh that wanted to turn bitter. "But the rest? I just don't know. I'm going to go out, start talking to witnesses, connections to those four female victims. Something's going to break out of it. I know it will."

"Take one of the men with you."

"I don't have anyone to spare. We're already spread thin with the de tails on my house, the ones taking Josie and Carter to work and sitting on them."

It made her sick to think of it, sick in mind, in heart, in the belly.

"And I know that can't go on much longer either. I know we don't have the manpower or the budget for unlimited babysitting."

"They're there today, so we think about today. How's Ava… everyone handling it?"

"Everyone, including Ava, is handling it as best they can. You might call her, or go by. It might ease her mind."

"Well. Hmm." He slipped his hands into his pockets. "About the interviews, I'd go with you myself, but I've got a meeting at City Hall. If you could pick someone out of the hat, not just the squad, who would it be?"

Maybe, maybe either he or Ava would make a move before they were both collecting Social Security, but she wasn't putting money on it. "Sykes is solid, and that's why I want him tugging on the tactical team. Liz Alberta. She's SV, I know, but she's got a good ear. But I don't know what her case load is, or-"

"I'll find out, see if it can be worked. Take ten minutes, call home. You'll feel better, clearer in your mind.".

"You're right. You take five, call yourself, it would do the same for you."

They met Sanchez in Forsythe Park, and stood in the shade with his wise-eyed horse. The thick air of the morning had turned oppressive, so the rich brown hide of the horse gleamed damp.

Close to MacNamara House, Phoebe thought. Close enough that in uniform, mounted on his pretty horse, he could watch her home without anyone noticing.

Sanchez stood about five-feet-eight by Phoebe's gauge, with a tough, scrapper's build. There was a little hook-shaped scar under the corner of his left eye, and a hard, stubborn line to his jaw.

Was the man in the ball cap, the whistler, taller? She thought by an inch or two. But had she paid enough attention to be certain?

"She didn't care about the car," Sanchez said, speaking of his sister.

"She just wanted to get Marissa out. She fought them because she wouldn't leave her baby, so they put a knife in her and left her bleeding to death on the street."

"You were in Germany when it happened?"

He nodded at Liz. "They gave me hardship leave, let me come home for her funeral. My mother, I thought it would kill her, too. And my brother-in-law, he was like a dead man for days."

"You were only nineteen when it happened. You were training as a weapons specialist."

"I thought I'd make the army a career. See the world, fight the fight. But after Philli… I finished my tour and came home."

"And joined the mounted unit about two years after."

"That's right." His eyes narrowed. "What's this about, Lieutenant MacNamara? The one who put that knife in her, he's still in. Have you come to tell me he's getting out?"

"No. Can you tell me where you were last night, Officer Sanchez? Between eleven and three?"

"I could," he said evenly. "I'd want to know why. I'd want to know why you're asking me where I was around the time a man was blown up in Bonaventure."

"I'm asking you because a man was blown up in Bonaventure."

"What does it have to do with me?"

"Let me ask you this first. You didn't say how your niece was spared that day while your sister was killed."

"I told you, the bastards killed Philli because she fought them. Cops caught up with them at a garage; they'd locked themselves in with Marissa. Cops surrounded the place, got them to let the baby go and surrender."

"Who got them to surrender?" Phoebe asked him.

"The cops." His horse tossed its head at the impatience in Sanchez's voice, and automatically he stroked a hand over its cheek to soothe. "The cops saved her life. Men like that? Men who'd kill a mother trying to protect her baby? What's to stop them from doing the same to a little girl? Cops saved Marissa. It's why I'm a cop."

No possible way this is the guy, Phoebe thought, and when she ex changed a look with Liz, saw they were in agreement. "I was the hostage negotiator in the crisis situation with your niece."