Jeffery Deaver - A Maiden's Grave

"Oh, no, don't do that. We've moving round enough as it is. Sit your heinie down."

Tuna and cream of mushroom soup and peas and those canned fried onions on top.

Oh, man, can't keep it down much longer.

"Looks like a hand and look at that thing – it's red and white – hell, I think it's one of the hostages got away!"

Shaw turned and looked at the debris, just above the surface of the choppy water, rising and falling. Each glimpse lasted no more than a few seconds. He couldn't tell what it was exactly. It looked sort of like a net float, except, as Buzz Marboro had pointed out, it was red and white. Blue too, he now saw.

And moving away from them, straight into midstream, pretty damn fast.

"Don't you see a hand?" Marboro said.

"No… Wait. You know, it does look like a hand. Sorta." Reluctantly, and to the great distress of his churning gut, Arnie Shaw rose to his feet. That made him feel, he estimated, about a thousand times worse.

"I can't tell. A branch maybe."

"I don't know. Look how fast it's moving. It'll be in Wichita 'fore too long." Shaw decided he'd rather have a tooth pulled than be seasick. No – two teeth.

"Maybe it's just something the takers threw out to, you know, distract us. We go after it and they get away out the back door."

"Or maybe it's just trash," Shaw said, sitting down. "Hey, what're we thinking of? If they were friendlies they wouldn't've just floated past without calling for help. Hell, we've got our uniforms on. They'd know we're deputies."

"Sure. What'm I thinking of?" Marboro said, sitting down too.

One pair of vigilant eyes returned to the ass end of the slaughterhouse. The other pair closed slowly, as their owner swallowed in a desperate effort to calm his stomach. "I'm dying," Shaw whispered.

Exactly ten seconds later the eyes opened. "Oh, son of a bitch," Shaw spat out slowly. He sat up straight.

"You just remembered too?" Marboro was nodding.

Shaw had in fact just remembered – that the hostages were deaf and mute and wouldn't be able to call out for help to save their souls, no matter how close they'd passed by the skiff.

That was one of the reasons for his dismay. The other was that Shaw knew that while he himself had been an intercollegiate state finals swim champion three years running, Buzz Marboro couldn't dog-paddle more than ten yards.

Breathing deeply – not for the impending swim but merely to keep his turbulent stomach at bay – Shaw shed his weapons, body armor, helmet, boots. A final breath. He dove headfirst into the raging, murky water and streaked toward the disappearing flotsam as it headed rapidly southeast in the ornery current.

Arthur Potter gazed at the window where he'd first seen Melanie.

Then at the window where he'd almost seen her shot.

"I think we're moving up against the wall here," he said slowly. "If we're lucky we're going to get maybe one or two more out but that's it. Then we'll either have to get him to surrender or have HRT go in. Somebody tell me the weather." Potter was hoping for a hellsapoppin' storm to justify a longer delay in finding a helicopter.

Derek Elb turned a switch and the Weather Channel snapped on. Potter learned that the rest of the night would be much the same – windy, with clearing skies. No rain. Winds would be out of the northwest at fifteen to twenty miles an hour.

"We'll have to rely on the wind for an excuse," LeBow said. "And even that's going to be dicey. Fifteen miles an hour? In the service Handy's probably flown in Hueys that've landed in gusts twice that."

Dean Stillwell called in for Henry LeBow, his laconic voice tripping out of the speaker above their heads.

"Yes?" the intelligence officer answered, leaning into his microphone.

"Agent Potter said to relay any information about the takers to you?"

"That's right," LeBow said.

Potter picked up the mike and asked what Stillwell had learned.

"Well, one of the troopers here has a good view inside, sort of an angle. And he said that Handy and Wilcox are walking around inside, looking the place over real carefully."

"Looking it over?"

"Pushing on pipes and machinery. It's like they're looking for something."

"Any idea what?" LeBow asked.

"Nope. I thought maybe they're checking out places to hide."

Potter nodded at Budd, recalling it had been the captain's idea that the takers might don rescue-worker uniforms during the surrender or HRT assault. It also wasn't unheard of for takers to, say, leave a back window open, then hide inside closets or crawl spaces for a day or two until law enforcers concluded they were long gone.

LeBow wrote down the information and thanked Stillwell. Potter said, "I want to make sure everybody's got pictures of the takers. And we'll have to tell Frank and the HRT to go through the place with a fine-tooth comb if it looks like an escape."

He sat in his chair once more, staring out at the factory.

"By the way," Stillwell returned over the radio. "I'm having chow brought in for the troopers and the Heartland's delivering your all's supper any time now."

"Thank you, Dean."

"Heartland? All right," Derek Elb said, looking particularly pleased.

Potter's mind, though, wasn't on food. He was thinking something far graver – whether or not he should meet with Handy. He felt the deadlines compressing, sensed somehow that Handy was growing testy and would start making nonnegotiable ultimatums. Face to face, Potter might be able to wear the convict down more efficiently than through their phone conversations.

Thinking too: It might give me a chance to see Melanie.

It might give me a chance to save her.

Yet a meeting between the taker and the incident commander was the most dangerous form of negotiating. There was the physical risk, of course; hostage takers' feelings, both positive and negative, are their most extreme about the negotiator. They often believe, sometimes subconsciously, that killing the negotiator will give them power they don't otherwise have, that the troopers will fall into chaos or that someone less daunting will take the negotiator's place. Even without violence, however, there's a danger that the negotiator will, in the taker's eyes, shrink in authority and stature and lose his opponent's respect.

Potter leaned against the window. What's inside you, Handy? What's making the wheels go round?

Something's happening in that cold brain of yours.

When you talk I hear silence.

When you don't say a word I hear your voice.

When you smile I see… what? What do I see? Ah, that's the problem. I just don't know.

The door swung open and the smell of food filled the room. A young deputy from the Crow Ridge Sheriff's Department brought in several boxes, filled with plastic containers of food and cartons of coffee.

Potter's appetite returned suddenly as the trooper set out the containers. He expected tasteless diner fare – hot beef sandwiches and Jell-O. But the trooper pointed to each of the dishes as he laid them out and said, "That's cherry mos, that's zwieback, bratwurst, goat and lamb pie, sauerbraten, dill potatoes."

Derek Elb explained, "Heartland's a famous Mennonite restaurant. People drive there from all over the state."

For ten minutes, they ate, largely in silence. Potter tried to remember the names of the dishes to tell Cousin Linden when he returned to the Windy City. She collected exotic recipes. He was just finishing his second cup of coffee when, from the corner of his eye, he saw Tobe stiffen as a radio transmission came in. "What?" the young agent said in shock into his microphone. "Repeat that, Sheriff."

Potter turned to him.

"One of Dean's men just fished the twins out of the river!"

A collective gasp. Then, spontaneous applause erupted in the van. The intelligence officer plucked the two Post-It tabs representing the girls off the chart and moved them to the margin. He took down their pictures, which joined Jocylyn's, Shannon's, and Kielle's in the "Released" folder of hostage bios.