Джеймс Паттерсон - Target - Alex Cross

Ali rattled off something in Chinese that made Song laugh and clap her hands. She replied to Ali, and he started laughing as well.

“Okay,” Nana said. “Fill the rest of us in?”

Song said, “Ali said it was nice to meet a daughter of Hong Kong.”

Ali grinned. “And she said it was nice to meet the brother of Mr. Basketball.”

“Mr. Basketball?” Damon said.

Song clapped again, laughed, and said, “He has a very good ear. How long have you been studying, Ali?”

“A year?” he said.

“That’s amazing!”

“Here’s the Uber car, Dad,” Jannie said.

Damon looked at me. “Can Song come with us? Stay at the house tonight?”

“Of course,” I said. “She fits right in.”

Damon grinned and put his arm around her again. “She does, doesn’t she?”

“C’mon, then,” Nana Mama said. “Get in, you two must be hungry.”

“Damon is always hungry,” Song said, shaking her head and looking awed enough that we all chuckled.

We climbed into the car and set off toward home.

Damon said, “Can Song sleep in your old attic office, Dad?”

I was slightly relieved to hear the plan. “That’s fine. You can blow up the mattress for her up there.”

On the ten-minute ride, Nana Mama gently interrogated Song, and we learned that she was born in Hong Kong, her mother worked in financial services, and her father had spent two years with Scotland Yard in London before returning home to head the detective and special investigations bureau for the Hong Kong police force.

“So he’s like Bree?” Ali said.

I nodded. “Sounds like it.”

Damon said, “Where is Bree, anyway?”

When bree reached the Takoma area of Washington, DC, patrol cars had blocked off both ends of Aspen Street between Seventh and Tenth.

“FBI here?” she asked a patrol officer.

“Not yet, Chief.”

“Secret Service, Capitol Police?”

“Negative. Metro SWAT’s en route.”

That helped. Bree ducked under the crime scene tape and kept low as she hustled toward another patrol car up the block where two officers were crouched, their weapons drawn. The side windows of the cruiser were blown out. So was the windshield. Half a block beyond them, in the middle of the street, there was a midnight-blue Cadillac Escalade with California plates and an abandoned city snowplow.

“You the ones who pulled them over?” Bree said when she reached the officers.

“Wiggins and Flaherty, Chief,” said Officer Wiggins, a blonde in her thirties.

Flaherty said that getting the alert regarding Romero’s felonies had taken long enough to make the gangbanger and his friends anxious.

“When they saw me climb out of the car, one of the two in the back opened fire, and Romero hit the gas.”

They gave chase for more than a mile before Romero saw the snowplow coming at them down Aspen Street between Eighth and Ninth. They couldn’t get around the plow, and they abandoned the Escalade in the middle of the street.

Armed with pistols and AR-style rifles, Romero shot at the snowplow, shattering the windshield and sending the operator scrambling out the other door and down the street. One of the other two opened up on the patrol car before the three of them forced their way into a yellow craftsman bungalow on the north side of the street.

“Time of last shots?” Bree asked.

“Nine minutes ago,” Wiggins said. “And we’ve got officers watching the back of the house. They’re still in there.”

“Hostages?”

“We’re assuming so,” Flaherty said. “According to city records, residents are Matthew Sheridan, his wife, Sienna, and their eight-year-old twins, Emma and Kate.”

Before Bree could reply, a gun went off in the house.

A woman started screaming, and then girls’ shrill voices joined her.

Bree radioed dispatch, reported the shot and the hostages, and requested that the entire neighborhood be cordoned off.

Bree clicked off and her phone immediately rang. Chief of Police Michaels.

“What’s happening?” he demanded.

Bree told him about Romero. “He threatened Senator Walker two weeks ago in Oakland. Now he’s here in DC armed to the teeth with two of his fellow bangers.”

“You think he killed Walker?”

“When pulled over nearly three thousand miles from home, he and his men responded with violence, and they’ve taken hostages. There’s also a homicide victim in Georgetown who may or may not be involved.”

“Jesus,” Michaels said. “What do you need from me?”

She looked down the street behind her, saw a big black SWAT van pulling up.

“The cavalry just arrived, Chief,” Bree said. “I’ll let you know if anything—”

More screams came from the house.

“Sorry, Chief, gotta go,” Bree said. She hung up and peeked over the hood of the patrol car.

Emma and Kate, the terrified eight-year-old Sheridan twins, came out the front door, followed closely by two of the gangsters. The men were wearing kerchiefs over their lower faces, holding on to the collars of the sisters’ nightgowns, and pressing pistol muzzles to the backs of the girls’ heads, using the children as human shields.

“We ain’t waiting for no SWAT or negotiators,” one shouted. “Get that plow the hell out of here. You let us move on, or we kill them and go out in a blaze!”

“No!” a woman screamed.

Bree peeked again and saw a brunette in a Washington Red-skins jersey, jeans, and socks come out the door with the third man behind her. Bree recognized Romero from the picture that dispatch had sent. He held an AK-47 pressed to the back of a sobbing Sienna Sheridan.

He said something to her.

“Believe him!” she cried. “He shot my husband. He’ll kill us all.”

“So what’s it gonna be?” Romero yelled as his men started down the front steps. “A peaceful ending? Or a goddamned bloodbath?”

Bree took the bullhorn that Officer Wiggins offered her.

“This is Chief Stone of Metro PD,” she said, trying to sound calm. “No one wants bloodshed here, Mr. Romero.”

“Then let us leave!” Romero yelled. “Now.”

“You’re going to have to give me time to clear the streets,” she called out. “It’s not like I have the keys to that snowplow at my fingertips.”

“Five minutes, then!” Romero said.

“Fifteen.”

“No. Ten! And after that we don’t give a damn about no East Coast bullshit, and little girls and Mommy gonna start dying, just like that bitch Betsy Walker did!”

Betsy Walker. My God, Bree thought as they dragged the girls and their mother back inside the bungalow. He did kill her. Romero is the shooter!

She dropped behind the cruiser and keyed her radio mike.

“DC SWAT, this is Chief Stone.”

“Captain Forchek here, Chief. SWAT is armored and ready to deploy.”

A plan formulated quickly in her head. “Captain, I need a team ready to push forward in support of my current location. I want quality shooters up high, with a clear view to that Land Rover. And put teams on porches on the southwest and northwest corners of Aspen and Tenth. Your best officers. Block off Ninth, north and south.”

“Roger that, Chief.”

From the house, Romero yelled, “Seven minutes, Stone!”

“I hear you, Mr. Romero,” she said through the bullhorn. “We’re trying to find the snowplow operator.”

A rattle of gunfire went off inside before he shouted, “There’s no trying! We’re about doing here, right?”

“Right, Mr. Romero,” she said, and then she ducked back behind the cruiser, still working out her strategy.