Hostage negotiation is not a test of your manhood. It is not a chance to be a knight in shining armor, or a way to get your fifteen minutes of fame. It may go your way and it may not, no matter how textbook your responses are. Don’t take it personally.
But Hugh had known from the get-go that was never going to be possible, not today, not this time, because this was a different situation altogether. There were God knew how many dead bodies in that clinic, plus five hostages who were still alive. And one of them was his kid.
The SWAT commander was suddenly standing in front of him. “We’re going in now,” Quandt said. “I’m telling you as a courtesy.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Hugh replied. “I’m telling you as a courtesy.”
Quandt turned away and started to speak into the walkie-talkie at his shoulder. “We’re a go in five … four …” Suddenly his voice broke. “Stand down! I repeat—abort!”
It was the word that had started this disaster. Hugh’s head flew up, and he saw the same thing Quandt had noticed.
The front door of the clinic had suddenly opened, and two women were stepping outside.
—
WHEN WREN’S MOTHER STILL LIVED with them, she’d had a spider plant that she kept on top of a bookcase in the living room. After she left, neither Wren nor her father ever remembered to water it, but that spider plant seemed to defy death. It began to spill over its container and grow in a strange verdant comb-over toward a window, without playing by the rules of logic or gravity.
Wren felt like that now, swaying on her feet toward the light every time the door opened, drawn to where her father stood in the parking lot outside.
But it wasn’t Wren who was walking out of the building. She had no idea what it was that her father had said to George during their last phone conversation, but it had worked. George had pulled back the trigger and told her to move the couch that he had used to buttress the door. Although the hostages couldn’t talk freely without George hearing, a current had passed among them. When he instructed Wren to open the lock, she had even begun to think she might get out of here in one piece.
Joy and Janine had left first. Then George told Izzy to push out Dr. Ward in the wheelchair. Wren had thought that she’d be released then, too, but George had grabbed her by her hair and yanked her back. Izzy had turned at the threshold, her face dark, but Wren had given a small shake of her head. This might be Dr. Ward’s only chance to get out, and he was hurt. She had to take him. She was a nurse; she knew. “Wren—” Izzy said, but then George slammed the door behind her and drove home the metal bolt. He released Wren long enough to have her shove the couch in front of the doorway again.
Wren felt panic rise in her throat. Maybe this was George’s way of getting back at her for what she’d done to him. She was alone in here now, with this animal. Well, not quite—her eyes slid along the floor to Olive’s body.
Maybe Aunt Bex was with Olive, wherever you go when you die. Maybe they were both waiting for Wren.
George sank down on the couch in front of the door, burying his face in his hands. He was still holding the gun. It winked at her.
“Are you going to shoot me?” she blurted.
George glanced up as if he was surprised she would even ask that question. She forced herself to meet his gaze. One of his eyes pulled the tiniest bit to the right, not so much that he looked weird, but enough that it was hard to focus on his face. She wondered if he had to consciously pick which view he took in. He rubbed his bandaged hand across his cheek.
When Wren was little, she used to hold her hands to her father’s face to feel his stubble. It made a rasping sound. He’d smile, while she played his jaw like an instrument.
“Am I going to shoot you?” George leaned back on the cushions. “That depends.”
—
IT ALL HAPPENED SO FAST. One minute Janine Deguerre was a hostage, and the next she was in a medical tent, being checked over by EMTs. She looked around, trying to find Joy, but the other hostage with whom she had walked outside was nowhere to be seen.
“Ma’am,” one of the first responders said, “can you follow the light?”
Janine snapped her attention back to the kid, who in fact probably wasn’t much younger than she was—twenty-four. She blinked at him as he waved a little flashlight back and forth in front of her face.
She was shivering. Not because she was cold, but because she was in shock. She’d been pistol-whipped earlier across the temple, and her head was still throbbing. The EMT wrapped a silver metallic blanket around her shoulders, the kind given to marathon runners at the finish. Well, maybe she had run a marathon, metaphorically. Certainly she had crossed a line.
The sun was low, making shadows come to life, so that it was hard to tell what was real and what was a trick of her eyes. Five minutes ago Janine had arguably been in the worst danger of her life, and yet it was here underneath a plastic tent surrounded by police and medical professionals that she felt isolated. The mere act of walking past that threshold had put her back where she had started: on the other side.
She craned her neck, looking for Joy again. Maybe they had taken her to the hospital, like Dr. Ward. Or maybe Joy had said, as soon as Janine was out of earshot: Get that bitch away from me.
“I think we should keep you for observation,” the paramedic said.
“I’m okay,” Janine insisted. “Really. I just want to go home.”
He frowned. “Is there someone who can stay with you tonight? Just in case?”
“Yes,” she lied.
A cop crouched down beside her. “If you’re feeling up to it,” he said, “we’re going to take you back to the station first. We need a statement.”
Janine panicked. Did they know about her? Did she have to tell them? Was it like going to court, and swearing on a Bible? Or could she just be, for a little longer, someone who deserved sympathy?
She nodded and got to her feet. With the policeman’s hand gently guiding her, she began to walk out of the tent. She held her metallic blanket around her like an ermine cloak. “Wait,” she said. “What about everyone else?”
“We’ll be bringing in the others as soon as they’re able,” he assured her.
“The girl,” Janine said. “What about the girl? Did she come out?”
“Don’t you worry, ma’am,” he said.
A surge of reporters called to her, shouting questions that tangled together. The cop stepped between her and the media, a shield. He led her to a waiting police car. When the door closed, it was suffocatingly hot. She stared out the window as the policeman drove.
They passed a billboard on the way to the station. Janine recognized it because she had helped raise money to erect it. It was a picture of two smiling, gummy-mouthed babies—one black, one white. DID YOU KNOW, it read, MY HEART BEAT EIGHTEEN DAYS FROM CONCEPTION?
Janine knew a lot of facts like that. She also knew how various religions and cultures looked at personhood. Catholics believed in life at conception. Muslims believed that it took forty-two days after conception for Allah to send an angel to transform sperm and egg into something alive. Thomas Aquinas had said that abortion was homicide after forty days for a male embryo and eighty days for a female one. There were the outliers, too—the ancient Greeks, who said that a fetus had a “vegetable” soul, and the Jews, who said that the soul came at birth. Janine knew how to consciously steer away from those opinions in a discussion.
Still, it didn’t really make sense, did it? How could the moment that life began differ so much, depending on the point of view? How could the law in Mississippi say that an embryo was a human being, but the law in Massachusetts disagreed? Wasn’t the baby the same baby, no matter whether it was conceived on a bed in Jackson, or on a beach in Nantucket?
It made Janine’s head hurt. But then, so did everything right now.
—