Page 34 of Under Cover
But Garcia spent the next few months wondering, the idea niggling at him. Building. Growing from a hope to a want to an unbearable need.
God. One day he was going to reach for Crosby, because even if he was denied, he’d at least know he’d tried.
Under Protest
CROSBY ALMOSThated himself for this skill sometimes. It felt cold and bloodless, when the results could be bloody as hell, and right now he couldn’t afford for that blood to be spilled.
He didnotlike this op.
“Garcia, to your left,” he murmured into his comm.
Through his scope, he watched the back of his subject’s head andwilledhis partner to shift to Crosby’s right. Crosby couldn’t see the subject’s face, but that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that he was firing a 700-gram projectile 2000 miles an hour into a combined half inch of bone, front and back.
Best case scenario, the bullet stopped inside the subject’s head.
Worst case, it blew the subject’s head off and then blew right into the nine-year-old girl that he was holding hostage—or into Garcia, who was standing close enough to catch the bullet too if Crosby missed.
He wasnottaking the shot unless the victim was in the clear—and Garcia too. But Garcia was there to try to keep him from having to take the shot anyway.
With a deep breath, he turned his attention to what was going on in the comms.
“So, you got that big-ass knife to her throat and you got all the power, right?” Garcia said. From around the subject’s back, Crosby could see his expressive hands, one on either side of their subject—but he couldn’t see the nine-year-old girl in their subject’s arms. A minute ago, she’d been all he could see, and then Garcia had stepped in to distract their perp. Dammit.Dammit.
“Don’t give me that,” snarled their perpetrator. “I’m acop, remember? You assholes probably have snipers all over me.”
Local deputy Pete Thomas had been in service of the small Maryland sheriff’s office for over ten years, and he had a jacket of complaints for unnecessary force to prove it. He might have gone on beating up people of color for traffic infractions if he hadn’t hit a pregnant teenager in the stomach with a baton in full view of a gas-station camera.
The guy behind the counter had seen Thomas in action one too many times. He made the moment viral, and the DA had been forced to arrest and prosecute.
And Thomas had run like the coward he was.
He’d ended up in this stop-and-rob near a New Jersey turnpike, and his first action when he’d sensed the team gathering around him had been to take a hostage.
Gail and Manny had been first on the scene, and as they’d attempted to make contact with the guy, he’d used both a racial slur and the word “cunt,” so they’d backed off. As Gail said, “Our very existence is pissing this guy off, and he’s got a kid with him. He’s got crazy eyes, people. We need Crosby to do his thing.”
Well, since Carlyle and Chadwick were still stuck in traffic from DC and Harding and Denison were hauling ass from Manhattan, it was the best call they could make.
But it made Garcia, with his definitely Latin features, their only other bet for negotiator. Crosby had been able to set up from a nearby rooftop as Garcia had tried to de-escalate the situation, but in spite of Crosby’s many injunctions to stay out of the line of fire—even if the subject was on the side of the bullet—Garcia hadn’t been able to edge his way sideways.
“Maybe we do have snipers everywhere,” Garcia said, and Crosby hoped his heart didn’t explode. “But, you know, you still got the kid. What is it you want? What can we give you?”
Crosby’s eyes—squinting through the rifle scope—shot wide open. Bad question.Badquestion! Thomas knew all the angles. All of them. He’d killed three people on his way to this impasse, all of them Black. The only thing that had saved the little girl’s life, Crosby was convinced, was her pale skin, and that might not do it in the end.
“Give me?” the man sneered. “Giveme? Who areyouto give mejack? All day long, swimming in the fucking sewers with the animals—Itakewhat I want!”
Crosby heard Garcia swallow, but his voice when he spoke was just as even as it had been. Except he’d started inching around to his left, bit by bit.
“Okay, so you take what you want,” Garcia murmured. “I get that. Do you really want to take that little girl’s life? I mean, there’s other cops here—you were right about that. Do you really want to go out slitting her throat?”
There was a moment’s pause, and Harding must have shown up somewhere, but Crosby couldn’t afford to look away.
“Don’t take it if it’s not good,” Harding said soothingly into his ear, now in comm’s reach.
“Garcia’s not clear,” Crosby said, agitated. “Thegirlisn’t clear.”
“You can’t see his face,” Harding said. “I can.” Which meant Harding must be inside the service station. “He’s got nothing to lose. You’re their best bet if we can get Garcia out of there.”
