CHAPTER ONE

Sergeant Arial Dean strode toward the command van, the beam of a flashlight bouncing ahead of her, illuminating dead brush and icy ground. For once she was grateful for the heavy weight of the bulletproof vest that provided extra warmth in the December cold. In summer, the vest quickly became a sodden, sweaty mini-sauna, tolerable only because it kept her from taking a round in the chest.

The white, blocky bulk of the RV loomed before her, emblazoned with the gold and blue James County Sheriff's Office shield that matched the badge on Arial's blue-jeaned waist. She hesitated at the narrow door and scanned the surrounding woods. Through the skeletal winter branches, a double-wide mobile home sat gleaming in the moonlight. White icicle lights hung from its eaves, their dim glow illuminating the beer cans lying in the patchy grass.

The patrol cars that were parked up and down the road weren't visible from the double-wide. Neither were the SWAT team members who'd surrounded the trailer in their black fatigues, lying belly-down and patient in the frosty leaves, rifles at the ready.

The sheriff was being extremely low key. Arial approved. The last thing they needed was to spook the asshole in the trailer into doing something stupid. They needed him to start using his pea brain before somebody got killed.

Like the little girls he'd taken hostage.

Arial slapped a hand on the RV's door. It opened with a creak and thump, and she scrambled up the narrow steps, nodding at the uniformed deputy in the driver's seat.

Sheriff Bill Davis looked up from his spot behind the bomb squad specialist. Davis was a tall, wiry man with a rawboned face who looked as if he should be riding the range. Like the bomb tech, he wore green fatigues and black combat boots. A green ball cap with an embroidered sheriff's star rode his thinning red hair. "Glad you're here, Dean. You gonna get this joker out of his hole for me?"

"I'm sure going to try, Sheriff." She made her way down the narrow passage between the RV's seats. "What have we got?"

"Tommy Phillips, thirty-five, white male. His wife is Charlotte. They've got two kids, Rebecca, who's three, and Mary, who's five." The sheriff pushed his ball cap up and leaned on the back of the bomb tech's padded seat. "Charlotte called 911 saying her husband was threatening to kill them all. When deputies arrived on the scene, Tommy informed them he was going to fry them and his wife and kids."

"Fry?" Arial frowned. "I don't like his choice of words. Do we know if he's armed?"

"No idea. He hasn't fired on anybody yet. Could be he's running a bluff…"

"Or he could have more weapons than Al Qaeda." And it was best to assume he did. This was the most dangerous kind of hostage incident. Unlike a cornered robber in a bank, a man who took his family hostage had no interest in negotiating with police. His objective was simply to kill his captives and probably himself. His wife and children weren't really hostages at all, but victims-to-be. "Have we made contact yet?"

"Nope. I've called him repeatedly, but our guys say they don't hear a phone ringing. Either he's just not answering—"

"Or he pulled it out of the wall. We need to get him a throw phone."

"Already on it." The bomb tech glanced up from the remote controls of the squad's robot and gave her a thin smile. His dark eyes glittered with an adrenalin junkie's intensity under his cap.

"I figured you were." Smiling grimly, Arial leaned over his shoulder to look at the black and white image on his laptop screen. The picture jounced, showing the view from the robot's camera as the little machine trundled toward the trailer on its caterpillar treads. It gripped a cell phone in one claw.

The department had bought the robot with Homeland Security funding a couple of years before to deal with suspicious packages, but it also did double duty in hostage situations. Sometimes subjects even surrendered to it, realizing that where the robot was, there were probably lots of cops with lots of guns.

Arial had a feeling Phillips wasn't going to be that accommodating.

The robot reached the trailer steps and stopped. The tech manipulated the joystick on his laptop to aim the camera at the door, then handed Arial a small microphone.

Her mouth went dry as she accepted it. She'd been a hostage negotiator for three years, but her first contact with a suspect never failed to tie her stomach in knots. She keyed the mike. "Tommy Phillips?" Her voice sounded steady and cool despite her nerves.

Copyright © 2007 by The Berkley Publishing Group.