“I noticed.” Kittrie’s tone was breezy, almost singsongy in its inflection, as if he were a kindergarten teacher feigning artificial patience with an antsy child. “And I assume you know this isn’t your lieutenant.”

“Send out Eckels, or we’ll have twenty police officers storming that little shed of yours within two minutes.”

“Nice try, Detective, but if you’re anywhere near as good as I think you are, then you know that death threats won’t go too far with me. I can’t say the same about Lieutenant Eckels. I think that means I get to set the rules. Since you like the sound of two minutes so much, let’s say you have exactly two minutes to come to my front door. Alone. Unarmed.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Two minutes, Detective. And get rid of the vest. If they take a shot at me, they need to know they might kill you instead.”

The line went dead.

He had known about the vest. He was watching them. She pulled off her Kevlar and threw it to the ground.

“What the fuck are you doing, Hatcher?”

“This is what he wants. Me at the front door in two minutes. No weapons. No vest. Otherwise, he’ll kill Eckels.”

“No way,” Donovan said.

“You don’t get to have an opinion on this.”

“He’s bluffing,” Rogan said. “Shit. We should have brought a fucking hostage negotiator.”

“I don’t need a negotiator. We know enough about this guy to know he’s got nothing to lose.”

“Except his leverage. If he kills Eckels, this is over.”

“And if he doesn’t kill Eckels, it’s over because we’ll know he’s a bluffer. I’m going in.”

Officer Foreman interrupted. “I can’t let you go in there, Detective, as much as you want to. You don’t even know he’ll let his hostage go. His hostage could be dead by now.”

“‘His hostage’ is one of us, and he’s our lieutenant.”

Foreman tried to block her way. She dodged him. Rogan grabbed her arm, but she pulled it away. “Damn it, J. J. If either of you tries to fucking stop me one more time, I am going to physically hurt you.”

She ducked behind the ESU van, and Rogan followed her. “Give me your weapon,” she said, holding out her right hand.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t have time to explain. Just give me your Glock.”

He unholstered his gun and handed it to her. “You can’t do this.”

“I have to do this. Don’t you see that? I did this. I found Chelsea Hart. Those were my initials carved into Rachel Peck’s forehead with a knife. I was the one who had all the information we needed-his cancer, the timing of that book, the knowledge he had about the cases, his fucking picture, for Christ’s sake, before I went and cropped it into the ether. It should be me in there, and I swear to God, I am not going to let you stop me.”

As she spoke, she ejected the magazine and let it fall to the ground, then slid out the chambered round and tossed it aside as well.

“He will kill you.”

“He’ll kill Eckels faster. Me, he wants to brainfuck first. Take any shot you get.” She tucked Rogan’s unloaded weapon in her waistband beneath her coat. “Do you hear me?”

Donovan was next to her now with his hand on her elbow, but Rogan pulled him away. “We’re going to get you out of there, Hatcher. You’re not alone in there, you understand?”

She swallowed and nodded, hoping that he was right, and stepped out from behind the van. She rushed toward the house, stopping in the middle of Kittrie’s yard to unholster her own service weapon and toss it onto the grass.

CHAPTER 48

ELLIE STOOD on the porch for thirty seconds before Kittrie’s front door opened, a tiny gap at first, then another few inches, until she could see the terrified eyes of Dan Eckels peering out at her. His mouth was wrapped with silver duct tape. His hands were taped in front of him, and his legs were bound together at the ankles.

“It’s okay, sir. Come on out.”

She pushed open the door slowly until she heard a voice from farther inside the house. “That’s far enough. I saw your SWAT bus.”

Eckels turned sideways to slip through the crack in the door. He looked into her eyes intensely and gave her a slight shake of his head. He was trying to tell her something. He was telling her not to go inside.

Is…this…a…trap? She mouthed the words silently. Eckels responded with the same intense stare and a harder shake of his head.

“This is a trade, remember. You get in here before he gets out.”

Ellie turned sideways as well and pressed herself past Eckels. As the two exchanged places, she saw him blink back tears.

“Go,” she whispered. He looked at her one more time before hopping down the porch steps. She saw Foreman running to meet Eckels on the front lawn before she heard the voice behind her again.

“Shut that door.”

She closed the door, only to be slammed immediately against it. She could feel George Kittrie’s body pressed against hers, his hands groping beneath her jacket. The weight of Rogan’s Glock left the small of her back.

“That was quite a show when you dropped your weapon in the yard, Detective. I’m not that stupid.”

He yanked off her coat and threw it to the floor. He stepped away from her and moved farther into the house. Ellie turned and took in the layout.

At the front of the house, the living room shades were drawn. The vertical blinds that covered a set of sliding doors off the dining area in the back were pulled shut. He had positioned a wood-framed dining chair in the entry to a small hallway that broke away from the living area. He was smart. The entry to the hallway gave him cover from any incoming bullets.

“On the couch.” He gestured toward a beige sofa against the living room wall as he took his own protected seat in the hall, placing the gun in his left hand on the floor beside him. She tried to keep her eyes on his, but they automatically leapt to the glint of the silver blade on the knife in his right hand.

On another day, in a different context, the image should have scared her. But instead Ellie felt emboldened. He had been holding a police lieutenant hostage. Now he had a new captive, exchanging one source of unpredictability for another. If he was at all comfortable with guns, she would be looking down the barrel of one-either his own or the one he’d just taken from her.

Her instincts had been right. Only one of Kittrie’s victim had been shot-Darrell Washington-and, as Ken Garcia had said, whoever killed Washington had been a lousy marksman. He also used the same weapon Washington had wielded to rob Jordan and Stefanie, then left that gun at the scene. Kittrie’s current location in the hallway ruled out immediate access to any place where another gun might be hidden.

She knew now what Eckels had been trying to tell her-Kittrie didn’t have a gun. Kittrie had apparently managed to restrain her lieutenant before Eckels had established that critical fact. She wasn’t going to let the same thing happen to her. She was a good, strong fighter. If the only advantage Kittrie had on her was a knife and Rogan’s unloaded gun, she might just walk out of here alive.

She took a seat on the sofa as instructed and saw for the first time a pair of orange-handled sewing shears on a glass end table. Kittrie must have noted the movement of her glance, because he said, “Unhunh. Not yet. Later. I want to look at you here. Left hand into the cuffs.”

Only then did she notice a pair of handcuffs dangling from the same glass table where the scissors rested. One end was hooked through the table’s wrought iron base. The other hung open. Ellie slid across the sofa, crossing her left leg in front of her, and closed the cuffs around her left wrist.

“So I would ask you to tell me about your father, but I know how you feel about men who’ve watched Silence of the Lambs too many times. I don’t want to be a cliché.”

He was reciting from her Dateline interview. Ellie stared at him as if he were a lizard on display behind glass.