Joy was being saved!

  NINETEEN

  Bright beams from myriad spotlights on the surrounding police cars cut the darkness into a crisscross pattern making it difficult to see clearly but Daniel could hear well enough, especially since Ingrid Murray’s voice was raised and raspy.

  Her shout of “get back here” could mean only one thing. Ingrid’s attention was on someone outside the car and she had stepped away. Gritting his teeth, he broke into a run.

  The car loomed. Dropping into a crouch, he tried the rear door and was able to open it.

  Little Joy fell into his arms, clinging to his neck. Catherine gave the child a push. “Go, go!”

  “You too.”

  “No. I’ll stay to help Aurora.”

  Daniel wanted to yell at her, to grab her hand and pull her to safety with him. There was not enough time. Milliseconds lay between escape and death. He knew it and Catherine knew it. She was right. His present duty was to carry little Joy out of danger. And it was breaking his heart.

  Turning, staying hunched over the child so his vest and his body would help protect her, Daniel started away.

  People in the distance were shouting. Cheering. Then the shooting started. As he rounded his own SUV and came face to face with Jack, he yelled, “Cease fire! There are still two hostages.”

  Gunfire died down with only a few more pops after his order. Winded and heavy-hearted, he dropped to his knees, still embracing the toddler. She was sniffling against his shoulder but unhurt and he patted her back through her warm coat. “It’s okay, honey. You’re okay.”

  “Where’s Nana?” she asked, her voice thready.

  “I’ll go get Nana and Aurora soon. I promise. Right now I want you to get in my car with Dakota and help her be good. Okay?”

  Jack was scowling. “You’re going to take your K-9 out of service? I don’t like that idea much. We might need her.”

  “I know, but…” Daniel saw his colleague’s point. Still, he wanted to be certain nobody else could get to Joy. The child tried to solve the dilemma for him by saying, “I’ll be good, Daddy.”

  Daniel almost lost it right then and there. Pulling himself together he radioed for Jenna Morrow to join them.

  “Why her? Why not Lucy? She has a young daughter,” Jack asked.

  “Jenna’s the queen of snack food? Who better to keep a kid occupied?”

  “We might need her Augie.”

  “Right. We’ll bring them both over. A second pair of eyes on Joy won’t hurt.”

  “Okay. Then what?”

  Daniel huffed. “What did Ingrid do while I was running?”

  “Mostly cussed,” Jack said. “I could hear her all the way over here. Then the lights came on in the car and she shoved Aurora back inside.”

  “Catherine wouldn’t come with me when I grabbed Joy,” Daniel reported, shaking his head sadly.

  “That was probably for the best. Ingrid moved pretty fast once she realized you had the kid. She shot at you at least once before our units returned fire. If Catherine had been with you, running behind, she could very well have been hit.”

  “Or not,” Daniel said. “It’s too late to change things now. How many units do we have in all?”

  “Our team is here except for Kenyon. He’s on his way, ETA ten. Local police sent in five cars with two more guarding possible escape routes. I’m not sure where your ATF people are.”

  “Okay. What about the negotiator?”

  “No word yet. I turned that over to Chief Ross. He said he’d see what he could do but no guarantees.”

  “I copy.”

  Jenna’s arrival in a Cold River patrol car was accompanied by Lucy Lopez in a Fargo unit. They parked on either side of Daniel’s vehicle and got out. He greeted them with Joy in his arms. “I’m assigning you two to temporary babysitting duty.”

  Jenna rolled her eyes. “Because we’re women?”

  He almost laughed in spite of the situation. “No, because you always have enough candy and snacks with you to feed our whole team and she’s Annalise’s mother,” he said, noting Lucy’s proud expression.

  Daniel heard Jenna chuckling as she and Lucy helped the toddler into the back seat of one of the cars. Then he turned to Jack. “Any reports of injuries after all that shooting?”

  “Not on our side. I’m not sure about Ingrid. She was pretty exposed when it started.”

  “Let’s find out.” As Daniel lifted his cell phone, he pictured both Catherine and Aurora and prayed silently for their well-being.

  The phone rang three times before someone answered. It was Catherine. “Danny?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I am. Ingrid’s arm is bleeding and Aurora is in the front seat giving her first aid.”

  Way to go, he thought. Give us positions inside the car. “Copy. Anything else?”

  “Yes, Ingrid isn’t being rational.”

  “Hah! Says who?” echoed from the front seat.

  “Says me,” Catherine countered, lowering her voice a cupping the phone with her hand. “She doesn’t seem to grasp is that this mess is her fault for involving her boys in this terrible business in the first place.”

  “It’s always easier to blame somebody else,” Daniel said, “especially the police. Can you tell how badly she’s hurt?”

  Catherine huffed. “Not bad enough to stop her if that’s what you mean.” She spoke even more quietly. “We’re not dealing with a normal person here. She’s totally unpredictable.”

  “Has she given you any idea of what she intends to do next?”

  “You tell me. Listen.” Screeching in the background was incoherent and unmistakably coming from Ingrid. Catherine sniffled and whispered, “Praise the Lord you got Joy out.”

  “I’ll get the rest of you too,” Daniel vowed. “Somehow.”

  “Well, if you don’t, don’t blame yourself. I know you’ll do all you can. Don’t go getting killed trying, okay? I’m too old to raise another child, especially by myself.”

  “I’ll make it. We’ll all make it,” Daniel said. “How is Aurora doing? I saw her trying to escape. Too bad she got caught.”

  “Escape? Hah! That girl only ran to distract Ingrid. I don’t think she ever expected to actually get away. And it worked. You were able to rescue our princess.”

  As Daniel’s heart swelled with affection and pride, he also felt intense sorrow. Aurora was such a special woman. So smart. So loving. So willing to sacrifice. How could he have avoided falling in love with her?

  The answer was plain. He couldn’t have. And he hadn’t. The time for declaring his independence was over. He needed a helpmate. A wife. And, God willing, he’d have the perfect woman as soon as this frightening test of wills was over.

  Niggling doubt tried to sneak into his thoughts. He denied it. Aurora had been thrust into his life despite his prior decisions to remain single and proved by her mere presence that he’d been wrong. He did need someone. A particular someone.

  He needed her. And he hadn’t even told her so.

  * * *

  “I think it’s stopped bleeding,” Aurora told Ingrid. “Do you want me to help you put your arm back in the sleeve of your hoodie?”

  “And grab my gun while you pretend to help? No thank you.”

  “I helped you take it off,” she reminded the injured woman. “Please, don’t you think this whole thing has gone too far? Isn’t it time to give up and get some peace?”

  “Peace? How will I have peace without my boy?”

  “You still have Brandon. Don’t you want to protect him?”

  “Him? Your boyfriend killed the good one and left me with the dregs. Brandon never did have a brain in his head. It was Hal I was proud of. He was everything to me.”

  Thinking of the way Serena was treated by her absent father gave Aurora some empathy for Brandon Jones/Murray. No wonder he acted so desperate. He’d probably been trying to make up for not being like his brother his whole life.

  Ingrid motioned Aurora away by waving the gun and transferred it to her injured side so she could reach over the seat toward Catherine. “Give me that phone.”

  Slowly, clearly reluctant, she handed the phone to their captor with the warning, “Daniel has us surrounded.”

  “Do you think I care? I was beyond that the instant I watched my Hal die.”

  “We all lose loved ones,” Aurora said tenderly. “I recently lost my mother.”

  “Yeah, and your boyfriend’s sister died. I heard. Too bad. I was going to help her along but there were police guards on her door.”

  “You got into the hospital?”

  “Oh, yeah. Saw you too. You and the brat and that dumb-looking dog. Probably eats him out of house and home.”

  Racking her brain, Aurora couldn’t picture seeing this woman when they’d visited Serena. Nevertheless, she could have been there. Everyone had been so concerned about losing Serena they probably weren’t as conscious of their surroundings as they should have been.

  “You let us go then. Let us go now.”

  “Very funny. You’re a hoot.” Ingrid pressed the phone to her ear. “Did you hear that, Mister ATF Agent? Me and my friends were all over that hospital and you walked right by us.”

  Was that true? Aurora wondered. Possibly. Although given Ingrid’s obvious mental illness, it might also be an illusion. Where did wishful thinking stop and reality begin when a person was so distraught and confused?

  Aurora didn’t hear Daniel’s reply but judging by the scowl on the older woman’s face, he hadn’t pleased her.

  Ingrid pointed the cell phone at Aurora. “Ask your boyfriend to tell you what happened to my Hal?”

  The option of speaking with Daniel again was too tempting to refuse. Aurora leaned toward the phone Ingrid still held. “Wh-what happened to him?”

  Ingrid answered instead. “They buried him without me, that’s what. I told Brandon to go claim Hal’s body but he was too scared of the cops to listen to me so Hal was put in the ground all by himself.” At this point, she began to weep. “My poor boy.”

  Aurora flashed a look at Catherine, hoping she’d understand, then made a grab for the gun, twisting it away and pulling on Ingrid’s sore arm at the same time.

  The cell phone fell onto the center console, bounced and slid onto the floor. Catherine lunged for Ingrid from the back seat and tried to grab her shoulders, missing, settling for a handful of hair instead, and pulling off a curly gray wig.

  Surprisingly strong for someone her age, their captor continued to wrestle with Aurora until she was finally able to push her index finger through the trigger guard and fire another shot. The reaction of ejecting the spent shell propelled the top of the gun’s receiver back almost as quickly as it discharged the bullet from the barrel. Aurora, hit by the action and injured, screamed and grabbed her stinging hand. Blood seeped from between her fingers. Unshed tears filled her eyes.

  “Bit ya, did it?” Ingrid chortled. “Serves you right. I told you how this was going to go and I don’t intend to change my mind so you might as well give up.”

  Catherine leaned over the front seat and waved the handful off fake hair. “You were wearing a wig?”

  “Fooled ya, didn’t I? Everybody was expecting an old lady so I gave them one. I had my boys in my teens. I’m far from over the hill.”

  Which explained why Ingrid was so strong, Aurora realized. They were facing a different enemy than she had expected. No wonder it had been so hard to disarm her.

  Muttered conversation was coming from the cell phone on the floor. Ingrid motioned at Aurora with the gun barrel. “You. Pick it up and tell the cops I’m still in charge. If they try to rush us, I’ll shoot you both, starting with you.”

  Aurora felt around with her good hand until her fingers brushed the phone. She raised it to her ear, hoping Daniel was still connected. “You heard?”

  His voice sounded odd when he said, “Yes,” as if he was fighting emotion, which made perfect sense to her since she was barely holding it together herself.

  “I’m still in the front seat with Mrs. Murray. I bandaged her arm.”

  “Is she badly hurt? Are you?”

  Aurora wanted to elaborate but thought better of it. “No. Not really. The action on her gun pinched my palm when she fired. Her arm is bandaged and not bleeding through.”

  “Copy. I heard everything she said. My team is holding in place to keep the guns from being moved while we wait for a hostage negotiator but they say it could be hours before one arrives. What do you think? Will she last that long?”

  Before she snaps? Aurora added internally. She shook her head as if Daniel could see her. Their time was running out. This woman was not only injured, she was having some kind of mental episode making her doubly unstable. Hours? No way.

  She cradled the phone with her uninjured hand while the other one throbbed and bled slightly. Then she answered his question the only way she could.

  “No.”

  TWENTY

  Out of viable options, Daniel told Aurora to hand the phone back to Ingrid. As soon as she did, he started to speak.

  “Mrs. Jones, or is it Murray?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Never mind. I have a proposition for you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “It’s me you’re angry with, not my grandmother or the CSI tech, so why not make a trade?”

  She huffed. “Yeah, right. What did you have in mind, Mister Special Agent?”

  “Me. I’ll show myself and start toward you. When you see me, you let the women go and we cross paths halfway. What do you say?” He had to work to keep from holding his breath. Offering exactly what he thought she wanted was his only choice, one he was willing to make for the well-being of his loved ones.

  “I say…” She cursed colorfully, then laughed. “Wait. Let me put this on speaker again. I want everybody to hear you beg.”

  Daniel had hoped to avoid informing the hostages of his rescue plans until they were agreed on but there was nothing he could do to stop Ingrid.

  “Okay. Talk. We’re all listening,” she said.

  He cleared his throat and continued. “I don’t see any alternative so I’ve offered to trade myself for the hostages.”

  As he had expected, both Aurora and Catherine raised a fuss. That seemed to delight their captor, much to Daniel’s discouragement, so he directed his next remarks to them. “It’s the only logical choice other than waiting this out and I can’t see Ingrid changing her mind anytime soon.”

  She answered immediately. “You’ve got that right.”

  “Okay,” he continued. “You agree to the trade?”

  “I’m thinking about it,” the gang leader drawled, increasing his anxiety. “Give me time to tell my men to back off. Then we’ll see.” Ingrid paused. “I’m gonna hang up now and get out of the car. If there’s one single shot or if anybody tries to rush me, I’ll put a bullet into granny. Got that?”

  “Wait.” Daniel radioed orders on the private channel, waiting for affirmative replies before assuring Ingrid she could safely leave her car and ending their conversation.

  It was all he could do to keep from trembling visibly. He leaned back against his SUV for support and peered at the warehouse. A wind was rising, driving clouds across the waxing moon and lessening the visibility in waves. If the storm arrived in full force too soon, there was no telling how the dynamics of the standoff might change. That too was out of his control and he was feeling more and more helpless as the minutes passed.

  He assessed the sky, then looked to Jack. “What’s the latest weather report?”

  “Not good. There’s a cold front coming down from Canada.”

  “Snow?”

  “Probably. Don’t know how soon. Fargo already has two inches.”

  Daniel clenched his jaw and nodded. Snow was preferable to rain, although either could cause plenty of problems. Suppose he waited to see what developed before he took further action? Was that idea even viable?

  As he and Jack watched, Ingrid slowly opened the driver’s door of the sedan and got out. Except for the whistling wind, the night remained silent.

  Instead of heading for the warehouse as Daniel had anticipated, Ingrid paused long enough to open the rear door and pull Catherine out, keeping hold of one of her arms while she pressed the gun into her ribs. There was no sign of Aurora.

  His already pounding heart sped. His breathing was ragged. Puffs of condensation formed in front of his mouth and were immediately dispersed by the wind.

  He reclaimed Dakota from his SUV, signaled wordless deployment orders to Jack and saw him nod and leave before turning back to stare at the scene developing in front of the warehouse. Without knowing where Aurora was and whether she was all right, he couldn’t chance rushing Ingrid or letting any of his team do so no matter how much he wanted to end this siege once and for all.

  Because he could no longer see Jack, Daniel figured nobody else could either. So far, so good. Still, Ingrid was keeping his grandmother close enough to kill her if she so chose.

  At a loss and frustrated beyond words, Daniel suddenly realized what he had not done yet. He had not prayed. Not for wisdom. Not for assistance. Not for anything.

  Starting with a plea for forgiveness, he raised his eyes to the heavens and began to call upon God. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t see a way out; he didn’t have to. God willing, the way would be made clear.

  Until then however, he was up to his chin in trouble and supposedly in charge. For the first time in memory, he was unsure of success and that frightened him more than anything else. Yes, he trusted the Lord to take care of His earthly children. And, yes, he knew Catherine and Aurora were believers.

  But so was Serena. And regardless of countless fervent prayers for healing, God had chosen to take her home. That was part of the conundrum, wasn’t it? Wanting to see one kind of result yet having to accept a contrary one wasn’t as easy as it sounded when preachers tried to explain. Some things were beyond human understanding.

  And, despite his desire to trust fully and leave problems in God’s hands, he realized he wasn’t having much success letting go of the ingrained desire to rush into danger for the sake of his loved ones. Sighing, he realized how true that thought was. He loved them both, and, sadly, only one of them knew it.