Hunted by Karen Robards

was looking right at her again. Her father heard, too: she could tell by the way his eyes also flickered in the camera’s direction, and the deepening of his scowl. “We’re committed to doing whatever it takes to keep everybody safe, so stay cool.”
    “Nobody’s going to do anything stupid,” her father answered. “Except for Ware, of course, who already has.”
    Ware’s mouth twisted. “I thought I told you to shut up.”
    Caroline missed whatever Martin might have said in reply because her attention was distracted by the sudden movement of the SWAT team. The unit was getting into some kind of formationon the ground to the left of the house, apparently just awaiting word to ascend to the second story via the ladder: she could see them on a monitor. She knew that ideally they liked to wait until the sniper team assessed the situation first, but whether a sniper would even make the attempt tonight would depend on several factors, the most important of which was whether such an action might set off a bomb or bombs. Her eyes ran over Ware again. He was talking to her father now, his voice too low for her to decipher the words, his expression as ugly as her father’s was stony. It was obvious that there was crackling animosity between the two. Again, if Ware was wearing an explosive vest, as she’d been advised he was, she saw no sign of it. But from the way his left hand was fisted, and the position of his thumb, she was increasingly convinced that he was indeed holding a dead man’s switch. Which meant, of course, that there was indeed a bomb.
    A cherry picker with a sniper in the bucket was positioning itself so that, Caroline realized as she watched the action on a monitor, it could potentially get a shot off through the gap in the library curtains.
    Her heart thumped in her chest.
    “You still there, Caroline?” Ware asked, his eyes shifting toward the camera again as though he could feel her looking at him. They were as shiny black as jet. His mouth was tight. He appeared to be growing increasingly restless and Caroline wondered if the hopelessness of his position might be starting to sink in. If so, and he was suicidal, that could be very bad news.
    Looking at those gleaming eyes, she wondered again if Ware was on something.
    “I’m here,” she replied, trying her best to sound reassuring. What she said next was part of the game plan: stall for time. “We’re still working on locating Hollis Bayard.”
    “There’s a deadline on that,” Ware said. “In case I forgot to mention it. You tell Dixon and whoever else is running the show out there that I gave ’em an hour. For all of it. Starting from the time I first told you what I wanted. Which means”—he glanced to his left, and from his next words Caroline presumed he was checking with a clock—“you have forty-five minutes left.”
    “That’s not enough time,” Caroline protested automatically, both because it was true and because that was the classic negotiator’s gambit.
    Ware said, “It’s all you’ve got.”
    “I want to help you,” Caroline said. “I’m doing everything I can to see that this works out and you get what you want and everyone gets out of there safely. We all are. But you need to be realistic about how difficult this is, and give us a reasonable amount of time.”
    Again, Ware seemed to be looking right at her through the monitor. “You really think you can bullshit me, Caroline?”
    Forgetting that he couldn’t see her, Caroline shook her head. “I’m not trying to bullshit you. It’s the truth.”
    “Well, you better figure out a way to speed things along. Because I’m starting to get a little antsy here.”
    With that Ware laid his pistol down beside him on the desk, leaned sideways, and pulled a wheeled leather desk chair into view. In it sat New Orleans’ mayor Harlan Guthrie, his portly, tux-clad body secured to the chair with bungee cords and zip ties. A strip of duct tape covered his mouth. His pale