Hostage Zero

If everything went according to plan, Venice would be the key player in this op, controlling all the moving parts from her computer terminal sixty-plus miles away. Jonathan didn’t understand the technical details, but he’d witnessed Venice’s skills enough times in the past to trust that she could perform every task she had promised.

Boxers’ point was a valid one, though: If things went to shit, a great big boom would be their only escape.

Jonathan followed his footsteps from before, even duplicating his gait. As he approached the front desk, it occurred to him that this was all feeling very easy.

In his line of work, that was never a good thing.

Granville George caught action out of the corner of his eye-movement on the one video monitor that rarely showed anything but a still life at this hour, and he knew right away that it was the FBI agent from earlier in the evening. Granville had read Bill Diane’s entry in the logbook after shift change, and he’d heard a personal account from Battles in the locker room when they were changing out. What was it about these federal guys that made them be such pricks all the time? He figured there had to be special courses on ego inflation at the FBI Academy.

No Fibbie would ever believe it, but Granville wouldn’t trade places with a fed for anything, doubled salary included. He liked living on the water in a community where the spectrum of crime was more or less the same as you’d get in a big city, but at a fraction of the scale. His current penance of jail duty-the mandatory six-month sentence for wrecking a police cruiser in a high-speed chase-would be fulfilled in another fifteen days, and then he’d be back on the streets, doing what he loved.

He glared as the man in the suit crossed the waiting room to the reception window.

“I’m Agent Harris, FBI,” he said, producing the obligatory credentials case. “I need to speak with Jimmy Henry.”

Granville took the black leather folder from him and examined it-not because he had to, but because he could. The weight of it told him that the man was legit. Fake IDs were rarely made of the same quality of metal as the real thing. “A little late, isn’t it?” he grumped, returning the creds to their owner.

“The law never sleeps,” the agent said.

Granville rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well our inmates do, and rousting them at two in the morning is a good way to start a riot.”

“That’s what locks are for,” the agent said with a smirk. “I really need to talk with him.”

“About what?”

“About things that are confidential. Now can you please wake him?”

Granville sighed to signal what a pain in the ass it was to do this, and then he stood from his chair and pointed toward the door to his left, his visitor’s right. “Wait for me over there.” Technically, it was within his power to make the agent cool his heels until 6:30 wake-up, but he couldn’t see any good coming from returning shittiness with shittiness. He’d already pissed off his bosses enough to get jail duty for half a year; it made no sense to piss them off more.

Venice waited for the guard to leave his desk and then counted to five before she went to work. With everything cued up ahead of time, it was just a matter of a few keystrokes. The video monitors at the front desk went black for an instant, and when they returned to life, they showed Jonathan dressed just as he was right now, being let in through the security air lock, just as he was right now. Except the pictures were all about six hours old.

She’d rerouted everything she’d recorded earlier to their respective monitors. All but the camera facing the lobby and the front desk, which would continue to project a live feed. It wasn’t a foolproof plan, but given the short time they’d had to put it together, she thought it was pretty darn good.

Jonathan followed the second deputy-a blond string bean of a man whose tag read R. SHENTON — to the interview room and walked with a determined gait to the waiting table.

“I’ll be back with the Henry boy in a minute,” Shenton said before leaving. Jonathan noted that unlike his evening-shift colleague, he did not lock the door behind him.

“He’s walking toward Jimmy Henry’s cell,” Venice said in his ear. When Jonathan didn’t reply, she added, “The guards are all watching camera loops. The audio in the interview room is down.”

He nodded. “Thank you,” he said, and then added, “I don’t need to know what’s going right, only what’s going wrong.” He hated radio chatter.

Unlike his last visit when he was performing for the camera, Jonathan didn’t bother to sit. He paced the strip of tile between the door and the table. When it came time to react, he was going to have to move quickly.

A glance at his watch confirmed that it had only been two minutes, but it felt like fifteen. He understood that Shenton needed time to shackle Henry up and shuffle him down the hall, but knowledge did nothing to move the hands on the clock faster.

“They’re in the hallway, coming at you,” Venice said. “Give it ten seconds.”