Chapter 11
He almost didn't get out of bed. But if he rolled over one more time, he would wear out the mattress. He sighed and focused again on the clock. 3:45. Way too early. He never should have taken that nighttime cold medicine and gone to bed before 9 last night. He'd been awake for 45 minutes, and it was finally apparent he wasn't going back to sleep.
He sighed again and sat on the edge of the bed, took his time getting stiff limbs to work together, again. This age thing wasn't working out for him. He dressed as quickly as he could in the cool morning. At least his cold was better today. That medicine had really knocked him out. He hadn't even heard Charlie come home.
He hoped his son had remembered the milk.
If there was milk, he would make some biscuits from scratch for breakfast, maybe even start a couple of loaves of bread and put them out to raise before Charlie got up. Might as well do something useful, if he was going to get up this early.
He slid his feet into slippers and stopped at the bathroom, then walked quietly past Charlie's door and down the stairs. He was developing a taste for the biscuits and a craving for fresh bread when he opened the refrigerator.
No milk.
Just like that, his mood changed.
He slammed the door, and started making coffee. He did not know what had gotten into Charlie, since Amita left. He was down at that damn campus at all hours, now, even more than before. On more than one occasion he had fallen asleep there and not come home at all. For all he knew, Charlie wasn't upstairs now. Maybe he hadn't heard him come home because he hadn't come home.
Enough was enough. He had to get over it, whatever it was. He had promised. In a 7 o'clock phone call, he had heard his father's cold in his voice and promised to get him whatever he needed, swore that he was writing it down and that he would be home soon. At the time, Alan had been touched. Now, he was angry.
He and Margaret somehow failed to convince Charlie that the people in his life were not just satellites who revolved around him. Fine. Let him make his own damn breakfast. If he was here.
As Alan took the first cup of coffee and pushed through the swinging door into the rest of the house, he stopped being quiet. He threw himself into the recliner. It was still too early for the newspaper, so he grabbed the remote and started channel surfing. It was hard to tell exactly where the steam was coming from — the cup of coffee, or him.
"In this exclusive dramatic footage, you can see a young child emerging from the convenience store, LAPD and FBI officers waiting for him safely behind a barricade of police vehicles. Our policy prohibits the release of the child's name, but our sources have confirmed that several other hostages are still inside the store."
Alan stopped surfing and looked at the screen with interest. The store — it was the one just down the street, less than half a mile away. He shivered. The picture switched to a live remote, the reporter supplying a brief history of the night, stumbling over her words as she tried to find new ways to say the same few things she actually knew. Alan leaned forward a little. Yep. He could just make out Colby in the background. Don must be there too, then.
"We have a second camera on the scene, and can show you the hostage release from another angle, now. If you'll watch the lower right portion of your screen, you will see the shadow of the boy still inside the store, as he unlocks the door…here, he hesitates, looks back toward the market and starts across the parking lot…"
Alan slowly lowered the recliner and walked over to the television. "Show me that again," he said.
As if she could hear him, the reporter answered. "We'll run that new clip another time. Watch the lower…"
But Alan didn't watch the lower portion of the screen. He watched the upper. He watched the part where the boy walked past Charlie's car.
Just like that, his mood changed again.
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After the second hail of gunfire was heard in the store, the line of bystanders and reporters was pushed back again. Homes on all four sides of the corner market were evacuated. Alan saw that he couldn't get within a block of the place, so he pulled to the curb, parked, and walked to the barrier.
He didn't even try to talk the officer into letting him pass. He just took out his cell and started calling Don. The call went to voice mail, Don's usual procedure when he was at a crime scene. Alan called again, then scrolled through the address book and called Colby, Megan and David, waiting to be logged onto all their voice mails. Then he started over with Don.
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Don's pocket was driving him crazy.
All through the conversation Lieutenant Richards had conducted with Elvis — who was now in charge, he said — his damn phone kept vibrating. Over and over.
Elvis didn't ask to speak with him, like Sandy always did, and that drove him crazy, too. He needed to feed himself the delusion that being the one to speak to the perp somehow kept Charlie alive.
His pocket buzzed again. "Dammit," he growled. "Who keeps calling me at 4:15 in the fucking morning?"
Megan reached for her own phone, clipped to her belt. "I'm getting it too," she said.
Colby was already staring at the cell phone in his hand. "Don. I have six missed calls from your Dad."
"Five," said Megan.
Don looked at David, who reached for his own phone. He checked the display and looked at Don. "Six."
Don's cell began to vibrate again even as he took it from his pocket. "Might as well take number 8," he sighed, and stepped out of the van to wander the back of the parking lot.
"Dad? What's wrong?" No sense in telling him anything he didn't already know. Maybe he was just calling because Charlie never came home last night.
"It's all over the news, Donnie. Your brother's car is in front of the store. I saw it. I'm down at the barricade."
The news? Why was his father watching the news at 4:15 in the morning?
"Yeah. He's a hostage."
He heard a quick intake of breath. "How do you know he's in there? Just from the car? Maybe he got out?"
Don sighed. "I know, Dad, okay?"
"What do they want? Are there demands?"
Don shook his head. "You know I can't tell you that, Dad."
Alan raised his voice. "Is there a deadline?" Don didn't say anything right away, and that was all the answer Alan needed. He lowered his voice to a near-whisper. "It's soon. My God. My God, Don."
"You should go home, Dad. You can't do anything standing at the barricade."
Alan tried to make his voice reflect his conviction. "I will not go home until Charlie goes with me."
Now Don was whispering. "Me, neither."
