Fire Brand. Diana Palmer

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

       CHAPTER FIFTEEN

       CHAPTER SIXTEEN

       CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

       CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

       CHAPTER NINETEEN

       CHAPTER TWENTY

       CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

       Extract

       Copyright

       CHAPTER ONE

      JUST WHEN GABY thought it couldn’t get worse, it started to rain. She groaned as she tried to adjust part of her raincoat over the lens of her .35 mm camera, and kept shooting, aiming away from the red and blue flashing lights and the spotlights so that she wouldn’t spoil the shot.

      “Are you out of your mind?” the thin man beside her grumbled, jerking her back down just as a bullet whizzed past her ear. “Gaby, that was stupid!”

      “Shut up and keep taking notes,” she told him absently. The whir of the camera shutter was lost amid the renewed firing. It sounded like an automatic, which it probably was. The armed robber holed up in the old department store building was known to have one. He’d already killed the store manager and negotiations had broken down before they had even begun. “There’s a pregnant hostage in there with him. See if you can find out her name.”

      “Will you stop slinging out orders?” he grumbled. “I know how to cover a story.”

      Oh, sure you do, Gaby thought irritably, as long as it’s in a boardroom or a good restaurant. Only fate could have managed to leave Harrington alone in the newsroom when she had needed a photographer. And once the shooting in the street started, Harrington had plastered himself against a police car and refused to move. Gaby had no choice but to give him the note pad.

      She pushed back her long black hair and snapped the camera lens cap on to keep the rain out of it. She was drenched already, her jeans and bulky pink knit top plastered to her skin under the concealing folds of the beige raincoat. And while she could take a photograph, Harrington’s were better—if he just had the nerve to go with his talent. He was a photojournalist and sometimes did interviews, to fill in for other reporters. He hated taking crime photos.

      “I never should have let Johnny talk me into coming with you, you maniac,” Fred Harrington muttered. He glared at her through thick lenses that were spotted with drops of rain. She wondered if he knew how big they made his dark eyes look.

      “If Johnny were here, he’d be out there where the Bulletin guy is right now,” she returned, nodding toward a beanpole in baggy jeans with a long ponytail and glasses, wandering into the line of fire. “For God’s sake, Wilson, get out of there!” she yelled across the police car she and Fred were crouched behind.

      Wilson glanced her way and raised his hand in a friendly salute. “That you, Cane?” He grinned.

      About that time, a disgruntled police officer tackled him and took him down, right on top of his camera.

      “Good for you, officer!” Fred yelled.

      Gaby elbowed him. “Traitor,” she accused.

      “Stupid people should be trampled,” he replied. “Fool! Lunatic!” he called across to the rival paper’s reporter/photographer, who was being led away not too gently by his accoster.

      “I love you, too, Harrington!” Wilson called back. “Hey, Cane, how about calling this story in to my editor for me?”

      “Eat worms and die, Wilson!” she said gaily.

      He stuck his tongue out at her and vanished behind the bulk of the angry police officer.

      “Will you two keep it down?” one of the nearby policemen muttered. “Honest to God, you reporters are the biggest pests.”

      “Just for that, I’ll misspell your name,” Gaby promised.

      He grinned at her and moved away.

      “You’re crazy,” Fred said fervently. He was new to the newspaper scene, having preferred photography to journalism—although he could write good cutlines and even do good interviews. He didn’t have the wherewithal for this kind of assignment, though. Gaby usually had the political beat. She and Harrington were only here because the police reporter was out sick. And any news reporter could be commandeered to cover police news in an emergency.

      Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted movement. There was a uniformed man with a rifle running into a building across the street from the abandoned department store building. “Something’s happening,” Gaby said. “Look sharp. You might get a little closer to Chief Jones and see if he can fill you in on what the SWAT team’s going to do.”

      Fred glared at her. “Why don’t you do it? I can take photos.”

      “Deal.” She handed him the camera and started toward Chief Jones. Then, just as he started shooting, she turned around and removed the lens cap. “It works better that way,” she said, before edging her way along the police car line.

      “Hi, Teddy,” she whispered, easing up beside the tall, distinguished police chief. “What’s up?”

      “Utility stocks, or so I hear,” he mused.

      “Dammit, Teddy, stop that,” she muttered. “It’s been a long day, and I’ve got an engagement party to go to when I get through here.”

      “You getting engaged, Gaby?” he asked. “A miracle.” He looked up at the rainy sky.

      “Not me,” she said through her teeth. “Mary, down in composing. She and I went through journalism school together.”

      “I might have known.” He frowned as his eyes shifted to the roof of the building across the street, where the faint glimmer of metal gave away a marksman.

      “Good for you,” Gaby whispered, glancing up with eyes that were such a dark olive shade of green that they looked brown. “The robber will take out that hostage if you don’t do something drastic.”

      “We don’t like this sort of thing, you know that,” he sighed. “But he’s killed one man already and there’s a pregnant lady in there and he’s gone wild. We can’t negotiate him out of a damned thing. There’s no power or telephone or heat to cut off and trade him things for, and he won’t talk to us.” He shook his head. “This is a hell of a job sometimes, kid.”

      “You’re telling me.”

      Three years of work on the Phoenix Advertiser had given her an education in police tactics. She stood crouched beside Chief Jones, waiting for the inevitable shot that would drop the gunman. It was like waiting for death, because a head shot was all the sharpshooter was likely to get, if that much. For one long moment, she contemplated the futility of crime and its terrible cost—to the perpetrators, the public, and the police. And then the shot came. It echoed through the darkness with a horrible