Celebrity Skin
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Synopsis
Lights. Camera. Violence.
When a homemade explosive device detonates on the set of a network sitcom, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to Hollywood to investigate. Her gut tells her this is only the first of what will be multiple attacks.
Her gut is right.
Darger enters the strange world of the studio lot. Elaborate sets surround her. Actors and crew members stream past in all directions. The excitement vibrates in the air -- the passion necessary to capture the collective dreams of a culture within the lens of a camera.
But up close the sets look fake, and the cynicism behind those dreams comes clear. The ugly reality doesn't match the way things seem on screen.
Darger works the clues. Digs into the dirt of the victims. Penetrates the psychology of the perpetrator.
The serial bomber might be a name from her past. Might be.
The revolution will be etched into celebrity skin.
But every turn seems to run her up against fresh danger, fresh obstacles. And the pessimism that pervades Los Angeles seems to win out over and over.
And all the while, the clock is ticking. By the time Darger closes in on the bomber, it might be too late.
This pulse-pounding thriller will thrash you right up to the shocking finale. Fans of Michael Connelly, John Sandford, Karin Slaughter, and John Grisham should check out the Violet Darger series. Scroll up and grab Celebrity Skin now.
Release date: May 31, 2023
Publisher: Smarmy Press
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Celebrity Skin
L.T. Vargus
Prologue
The compact car wheels into the long driveway, tires humming against the asphalt. A hatchback with peeling green enamel, shimmying and groaning like the whole thing might shake apart at top speed, the front end pointed at its destination like a missile.
The driver adjusts his hands on the steering wheel. Leans forward to see the buildings rising up beyond the windshield.
This is it. The big time.
It’s all there just beyond the brim of his stupid Pizza Cottage hat.
The studio lot.
The hallowed halls, sacred ground practically, where so many movies and TV shows had been shot. All those dreams captured inside of a camera lens and then broadcast out to the masses or projected on a giant theater screen to become the shared fantasy of a whole culture.
He takes the reality in. Soaking up the details. Rapt.
It’s all surprisingly… what’s the word?
Shitty.
Up close, the buildings look like hell. Fifty shades of beige. Pock marked like someone had flung gravel at the concrete exteriors over and over.
The drive snakes toward the buildings in the distance, tightly packed rows of plain buildings the color of sand, cement cubes that look more industrial than anything artistic. In a way, he supposes, they are.
These drab looking dream factories crank out the sitcoms, talk shows, movies. Not art really. Entertainment. Commodities with all the hard edges ground down. All the strong flavors sucked out. Everything reduced to something polished and bland that goes down smooth for the whole audience. Non-offensive even to the cranky church lady types, who are always squinting in an effort to see evil intentions everywhere they look.
The stack of cardboard pizza boxes in the passenger seat shifts as he rounds the gentle bend in the drive. He reaches out. Presses his hand flat to the top of the stack, sticks it there like a starfish suctioned to a boat’s hull, and the stack of boxes goes steady.
He exhales. Feels a tremor in his breathing.
The toll booth takes shape around that curve in the drive — a glass box with the dark silhouette of the attendant vaguely discernible within. He pulls up alongside it.
The sunlight flares off the glass like a camera flash. Blinds him for a second.
And then the attendant’s shape is moving inside the booth, and the window is sliding open.
“Pass.”
He hears the monotone voice before the face comes into focus. Male. Early 30s. Stubble. Bags under his dead eyes. Could be hung over. The name patch sewn into the breast of his polo says “Cliff.”
“Huh?”
“You got a parking pass?”
“Uh… I have these pizzas for the audition. The, um, Peter Angell audition.”
Cliff’s face somehow goes blanker as he interrupts.
“Look, I’m gonna need a pass to let you into the lot.”
“I, uh… Wait. They gave me a code. Hang on.”
“That’ll work.”
He digs a folded scrap of paper out of his left hip pocket, reads the code. Six digits.
The parking attendant types the number into a tablet. Finger smearing over the glossy screen in fast motion.
The driver’s breath still feels shaky.
“I’m not seeing it…”
“Not seeing it?”
“The code. You’re not on the list.”
The driver turns his head. Looks over at the stack of pizza boxes. Swallows. He can feel the attendant watching him watch the pizzas.
“Shoot. I could take ‘em off your hands. Call a page down to lug the stack up to the audition.”
“The pizzas? No way. This is like $170 worth of pie. I need cash on delivery. Plus, I was hoping… I mean I figured a big movie audition… Peter Angell… Seems like I oughta get a decent tip, at least.”
The attendant closes his eyes and huffs out a breath. Definitely hung over.
“Let me try to call up. Angell's office, you said?”
The driver nods. Watches the smart phone nestle against Cliff’s cheek. Waits.
Cliff blinks a few times. Stares at nothing. Then he shakes his head.
“Phone system is fucked. I think they’re doing maintenance or something.”
He taps the phone screen to kill the call. Shakes his head again.
“So… like.. What do we do?”
Cliff looks up at the driver, his eyes crawling to the Pizza Cottage hat and then the stack of cardboard on the passenger seat.
“Well…”
It sounds like he’ll say more, but he trails off there.
Now the driver knows he has to seize the moment. Say the right words to get what he wants.
In a way this is his audition.
“Look, I don’t know how things work around here as well as you do, but I can hang out here all afternoon if need be. I figure a bunch of hungry producers won’t mind. They’ve always seemed like patient and forgiving types to me.”
The attendant rubs his knuckles at his eyelids. Blinks a couple more times. Nods.
“Yeah. OK. I get it.”
“So let me put the question to you a second time, Cliff: What do we do?”
Cliff holds up a finger. Digs around inside the booth for a second, ducking down out of view. He bobs back into the frame of the open window a couple seconds later, a flap of cardstock in his hand. He jots something on the back of the card in blank ink, then passes it through.
“Here. It’s a temporary pass. We, uh, don’t use these much these days, but…”
“Desperate times. Desperate measures.”
Cliff’s arm jerks, his hand just out of view, and something clicks somewhere in the guts of the security booth.
The boom glides upward before the hood of the car, that metallic arm sliding away, and the threshold into the lot is suddenly clear.
The driver lets off the brake, and the hatchback creeps forward again. Passes through the gate. Pulls away from the booth until Cliff is back to that indiscernible dark shape he’d been to begin with.
He toes the accelerator after that, and the vehicle lurches at his touch, engine coughing and then growling. A wide expanse of asphalt choked with luxury vehicles fills his field of vision now, those studio buildings rising up beyond them like rounded concrete mountains against the horizon.
Markings on the sides of the building guide him deeper into the lot. Letters and numbers coding the different sound stages. 32H. 33H.
He passes exterior sets along the way — strips of fake streets that snake between the concrete tubes. One set looks like a row of Brownstones in Brooklyn, at least the facade of such. Another sports the brick storefronts of a Main Street in some Midwestern burgh. A little utility shed surrounded by wispy foliage could pass for a lagoon setting if you blocked out the cement surrounding it.
It all appears small up close. Artificial in a preposterous way. Thin like the inch-thick cinder block tile they use to make the walls of a basement set look legit.
But that makes sense, he thinks. All that matters is what the camera sees. Angles and lighting can make even the phoniest backdrop appear convincing in the final cut.
He snugs the hatchback between a $300,000 Range Rover and a Hummer that looks like it could roll right over the other cars in the lot in a pinch. The compact looks ludicrous in this company. Cartoonishly small and shabby. He wonders if it sticks out too much, wonders if it will matter at all.
Will any of this matter?
He climbs out. Hoists the stack of pizza boxes. Crosses the lot on foot.
An eerie hush seems to reach out over the asphalt. The tiniest whisper of wind moves here, tickling his arms, his top lip, the bridge of his nose.
He swallows. Looks over his shoulder as he nears the glass doors leading into the lobby.
In the distance, he can just make out the security booth and the shadow of a figure inside. A dark shape, shoulders more visible than anything. The edge of the building crops it out of view as he closes on the front door, that hard line of concrete sweeping over the booth like a curtain.
And he pushes through the glass panel, feels a faint suction, some pressure difference between the indoors and outside.
The shade inside washes everything out for a second. Blinding. And then he finds himself in a small foyer just shy of the lobby, another set of glass doors ahead.
He stops there. Surveys.
No.
Not here.
Not yet.
He pushes through the second set of doors. Enters a reception area. It smells vaguely herbal here. Something bright and green.
The woman behind the desk chatters into a headset and types on her laptop at the same time. Red hair. Pale eyes. A suntan that almost looks pink.
She blinks at him. Face blank. Staring.
And he turns on the big smile. Points an index finger at the stack of cardboard in his hand like she could have failed to notice. Then he points that same finger down the hall to his left and her right.
She blinks again. Nods and waves him through.
He strides down the hall. Finds it as empty and mute as most everything else around here. A row of doorways mars the wall off to his right.
And that herbal smell gives way to something more industrial. Fresh paint, he thinks. Maybe a hint of sawdust. They’re probably building sets all day. He remembers reading that the soap opera sets are in motion 24 hours a day, backgrounds being built and scenes being shot into the wee hours of every night — the construction logistics perhaps more sophisticated than the actual scripts.
One spot of sunshine gleams into the box of white walls. He approaches the window and finds a potted plant huddling in a nook there. Some kind of yucca or palm, he thinks.
He strides toward it. Dumps most of the pizza boxes in behind the plant. One box peels open, part of a rounded pie sliding free of the cardboard flaps, a pale tongue exiting lips.
He keeps the bottom box — the last remaining box — steady as he glides on down the hall. Moves carefully with it.
He’d gotten the idea from a book about the making of The Sopranos. A would-be actor showed up in a Domino’s uniform or something with a stack of pizzas to sneak into an open casting call. It jumped him past thousands of others in line and got him in the door.
Another story he’d read involved an actor getting his big break by posing as a UPS guy to get onto the set of a network hit. He not only got in, he landed a role and launched his career as a full-time TV actor based on the ruse — a career still thriving to this day.
He feels the air-conditioning touch the sheen of sweat now coating his face. Chilly and dry and harsh.
He ducks into the open on his right.
* * *
Back in the hall, panels of glass flit by on his left. Cutouts looking into some offices toward the back of the building, all of the panes blocked out by swaths of curtain.
And his reflection stares back at him, walking along with him, ghostly white from the creamy fabric of the shades.
He stares into the eyes of the double of himself. Something hollow in them. Unfamiliar.
He sees a face he doesn’t recognize, a face no one recognizes. But that’s the point.
Not so long ago, he had one of the most famous faces in the country. FBI Most Wanted Lists. TV news segments that ran for months. His features boxed in a graphic pinned up over every news anchor’s shoulder.
Plastic surgery has rearranged his visage. Morphed the features into something alien.
The scalpel and lipo vac pulled all the soft youthful bits into an angular jaw line, square chin, masculine brow. Lean and hard. Riveted.
The procedure had left him a little mean looking, a little empty looking, even to himself. Like a crystal meth addict who somehow sucked on a glass pipe until they’d drawn most of that fleshy subcutaneous layer out of themselves, left only skin drawn taut over stringy muscle and blades of bone. Emaciated.
He’d read about the doctor somewhere in the guts of the dark web, where the eyes of decent folks never go. A plastic surgeon without scruples who would happily work for the highest bidder.
Even if the highest bidder was Tyler Huxley, apparently. The serial bomber from the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
Huxley trails deeper into the building. And suddenly he’s not alone.
A security guard’s thick frame fills the other end of the hall. Mustache the flat brown hue of a Snickers wrapper. Crew cut colored the same. He sips at a cup of Starbucks, moseying this way, a rolled up newspaper tucked under his arm.
Huxley stares straight ahead. Hears his own breathing go loud inside his sinuses as the security guard grows closer.
The big guy bobs his head as they come to within a few paces of each other. Grins like a friendly bulldog, a jutting row of bottom teeth somehow becoming more visible than the top.
“How ya doin’?”
Huxley’s throat feels like some mess of tentacles pulling apart as he replies, turgid and tight.
“Hi.”
And then the big lug is past. Trailing away down the long hall. No double take. No glance back. No problems.
But Huxley can feel his heart hammering in his chest. A rivulet of sweat cascades from the corner of his brow, and he dabs it away with the hem of his Pizza Cottage polo.
He rounds a corner. Comes, at last, to the bigger sets of steel doors marked the way he’d expected, the way he’d remembered.
Studio A. That’s where they film the talk show where the awful host says rude things about his guests’ appearances — not backhanded compliments so much as throat punches thinly disguised as praise. “Well, I think your new lips look great. Way better than those pink inner tubes they were before. Seriously. Bloa-ted.”
Studio B. That’s where they film the brain dead game show, Ultimate Food Fight. While millions starve to death yearly, the American public watches idiots waste food by smearing themselves in kiddie pools of creamed corn and crawling through tunnels clogged with tapioca pudding and SpaghettiOs.
On and on it goes. The sound stages lay out before him, all in a row. Mega-corporations churning out toxic swill, and the masses huddling around their screens to drink greedily from the poison well.
Finally he reaches the set he wants. Steps into the empty space. The posted filming schedule he’d seen online makes him confident that nobody will be here for some time, possibly hours.
He walks down the narrow aisle — a row of steps running through the theater seating. He moves into the open in front of the auditorium area and crosses the line where the shiny black floor gives way to beige carpet, stepping onto the stage.
He finds it surreal to walk among the living room furniture he’s seen on TV so many times. So many one liners and sarcastic comebacks delivered here.
It seems different up close, with that fourth wall wide open to the stadium-style seating. Naked. Peeled.
A fraud.
He kneels. Places the pizza box down on the shag carpet delicately. Holds his breath until the floor supports its weight fully.
There.
Good.
Then he squats before the couch like it’s an altar — and he supposes that today it is. A sacred place to make his sacrificial offering.
He removes one of the couch cushions. Then he swallows and again smears his fingers at his soggy brow.
He opens the pizza box carefully. Peers at the gadgetry laid bare.
After two breaths, he starts to transfer his mechanism from the box into the couch. Slower than slow motion. Arms gliding. Gradually descending.
He rests the device on the flat where the couch cushion should go.
Feels a breath come out all shaky.
Done.
Done.
Now he places the cushion over top. Slow to let it go, to let its weight free of his touch. Like a dad holding onto the bike seat for an extra second or two, he thinks. No training wheels now.
It’s down. And his eyelids are fluttering. And a quiver runs through his whole body. Bubbles bursting in his chest, in his arms. Needles prickling in his thighs, along the top of his scalp.
Holy hell.
He tries to squelch the giddy feeling rising up from his belly. Even his body itself, the meat and bones of him, knows what comes next. Knows too well the big bang that’s soon to arrive.
Hollywood loves a comeback. And Tyler Huxley’s will be legendary.
Chapter 1
“If they die, it’s on you. Their blood will be on your hands.”
The inside of the SWAT van was stifling, but Violet Darger had more important things to worry about right now — like the phone in her hand.
“No one needs to die today, Justin,” she said, keeping her voice calm and level.
She ignored the trickle of sweat running down the back of her neck, ignored the boom of her pulse in her skull, ignored the chuff of the news helicopters circling overhead like vultures.
She focused on only the phone, on the sucking silence shoved up to her ear. She adjusted her grip on the plastic case and waited for him to respond.
The man on the other end of the line was named Justin Leffew. Earlier that morning, Leffew had robbed a Dollar General store in Los Altos, and then led police on a merry chase through the streets of San Francisco. The vehicular pursuit ended when a SWAT officer managed to shoot out the left front tire of the suspect’s vehicle, but Leffew’s crime spree hadn’t stopped there.
Instead, the suspect fled on foot, ducking inside a nearby apartment building, and from there, 22-year-old Mindy Garza and her 15-month-old daughter, Leila, won the un-lucky lottery. They’d been standing in the foyer of the building, collecting their mail, when the suspect burst in. Leffew saw his opportunity and took the woman and toddler hostage, directing them at gunpoint up to Garza’s fourth-floor apartment.
SFPD’s first act was to evacuate the rest of the building. The second thing they’d done was call the FBI to request a hostage negotiator. And that was where Darger came in.
The silence seemed to grow louder on the other end of the line. Darger felt oddly aware of the space there, conscious that she was listening to the inside of Mindy Garza’s apartment, her right ear somehow granted access to the 650-odd square feet of efficiency living area which somehow sounded cavernous through the phone speaker just now. Empty. She pawed at the perspiration beading on her temple and checked the time.
Leffew and his hostages had been barricaded in the building for four hours now. Darger had been in communication with him for almost half of that span, but she’d yet to get him to agree to release Garza and her daughter.
A wail in the background pierced the quiet. Baby Leila was crying again.
“Shut that baby up,” Leffew said, his voice slightly muffled, as if he had covered the mouthpiece to prevent Darger from hearing.
Not good. She wanted Leffew’s attention on her, not the hostages.
Keep him talking.
Keep him calm.
She shuffled through the notes in her lap. Hastily scribbled details about Leffew’s background.
“You have a sister, isn’t that right? Rachel?”
The quiet stretched out again for a full second.
“What of it?” Leffew asked, and Darger could hear the uncertainty in his voice as he tried to wrap his head around the sudden change in topic.
“And a three-year-old niece named Caroline? Think of them, Justin. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to them, would you?”
The phone’s speaker fluttered in her ear as he exhaled.
“Of course not. But that’s not… you still don’t get it. No one respects me.”
“You have my respect, Justin,” Darger said, her tone soothing, almost a whisper. “And that’s why I want to understand you. I think we’ve made some progress here. I’ve done my best to get you what you need. Would you agree with that?”
“I guess so. Except for the Xanax.”
“And I told you from the start that there were certain rules. Things I can and can’t get you. No drugs. No weapons.”
He sighed again.
“Yeah, I know.”
“I also think — and you tell me if you agree — that you don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Of course not,” he said, and Darger thought she heard the slightest waver of emotion blooming there. “Of course I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“I can hear that in your voice, Justin.”
“That’s not what everyone else thinks, though. They think I’m a monster.”
“Maybe that’s true,” Darger said. “But there’s something you can do to show them you aren’t a violent person. That you aren’t a monster.”
He sniffed.
“This… This can’t go on forever.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Darger said, feeling like she was walking a mental tightrope. “And I know there’s a way everyone can get out of this unharmed, if you keep working with me, just like you have been.”
“I just… I can’t go back to jail, man. I can’t do it.”
The pitch of the helicopter’s rotors changed overhead. The various choppers jockeying to get the money shot for tonight’s newscast.
“Well, look… that’s something we can discuss. But I’m not going to lie to you, Justin. That’s going to be up to the prosecutor, in the end. So I don’t know if I can promise no jail time. But I can promise you something else, and that’s if you let Mindy and Leila go — right now — I will personally advocate for a lighter sentence on your behalf.”
Leffew was silent for a few seconds. Darger thought that was good. He was considering it. There was only one possible soft landing here. He had to see that.
When he spoke again, his voice was low, confused.
“What the fuck?”
And then he erupted. Volcanic rage all at once.
“You fucking bitch! What have you been telling them?”
“Justin, you need to stay calm. I don’t know what—”
“I knew it! I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you.”
There was a click, and the line went dead.
Chapter 2
Huxley’s hands still hover just shy of the couch cushion when the door clicks behind him. A metallic snap that rings over the open sound stage and echoes back from the corners.
His mind freezes. The white noise of fear blotting out all the words, a tea kettle shriek filling his skull.
But instinct kicks in anyway. Lifts him to his feet. Shuffles him a few paces back from the couch.
Some part of him understands this, words coming unlocked in his head via a few fragmented sentences.
Need to get away. Away from it. Like now.
He turns just in time to see the security guard’s eyes go wide.
“What the— Hey! Who let you in here?”
It’s the one with the Snickers wrapper mustache. Those bottom bulldog teeth jutting out of the gap in his lips again.
No Starbucks cup or newspaper in his hands now. He juts an accusatory finger toward Huxley’s chest, arm already tremoring with adrenaline.
Huxley blinks once. Feet momentarily glued to the floor.
The big lug sneers. Mustache curling at the corners. He speed walks down the aisle toward the stage, shoulders hunched like a racoon’s.
And then Huxley is running. Crossing that shag carpet floor of the fake living room and moving back onto the matte black of the studio floor. He bashes through a side door leading backstage.
The steel panel lurches out of his way. Bangs into the wall.
And another hallway opens up before him. A white tunnel of drywall. Names emblazoned on some of the doors.
He plunges down the sheet rock tube. Feels almost claustrophobic after dwelling in the broad expanse of the sound stage.
Doors flit by one side of his field of vision like the dotted line in the middle of the freeway.
He picks up his feet. Builds speed.
Somewhere behind him, Mustache yells into a walkie talkie. Voice coming out raspy. A little out of breath.
“We’ve got a breach. An intruder exiting Studio C and moving into the backstage area. Over.”
A voice gurgles out of the walkie talkie speaker, but Huxley can’t make out the words. Then Mustache speaks again, loud, practically shouting somewhere behind him.
“White male. Maybe early 30s. A frickin’ pizza delivery guy. Or dressed that way, anyhow.”
Huxley banks hard to the right. Another hallway says ah before him.
He needs to think. This is his chance.
Movement erupts down the corridor. A doorway leaping open. Another security guard takes shape there.
And Huxley jams himself into the nearest door. Closes it behind him.
Soundless. Sealed off in the dark.
Shit.
He doesn’t think he’s been spotted. But the two guards have got him pinned down in any case, whether they realize it or not.
He sweeps a hand along the wall. Finds a light switch. Flicks it.
The fluorescent bulbs flicker and then wink to life. White light floods the room.
Harsh.
Bright.
Confusing.
And then he sees.
Racks of clothes fill the space before him, an otherwise bare room not much smaller than a small grocery store floor.
The clothes seem sorted loosely by color. Reds to the right. Blues to the left.
This is the wardrobe room, or one of them. Another piece of the collective dream is housed and decided just here.
He flicks the lights back off. Takes a breath.
And then he steps forward into the darkness and submerges himself in the hanging flaps of fabric.
Chapter 3
Hands shaking with adrenaline, Darger redialed the number.
Come on, she thought.
It rang.
Pick it up, Justin.
And rang.
Pick up the phone.
Finally, she was redirected to a generic voicemail greeting.
“Shit,” Darger whispered to herself.
Her gaze wheeled around the inside of the empty SWAT van as though the paneled walls might give her an answer to what had just happened. Blank white stared back in all directions, little gun portholes cutting circles into the contoured metal.
She moved to the back of the van, opened the door, and climbed out. Her skin was still dewy with sweat, and the blast of fresh air sent a wave of goose bumps up her arms.
Gregory Colfax, San Francisco’s Chief of Police, read the look on Darger’s face and frowned.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I was so close. I had him on the brink of giving up the hostages, and then… he just turned. Started screaming about how he shouldn’t have trusted me. He hung up.”
“You tried calling back?” Chief Colfax asked.
Darger nodded.
“He isn’t answering.”
The radio clipped to the Chief’s vest crackled, and then a voice said, “We’ve got movement at the window.”
Darger tilted her head to look. It was a bright day, and the sun was at just the wrong angle so she had to squint and shield her eyes. She noted the chief doing the same beside her.
But yes, she saw it now. The curtains swished and swayed and then were shoved side, exposing a narrow slit of window in the middle.
From a few yards away, Sergeant Barnes, leader of the SFPD SWAT team, brought his radio to his lips.
“Hold positions unless I give the word. We don’t know if the person at the window is our target or one of the hostages.”
Darger still couldn’t tell what exactly was happening behind the curtain, but she knew one thing for certain: there was no way Leffew was stupid enough to stand directly in front of it. He was well aware they had snipers stationed on the surrounding rooftops.
Slowly, an inch at a time, the window slid upward. It stopped about four inches up, and then there was a flash of light and movement. A few seconds later, a distinct clatter rang out from the pavement below. Darger squinted at the ground, piecing together what she’d seen and heard with the small, black object now lying inert on the sidewalk.
“Was that the—” Chief Colfax asked.
“The phone.” She sighed. “Yeah.”
He’d just tossed the phone out of the window, fully cutting off their line of communication with him.
Chief Colfax scratched one corner of his mustache.
“Now what? We try to get another phone up there?”
Darger chewed her lip. The task force had determined it was too dangerous for any law enforcement to enter the building. The first phone had been delivered to Leffew by way of tactical robot, and the operation had taken forty-five minutes.
Her gut clenched at the thought of being out of contact that long. Too much could happen. She had to figure out what had set Leffew off in the first place and try to deescalate the situation.
She turned to the two men.
“Let’s work on getting another phone up there, but in the meantime, do we have a bullhorn?”
“Affirmative,” Sergeant Barnes said, toggling the button on his radio. “Abiko, we’re gonna need to send another phone up. Lavilla, grab the megaphone from our gear and bring it out front.”
Two minutes later, Darger had the bullhorn in hand. She took a few steps closer to the building.
“Not too close, Agent,” Sergeant Barnes warned. “He’s still armed.”
Darger nodded and held the device in front of her mouth.
“Justin? It’s Violet,” she said.
Her voice sounded odd through the speaker. Thick and distorted. She hated it. But this wasn’t about her.
“Justin, can you come to the window so we can talk?”
Seconds passed, and Darger was about to lift the bullhorn again when there was another flutter of activity at the window.
Behind her, she heard Barnes murmur into his radio.
“Snipers, hold for my word.”
Fingers slid into view at the open gap of the window. They wrapped around the bottom rail, and the sash slid up until the window was fully open.
There was someone there. Standing directly in front of the window. Darger almost couldn’t believe it. Leffew had to know he was putting himself directly in the line of fire. Was he trying to get shot?
Then she saw what Leffew was holding in front of himself.
A baby.
“You all get back,” Leffew shouted. “Every one of you, or I’ll drop her. You back the fuck off, or I’ll do it.”
As if sensing the threat, 15-month-old Leila Garza began to squirm and whimper. Darger’s whole body tensed, terrified that Leffew would lose his grip.
She took a deep breath and spoke into the bullhorn, struggling to keep her voice in control.
“Justin, you can take Leila back inside. We’re going to do exactly what you say. We’re backing up now.”
Darger held up her arms in a placating gesture and took several steps backward.
“You think he’ll really do it?” Chief Colfax asked when she fell in line beside him.
“No,” she said, glancing back at the window. “He’s trying to intimidate us. The fact that he gave us an out — get back OR I’ll drop her? He’s still in a negotiation mindset.”
“But you’re still having us pull back?”
“It’s too risky not to give him what he wants. If he so much as sneezes, he could lose his grip on the kid.”
When they’d moved twenty yards back from their original position, Leffew whisked the baby back inside and shoved the curtains closed once more.
Darger exhaled and felt the faintest sense of relief.
“Justin, we’ve done what you asked,” she said into the bullhorn. “What’s next? What else can I do for you?”
His voice filtered out through the still open window.
“Fuck you, bitch!”
“I can hear that you’re angry, Justin. I want to understand why.”
“Fuck. You. Bitch.”
Darger let the arm holding the bullhorn fall to her side.
At least the baby was safe.
For now.
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