Countdown

Book 0: NYPD Negotiators

by Sara Driscoll

Genres: Suspense; Mystery

Synopsis

Following their terrifying ordeal as hostages of domestic terrorists, NYPD Detective Gemma Capello is back in the negotiator chair, while Detective Sean Logan, healed from injuries sustained saving Gemma’s life, has resumed leading an A-Team tactical unit—just in time for their next challenge . . . perfect for fans of James Patterson and David Baldacci.

It’s New Year’s Eve, Manhattan is alight with celebration, and Gemma and Logan are hoping for a relatively normal night amid the revelry. But that hope is shattered by a 911 text from a luxury yacht somewhere in busy New York Harbor. Below deck, a college student working aboard is hiding from a hostage taker. The student reports that the crew was ordered to join the guests. Gunshots followed.

The yacht party, hosted by billionaire venture capitalist Lucas Horner, includes local government officials and some of the city’s wealthiest, most influential people. Gemma and her team hypothesize that Horner, an infamously arrogant hustler, has burned someone financially—someone who now wants revenge.

Once the Aviation Unit identifies the yacht and its location, Logan and his team are transported through the brutal winter waters toward Liberty Island. Gemma finally connects with the hostage taker and learns of a cryptocurrency ransom demand—and a chilling execution plan if it’s not fulfilled by midnight. But Horner is refusing to pay. And Gemma senses things aren’t adding up—because beneath the unnerving scenario lies an even more twisted plan, layers of deceit—and a captor with nothing to lose . . .

Release date: April 28, 2026

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 272

Sample

GEMMA CAPELLO STEPPED OUT OF the biting winter wind and into the vestibule of the shuttered restaurant, expelling a relieved breath as warm air flowed over cheeks stung by the cold. She pulled off her gloves, folding them in half and tucking them into the pocket of her full-length coat, then paused, her hand on the long wood handle of the inner door as her heart rapped against her sternum.

She was back.

Was she ready?

You’re ready. Get it together. One note of hesitation, and Garcia will kick your ass back to scribe, exactly where it belongs if you’re second-guessing yourself. He gave you time to settle in. You’re settled.

She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, opened the door, and strode through the gap like she owned the place.

No one owned the place now.

Once a busy restaurant, the deserted space in front of her easily spanned two hundred feet. A long, burnished oak bar stretched down the middle of the room, its smooth run intermittently interrupted briefly by long, slender panels of electric-blue and bloodred stained glass inset into a decoratively capped panel of dark wood. Under the 150-year-old beam ceiling, a line of steampunk-style metal tubes and gauges ran the length of the bar. Metal barstools with blue leather cushions lined both sides, as if waiting for the next patron to pull up to the rail.

But the bottles were gone, the shelves and racks that once held glasses stood empty, and the wide-screen TVs hanging from the ceiling, which once likely displayed the menu or the latest sports match, were dark.

Abandoned.

Abandoned worked for the Hostage Negotiation Team as they needed a location close to their newest emergency. Since being on a boat in New York Harbor wasn’t feasible or necessary, the historic Victorian structure on Pier A, which reached hundreds of feet into the harbor, worked perfectly. It was close, and, just as importantly, it was big enough to work as HNT incident headquarters, as well as a staging area out of the frigid winter weather for the NYPD’s Apprehension Tactical Team—or A-Team—officers she knew would be arriving shortly.

Would Logan be among them?

It had only been a few weeks since she and Detective Sean Logan, out on their first official date on a rare joint night off, had the bad timing to pass through Grand Central Terminal in Midtown at the moment gunmen had taken control of the space, and had been held as part of a hostage group of fourteen individuals. Having watched two MTA cops in the Main Concourse die in the initial assault, Gemma and Logan had fiercely protected their real identities, knowing their lives would be immediately forfeit if they were discovered to be NYPD. Instead, Gemma had posed as a business negotiator and had offered herself to negotiate for the group with her own HNT colleagues, even as Logan’s fellow A-Team officers had filled the windows around them.

She would have died that night three weeks ago had Logan not been willing to sacrifice himself to get to her. In fact, for a few minutes, she thought she’d lost him forever when she watched him fall under a hail of bullets. However, the vest he’d stolen from one of the other hostage takers had saved his life, so he could then save hers.

It had been a traumatic experience, but one that brought them closer together as a couple. They’d taken advantage of their department-stipulated recovery time immediately following the incident to do what they hadn’t done fifteen years earlier: During their time at the academy, they’d briefly succumbed to their attraction for each other in one unforgettable night in Logan’s bed, but this time they purposely put their physical relationship on hold to get to know each other better.

For weeks they’d talked—over dinner, after a movie, while ice-skating in Bryant Park, or while strolling hand in hand through the Columbus Circle Winter Market—sharing details of their current lives, their families, their future hopes. They’d much too casually walked away from their feelings for each other as they left the academy to pursue their careers; now they were determined to explore whether they actually had a basis upon which to build a solid relationship.

If Logan was one of the A-Team members working this incident, it would be their first true test to show their superiors their personal relationship was entirely independent of their working relationship. Their relationship was known to the NYPD brass going straight through to Gemma’s father, Tony Capello, chief of Special Operations, but was allowed because neither was in a command position over the other. In fact, they were at the same level, working side by side in separate capacities during an incident.

They’d proved in the past that their connection allowed them to work together on a different level from most negotiator-tactical pairings—they could shortcut directions to each other in a crisis, and read each other’s moves ahead of time, allowing them to work seamlessly. Their teamwork had saved multiple lives in the past. In Gemma’s opinion, their new connection would only allow them to work even better. And if his or her lieutenant didn’t like any plan of action, they could order a change.

Gemma had been back at work for two weeks, but Garcia had been playing it safe with her, starting her in the scribe position, then moving her to coach. Finally, tonight was the first time since Grand Central Terminal she’d be sitting as primary, the negotiator whose role was to talk the hostage taker down. She understood his gradual reintegration—the primary held the lives of both the hostage taker and the hostages in their hands. Anything that might interfere with being attuned to the hostage taker and the active listening process required to deal with them—such as PTSD from being in the hostage position only a few weeks earlier—couldn’t be allowed for fear of a hostage paying the ultimate price of a negotiator being off their game.

Her attention was attracted by a figure stepping into the open stretch of flooring that ran roughly east to west for the length of the massive restaurant. Seeing her, the man waved an arm over his head.

“Capello! Down here!”

Trevor McFarland—her closest colleague at the HNT, though one she hadn’t worked with since Grand Central Terminal. He’d been the team member she’d “negotiated” with that night. He was also the one who always had her back and would give her the most confidence tonight.

Thanks, Garcia.

“Coming!” she called.

She strode to the other end of the restaurant, passing tables with benches or stools that lined the windows overlooking the night-darkened harbor. Once past the bar, glossy electric-blue tiles bordered the curving windows on her right, revealing the deserted kitchen beyond. Near the end of the restaurant, she reached a secondary bar area, located directly across from a small, glassed-in room of empty wine racks, the words Private Wine Cellar stenciled on one of the panels.

McFarland had selected a heavy wooden table next to the wine cellar that looked out through a large eight-paned window to the harbor beyond. He’d arranged four farmhouse spindle-back chairs around it.

“McFarland, good to see you.”

Short and wiry, with dirty-blond hair and wearing a smudge-brown suit that surprisingly looked like it might actually fit him—a rarity—McFarland looked up from the equipment he was organizing at one end of the table and grinned. “Back at you.” His gaze slid up to her forehead.

Gemma knew he was checking her only outward injury from that night three weeks before—a gash a little over an inch long at her hairline above her right eye, caused by exploding glass when a hostage lunged for an automatic weapon. But it was now healed—only the lightest line still showed, and she’d been assured that, given enough time, it would disappear entirely.

His gaze slipped down to meet hers. “You up for this?”

“Yes.” Her tone held no hesitation.

McFarland gave her a single sharp nod. “Told Garcia you’d be fine.”

“It’s time.”

“Told him that, too. Also told him I could step in if needed, but it wasn’t going to be.”

“No.” Gemma paused for a moment, her gaze flicking to the equipment and then back up again. “Though it’s good to know, just in case.”

“Anytime.”

“What’s going on? All I got from Garcia was there’s a hostage situation out on a boat in the harbor and to meet here.”

“Details have been rolling in, but they’re still a little scanty. Starting with their location.” He turned and faced the window. “They’re out there somewhere, but that’s all we have so far.”

Gemma turned to follow his gaze. It was a cold and windy night, but the sky was clear of clouds, with a few stars showing through the combined glow of the five boroughs. Atypically for this time on a winter night, the harbor was busy, with white, green, and red lights bobbing on the choppy water. “Are there usually this many boats out on New Year’s Eve?”

“From what I understand, yes. Especially on a clear night like this. While it’s breezy, it’s not so bad it’s going to make anyone seasick. But the harbor is one of the best places to see the fireworks they set off from the barge in front of Liberty Island.”

“Totally unobstructed view.”

“Yeah. Let me give you the rundown of what we know. Garcia knew I’d get here first, so he’s had all info channeled to me to share with the group. Chen and Ramos are incoming, and we’ll bring them up to speed as soon as they get here.” McFarland sat down and opened the laptop he brought to every negotiation, woke it, then scrolled to the top of a document. “A call came through to 911 at 8:12 PM. A college kid…” His gaze scanned his document. “Noah Swift reported he was hidden belowdecks on a luxury yacht in the harbor. His aunt, Rae Swift, is the steward on the boat and runs the interior crew. They’re throwing a big, glitzy party tonight and had to bring on extra crew to cover some of the shifts—servers, bartender, et cetera. He’s a starving college student home for the Christmas break, so she had him come in to help the chef on the q.t. to earn some extra money to give him a boost. A multicourse dinner for twenty-five was served at seven o’clock, and dessert had gone in about ten minutes before a message came through from the owner, who wanted all staff in the dining room.”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone.”

“What about the captain?”

“Yup.”

McFarland’s arched eyebrow told Gemma he’d caught the same detail. “So no one would be in control of the boat? In New York Harbor? With all that traffic?”

“It appears so. The kid said the first officer came into the kitchen to tell everyone to go into the dining room. Instead of complying, the steward sent the kid belowdecks to stay out of sight because the owner didn’t know he was part of the crew and she wasn’t sure how he’d feel about the nepotism of her hiring her own nephew. Apparently, he’s kind of an overbearing, touchy boss. Noah went to the bottom of the stairs, just off the kitchen, so he could hear what was going on. The captain was going to meet them there once the anchor was dropped. Apparently, he’d protested leaving the controls unattended, and the owner told him to do as ordered if he wanted to remain in command of his yacht.”

“Pretty ballsy.”

“You’ll see why shortly. Anyway, the captain dropped anchor for what he believed would be at most a couple of minutes, but as the situation stands now, it could be hours. And for all we know, they could be smack in the middle of the transportation lanes of the channel.”

Gemma stared out the window, at the lights out on the water. “Which means our clock is ticking faster than ever. Everyone on board is potentially at risk of a collision. But it’s an idiotic thing for a hostage taker to do. He’s on the boat with them. He’s put himself at risk as well.”

“We may be dealing with someone who hasn’t thought the situation through clearly,” McFarland stated. “Anyway, everyone but Noah went through as requested. Then shots were fired a few minutes later, which is likely why the owner pressured the captain to leave his post. He had a literal gun to his head.”

“You said shots, plural. How many?”

“At least three. The kid is rattled, and he was down one level toward the front of the boat, and the party is one deck up toward the rear. He thinks he heard all the shots, but he’s not sure. They also came in quick succession, so it might have been four.”

“He’s on a boat—any risk of the hull being breached and them taking on water?”

“He didn’t say, but it’s something to consider, depending on the type of bullet and how it penetrated. A hostage situation is bad enough. Adding in the stress of a boat taking on water would definitely make it worse. If we end up with people in the water, there’s the additional risk of drowning or hypothermia if we can’t get them out fast enough.”

“One crisis at a time. Noah doesn’t know if anyone was hit, I assume?”

“No. He was brave enough to creep up the stairs, closer to the living and dining areas on the main deck. He was behind a closed door but could hear yelling from where the party was. Specifically, a male voice telling everyone to sit down and shut up. He knew he was out of his league—one guy against someone with firepower—so he crept back belowdecks, hid in the laundry room, and called 911. Had he not called 911, we’d have no idea the incident had even occurred.”

Gemma latched on to the salient point. “No one’s reached out with demands.”

“Not so far.”

“The owner may not know Noah is on board, but obviously members of the interior crew do. His aunt, the chef, likely some of the pursers or servers. If they let it slip that he’s on board—”

“It wouldn’t go well. The hostage taker might threaten the crew, or threaten his aunt if he finds out about the familial relationship, to get Noah to join them. It could be another pressure point where someone could be killed.”

“If the crew is smart, they’ll realize he’s their best chance to raise the alarm to bring help. You’d think they’d work to keep his presence a secret.”

McFarland’s expression conveyed his lack of confidence. “You know people sometimes act against their own best interests when they’re under pressure.”

“Oh, yeah. We’ll have to see how that plays out. Step one for us, though, is identifying which boat is the center of this crisis.”

“I don’t think that will be as hard as we might have feared. We’ve determined the overbearing boss throwing the glitzy party is Lucas Horner. His superyacht is going to be the biggest boat out there.”

“Che cavolo.” Gemma sank down into the chair next to McFarland, shaking her head in disbelief. “That puts an entirely different spin on it.”

“Yeah.”

Everyone in the city—hell, likely in the country—had at least heard of Lucas Horner. Brash, arrogant, larger than life in every negative way possible as far as Gemma was concerned, he was well-known for taking lucrative chances on tech companies, lately focusing primarily on those interested in developing artificial general intelligence, or better, artificial super intelligence. So far, those risks had paid off in spades, giving the billionaire a more prominent platform and more money to invest in new technologies. He was infamous for not creating anything himself but for some extremely savvy business moves, which ranked him in the top ten venture capitalists worldwide.

“Suddenly it’s clear why we didn’t know,” Gemma said. “The hostage taker doesn’t need to make demands of us. The person they want to make demands of is literally sitting on the boat with them.”

“I’ve already started a deep dive on Horner. Using his own AI, SagAIcity, to do it.”

“SagAIcity? What does that even mean?”

“It’s a play on words. Sagacity, but with AI in the middle. Means ‘wisdom,’ but with added AI.”

“Shouldn’t have picked a ten-dollar word. A lot of people won’t know what it means. But will it help us?”

“Should gain us some time as long as it’s not hallucinating and making stuff up.”

“Hallucinations. Awesome.” Gemma rolled her eyes. “Keeping your search in mind, we need to look at who he’s pissed off in his career. Who he’s ruined. That might lead us to our suspect.”

“He’s also widely known as a womanizer, one who doesn’t care about the marital or partner status of the woman he’s pursuing. There could be some ill will coming from that.”

Gemma considered for a moment, then shook her head. “Could be, but that doesn’t ring true for me. At least not in this scenario. A betrayed spouse might shoot him on the street, but to go to this extent? To me, this is someone who wants a payout, not just revenge for a relationship humiliation. But you’re right. There might be a couple of superyachts in the harbor; however, his particular yacht should be easy to identify. I’ve seen pictures of it in the Times.”

“The Salacia. It’s huge, so it will likely be the largest boat out there. The Aviation Unit will be in the air shortly and will identify its location.”

“Step two will then be making contact. But how do we do that? It’s not like we can use a throw phone,” Gemma said, referring to the cell phone the team would occasionally provide a hostage taker so they had a way to reach out to them to start the conversation. Without that conversation, hostages could die.

“I have all our usual communications equipment.” He pointed at the standard unit they used for phone negotiations—the console that recorded all conversations with connections for the teams’ headsets so everyone was a part of the negotiation. Instead of being set out on the table as normal, it was jammed under the window, four headsets stacked beside it. “But because no one has reached out with their demands, we don’t have a number to call.”

“Sure we do. We just don’t know it yet.”

McFarland leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Come again?”

“Horner. Even if we don’t know any of his party guests’ identities at this point, we know he’s on the boat. Someone must have his personal cell phone number. A man like that won’t be without his phone. He wouldn’t pick up initially, wouldn’t have the freedom to, but repeated calls to it might open a channel to him and, through him, to the hostage taker. Another option is the kid’s aunt. We have his number since he called in to 911. Are we willing to risk texting him to get her number? That would be at most a single alert, as opposed to the repeated ring of a phone. Or, hopefully, he has his phone on silent. We don’t know that his aunt is carrying her phone—and she may not be because she’s working this party—however, it’s another option to consider.”

“Here’s another idea. I’ll take a look at Horner’s social media. He’s known as a show-off and may have posted pics live as the party was getting started, maybe even tagging some of the guests. You know how social types like that like to have their posts amplified by others, and that’s a surefire way to do it. That could build the guest list and generate more phone numbers, because depending on a single number isn’t the best idea. And if anyone has posted themselves or has shared photos, then we know they have their phones with them. There must be some way to get through. If all else fails, Garcia said the Harbor Unit is going to drop us off a VHF—very high frequency—radio to use, if needed.”

“VHF is what boats use to communicate with each other? If so, won’t we then be making contact with every boat in the harbor?”

“Yes and yes.”

“And can anyone listen in?”

“Also, yes.”

“I don’t like that. What if someone else thinks they should chime in? Egg the hostage taker on? Or belittle them? Or just as disastrous, think they can be the vigilante hero and try to save the hostages, potentially becoming a casualty or another hostage?”

“It’s not optimum, but we may not have another workable option.” He held up a hand before she continued to protest the idea. “Let’s not make any plans until we find out what our options are. We can begin on one channel and then ask them to move to another, more private channel, but anyone who hears the request could follow us there as well. Better yet, try to get them to use a cell phone after the initial contact.”

“Simply communicating that number could block it from us if others listening in call it.” Gemma blew out a breath. “Sounds like our options have some challenges, but we’ll figure it out as we go. What about recording the negotiation? Will the equipment they give us be able to do that?”

“I was going to put together a Raspberry Pi connected to the squelch pin on the data jack of the SDR, but apparently the unit they’re giving us has an SD card that can capture fifty hours of radio traffic, so we’re covered.”

Gemma’s remaining tension fizzled away under the comforting load of McFarland’s technobabble. She didn’t understand ninety percent of what he’d just said, but didn’t need to because she knew he did. It was a reminder that teamwork made the HNT so successful. She wouldn’t stumble because the team wouldn’t let her.

They were back.

“You realize you don’t make any sense to normal people, right?”

“I’m a normie.” McFarland tried to look affronted, but his expression cracked into a grin seconds later. “Relatively, anyway.”

“It’s all relative.” Gemma patted him on the shoulder. “So we have no information about the hostage taker?”

“None. The kid didn’t recognize the voice. Not to mention, whoever it is isn’t reaching out to us, and we can’t reach out ourselves, at least not yet.”

“We don’t even know it’s only one hostage taker,” she said. “Noah heard one voice, but there could be additional suspects with guns on board.”

Voices attracted Gemma’s attention, and she looked up to find a group of A-Team officers coming through one of the side doors off the pier about twenty feet away. They were dressed in identical Emergency Service Unit—ESU—head-to-toe black winter gear of layered tactical thermal shirt, pants, and winter jacket.

Their tactical equipment completed their uniforms—each wore a helmet with a streaming camera clipped to the brim, a loaded duty belt, and a Kevlar vest jammed with extra magazines, while carrying a rifle in their gloved hands and a Glock 19 strapped to their right thigh.

The man leading the group didn’t look in her direction, but Gemma easily identified him. S. . .