The bridge stretched far into the East River, rising slowly into a steel-gray sky roiling with dark clouds. Railings flashed by in a matching shade of grimy gunmetal, broken only by ragged wheals of rust where industrial paint had long ago been stripped by wind and weather as rot took hold.
They called it the “Bridge of Pain” and said it led only to violence, misery, and isolation.
Those destined to stay within its walls emerged changed. Broken. Having left an integral part of themselves behind in a desperate bid to survive.
Gemma Capello’s time there would be short compared to many, but a part of her dreaded not only what brought her there, but what would keep her.
Rikers Island.
Widely known as one of the worst jails in America, Rikers was considered a blight on New York City. So much so, the city had committed to shuttering it in 2026.
Many said the closure couldn’t come fast enough.
Some NYPD and Department of Corrections officers disagreed. In their minds, inmates were incarcerated because they’d broken the law, and Rikers was part of the justice system’s effort to right that wrong. Maybe it was in part because of Gemma’s calling and her innate ability to burrow inside the mindset of others, but she saw those inmates more clearly as fallible human beings than many of her fellow officers. She also recognized that sometimes justice rolled roughshod over human rights. In her mind, Rikers was a very public example of that abuse.
Moments before, she’d pulled up to the security booth on the Queens side of the Francis R. Buono Memorial Bridge. Immediately, an extra show of force was evident in the additional correction officers stationed there to thoroughly question anyone wishing to gain access to the island and to turn back those found unacceptable. The island was on lockdown and visitation rights would have to wait for another day. The Otis Bantum Correctional Center was in crisis and every available man was on-site, leaving the other buildings potentially short-staffed in case of emergency.
Gemma had waited patiently as they examined her ID and then waved her through with calls of “Good luck!” She could practically hear the silent You’re going to need it as she drove away, the grim tone chasing her onto the bridge.
She glanced over the right railing, across the wind-tossed choppy waters of the East River to the eastern side of the island. On the southern edge, a low, multicolored smear marked the visitor and employee parking lot, with the pale streak of the Control Building—the administrative facility where visitors and most employees entered the island and then boarded buses to travel to any of the ten jails—behind it. In the distance, taller detention centers rose into the sky.
Gemma had been to Rikers before, but each time it was like entering a war zone. She never felt like she could draw an easy breath until she was back on terra firma in Queens. It was said Rikers Island was sinking; geologists meant that literally, but in her mind, it was sinking straight into the blackness of despair.
Now she was called to report in at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center where, a little over an hour before, a riot had erupted and a group of inmates had taken control of one of the secured units. That was bad enough, but the eight correction officers they’d taken hostage had called for the big guns: the NYPD HNT—the Hostage Negotiation Team. Lieutenant Garcia, the commander of the team, had called her in, but even with lights and sirens, it had taken her nearly a half hour to fight her way through midafternoon traffic to the island.
In a few more minutes she’d be over the bridge and faced with additional layers of security—some standard, some likely extra layers in response to the crisis—to get onto the island proper. Then it was just a matter of finding the right jail and getting to work.
A low roar drew her gaze out the passenger window and her heart lurched into her throat at the sight of a massive jet speeding directly toward her on one of LaGuardia’s two runways, less than a half mile to the east. The plane left the runway, banking upward at a steep angle to rumble ferociously overhead. Heavy vibrations rattled Gemma’s breastbone as it jetted away from New York City and into the overcast sky.
She crossed the apex of the bridge and coasted down toward land. Spread out before her, Rikers covered the entire breadth of the island in clusters of buildings, each contained behind rows of chain link and razor wire. On the far side of the island, a quintet of stacks from the power plant pumped out billows of charcoal smoke to meld into the low-lying cloud cover.
Coming off the bridge, she joined a short line at the next set of security booths. When it was her turn, she pulled up to the booth, put down her window, and extended her identification. “Detective Gemma Capello, NYPD Hostage Negotiation Team.”
The burly corrections officer leaned in to inspect the picture on her ID, then her face, and then the ID again. He gave a curt nod. “Go on through to the next booth.”
One more round of identification and inspection and then Gemma had her directions—stay on Hazen Street straight ahead and follow the road as it curved to the left into Hillside Avenue. The Otis Bantum Correctional Center, or OBCC in officer shorthand, would be on the left. But as Gemma closed in on the OBCC, she realized directions weren’t required. All she needed to do was follow the emergency vehicles and flashing lights. It felt like every Department of Corrections worker and NYPD cop not already on duty had converged on the site.
The OBCC was a frenzy of activity—people streamed across the front parking lot, and emergency vehicles, both Department of Corrections and NYPD, lined the roadway. Gemma overshot the facility and found a parking spot on the far side of the road near the western edge of the island next to a small storage building. Getting out of the car, she buttoned her blazer and jogged back down the road, thankful for the flat-soled boots she paired with her tailored suits for just this reason.
She ran along the fence line where it towered ten feet overhead, curls of vicious razor wire twisted in loops over the top. Fifteen feet away, a second line of fencing ran parallel to the outer ring to dissuade anyone with hopes of escape—if the inner fence didn’t tear their flesh to shreds, the outer one would. High-tech security could be hacked, but there was nothing like good, old-fashioned agony to dash the hopes of anyone wishing for freedom outside the walls of the jail.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
Gemma dropped into a walk as she arrived at the parking lot. She scanned the buzzing activity, searching for Garcia’s salt-and-pepper hair among mostly younger officers, her ears attuned for any familiar voice, but the surrounding furor had an edge of unfamiliar desperation to it. To save time, she pulled out her cell phone and texted her lieutenant of her arrival. Seconds later, she received instructions to meet him under the trees just north of the main entrance. She cut to her right and, pushing past a cluster of correction officers, spotted Garcia standing with three other men with their backs to her.
She didn’t need to see his face to identify Trevor McFarland—his boxy charcoal suit hanging drunkenly as if he’d recently shed weight too quickly gave him away, as did the bulky equipment bag on his shoulder. He hadn’t suffered a drastic weight loss; he just never seemed to care that the off-the-rack suits he wore on the job didn’t actually fit him. It was the same reason he kept his fair hair buzzed short—so he didn’t need to fuss with it or worry about departmental regulations. McFarland was always more concerned with the job than the trappings of it, a sentiment with which Gemma wholeheartedly agreed.
At a word from Garcia, all three men glanced back toward her, allowing Gemma to quickly identify the rest of the team. Fresh-faced and with a cheerful grin as he pushed his bone-straight black hair out of his eyes, Jimmy Chen wore a suit and tie in an identical shade of navy blue. He was one of the newer members of the team, but even HNT rookies had at least a dozen years on the force. In the months since he’d joined the HNT, he’d shown himself to be intuitive, a quick thinker, and, thanks to his Asian-American roots, an asset in situations dealing with sensitive racial issues when a suspect didn’t want to deal with yet another white guy who didn’t understand his specific problem. The third man was Kurt Williams, a senior member of the team, his neatly trimmed beard liberally sprinkled with gray, his hazel eyes behind his boxy, wire-rimmed glasses serious and steady. He’d paired a subtle hunter green and navy blazer with dark trousers, giving him an elder statesman/professorial air.
Garcia’s put together a solid team for this.
Once again, Gemma was the only woman on the team. When under twenty percent of the entire NYPD force was female, this wasn’t a surprise. Unlike some of the women on the force who tried to blend into the male background, Gemma never tried to hide her gender. She might wear simple, tailored suits and sensible footwear like the guys, but she let her curly hair tumble to her shoulders, and she wouldn’t think of walking out of her apartment before framing her brown eyes with a swoop of eyeliner and a few flicks of mascara.
Of only medium stature, but with serious muscle behind his bulk, Garcia stepped out from the group and motioned Gemma over.
Gemma sidestepped around a bench where a uniformed correction officer was seated, attended by a paramedic who held a wad of gauze over his left eye while blood oozed down his cheek. “Sorry I’m late. I got here as fast as I could.” She nodded at the other detectives in greeting.
“We’re still waiting,” McFarland said. “DOC admin wants to be in on the briefing.”
The Department of Corrections was ultimately responsible for all activity on Rikers Island, so this wasn’t a surprise. “The commissioner’s on her way?”
“Expected shortly. Your father’s already inside.”
Tony Capello, a forty-year veteran of the NYPD, was the current Chief of Special Operations. As such, he oversaw the many units inside the division requiring specific training to respond by land, air, water, horseback, or for crisis situations requiring specialized skills or equipment. Considering the Emergency Services Unit and the HNT were under his purview, it was no surprise he’d want to be here to help establish the NYPD’s presence within Rikers.
Gemma glanced toward the main entrance. “I should have known.”
“Considering the media circus this could become, he’d want in on this from the beginning to help steer the story.” Garcia’s gaze shifted abruptly to focus on something over Gemma’s shoulder.
She turned to find the Apprehension Tactical Team had arrived. The A-Team, as they were more commonly called, was the NYPD Emergency Services Unit’s tactical outfit, and were often called into hostage situations. As usual, they looked ready for a siege, suited up in unrelieved black with heavy body armor, boots, helmets, and safety glasses. Each officer carried not only a handgun at his hip but an M4 carbine on a sling strap against his chest. “Who’s leading the team?” Gemma asked.
“Cartwright.”
“Good.” When Garcia turned to fix her with a pointed stare, she shrugged. “Sometimes Sanders can be a little hotheaded.” They don’t call him Shoot-’em-up Sanders for nothing. “Cartwright’s a slower burn, which is what this situation is going to need, especially if there might be a clash with Rikers’s own emergency team.”
“That’s for Cartwright to manage. Rikers ERSU can’t be occupied with this situation for days.” Rikers’s Emergency Response Service Unit—the ERSU—was the DOC’s tactical team. “They need to be available in case of crisis anywhere else on the island. If their people get spread too thin because of this situation, they’re going to end up with another crisis.”
Gemma scanned the A-Team officers, but at this distance and with helmets on, she couldn’t distinguish one officer from another.
If Logan was part of the team, she couldn’t tell.
Detective Sean Logan, who’d gone through the academy with her. Who’d been always a rival, sometimes a friend, usually a pain in the ass, and, for a single night about fifteen years ago, her lover. Who’d been ordered to the rooftop across the street from Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral two months earlier and had ignored her personal plea to save the life of John Boyle, the retired cop who’d vented his grief after losing his son by taking hostages at New York City Hall.
Who’d fired the fatal shot.
Logan had followed Sanders’s orders to take the shot if he felt Gemma or her brother Alex had been threatened by Boyle. But she understood with that kind of order, Logan relied on his own judgment of the situation to decide whether to take a life.
It was unreasonable to still be angry over what had happened in the cemetery, but months later she still couldn’t shake it off. In her heart, she knew Boyle was trying for suicide by cop, but there hadn’t been enough time to convince Logan that Boyle wasn’t a threat to anyone but himself. She’d depended on their history for Logan to trust her implicitly.
A man had lost his life because, clearly, Logan didn’t trust her judgment over his own, even when she’d spent hours with the suspect, getting to know how he ticked.
She hadn’t worked with Logan since that night. But sooner or later, he was going to circle back into her orbit. And with a situation of this size, unless he’d recently gone off shift, as one of the A-Team’s most competent officers, he’d be here.
She’d just have to deal with it.
She turned away from the A-Team and toward Garcia. “When’s the briefing?”
“In ten.” Garcia shot back his cuff and checked the time on his watch. “Whether the commissioner is here or not. They’re giving her time, but they can only afford so much.” He pointed at the industrial cement steps leading to a door where the parking lot curved around the building. “We still have to get through another round of security, so let’s move or we’ll be late.”
It was time to find out how bad the situation was. They’d know soon whether this would be a standoff that could be negotiated in a single day, or whether this would take over their lives for days, or maybe a week, or more.
Negotiating was already hard enough, but when it was with inmates already looking at life sentences with absolutely nothing to lose, the cost of a team’s lack of success might be paid in human lives.
Single file, they made their way through the OBCC’s heavy security—a room labeled ARSENAL—where they had to relinquish their service weapons, pass through metal detectors, endure ID scrutiny for the fourth time, and then wait for a laborious bag check that made Gemma grateful she never carried one on duty. She preferred instead to wear her Glock 19 in a holster on her belt and her gold shield clipped onto her waistband, where it was visible through her open blazer. McFarland, however, wasn’t so lucky, and the search of his jam-packed communications equipment bag held up the group temporarily.
The inside of the OBCC was equally as dreary as the outside. Industrial gray concrete block walls rose above what was probably originally a beige tile floor, now discolored with age and constant use into a nondescript mud brown. Fluorescent lights lined the ceiling, a random scattering of panels dark from an absence of maintenance. The air was stale, heavy with a lack of circulation, and tainted with the sour odors of sweat, mildew, and fear.
Correction officers filled the hallways, clearing people through security and pointing them toward a meeting room near the warden’s office. Most of the officers were men, almost all were people of color, and, universally, their expressions reflected their fury at the deadly nature of the situation. Chaos had entered their house and they weren’t going to stand for it.
They wore uniforms of navy blue or powder blue and navy, except for the captains, deputies, and warden who each wore a navy tie over a crisp white shirt. Each officer wore a DOC badge over the left breast pocket engraved with their name and a heavy utility belt that carried the tools of their trade, including a collapsible baton and a can of pepper spray.
Firearms were strictly forbidden in all prisoner areas to avoid a situation where an officer could lose his gun to an inmate. The only exception to this rule would be the A-Team officers—if they were forced to go into the facility because correction officer lives were at stake, the situation was far past the point of nonlethal enforcement. They would avoid lethal force, but it had to remain an option for them.
Gemma and the rest of the HNT were shepherded into a modest meeting room already filled to standing room only. They lined up against the rear wall, waiting as more people crammed in. Heat prickling up the back of her neck, Gemma unbuttoned her jacket; the temperature in the room was already climbing with the crowded conditions and lack of air flow, and they were likely going to be trapped inside for a while. Conversation was a grim hum.
She caught sight of her father standing at the front of the room, talking to an older man in a white shirt and navy tie.
Bet that’s the warden.
Even at sixty, Tony Capello was still a commanding figure. He’d never cracked six feet, but he more than made up for his shorter physical stature in calm, logic, and decisive choices, especially during crises. His dark hair had long gone to gray—he told his children it was from raising them as teenagers after they lost their mother—but he still moved with the ease of a much younger man. Gemma smiled as she watched him talk, his hands expressively accompanying his point. You just can’t take the Sicilian out of the cop.
McFarland dropped his bag between his feet and leaned sideways, cocking his head toward her. “Ever done a prison standoff before?”
Gemma glanced sideways at him to find his eyes facing ahead. “No. You?”
“Nope. I also haven’t done anything longer than a day or two. Mostly they’re only hours long. This one though . . . probably not so much.”
“I have a feeling this one’s going to be a test of our endurance.”
A dark-skinned, middle-aged woman wearing upper-rank white entered the room with DOC Commissioner Frye, a tall brunette in heels and a stylish skirt suit. The man talking to Tony excused himself, moved to shake the woman’s hand, and then waited as she and Tony took two seats in the front row before moving to stand in front of a smeared whiteboard badly in need of a good cleaning.
“Good afternoon.” The older man, whose receding white hair was balanced with a bristly white mustache, stood with his feet braced apart and his hands on his hips as he scanned the room. “Thank you for coming out to assist. I’m OBCC Warden Carl Davis.” He gestured to the tall, thick-set woman beside him who wore her hair pulled back tightly into a simple bun. “This is Deputy Warden Nya Coleman.”
A motion off to one side drew Gemma’s gaze. Lieutenant Cartwright stood framed in the doorway; he and his officers were still out in the corridor, unable to squeeze into the overpacked room with their bulky equipment and weapons.
“About ninety minutes ago,” continued Davis, “an incident occurred in one of our two Enhanced Supervision Housing units. What started off as a prisoner escaping his shackles inside ESH1 became a fight, which then escalated to a hostage situation. For those of you unfamiliar with the ESHs, these are relatively new units, opened only a few years ago as an alternative to the Central Punitive Segregation units—solitary confinement—especially for inmates twenty-two and under, as per current DOC regulations. In solitary, inmates are in their cells for twenty-three hours a day with one hour of outside recreation time, if the inmate wants it. In an ESH, except for periods of lockdown when all inmates are in their cells twenty-four/seven, these inmates are out of their cells for a minimum of seven hours a day for interpersonal interaction. They’re also offered social programs and mental health assessments.
“Ideally, it sounds like a great program. In practice, we’ve had significant difficulties. Part of the problem is the inmate populations in general and, specifically, in those units. The DOC is trying to decrease the inmate population by keeping more pretrial detainees in neighborhood facilities or out on bail pending their trials. They’ve been successful, but that means the population at Rikers, while smaller, is now a more dangerous group charged with more serious offenses. Those are the inmates we have in the ESHs. Most of them are gang members, and almost all of them have violent pasts. And violence is their go-to method to solve any problem, whether with an officer or with another inmate.” He tossed a glance in Cartwright’s direction that Gemma read as You know the kind . . .
“What gangs are in ESH1?” The unseen voice came from the front of the room.
“You name it, we have it. And all in very close quarters. It’s one of the reasons for the larger officer contingents in those cell blocks. It’s the only way to keep them under control. They don’t respond to reasoning, only to force.”
On the other side of McFarland, Chen let out a low grumble of dissent.
“This particular clash was between the Filero Kings and the Gutta Boys.” Davis beckoned someone in through the door. “I’d rather you hear what happened from a witness. Officer Neubeck, please come in.”
A man squeezed past Cartwright, and Gemma recognized the correction officer she’d seen receiving medical treatment on the bench outside. His left eye was covered by a gauze dressing, and while his face was now clean, blood soaked the collar of his wrinkled, dirt-smudged shirt. He walked with a slight limp, and his knuckles were bloody and puffy. It looked like he’d given as good as he got.
Neubeck came to stand beside Davis, glancing around the room and nervously shifting his weight from side to side. “Afternoon.” The word came out as a mumble, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Afternoon.”
Gemma could hear the correction officer in his tone.
“We had an incident in ESH1 this afternoon. Following lunch, some of the inmates were out of their cells and shackled to the tables on the mezzanine, which is protocol for when they’re out of their cells. Rivas got free.”
“How?” The question came from near the door.
“A lot of the inmates, they learn how to get out of restraints. Some of the equipment, it’s not in . . .
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