Free Hunted by Karen Robards

end. On Ware’s it is, just like before.”
    Dixon nodded. “We’re going to be listening to everything you say, kid,” he warned Bayard, who gave him a surly look. “You go spouting off, and the conversation’s over, understand?” Bayard’s eyes held his for a moment before his lids drooped over them. Then he gave a barely perceptible nod.
    “Okay, then.” Dixon gestured to Caroline. “Go ahead.”
    Caroline depressed the talk button and said into the phone, “Reed? I have Hollis Bayard for you.”
    As she started to pass the receiver to Bayard, she realized that he couldn’t take it because his hands were cuffed. Holding it up so that Bayard could speak into it, Caroline reflected that talking to Ware without being able to see him was as disconcerting as flying blind. What was going on in the library that he’d felt he needed to conceal from the view of the camera? Merely considering the possibilities gave her the jitters.
    “Holly?” Ware’s voice filled the enclosed space.
    “They can fucking hear every word you say,” Bayard burst out fiercely, shooting Caroline a furious look. His glance then slid past her to encompass the others in the van. The chain linking his cuffs rattled as he jiggled from foot to foot. “There’s like six of them in here. Fucking butchers. Fucking scum.”
    “Chill out,” Ware ordered in a warning tone as the uniforms responded to Bayard’s speech by taking nearly simultaneous steps closer to him. Ware continued, “What I need for you to do right now is just stay cool.”
    As he listened to Ware, Bayard looked at Caroline, who stood closest to him because she was holding the receiver. She could feel the nervous heat emanating from his thin body.
    “Easy for you to say,” Bayard told Ware bitterly. “You’re a damned cop, too.”
    Ware made a sound that was impossible to interpret. “Are you hurt?”
    Bayard’s eyes flickered around. Nervously. “They picked Ant up not long after me. Edie got word to me in jail. They got Ant. You hear what I’m saying?”
    Caroline noticed that he hadn’t answered Ware’s question.
    “Goddamn it.” The sudden anger in Ware’s voice was unmistakable.
    Bayard said, “He’s just a little kid. I can’t let nothing happen to him.”
    “I know,” Ware replied. “Nothing’s going to happen to him. I got this. Quit worrying about Ant for right now. What I need for you to do is focus on what’s going on here.”
    “Yeah.” Shifting from foot to foot, Bayard looked suspiciously at Caroline, then cast another uneasy look around at the others and added to Ware, “So what’s the deal?”
    “You come on inside the house here,” Ware told him. “Come in the front door, up the main staircase, and the room right at the top of the stairs is the library, which is where I am. You come up here to me, and then you and I are going to head out to that helicopter waiting down there by the pool and fly on out of here.” He paused. “Got it?”
    Bayard’s brows snapped together. He wet his lips as he gave Caroline another hard look and glanced around at the other cops again. “They ain’t going to let that happen. They’re gonna kill us, fool.”
    Bayard’s assessment was so right on that Caroline had to work to keep her expression neutral.
    “No, they aren’t,” Ware said. “I’ve got this under control. You just do what I tell you.”
    Bayard moved his shoulders nervously. “What about Ant?”
    Ware said, “You leave me to worry about—”
    Dixon interrupted by signaling to the uniforms, who grabbed Bayard by the arms and started pulling him toward the door. “That’s enough,” Dixon snapped. “Conversation’s over.”
    “Hey.” Sounding panicky, the kid yelled back at Ware, “They’re taking me out of here.”
    Only then did Caroline remember to release the talk button.
    “Hang in, Holly, it’s going to be okay,” Ware called back, then added, in a totally different tone, “That you I’m hearing, Dixon? Just