Free Hostage Zero by John Gilstrap Page A

said.
    Jonathan shot a look to Boxers. This was an interrogation, not a negotiation. The rules prohibited any deals with the target. To maintain the command position, the book said you had to make your target feel utterly helpless.
    Jonathan decided to trust his gut instead. “I’m not an assassin,” he said. “I wouldn’t shed a tear if you got hit by a truck, but as long as you continue to cooperate, I’m not going to kill you.”
    Another pause. Another gut-check for Jimmy. “They had a helicopter in there,” he confessed. “It wasn’t very big, and the propellers or whatever the hell you call them were, like, folded back, but I could see the front of it.”
    Jonathan’s stomach fell. “So they moved the children by helicopter.”
    “I think so.” Jimmy’s tone turned whiny. “I saw that, and I knew I was in deep, deep shit. A chopper, for Christ’s sake. Who does that? Who’s got the money for that? I just boogied the hell out of there as fast as I could.”
    Jonathan’s brain was stuck on the image of the chopper. Jimmy had asked all the right questions. Who the hell did have those kinds of resources? “Where did you boogie to?” he asked.
    Jimmy managed a laugh. “To jail,” he said. “I was supposed to ditch the van at a McDonald’s parking lot in Montross, where there was supposed to be a Mustang waiting for me. Only, I got pulled over on the way.” He sighed. “I guess I got a little heavy-footed.”
    Jonathan didn’t share with him the fact that his van had been spotted by a witness. If it hadn’t been for that one insomniac, Jimmy probably would have skated with nothing more than a speeding ticket.
    He found himself out of questions. He looked to Boxers and got a shrug. The big guy was out of questions, too.

C HAPTER N INE
    Granville George struggled to contain his amusement as he watched the teams from the FBI and the Virginia State Police try to make sense out of all that had happened. Whoever planned this mess had every right to feel proud of himself—even though Granville himself was probably looking at an extended tour of duty behind the desk.
    Sheriff Charles Willow had hauled his shriveled ass out of bed to be a part of the investigation, and from the looks of him, with his sleep-twisted hair and his white beard stubble, the usually media-savvy sheriff had forgotten to glance at a mirror on his way out of the house.
    Presently, the sheriff seemed most concerned about remaining relevant among the state troopers and FBI agents, all of whom had taken the position that as keeper of the jail system, Sheriff Willow was more a target of the investigation than a participant in it. Still, since he literally had all the keys, there was no keeping him out of the reception area as the very attractive Sergeant Lindsey Wilson of the Virginia State Police ran Granville through his story for the third time.
    “But there’s no such person as Special Agent Leon Harris with the FBI,” she said, responding to the information he’d just recited.
    “I’m not hard of hearing,” Granville said. “And I’m not especially dim-witted. Right around the time that he was coldcocking my colleague I think I began to consider the possibility that he was an imposter. How many times must I say it?”
    Sheriff Willow rose to his opportunity to make noise. “I’d watch my tone if I were you, Deputy,” he said.
    Granville ignored him.
    So did Sergeant Wilson. “When you explain how you let an imposter into a secured area, I can stop asking.”
    “He was an imposter with legitimate FBI credentials,” Granville explained. Again.
    “Not possible.” This from Special Agent William Meyer, FBI, whose role in this was not clear to Granville, beyond the fact that Jimmy Henry was being held on federal charges. “They had to be counterfeit.”
    “Then they were good ones.”
    “Perhaps to the untrained eye,” Meyer said. Wilson nodded in agreement. It seemed that the federal government and the