High Noon

end it.”
    “You have to get him out of the corner,” Duncan said, and Phoebe turned to him.
    “Yes, I do.”
    “If they can’t get an angle on him, he doesn’t have one on them.”
    “That’s right.” Phoebe closed her hand briefly over Duncan’s. “That’s exactly right. I need to talk to the commander. I need to know where to move him, if possible.” She signaled to Sykes to make the call. “They have to let me know when they’re going to take him. I know that’s not how it’s usually done, but they can trust me not to let him know it’s coming. I have to move him; they have to know that’s coming.”
    “Got it.” Sykes turned with his radio to signal the command post.
    Shoving her hair off her damp neck, Phoebe paced, tried to put herself inside the shop. “He’s going to have to let them use the bathroom at some point, unless he wants a big mess on his hands. And he doesn’t. One bathroom, employees’, right in the back room.” She narrowed her eyes at the sketch. “How does he plan to work this? He’d have thought it through already, have a system ready. That’s why he doesn’t have all the hostages in the circle. Holding one back to release another. He doesn’t have to move or interact with them to handle the basic function. But it’s going to be distracting, and he’ll have to be alert. He won’t want to talk to me while that’s going on.”
    She nodded. “And we’re not giving him what he wants.”
    Time, she thought, to start playing him. She picked up the phone, called.
    “Better be you, bitch.”
    “It’s always going to be me, Jerry. You know how this goes. No lying to a hostage-taker, it puts the hostages at risk. No saying no to a hostage-taker, it pisses them off, and puts the hostages at risk. I’m supposed to empathize with you, be supportive of your feelings, listen to your demands and complaints.”
    “Yeah, you were damn sympathetic with the bastards who shot Angie.”
    “Angela was a beautiful woman. She loved you.”
    “Fuck you. You don’t care about her.”
    “You’ve made me care, Jerry. I’m in love with someone, maybe you don’t feel I deserve to be, but I’m in love. So I understand how Angela felt about you. I understand something of what you’re feeling, because if anything happened to him, I don’t know what I’d do.”
    “You don’t know what we had.”
    “You had something special, something once in a lifetime. She was wearing your ring, Jerry. She was wearing it when she died.”
    “What?”
    “The ring you bought her in the store where you are now. She must’ve treasured it. She must have been thrilled to wear it. I wanted you to know that, Jerry. I called to tell you because it proves to everyone she was yours.”
    “Everyone can go to hell.”
    “If something like this had happened to me, I’d want everyone to know what we meant to each other. How much we loved each other. I think you want that, too, Jerry. I want to tell you that I do know it.” There was a long beat of silence where she could only hear him breathing. “Roy never loved me, did you know that? He never loved me or the child we made together. Can you imagine? Now that I have someone who does…”
    She looked over at Duncan, met his eyes, so she’d feel it only stronger, so it would come into her voice. “Now that I do, everything in the world is different. It’s stronger and brighter and clearer. Was it like that for you?”
    “She made it beautiful. And bright. Now it’s black.”
    Grief, she wrote. Tears. Careful, careful, she thought. If she tipped him too deeply into grief, he could end it all now. “She wouldn’t want the black for you, Jerry. Someone who loved you the way Angela loved you wouldn’t want you in the black.”
    “You put her there. I’m not leaving her there alone.”
    “She—”
    “You shut up ! You shut up about her.”
    “Okay, Jerry. I hear that I’ve upset you. I’m sorry. You know it’s not my purpose here to upset you.”
    “No, it’s your fucking purpose to talk to me like I’m an idiot until I come out crying with my hands in the air. You think you can play me? You think I’m going out that way after I’ve come this far?”
    “I think you’re preparing to commit suicide, and take those people with you.”
    “Is that what you think?” he said, and she noted the smug satisfaction in his tone.
    “That’s a big statement, Jerry. And a big black mark on my record. But we could spin it, you know how