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When she glanced down the length of the hallway, she locked gazes with a pair of familiar blue eyes for a fraction of a second. Her heart thundered and she stared. Time slowed down as the person attached to those blue eyes turned and walked to the stairwell exit.
“No,” she whispered. “It can’t be.”
“Lainie? The elevator’s here. You coming?” Her coworker’s voice came from a distance, barely heard over the whooshing sound ringing in her ears. “Lainie?”
“Uh ... yeah. Yeah.” She took a deep breath and shook her head, pushing aside the dizziness that threatened to overtake her.
“You okay?” the person asked.
She glanced at him. Chris Stanton. One of the radiologists. “Uh-huh.”
“Because you don’t look like you’re okay. Your color’s off.”
“I’m good.” She was anything but good.
He pressed the button on the panel. “Where you going?”
Crazy. “Um, three.”
He took care of the floor while she ran the incident over and over in her head. “It can’t be.”
“Can’t be what?” Chris asked.
She’d said that out loud? Clearing her throat, she forced herthoughts in order. “Nothing. I just thought I saw someone I recognized, but there’s no way it could be him.” And it wasn’t him who’d run her off the road last week.
“No? Why not?”
“Because he’s dead.”
And no one was going to convince her otherwise. Not even a twin that Adam didn’t have who was running around the hospital playing peekaboo with her.
TWENTY-FOUR MINUTES HAD PASSEDwith no real change. That was the good news. That meant no one had died. But no one had been released either, and time was ticking down.
The food had arrived, but James wasn’t ready to let it go quite yet. He spoke into the radio. “Hey, Gerald, the food is here.”
“Good, send it in.”
“Well, I can’t just do that. My boss said I need a hostage released. Will you at least send the kids out?”
“No.”
James closed his eyes and whispered a prayer. “What would you do if you were in my shoes, Gerald?”
A pause. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if you were out here and I was in there? What would you do?”
“I ... I don’t know. Why are you asking this stuff?”
“Would you want to save the kids?”
“I mean ... yeah. I guess. Everyone wants to save the kids, right?”
There might have been a sneer in the words, but the man wasn’t delusional. He was able to see another perspective, which meant, hopefully, James could work with that.
“See, that’s where I am right now,” he said. “I want you to let the kids go. Can you do that for me? And I’ll bring the food myself.”
The radio went silent, and James could only pray the guy was thinking about it.
