Tough Justice: Exposed (Part 1 of 8)
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Carla Cassidy
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Prologue
The ledge outside of the tenth floor window of the hotel had a beautiful view of Central Park. It was also dangerously narrow and covered with pigeon crap.
A cold late September breeze sliced through FBI Special Agent Lara Grant as she stepped out of the window of room 1021 and onto the ledge.
She leaned with her back against the window frame and eyed the man who sat on the ledge about five feet to her right. She shouldn’t be here. She’d been in the middle of a meet and greet with her new unit when the call had come in. Talking down potential jumpers wasn’t in her new job description, but the man had asked for her specifically by name.
She had no idea who he was, had never seen him before in her life. It was nine-thirty in the morning, and the last place she wanted to be was on a breathtakingly small ledge trying to stop a stranger from committing a very public and messy suicide.
“Bad day?” she asked.
“Bad life,” he replied. He didn’t look at her but, rather, stared straight ahead. “Are you FBI Agent Lara Grant?”
“You asked for me and here I am. What’s your name?” she asked. Despite the coolness of the day, his forehead shone with perspiration. She tried to gauge how best to connect with him. What persona could she pull out of her professional hat to get him down to safety? Tough talk or sweet and honeyed? Too soon for her to tell.
“Sean.” He leaned over and looked down below where Lara knew the NYPD had gathered, along with a growing crowd of looky-loos and local reporters.
“Sean what?”
“It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters now.” His voice held a weary hopelessness that shot tension through Lara.
It had been her experience that there were two types of people who crawled out on a high ledge and threatened to jump. The first were the people who wanted drama and were usually easily talked down from a window or a bridge.
The second were the serious ones, people who were more than willing to take the plunge to end their lives. Her initial observation was that Sean was dead serious.
“What’s going on today, Sean?” She kept her voice conversational and nonthreatening.
“I just can’t take it anymore.”
“Take what?” Lara made no move toward him. Her job was to keep him talking until a team on the ground got her some personal information about him that she could hopefully use to get him off the ledge and to safety.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“You obviously thought I would. You asked for me specifically to come here and talk to you.” She could hear the crowd below now, some asshole yelling “jump.”
Sean wasn’t a small man. Despite his seat on the ledge, he appeared tall and muscular; but as he looked at her, there was the darkness of impending death in his eyes. “I was wrong. I thought you might be the one to understand everything, but nobody will.”
“Try me,” she replied softly. “Talk to me, Sean.” Sweet and honeyed instinctively felt right for now.
He shook his head, closed his eyes and leaned back against the building.
“Sean, at least tell me your last name. It doesn’t seem fair that you know mine, and I don’t know yours.”
“Dunst. I’m Sean Dunst, and I deserve to die.”
“Sean Dunst,” she repeated. “It’s nice to meet you.” Lara was wired and knew an officer on the ground could hear what she said. With his full name they could now hopefully get her some information that might be useful.
Another cold gust of wind whipped around the building. “It’s freezing out here, Sean. Why don’t you come inside where it’s nice and warm and we can talk?”
He shook his head and didn’t reply.
For the next three hours he refused to speak. Lara kept up a running conversation in an effort to make a connection. Her legs shook from the effort of balancing on the ledge. In her long-sleeved black T-shirt and jeans she wasn’t dressed for the wind. She fought against shivers that threatened to throw off her balance and send her crashing to the ground below.
It would be just her luck to have survived everything she had in the past to meet her end here and now because of some screwed-up guy on a ledge.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m getting hungry, Sean. I skipped breakfast this morning, and I’ll bet you didn’t eat, either. Why don’t we order up some room service with a pot of hot coffee, and we can talk inside,” she said, and still he didn’t reply.
What was taking so damn long? Why hadn’t anyone whispered in her ear some information that would aid her in getting this guy back inside and down to safety? This needed to end.
“I’ve done things...terrible things,” he said, finally breaking his long, agonizing silence.
“Haven’t we all?”
“Not like this.” He began to cry. Not silent, seeping tears, but, rather deep, ugly cries. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed, snot bubbling out of his nose with the force of his hysteria.
“I’m sure things aren’t as bad as you think,” Lara replied. At least he was talking again.
“You can’t understand. Nobody can. I’ve done horrible things.” He swiped at his nose with the back of his long sleeve and looked at her. “I need to be forgiven.”
She was cold and tired and starting to get a little pissed off. “I can’t forgive you for something I don’t know about. Tell me what you’ve done, and maybe you can forgive yourself.”
Her earpiece crackled and filled with a deep male voice giving her details. A nine-year-old girl named Tina. Found deceased...murdered near Dunst’s home. Primary suspect...not enough evidence to convict.
The guy on the ledge was a suspected child killer. For just a moment Lara wanted to shove him off herself. “Tell me about Tina.”
He visibly stiffened. When he looked at her again it was with knowing eyes. He’d killed the kid, and he realized now that she knew it.
“You see why I have to jump?” he asked softly. “It’s the only way out for me.”
“You’re guilty?” She held his gaze, her voice reflecting none of the revulsion that bubbled up inside her.
“Yes.” The single word tore from his lips, and his features twisted with inner torment.
Lara continued to stare at him, her face schooled to reflect nothing. “And you believe you deserve to pay?”
“Yes.” The answer was a sibilant whisper.
“Then how dare you try to take the easy way out,” she replied harshly.
She’d changed her mind. He wasn’t going to jump. She knew it with a gut instinct that had served her well over the years. If he was a serious suicide he would have already flung himself off the ledge. He wouldn’t have sat here for the hours that he had.
“Man up, Dunst,” she said, dropping the pleasant conversational tone she’d previously used. Sweet and honeyed definitely wasn’t cutting it. “You know you don’t want to jump. Come inside, and deal with whatever you need to like a man.”
It took another long hour to finally talk him into giving himself up. She climbed back through the window, and thankfully he followed her into the upscale hotel room.
Once they were inside, she cuffed him with his wrists behind his back and then led him toward the stairs that would take them to the ground floor and into the custody of awaiting officers. Ten freaking stories, but she didn’t want to throw him into an elevator where other hotel patrons might be present despite the police effort to keep them out.
It was nearly two o’clock. Over four hours she’d wasted on this creep who had finally stopped crying and now wore a weary resignation on his face.
“Why did you ask for me?” she asked when they’d descended halfway to the ground level.
“It doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters now. My life is over.”
What did matter was that Lara was cold and tired and more than ready to put this child killer in jail. There was a special place in hell for men like him.
They reached the lobby where not a soul was present. The police would have moved everyone out in the event that things went bad.
She held Sean by the cuffs behind his back and paused to look outside of the lobby doors. It was a circus. Not only were there half a dozen NYPD cop cars, but also news vans and a throng of people held back from the entrance by some of the officers. Potential jumpers always drew a big crowd.
A rivulet of apprehension worked through her. The last thing she needed right now was for her picture to appear in any news stories.
She’d wanted...needed to stay low-profile. Dammit, this had the potential of ruining everything for her. Get a grip, she mentally commanded herself.
She straightened her shoulders and fought against a sense of dark foreboding. She had a job to do, and no matter what the consequences, she had to see it through. That’s what she did...she did her job.
Just get him into the back of one of the patrol cars and then your job here is done. You can get back to your new unit, and life will go on, she thought with determination.
“We’re coming out,” she said into her wire.
Getting a firm grip on Dunst’s handcuffs, she threw her other arm up to hide her face and then used her back to push out of the building doors.
Shouts resounded, along with the click and whir of cameras. Halfway to the nearest patrol car, the sickening sound of a bullet hitting flesh jerked her to an abrupt halt. Dunst stiffened and then fell out of her grasp and to the ground beside her. He lay face up with a bullet hole between his eyes.
Silence. The world stopped moving for a single moment as Lara stared down at the dead man and the blood seeping out and making a sickening puddle surrounding the back of his head.
She looked up in horror, and chaos erupted. Police rushed in, onlookers screamed, and cameras continued to click. Lara backed away from the dead man.
A sniper.
She automatically pulled her gun from her holster and crouched, steeled for another potential shot as she focused her attention on the nearby surrounding buildings. Uniformed police ran in dozens of directions—some toward the nearest building where the shot had possibly come from. Others raced to her side, and more NYPD officers scattered the onlookers toward cover.
Seconds ticked by, and when another shot didn’t follow the first, Lara’s first thought of public safety shifted to personal vulnerability, and a more primal instinct kicked in.
She threw her arm up once again in an attempt to shield her features and raced toward her company-issued car in the parking lot. Her heart nearly beat out of her chest.
Once inside she gripped the steering wheel tightly and stared at the scene in the distance. What in the hell had just happened?
She’d done her job. She’d talked him off the ledge. It should have been a piece of cake to get him into a patrol car and on his way to jail.
A cluster fuck. That’s what she saw before her, with cops wielding guns and running helter-skelter. People still screamed, and not only news people were taking photos, but also everyone with a cell phone captured the madness for posterity.
How many had captured her image? She had to get out of there. She slammed her fists against the steering wheel and then quickly started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. She only hoped that no ghosts from her past chased after her.
