“All units, active shooter in progress, be advised perp is SFPD . . .”

The police frequencies in Vessa’s sedan couldn’t get enough of the situation. She was hardly in her car before the address where Richter was came over the air. She headed there immediately, lights flashing, accelerator floored.

He was in a townhouse on ninth, near Tehama, only a handful of blocks from the Hall of Justice. The entire area was cordoned off and blanketed with police cars. Vessa badged her way through and got to Commander Bayes who stood with Deputy Chief Forrest several yards from the front door. The townhouse was painted lime green and the entrance stood ajar.

“Commander, what’s the situation?” Vessa asked.

“He’s holed up in there,” Bayes shook his head toward the house. “Got a hostage.”

“A hostage? You’re kidding.”

“Wish I was. Teenage girl, still up there. He let the rest of the family go.”

Now, Bayes shook his head a different way, indicating Vessa should look near one of the ambulances. There was a man and a woman, firmly behind police lines. Both were slender with brown hair and the woman wore a red sweater. She was crying and the man and a paramedic were trying to comfort her.

“Commander, none of this makes sense. Can you imagine Richter taking a hostage? It doesn’t feel right.”

“C’mon, Agent Drake,” Bayes said. “None of us can say we really know him now.”

Vessa frowned up at the building. Between her and the front door lay perhaps twenty feet of tarmac and parked cars. Bayes turned to Forrest and they conferred. Before Vessa even knew what she was doing, she was off –crossing the street at a sprint.

“Hey!” Bayes yelled.

Forrest pointed. “Stop her!”

It was too late. She broke away from the lines and was at the door before anyone could grab her. She pushed the dark portal open and slipped inside, shutting it behind her, closing it fully so it locked. Inside, it took a couple of minutes for her eyes to adjust to the pale strobe lights coming through the front blinds and door windows. She was in an open living room. It was small and closely furnished with a dining room capping it off near the back of the building. She guessed the kitchen would be around the corner. To her right, a staircase led upward. The landing was dark.

Vessa had taken her gun out without consciously realizing it. Now, she stared at it in the undulating red and blue lights. What was she going to do with it? Shoot her lover when she found him?

She holstered the gun. “Oh, Luke,” she said softly. As if in answer, something moved above her, making a dull thud on the floor. She startled.

Slowly, she made her way up the stairs. “Luke?” she called. “I’m coming upstairs.”

There was no answer. At the top of the stairs were three doors. Two were dark and closed. Wan light traced the outline of the third door. She opened it cautiously.

“Luke?”

The door creaked on its hinges to reveal a seemingly empty bedroom. The air was stale although the room was tidy and sparsely furnished with a queen-sized bed and two nightstands. The fluorescent lights from the street diffused around the edges of a thick curtain drawn across a large window. The occluded light wasn’t strong enough to dispel the rooms shadows.

“Luke?” Vessa noticed she was whispering. She cleared her throat and spoke with as normal a voice as she could muster. “Luke? Where are you?”

“Here,” came a reply.

She was practically on top of him by that time. He sat with his back to a wall across from the foot of the bed.

Vessa jumped. “Oh! You startled me.”

He was staring at her. She half expected his evil eye to glow in the dimness but instead, she saw only normal dark eyes glittering from his outlined face. He sat with his knees bent and his arms resting between his legs. In his hands was a mass of blackness-his gun. That ugly piece of metal was a cursed reminder of what was going on and why they were here, facing each other in this shadowed space.

Vessa craned her neck around but didn’t see anyone else. “Where’s the girl?”

Richter watched Vessa intently for several seconds before answering. “The couple’s outside. I let them go.”

“No, apparently there’s still a teenager in here somewhere.”

Richter’s gaze dropped to the carpet in front of him. “That would explain why it’s just you and not SWAT. They think I have a hostage. Well, I don’t.”

“You have me.”

His head snapped up. “You’re not a hostage. Why are you here, anyway?”

“I’m here to get you. I don’t want them gunning you down.”

“You’re here to arrest me, Special Agent Vessa Belle Drake?”

“Oh, Luke. We’ll figure this out.”

Richter brought the gun up in his right hand and pressed it to the underside of his chin, angled back toward his brain.

Vessa gasped. “No!” She was rooted to the spot, eyes wide.

He stared at her. “I guess whether I do it or SWAT does it, it’s still death by cop.”

Tears burned her eyes. “No, Luke. No. Why would you even think it? There must be some mistake. There must be some reason why those bullets matched.”

“I won’t be locked up. I won’t be put back in the cage and poked and prodded, and studied to death this time.”

Vessa remembered the shaking man sweating beside her in his bed at night. Even though he didn’t speak of them, she knew he was having nightmares. Was it possible he was actually capable of pulling that trigger? Her chin throbbed where he’d bitten her. She couldn’t stand this. How could she have been so wrong? She was never wrong. She swallowed. Never before had she fallen for a guilty man. How was she so blinded by hubris that she could feel this way about Richter when he was a merciless killer?

He stared at her, gun in his hand. He didn’t move. She shook slightly with the emotions flooding her. Here she was, at the cusp of what she felt was the most important moment in her life. The man she loved sat before her, ready to take his own life if she didn’t do or say the right thing next. She was paralyzed-absolutely paralyzed. All her training, and here she was, a shaking, paralyzed ball of nerves.

She burst into tears. How utterly professional.

Richter frowned.

Vessa’s nose and eyes ran uncontrollably and she heaved great sighs. She didn’t dare wave her arms around and wipe her face. Instead, she simply stood there and let her emotions pour down her cheeks.

Richter sighed. He lowered the gun. He dropped it with a thud to the carpet and kicked it toward her.

“How am I supposed to kill myself with you crying like that?”

She rushed to pick up the weapon and tucked it into the small of her back, under her blazer. She faced Richter, this time allowing herself to wipe the fluids from her face with her hands and sleeves. She could only imagine how many shades of fired she would be if Bully Benson had seen her outburst. She almost felt like declaring herself unfit for duty on the spot.

“I can’t stand it,” she said. “I can’t lose you this way.”

He said nothing. What was there to say? They stared at each other. Tears fell from her eyes until the momentum of her outburst ran its course and she finally managed to get a grip on herself.

Richter sat, inordinately relaxed, leaning against the wall, hands folded innocently between his legs.

“What now?” he asked.

She glanced toward the thick curtains shielding them from the snipers across the street.

“I’ll have to cuff you. Then you won’t be seen as a threat. Keep your head down, and I’ll stay between you and them.”

He craned his neck and looked over the bed toward the window. He watched the dark cloth for several seconds.

“Is your eye working? What do you see?”

“It’s working,” he said. “And, I see only reflections. Your temperature is up, though.”

She came over and stood beside him. “Stay low,” she said softly.

He got up and they crossed the room with him crouched low. They entered the windowless landing. Vessa closed the bedroom door behind them. She looked at the other two doors. The girl was probably behind one of them, asleep or with her headphones on, completely oblivious. Vessa pulled her cuffs out. Richter stood tall.

“All right?” she asked. She needed him to cooperate. She wasn’t about to subdue such a large man in such a small space.

“Just a second,” he said.

He bent and kissed her. They embraced. Vessa wanted the floor to open up and swallow them so they could stay like this forever. Of course it did not, and the moment had to end.

He straightened up again, turned his back to her, and extended his arms behind him so she could easily cuff him.

“I didn’t shoot him,” he said.

Before she could even think about it, Vessa responded.

“I know. I believe you.”

***

Excerpt from An Eye for a Lie by Cy Wyss. Copyright 2019 by Cy Wyss. Reproduced with permission from Cy Wyss. All rights reserved.