Ransom River by Meg Gardiner Read Free Book Online

hallway twenty yards from the courtroom door, out of the line of fire. In the parking garage across the street, snipers were maneuvering into position. Their rifles had scopes that would provide a direct view into the courtroom. Other officers were reconnoitering the courthouse roof. They would place microphones and try to listen in. He had ten channels of chatter on the radio, people running around outside, officers trying to clear civilians from the street. He had two security guards who didn’t know what the hell had happened, except that they had apparently let a man armed with a goddamned shotgun into a murder trial.
    A uniform jogged up, radio whining. “County Clerk’s office is getting the courthouse blueprints. Should have them in ten minutes.”
    That was barely a start on what Strandberg needed. “Find out the strength of the glass in the windows. In case we have to go in that way.”
    SWAT was headed in this direction, and a hostage negotiator.
    Neither of those specialties had been employed in Ransom River in the last year. Strandberg didn’t know whether that meant they were rusty, eager, or both. He didn’t know anything except that this morning had turned from dull to deadly.
    “What about the door into the court from the judge’s chambers?” he said.
    “Wedged shut. We might be able to force it.”
    “Wedged with what?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Strandberg shook his head. “Nobody touches that door until we have more information about what’s happening inside.”
    “What does the guy inside want?” the uniform said.
    “Hell if I know.”
    Strandberg wondered how much time they had.

    At Leticia’s Taqueria on Wilshire Boulevard, the TV mounted above the counter played a news channel nonstop. Night, morning, noon, it showed violence and corruption, hurricanes and drunken senators and naked celebrities. When the jerky images and breathless audio first interrupted normal coverage, nobody bothered to look up. This was Los Angeles. Los Angeles TV news would interrupt coverage of the Second Coming for footage of supermodels fighting in an alley.
    The reporter’s voice cut through the restaurant’s background noise. “The police won’t tell us what’s happening inside the Ransom River Superior Courthouse, but we have reports that shots have been fired.”
    Seth Colder stopped eating. He turned to the screen.
    The news crew was huddled inside the parking garage across the street from the courthouse. The reporter slid in and out of view, a youngster who couldn’t get the frightened excitement out of her voice.
    Seth thought,
Enjoy the rush, sweetie. It sours quickly.
    “All we know is that an incident is in progress in the Criminal Division, where Ransom River police officers Jared Smith and Lucy Elmendorf are on trial for the murder of teenage burglar Obrad Mirkovic.”
    Seth wiped his hands on a napkin. He forgot his coffee.
    He hadn’t been through the doors of that courthouse in two years, butnothing about it had changed. And what he saw, from the shoulder-mounted news camera inside the parking garage, brought him to a standstill.
    The Ransom River PD was there in force. Patrol units and unmarked cars with antennas on the back, officers positioned behind them. They’d barricaded both ends of the block.
    The reporter said, sotto voce, “There. The courtroom windows.”
    The camera zoomed in. Seth forgot that he was in L.A., that he was mountains and valleys and a lifetime away from Ransom River.
    Hostages stood pressed against the windows of a third-floor courtroom. Men and women were crowded against the glass, hands up. They blocked any view of the courtroom interior.
    He knew that police snipers would be moving into place. In that garage, certainly. The news crew would get yanked any second. If the cops were smart.
    If, that is, the cops realized where the news team was broadcasting from. And if they weren’t too busy to shut off the feed. And if some idiot commander didn’t decide the