I want to shout a warning, but Regan’s face tells me he’ll fire the flamethrower if I do. Yet waiting will guarantee casualties among our rescuers. No amount of body armor will protect a man from burning gasoline.

Brody tenses at the sound of further movement in the gun room, but there’s no fear in his face or posture. Still glaring at me, Regan aims the flamethrower at Caitlin to ensure my silence.

“Royal!” yells the voice from the gun room, now sounding strangely familiar. “We know you have Mayor Cage and Caitlin Masters down here! Send them out!”

I know that voice, but the speech seems impaired … yet even that sounds familiar. “Oh, no,” I say under my breath. Henry? Impossible—

“The FBI’s on their way!” yells the voice.

Hope dies within me. In Caitlin, too, I can tell. If John Kaiser were coming for us, Henry Sexton would still be back in his hospital bed.

Brody looks back at Regan with a smile, then gives him a thumbs-up. Ever the astute gambler, he’s already guessed the truth: a SWAT assault would have unfolded very differently from this. I’m almost ready to shout a warning regardless of the consequences, but Caitlin beats me to it.

“Stay back, Henry! It’s an ambush!”

Before her last word fades, someone kicks open the firing-range door.

No one comes through.

As we stare at the empty doorway, a black object skitters through it and slides across the floor. Royal and Regan throw up their arms, expecting a grenade, but it’s only a walkie-talkie.

A tinny version of Henry Sexton’s voice emerges from the black radio. “You’re surrounded, Royal. Send out your hostages.”

While Royal and Regan stare at the walkie-talkie, a black man darts through the door, a pistol held in front of him as he scans the room for targets.

Brody takes one step and lays his gun against the back of the man’s head. “Drop it,” he says. “Drop it now, or I pull the trigger.”

Left with no choice, the man drops his gun.

He’s obviously no SWAT operator. Dressed in work boots, jeans, and a dark jacket, he looks like a stranger to me. A sixty-five-year-old stranger. Then I see the gothic D on his black baseball cap, and a sadness unlike anything I’ve ever known suffuses me. Henry has done the one thing that could worsen our situation—and make our defeat more complete. He’s brought “Gates Brown” straight into the arms of Brody Royal.

As I turn toward Caitlin, Henry steps through the basement door in a raincoat, a shotgun held before him, its barrel aimed at Royal’s head. Henry’s head is bandaged, and a huge bloodstain soaks his shoulder and sleeve, but he looks ready and willing to pull the trigger.

“Wait!” Brody cries, total submission embodied in the word.