She had half an hour, max, before she needed to be in the car with Vernon and Jimmy heading for the Capitol, and even that would make her late for the reception. She hoped Nick would understand that she couldn’t leave when they were this close to getting their guy.

As they got closer to the location, they could hear the woman’s piercing screams.

“Shane, we have you surrounded,” the Special Response commander said. “There’s no way out of here. You need to let her go.”

“If you want her to live, let me out of here. She’s got five minutes before I kill her.”

Sam could see them now through the vegetation.

Shane had the naked woman in a chokehold, the gun pressed to her head.

“Please.” The woman whimpered as she shivered uncontrollably. “Help me.”

“Let her go, Shane,” the commander said. “We want to get you out of this alive, but if you hurt her, we’ll have no choice but to hurt you.”

“Where’s my father? I want to talk to him.”

“We’ll get him here, but that’s going to take time. She’s cold, Shane. Let her go, and we’ll bring your dad in to talk to you.”

“Get him on the phone,” Shane said. “Now.”

“I’ve got it,” Malone said, putting through the call to Ramsey, his phone on speaker.

“What?”

“Your son wants to talk to you.”

For a second, Ramsey said nothing.

“Sergeant! Your son is holding a woman hostage in Rock Creek Park and is asking to speak to you. Do your job.”

“Shane.”

“Dad… They’re trying to pin this on me. You have to do something.”

“The DNA doesn’t lie, Shane,” Malone said. “Nobody is pinning anything on you.”

“Why?” Sergeant Ramsey asked with less bravado than Sam had ever heard from him. “Why would you do this, Shane?”

“To get back at you, the mighty SVU detective who can’t keep it in his pants. Like father, like son.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I know what you did to Mom, cheating on her while preaching to me about the right way to treat a woman. I learned it all from you, Pops.”

“No,” Ramsey said, sounding horrified. “I never taught you to rape and murder.”

“You couldn’t find the guy who did it,” Shane said, laughing now. “All that swagger and talk of power. I was raping women right under your nose, Daddy-o, and you had no way to stop me. Who’s the powerful one now?”

“Let the girl go, Shane,” Ramsey said. “Let her go and turn yourself in.”

“You said you’d always have my back. Was that another lie?”

“Let her go, Shane.”

“I’ve got a clear shot,” Officer Offenbach, the sharpshooter, said through the earpieces they were all wearing.

Sam glanced at Malone. As the senior officer on the scene, it was his call.