The younger detective looked up quickly, dismissively, then looked up again, the double take a response to the surprise of being approached by a younger female with FBI credentials.

“Not a lot is known,” he said, affecting a casual air. “Original bank alarm seemed like a robbery. Maybe it still is. But it’s the manager who took over her own bank. Busted robbery seems unlikely. They think she just snapped. Been emptying drawers and the vault and dumping the cash and coins on the floor. She’s lost her damn mind.”

“No demands?”

“Not that I’ve heard. I know the crisis negotiator can’t keep her on the phone. Couple of customers ran outta there when she started ranting, before she locked them in. They said she made bomb threats. We’re treating it as such—”

Two loud reports, like balloons popping, silenced the barricade.

“Jesus,” said the detective. “She’s shooting it up randomly. This ain’t gonna end good.”

Odessa said, “Is there a plan to go in?”

“Well,” said the detective, “the other option is to stand out here while she shoots her employees and customers one by one.”

“Right,” said Odessa. “Thanks.”

“You look familiar,” said the detective, ignoring his ringing phone. “You work out of the B-Q here?”

“Federal Plaza,” she said, lying, letting him take his phone call.

Blackwood overheard most of the conversation. “She wants the confrontation,” he said. “The Hollow One wants her to be killed.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Odessa, impatiently. “What is it you think I can do here?”

Blackwood looked around. “We can’t let it jump into another body.”

“So tell me how,” she said. “It’s completely out of my hands.”

“You have seen what it can do,” he reminded her. “Other lives are at stake. You have to try.”

He was right. Odessa did not want any other cop or FBI agent to be put in the position she had been in. Besides, what did she have to lose here: her job?

“Wait here,” she said.

She walked to the largest of the mobile command center trucks set back from the perimeter and knocked on the door, opening it. She had her badge out, expecting to have to bullshit her way inside, but none of the half dozen cops even turned to look at her. Each of them wore headphones or earbuds, remotely monitoring the standoff via the truck’s surveillance cameras and glass-penetrating microphones, or else spoke into a cell phone.

Odessa watched the video feeds on a bank of screens on the long side wall. The bank manager appeared behind the teller counter with a metal tray, a gun in her hand. She overturned the tray over the floor, dumping its contents, the camera dipping down to reveal a pile of paper currency on the floor.