Roses Are Red

Chapter Sixty-Five

"Keep going. Drive by,” I told our driver as we reached the Browne farm on State Road #24. He did as I asked. We curled around a bend in the road about a hundred yards farther on. Then the car eased to a stop.

"I saw somebody on the grounds. He was leaning against a tree. Up near the house. He was watching the road, Kyle. Watching us go by. They're still here."

Up ahead, I could see the remains of the old missile site that had once been in operation out here. I figured we would find the tour bus hidden in a missile silo, safe from the Apache search helicopters. I wasn't so optimistic about the nineteen hostages from Metro Hartford The Mastermind hated insurance companies, didn't he? Was this about revenge?

I was flashing lurid images of the hostages who'd been killed during the bank robberies; I was afraid of finding a massacre scene at the farm. We had been warned. No errors, no mistakes. The rules had been enforced during the bank jobs. Had anything changed?

Kyle said, "Let's go in through the woods. We don't have time to be choosy."

He made contact with the other units. Then he, Betsey, and I ran due north through the dense woods. We couldn't see the farmhouse yet, but we couldn't be seen, either.

The woods came up close to the main house, which was fortunate for us. The brush was mostly overgrown, almost all the way to the driveway. The lights were off inside the house. There was no movement that I could make out. No sound.

I could still see the sentry for the kidnappers. He wasn't too far away and he had his back to us. Where were the others? Where were the

FBI agents were inside and spreading out all over the house. Some of the hostages began to cry when they realized they weren't going to die, that they'd finally been rescued.

"They said we'd be killed if we tried to leave the house before tomorrow morning. They told us about the Buccieri and Casselman families," a tall, dark-haired woman said between sobs. Her name was Mary Jordan and she'd been in charge of the tour group.

We did a careful search of the house no one was there. There wasn't any obvious evidence, but the technicians would be here soon. The tour bus had already been found in a shed on the former army base.

After half an hour or so, Mrs. Morris came waddling through the front door. A couple of agents were futilely trying to stop her. The local woman's appearance was an almost comical punctuation to the stress of the last several hours," Why did you hit old Bud O'Mara. He's just a nice local fella, works at the truck-stop. Bud said he was paid to stand around and wait. Got all of a hundred bucks for the dent in his skull. He's harmless, Bud is."

An odd and exhilarating thing happened as several rescue vehicles finally arrived. The hostages started to clap and to cheer. We'd come for them; we hadn't let them die.

But I knew otherwise: For some reason, the Mastermind hadn't wanted them to die.