Black & Blue: BookShots (Detective Harriet Blue Series) by James Patterson Page A

time. Murray’s boat had been carried forward a little further than the others as we came to a stop behind the
New Hope
, and she was warning him back. I saw all three officers on board dive for the deck.
    ‘Girl’s gonna run out of bullets in a minute,’ Tox grunted.
    He was right. Hope stopped firing and returned to the bridge. When she reappeared she had a hunting rifle in her hand. She pointed it skyward and fired at the coastguard chopper, which was hovering high above us. She only gave it one shot. This was probably her last gun.
    ‘
Move back!
’ her voice screeched on the radio. Murray put his boat in reverse and came into line with the rest of us.
    Every second of growing darkness was agonising. Jenny wasn’t moving. A couple of times, rogue officers on the water police boats tried to creep forward into the circle we’d established around the
New Hope
. But she spotted them soon enough and forced them back.
    I could see the air compressor she’d tied Jenny to. A third of the heavy, squat machine was hanging off the edge of the boat, just beyond the gap in the bridge wall. When she felt threatened, Hope would go to the machine and rattle it, push it further over the edge and then pull it back. I waited for Jenny to move. She didn’t.
    I couldn’t take it any longer. All of the vessels around the
New Hope
had their spotlights trained on the water around the hull. I got an idea, and flicked ours off.
    ‘What’s the plan now, genius?’ Tox asked.
    I switched radio channels onto the coastguard channel, so that Hope couldn’t hear me. I radioed the three coastguard boats spread throughout the circle.
    ‘Coastguard, coastguard, this is Detective Harriet Blue, over.’
    ‘Coastguard here.’
    ‘Can you guys wait a few minutes, then switch your lights off? I’m trying to set up a path in, over.’
    Hope had noticed I’d switched my spotlights off, and that the ocean in front of my boat was black. I played it casual, leaning on the top of the bridge, talking to Tox. If I was careful, she’d think I was just switching the big light off to conserve my boat’s battery power. I could feel her watching me, but she said nothing to Chris about it as they negotiated over the radio.
    My plan was working. After a time, one coastguard boat switched off its light. Then another. Hope hardly noticed. She was ranting and pacing.
    ‘You don’t fucking understand. You’re a man. How could you? You probably grew up in some mansion in bloody Mosman or something. You probably went to private school, didn’t you? You were a poor choice of negotiator, my friend. There’s no way you could possibly understand me. All right? So don’t say that you do.’
    ‘We had another negotiator for you,’ Chris sighed. I could hear his dismay over the radio. ‘He’s been held up.’
    Half the ocean around the
New Hope
was in darkness. The police boats cut beams of light through the black waves. It was time to go.
    ‘You coming?’ I asked Tox. He looked bewildered, until I started taking off my shoes.
    ‘Oh shit,’ he sighed, peeling off his jacket.

CHAPTER 51
    AS WE SWAM along the side of the
New Hope
to the diving ladder, the sounds of Hope’s yelling from the upper decks reached us. We’d dived deep from the back of our vessel, popping up just once in the dark between the boats to breathe. The threat of Hope seeing us and firing into the water made my jaw lock with terror. I pulled my gun out of the back of my pants and put it on the deck in front of me as I got to the top of the ladder. I hoped that if I needed it, it would still work. I didn’t know how it would react to the saltwater.
    The cold seized everything, made every muscle hard as stone. I stood shivering on the deck as Tox climbed out. We were near a dark, cluttered galley. Our socks squelched on the polished wood. We listened to the voice above us, her footsteps on the floor. Tox was sniffing the air. He went to the pantry and pulled open the door. Leaning