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Brooke: Before she left my office earlier, she told me that she planned to be back here no later than 2:00 p.m. Well, it’s almost 3:00 p.m. and I’ve texted her twice but she hasn’t replied. I just thought you two might’ve taken a quick rendezvous somewhere.
Me: Where did Stevie go?
Brooke: The courthouse. She had a hearing and was gonna run over to the records division afterward.
Me: Let me get back to you. I’m gonna try calling her.
Brooke: Okay.
I called Stevie twice but she didn’t answer, so I texted her. She still didn’t reply so I left my office to drive over to the Dallas courthouse to see if she was still there, caught up in some legalmatter. I was about five minutes away when my cellphone rang. It wasn’t Stevie calling me back, though. It was Bash.
“Where are you, Zac?”
“On my way to the courthouse to find Stevie.”
“I want you to listen to me and I want you to listen closely.”
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s a situation at the courthouse that’s happening right now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The news is reporting that a man is there in the parking lot and he’s taken a hostage at gunpoint. It’s Stevie, Zac. The son of a bitch has Stevie. I saw her in the video online.”
And all at once everything began closing in on me as I was driving down the interstate. Then I heard a car bear down on its horn, honking at me. It jarred me back into the reality of where I was and what was happening, and I pulled back into my lane. Then I pushed down on the gas even harder.
“I’m gonna fucking kill him,” I said through my gritted teeth.
“No, Zac! Don’t go up there!”
“I see the scene ahead of me now. The police are everywhere and there are helicopters in the air.”
I hung up on Bash before he could say anything else and less than thirty seconds later, I was exiting off the interstate. I already knew I wasn’t going to be able to park my car anywhere near the courthouse, so I pulled up to a gas station and parked in their lot. Then I took off running.
As I was approaching a line of Dallas police officers and their barricades, they held up their hands and ordered me to stop but I didn’t. I kept running, but they stopped me by grabbing my arms and pulling me back.
“Let me go!” I screamed. “That’s my girlfriend that the man is holding hostage! Stevie Sinclair! That’s her name!”
“Sir! You can’t go over there!” one of the officers said. “I’m sorry but you can’t!”
“No! I’ve gotta save her!”
“We’re on the situation and trying to talk the man into letting your girlfriend go.”
My chest was hurting so badly and I could hardly breathe.
“Sir, what is your name?” another officer asked.
“Zac. Zac Buchanan.”
“Mr. Buchanan, you’ve gotta try to calm down.”
I grabbed my head. “I-I’ve gotta… She can’t…”
The officer standing closest to me looked at the other one, and then they nodded at each other. Right after that, I was led over to a S.W.A.T. vehicle that was closer to the scene. I was standing behind it along with several police officers and we all had our eyes on Stevie and the man who had her down on the ground in the parking lot, backed up against a car with his gun held to her head—and I recognized the man. It was Mr. Ferguson, the man whom I’d represented in the C.P.S. court case that Stevie had won. The case that she’d won on her own because she did her homework and I didn’t. I was only teasing her on that day in the hallway on the sixth floor of the courthouse.
I told one of the police officers everything I knew about Mr. Ferguson, and he radioed in all the information. As I listened to him, I kept watching Stevie and could see the tempest raging in her eyes. She wasn’t scared of Mr. Ferguson. She was furious about what he was doing to her. We all were.
