The hostage scene outside the daycare center is bustling. Three patrol cars, a fire engine, and an ambulance are already here. Uniformed officers run with rifles to position themselves along the chainlink fence. Toddlers are crying for their parents inside the daycare, and one youngster lies dead on the playground inside the fence. The crowd is buzzing with worry as uniformed officers try to move them back with little success.

Captain Dobey stands with a mobile telephone in his hand, talking to the hostage taker inside the building.

The hostage taker’s voice comes over Dobey’s phone: "Better stay back, pig. This doesn’t concern you. This is between me and the kids."

The Torino comes careening into the scene, Starsky driving, Hutch jumping out and running toward the fence before the car comes to a complete stop.

Starsky scrambles to open his car door. "Hutch!"

Hutch grabs for the latch on the gate. "Jesse!"

Dobey turns to Starsky. "Get him out of here!"

Starsky ignores Dobey and throws up the trunk of the Torino, digging around in the equipment, delivering an obligatory response in a patronizing but tension-tinged singsong voice: "Oh Hutch! Don’t do anything crazy!"

Hutch, frantically to Dobey: "What does he want? Give him what he wants."

"He doesn’t want anything. He just wants to hurt the kids."

"He wants something, damn it. They all want something."

"You need to be with Susan. Did you call her?"

Hutch grabs the telephone and speaks into it. "Okay, buddy. You have my attention. I’m Detective Hutchinson and my little girl is in there, so I’m real interested in what you have to say." A beat, swallowing, breathless. "What do you want?"

Dobey is fuming. "Hutchinson! I will not let you negotiate as a father!"

Hutch turns his back to the captain. "You don’t have any choice."

"You’ll jeopardize this entire situation!"

Hutch, over his shoulder: "What would you do?"

Dobey glances around. "Where the hell is SWAT?"

Inside the daycare, the hostage taker has about fifteen toddlers lined against the wall. Like a caged tiger he stalks back and forth in front of them with a machine gun.

Four adult daycare workers are dead on the floor in sticky puddles of blood.

Upon hearing Hutch’s voice say "What do you want?" on the hostage taker’s phone, one toddler, a little girl of about three, with blond hair and sea-blue eyes, takes a step forward.

Hutch’s voice comes across again, barely under control. "I said, scum, what do you want?"

Dobey’s voice: "Hutchinson! That’s not the way!"

Jesse, frightened but excited: "Daddy!"

Hutch again, a forced calm. "Baby, is that you? Don’t be scared, honey. It’ll be all right."

The hostage taker grabs Jesse up with his gun arm. She is kicking and squealing, her small fists hitting at him. Into the phone as he paces: "Cop’s kid? This your kid, cop? Kids are the future. Kids are the future. What future? I’m on a mission, pig. You know what I want? You ask what I want? I’ll tell you. I want all the kids out of this fucked up world so they don’t have to endure the drugs, the gangs, the perversion, the immorality, the twisted minds of society."

"So help me God, if you—"

The man chuckles. "Sounds contradictory, doesn’t it, cop? Destroy the kids to save the kids? It’s the only way. Your kid here won’t ever have to wade through this sewer like we do."

Hutch’s tone is strained as he tries to stay calm and focused. "Okay, I’m listening. Keep talking."

"You know what I’m talking about, Hutchinson. You see it every day. These kids will only grow up to be twisted too. We have to keep them innocent. And if that means bending the tender reed . . . "

Through the large windows Hutch sees Jesse struggling under the hostage taker’s arm.

"Put my daughter down."

Over the phone Hutch hears the man’s words to Jesse: "Want to go to heaven today?"

Jesse squeals in protest, kicks to get down, pummels the man with her fists, and then bites him on the arm.

The hostage taker, yelping in pain, tosses Jesse against the wall. "Little bitch! You bit me!"

The man sprays the room with a shower of bullets.

The kids scream and cover their heads. Jesse lies in a small stunned bundle.

Hutch throws the phone down and starts over the fence, but Starsky, in full body armor and helmet and carrying a machine gun, walks to the gate and casually clamps Hutch’s right wrist to it with handcuffs before Hutch realizes what he has done.

"Starsky!"

Starsky takes the mobile phone from Hutch’s other hand and tosses it to Captain Dobey, then enters the playground through the gate.

Hutch is growling as he tries to yank his wrist free. "Starsky!"

Dobey, to no one in particular, but referring to Starsky, who is unrecognizable to him in his gear. "Is that SWAT? Who the hell is that? Did I give an order for that?"

Hutch is still jerking on his wrist. "Starsky! Damn it! Come back here!"

But Starsky keeps walking across the playground toward the daycare.

Dobey glances around. "Starsky! Is that you? Where the hell did you get that gun? It’s illegal!"

Hutch is straining at the handcuff, his wrist now raw and bloody, his movements slowing now, quietly hopeful and tense as he watches his partner.

"Jesus," he whispers prayerfully, "help him."

Starsky, to the hostage taker through the window: "Come on, motherfucker! I’m on a mission too! Ridding the planet of all the John Carpenter freakazoids like you! Come and get me! ‘Cause I’m comin’ to get you!"

Starsky raises the machine gun up as he walks toward the front door.

Dobey swipes the mobile phone at the air. "Starsky! Get the hell back here!"

The door to the daycare bangs open and the hostage taker’s huge frame fills the doorway, the machine gun aimed at Starsky.

Starsky pats his chest. "Come on, you lowlife motherfucker. Right here. Shoot me. I dare you."

The man shoots at Starsky but the bullets have no effect.

"Superman," Starsky laughs darkly. "I love it. Somebody give me a cape."

The man keeps shooting, his face melting into a mask of fear and panic.

At the window, Jesse watches Starsky approach.

Jesse claps her hands and jumps up and down. "Uncle Starry!"

With a sudden roar of fury the hostage taker charges at Starsky with a knife and leaps toward him.

Starsky shoots the man with a smattering of bullets in mid-air, and the man lands in a bloody heap on the ground.

Starsky steps around the body and pokes his head into the doorway and grins. "Okay, kiddies! Just like the movies! Happy ending!"

Jesse runs to Starsky, who eagerly scoops her up into one arm.

"You’re okay, baby. It’s over now."

The other toddlers clamor excitedly around their hero like little groupies around their favorite rock star.

"Let’s go!" he shouts cheerily, and they follow him out the front door of the daycare as if he’s a pied piper.

A cheer roars up from the crowd as Starsky carries Jesse across the playground toward Hutch, who reaches for her with his free arm.

Other parents are running and crying to meet their children, who are running and crying

to meet them as well.

Jesse reaches for her father. "Daddy!"

Hutch takes Jesse from his partner with his free arm and hugs her tightly, weeping into her hair. "Hi, baby. You all right? You okay?"

Starsky unlocks Hutch’s handcuffs. "Sorry, Hutch."

Jesse holds the back of her head. "I got a bump."

Hutch laughs and kisses the back of her head. "It’ll be fine."

Since Starsky’s helmet prevents Hutch from ruffling his hair, he bangs his hand affectionately on top of the black helmet and throws his arm around Starsky’s neck. "Here’s the man. Kick-ass. Right here."

Jesse throws her other arm around Starsky’s neck too. "Starry saved me!"

And then Susan is there pushing her way through the crowd, trying to reach her husband and little girl.

"Jesse!" she laughs and cries at the same time, hugging all three at once. "Hutch! Oh my God!"

She sobs into Starsky’s neck. "Thank you! Oh God! Thank you!"

"Nothin' to it."

Hutch hugs her reassuringly. "It’s over, honey. She’s okay."

TV reporters run up to them with cameras and microphones, the crowd patting Starsky’s back and shaking his hand.

"Detective Starsky," a female reporter says as the detectives, Susan, and Jesse walk to Susan’s car, "wasn’t that a dangerous thing to do?"

Starsky answers in his best Charlton Heston: "I’m a dangerous man, my dear."

He stops at the Torino and takes his helmet off, then begins stripping off his body armor.

"Will you give me an interview?"

"I’ll give you an autograph."

"I’m serious."

Hutch grins. "So is he."

"Hey," the female reporter flirts to Starsky. "You’re cute. Wanna go out?"

"Where and when?"

He stops at something that catches the corner of his eye. Looking to his left he sees one mother crying over her dead son on the playground.

Starsky forgets the crowd and the reporters and walks back through the gate to the mother, stooping with her to console her.

The female reporter motions to the cameraman. "Bobby, get that. I think we just found the next cover of Life."

Hutch calmly covers the lens with his hand and shakes his head no. "Let their moment be private."

Jesse snoozes soundly between Hutch and Susan in the bed, Hutch’s arm curled protectively around her in his sleep. But the soft shawl of stillness is disturbed by Susan’s quiet weeping.

Hutch raises up on one elbow, touching her shoulder. "Susan? What’s wrong?"

Susan sniffs. "I can’t get it out of my mind. How close . . . how close we were to losing her."

He moves around the bed to sit beside her, pulling her up to embrace her, voice a soothing murmur. "I know. It’s over now, sweetheart. Don't think about it."

She holds desperately to her lifeline, her lighthouse, her tree.

"I felt so . . . " Her voice fades to a whisper. "So helpless to do anything. I heard it over the radio and I thought . . . if I could just get there I could . . . but I couldn't do anything. I couldn't drive fast enough. . . the traffic was too damn slow, I couldn't remember where you said you and Starsky were going to eat lunch . . . and all I did was cry and . . . I'm a police officer who's supposed to be . . . but I--"

"Sshh. You're a mother. No one expected you to act like a cop today. I shouldn't have acted like one today either. I almost got her killed."

"Oh honey . . . "

"If Starsk hadn't been there . . . hadn't been crazy enough . . . or loved us enough . . . she'd

be gone."

And later it is Susan who awakens from the stillness of the night to find Hutch quietly rocking Jesse on his lap in the living room. He is humming softly to their sleeping daughter and stroking her golden hair.

Susan doesn't let him know she's watching through the doorway. She knows what he is thinking: That he will never take for granted the precious gift of his daughter and her life.

Starsky lies on his stomach in his bed the same night, a pillow bunched under his chin as he gazes drowsily at a photo of Terry.

"I wish I coulda saved you like that, Terry," he whispers to her picture. "I really do. If we could go back . . . if I had the chance . . . but I guess it just wasn’t meant to be."

The next morning Starsky is awakened by a loud rap at his bedroom door.

"Rise and shine!" Hutch shouts happily at him as he carries a breakfast tray over to the bed.

Starsky pries one eye open as he turns over in the bed. Then a grin starts across his face when he sees Jesse with a bouquet of daisies in her hand.

"Oh, yeah," Starsky says as he opens his arms to her. "A fistful of daisies. Come here, girlie."

She jumps into the bed with him and flings her arms around his neck.

Hutch sets a huge pancake breakfast on the bedside table.

Starsky grins at him. "You got a fever or somethin’, bringin’ me pancakes?"

Jesse settles onto Starsky’s lap. "And sausage, and bacon, and hash browns, and eggs. Daddy says you deserve your favorite breakfast for saving my life."

Starsky looks at his partner, who suddenly busies himself with opening a container of chocolate milk. "Thanks, Hutch."

Hutch hands the chocolate milk to Starsky. "No. The thanks goes to you, Starsk. You saved my little girl. I don’t know what I can say to ever . . . if you hadn’t gone in there . . . I wasn’t getting anywhere the way I was handle . . . Dobey was right about . . . " He looks away, so overcome he is unable to continue.

Starsky kisses the top of Jesse’s head, trying to hide his own teary eyes in her hair. "Your daddy’s a big baby, Jesse. You know that?"

"I know, Uncle Starry," she says heaving a world-weary sigh. "I know."

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