Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

thought to ask, but Chris Watts just offered up one of the
tellers like it was no big deal—and to him, at this late stage
in the standoff, I guess it wasn’t. From his view, such a
conciliatory move might buy him enough time to figure out
a way to escape.
Dominick remained calm, but seized on the opportunity.
He said he wanted to talk to the hostage first, to make sure
everything went okay, so Chris Watts tapped one of the
women and put her on the phone. The woman had been
paying attention, knew there’d been some sort of snafu
when Bobby wanted to give himself up, so even though she
was still completely terrified she had the presence of mind to
ask about the door. I remember thinking this showed a lot of
brass—to be terrified, held against your will, roughed up a
bit, and to still have your wits about you.
She said, “Are you sure you have a key to the front
door?”
Dominick said, “The front door’s open.”
And it was.
Ultimately, what happened was one of the women came
out, unharmed, and an hour or so later the other woman
followed, also unharmed.
We were working on getting the bank guard out, but we
couldn’t be sure from the accounts of these bank tellers
what kind of shape this guy might be in. We didn’t even
know if he was still alive. They hadn’t seen him since first
thing that morning. He could have had a heart attack and
died—there was just no way to know.