Takeover (16 page)

“We won’t,” the security chief confirmed.

“That’s all I can fit.” The blond woman struggled with the bag’s zipper. “How much is it? I lost count.”

The guard who had helped her said, “Eight hundred forty thousand.”

“Seven minutes,” the other one reported.

The young woman hefted the backpack with a grimace. Patrick thought for a moment that he could smell her fear, a sharp, sweaty odor. “That might not be enough,” she worried. “I’m sure he said a million.”

“It’s all you can fit in that bag,” Mulvaney pointed out.

Jessica slung one strap over her shoulder and weaved through the cubicles, making for the elevator like a student late for class. The men had to trot to keep up with her.

The elevator doors stood open; this apparently confused her, because she stopped and did not go in.

“We shut it off,” Mulvaney explained, reaching in and flicking a red switch before holding the doors for her. “So you wouldn’t have to wait for it.”

Then she moved inside quickly and stood at the front, as if trying to bar them from entering. “You can’t come with me. He said I had better come back alone.”

“I know,” the security chief said. “And I’m sorry. We’d rather do anything in the world than have to send you back there, Mrs. Ludlow. You’re a brave woman.”

She pushed the “L” button. “He has my baby.”

The doors began to slide shut. Patrick’s stomach seemed to shrink; it went against a cop’s grain to let an unarmed civilian walk into a criminal’s power, it battled with every instinct he had. But he could not see a solution.

With five inches to go, her palm slammed against the moving door. She spoke to Patrick, as if answering one of his earlier questions. “One thing. It was after they shot that guy in the blazer, the one that new lady asked them to let go. Lucas said to the other guy, ‘If the cops come in after us, we have to kill them all.’ But he nodded his head at us as he said it. He didn’t mean you cops, he meant he’d have to kill
us.
The hostages.”

The doors slid shut.

Before he left, Patrick asked the Fed security chief about the money packs. “There’s really nothing in there?”

“Nothing this scumbag is going to figure out.”

“If he does, who do you think he’s going to pick for his next example? He’s already shot one cop—why not one of yours? Or our scientist?”

Mulvaney held the door to the stairwell for him, possibly implying that Patrick shouldn’t let it hit him in the butt on the way out. “It’s not in the money. You have to keep this to yourself, and I mean it—the employees here don’t even know about it, for obvious reasons. There’s a metallic tracer in the bands, but all it will do is show up at the metal detector by the doors. I wasn’t lying—a robber, under normal circumstances, would never make it to that vault, so there aren’t any standard security devices there. The bands are meant to catch thieves who work here and decide to cut out early one day and head to Aruba. Last time that happened was 1963.”

“So Lucas won’t notice—”

“He might hear a beep when they go out the doors, but since the guy’s carrying a damn M4 carbine, I don’t think it’s going to worry him much. Unfortunately, it’s not going to help us at all either.”

“Mmm.” Patrick checked Theresa’s status on the security unit’s monitors but grew frustrated with the lousy audio quality. At least in the library he could hear the phone conversations. He hurried back up Rockwell, hoping nothing had happened to Theresa in his absence. Not that he could do a bloody thing about it anyway.

12:46
P.M
.

Six stories down, Theresa remained occupied with the squirming child on her lap.

Two-year-old Ethan pushed at her, trying to get away from this stranger, and hit her with the stuffed Cleveland Browns dog. She gave him a bit of space but wouldn’t let go. His screams pierced her eardrums.

“Told you so,” she said to Lucas.

“Don’t hassle me, ma’am. You should be able to handle kids—you’ve got your own.”

He must have overheard her conversation with Rachael. “Just one, and it’s been a long time since she was two.”

Lucas glanced at his watch. “Hang in there. His mama’s only got seven minutes left. And how’d you know he was two?”

Her lungs seemed to seize up, and she covered herself by getting a firmer grip on the writhing boy and turning him to face outward. “He’s pretty solid for his size. And he’s definitely got all his teeth, since he just bit me with them.”

Lucas watched her with a cool, shark-eyed stare, but said only, “Don’t bite, Ethan. It’s a nasty habit.”

The boy quieted, distracted by the sweeping room and the mysterious man in front of him. He straddled Theresa’s thigh, with one of her arms firmly around his waist. “Bo,” he said, suddenly and clearly, shaking the stuffed animal. “Bo.”

“That don’t concern me,” Lucas answered, his eyes on Theresa still. “What concerns me is your mama has five minutes and twenty seconds left.”

“I still don’t see how you expect a young girl to find and then break into a small vault, or whatever the heck is up there,” Theresa said.

“You’d be amazed what people can do when they have the proper incentive.”

“You’ve got some money, you have your car. You could leave now and come out way ahead.” Theresa wished she could have read Cavanaugh’s book before getting herself into this. Whatever she said might agitate him, spur him on. On the other hand, she couldn’t sit idly by while he shot a two-year-old.

“You think so, do you?”

“I’m probably going to get fired for giving you that car, if not thrown in jail. I’d hate to have it be for nothing.”

“Yeah, what about that?” He crouched in front of her, putting them at the same eye level, submachine gun across his knees. The sudden advance startled her. “You did that because you love that cop?”

“You’re not watching the street. They might come for your car.”

“The marble behind you, Theresa, is as smooth as a mirror. I
can see any movement outside. Cops are many things, but invisible is not one of them. Now, did you come here because you’re in love with that cop?”

Love. Something she had almost convinced herself didn’t exist until one night when Paul suddenly put his arms around her, outside a ring of crime-scene tape in the Metroparks after everyone else had left. He hadn’t asked her to dinner or a movie or out for drinks, knowing that her defense system would rise if forewarned. He simply stepped inside the castle walls before she had time to lower the gate.

She swallowed. “Yes.”

“Crazy, the things people do for love.”

She couldn’t speak around the lump in her throat.

“Bo,” the child insisted.

“Is that what you’re robbing this place for?” Theresa asked him. “Love?”

“You trying to analyze me, Theresa? Figure me out? Or just distract me from the fact that Ethan’s mom has twenty-seven seconds remaining?”

“I’d like to know why my fiancé is bleeding to death and why my daughter may have to grow into adulthood without a mother.”

He edged closer to her, so close she could see the red veins standing out against the whites of his eyes, could smell the last traces of a breath mint on his tongue. “I’d really like to tell you, but I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand.”

“I might understand a lot more than you think.”

He didn’t actually roll his eyes, but he came close.

She went on. “I understand that someone didn’t take very good care of you when you were a little boy.”

The red-rimmed eyes narrowed, and his body receded from her ever so slightly. “You saying I wasn’t raised right?”

“I’m saying someone burned the inside of your left wrist with a cigarette, at least four times that I can see. I had a young man about your age in last month. The abuse had occurred when he was five, but his wounds were less distinct than yours. So you were, what? Ten? Twelve?”

He stood as quickly as if he had discovered a scorpion at his toes, checked his watch, and said, “Mama’s time is up.”

“You’re not going to shoot this little boy.”

“And who’s going to stop me, Theresa? You?”

“What will it gain you, except a quick trip to a lethal injection?”

“That’s assuming I get caught.”

“You know you’re going to be caught eventually. You’re not stupid.”

They certainly didn’t seem to be bonding—in fact, she seemed to annoy him more with every word. Yet he kept talking to her. Why?

“I’m not going to get caught.” He did not say this as if he believed it, however. The tone of his voice sounded neither boastful nor wistful; it sounded resigned, as if he knew he would do exactly that.

“Let’s say you do. If you leave here without hurting anyone, the cops will pursue you, yes. But if you hurt a child, they will chase you to the very ends of the earth.”

Bobby shifted in the background, but Lucas did not turn. “You seem to forget I’ve already killed someone.”

She didn’t want to mention Mark Ludlow again; it might make things worse. But he had freely discussed the bank teller. “You mean Cherise? What happened to her anyway?”

Without raising his voice he asked, “You think I didn’t shoot her? You think maybe I’m faking all this?”

“No.” But her voice lacked certainty.

“Anybody else here think I’m faking this?”

The other hostages, who had been present to hear the gunshot and Cherise’s voice, abruptly cut off, shook their heads. Missy even cast Theresa a murderous look.

What am I doing?
What she’d said to Cavanaugh was true. Forensic work burdened her with only a limited amount of personal responsibility. Sure, she cared about solving an innocent victim’s murder, but if she could not, she didn’t take it personally. Sometimes the evidence just wasn’t there. But now she had to be proactive, and other people could die as a result. The idea made her heart pound even more than Lucas’s threats.

“Set the boy down,” Lucas said to Theresa, referring to Ethan. “Just leave him there.”

“He’ll run away.”

“Missy, you hang on to the kid. I need to show Theresa something. Just hold the back of his shirt so he don’t run around.”

Missy moved to the other side of Brad and slid the boy from Theresa’s lap, gently easing him into her own. Ethan seemed sufficiently interested in Lucas’s movements and did not protest.

“Get up.”

Theresa stood, her knees reluctant to move but not half as reluctant as her mind. Why had she antagonized him? Why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut?

On the other hand, Lucas seemed to have forgotten Jessica Ludlow’s tardiness.

The phone began to ring.

He ignored it. “Come here.”

She complied. It didn’t seem that she had another option. But Lucas merely grabbed her right elbow with his left hand, leaving his gun ready in his right. He prodded the muzzle of it into her rib cage, and she flinched.

“We’re going to take a stroll. Just walk with me, nice and easy, and I won’t have to pull this trigger, understand?”

“Yes.”

He gripped her elbow tightly enough to stop the circulation, and they made a careful excursion past the other hostages. The pool of Paul’s blood had developed a yellow halo as the serum separated out from the red blood cells. She looked at the security guards with a wincing glance; their barely contained fury hurt her eyes. The dog growled. The phone kept ringing.

The teller cages continued in the marble and gilt tradition of the rest of the lobby. Behind the fancy ironwork grates sat counters filled with the accoutrements of work: tape dispensers, staplers, rubber stamps of all sizes and shapes, framed photos of adorable children. The third drawer down at each station had been pried open, the locks mangled, except for one. Cherise’s work area, complete with a nameplate and a photo of herself and a boyfriend with a beach in the background. The entire drawer, undamaged, lay on the floor.

Theresa took this in as they passed. Lucas did not pause but continued past the tellers’ cages, around to the narrow, walled-off section behind them. Theresa could already smell it. The burnt gunpowder and the tinny odor of blood.

On a worn section of carpet, directly below a stack of computer printouts and a half-empty coffeepot, the young woman had bled out onto the springy carpet. This, then, was the missing Cherise.

1:00
P.M
.

Patrick had never felt more helpless. Returning to the library’s video monitor only to find Theresa missing from the hostage’s lineup had been déjà vu in the worst way. Cherise had gone off in the same direction and hadn’t come back. Paul had been shot before their eyes, or before the cold black-and-white eyes of the video monitor. Now Theresa, and he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. He should have stayed over there. No, he should have stayed here, made Cavanaugh distract Lucas. “Why didn’t you do something?”

“I called. He ignored the phone. But she’s all right. We’re catching snatches of her voice.”

“Maybe it’s time to use the snipers. Or the assault time. Or the 101st Airborne.”

“The snipers are ready,” Cavanaugh said. “They’ve had a hundred opportunities to pick off Lucas, but Bobby stays out of range. He could shoot a few hostages or set off their RDX, wherever they’ve got it. For amateurs they’ve been pretty careful so far.”

“Do we know they’re amateurs?” Assistant Chief Viancourt asked.

“We don’t know much of anything at the moment.”

Jason hung up his cell phone. He had spent enough time on it to leave a red slash across his face. “Lucas Winston Parrish was
injured five years ago in an explosion during a training mission in Germany. He was stationed at the base there. He still carries a few pieces of shrapnel against his ribs.”

Patrick sighed. “Theresa called it.”

“Maybe,” Cavanaugh said. “What else?”

“He told the military that both his parents were dead, and the prison said he had one visitor during the five years he spent at Atlanta—his sister. She lives in North Carolina and isn’t answering her phone.”

Cavanaugh massaged beads of sweat into his face. “What did he do in the military?”

“Armory clerk.”

“So he knows guns. And at least the basics of explosives.”

“I’d like to know where he got those two.” Patrick nodded at the monitor. “That’s a lot of firepower for a bum just out of jail.”

Cavanaugh asked Jason, “Did Atlanta say he and Bobby were friends?”

“No one there knows. Of the regular guards on their cell block, one is off on a fishing trip and the other one is in the hospital.”

“Prison riot?”

“Heart attack.”

“And Bobby had no visitors.”

“There’s one more thing. Parrish had one other person on his visitor’s list—a Jack Cornell in Tennessee. The guy never visited, but he had him listed. There was a Jack Cornell in his unit in the army.”

“That’s his gun connection, I’ll bet,” Patrick said. “Lucas came here from Atlanta by way of Tennessee.”

Cavanaugh opened the cooler next to Irene and pulled out a
dripping bottle of water for Jason. “Here, you deserve it. Get us Cornell on the phone. We definitely need to talk to him.”

“
Talk
to him.” Patrick perched on the window seat and lit a cigarette. “We need him picked up by the Tennessee cops. He’s the best suspect for providing not only the guns but the plastic explosive as well.”

Cavanaugh swiped at the sweat on his temples with one hand. “If they show up at his door, they could be walking into a literal powder keg. On top of which, he might wind up too preoccupied with his own problems to talk to us about ours. We’ve got two dead people here and a bunch of hostages, and he’s not going to be willing to own up to his part in that. Jason, you silver-tongued devil, get the right cops in Tennessee on the line and tell them everything we’ve got. They’ll have to handle it as they see fit. They might even know the guy.”

Patrick took one more deep puff before tamping the butt on the bottom of his shoe. “I’d send someone to the sister as well. At least she’s got more incentive to help, if she wants her brother to live through the day.”