3:39 P.M.
The plastic tie-wrap around her wrists must have stretched during the tumble, because she could now, painfully, slide one hand free of the other. She stayed pressed to Cavanaugh, their bodies so close she could smell his sweat; her hands swiped the back of his vest, searching for the hard outlines of a concealed weapon. If she found one, she would shoot Lucas without the slightest hesitation. She knew this as clearly as she knew her own name.
Of course he had none. Cavanaugh had promised to come unarmed, and he could not lie.
“Go. Sit with the others.”
Theresa shifted sideways to get to the desk rather than turn her back on him and collapsed almost gratefully to the cool tile. Both her wrists bled from shallow cuts. Cavanaugh sat next to her. Lucas sped past the doors to tuck himself into the L of the teller cages and the exterior wall; he favored his right knee with the slightest limp.
“Well.” He retrieved his automatic rif le and switched the handgun to his left hand. “That was exciting. I’ll be taking that vest, Chris. I think I’ll need it more than you will.”
Theresa tried to picture the thoughts crashing about in Cava-naugh’s mind. His perfect record had been shot to hell-no pun intended-and he found himself on the wrong side of the phone lines. Would he try to do his job from the inside or give up, let Jason take over? Assuming that his mind hadn’t shut down from the shock, how would he play this?
“This has gone from bad to worse, Lucas.” She heard him plainly over the ringing in her ears. She had not gone deaf.
“Tell me about it.”
“Who are you?” Jessica Ludlow asked of the man who had just dropped down next to her.
“He’s the negotiator, Jessie,” Lucas told her. “Though he hasn’t done such a great job so far. That dog don’t hunt, as we say at home.”
Cavanaugh asked, “What are you going to do now? Do you have a plan?”
“You know me, Chris. I always have a plan.”
“Mind if I ask what it is?”
“I don’t mind. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to discuss it. Let me have that vest.”
Cavanaugh pulled at the Velcro straps and removed the bulletproof vest. The shirt underneath had a circle of blood above the right pocket, and the whole thing dripped with sweat. He slid it across to Lucas but spoke to Theresa. “I’m a little damp.”
“You don’t smell too good either,” she observed.
His dimples appeared, as if he found her attempt at humor reassuring. “We’re still alive. We’ll make it.”
“I know.” She didn’t know any such thing, but the old defenses reasserted themselves. Act like everything is normal, and it will be. “Where’s my daughter? How is she?”
“She’s fine. She’s across the street, watching this on the monitor.”
“You’re letting her watch this?” Stunned, she let her voice climb to a shout, and Lucas told her to shut up. She barely heard him. “You’re letting her see her own mother held at gunpoint? What if-”
She stopped. What if he kills me?
“I’m sorry, Theresa,” Cavanaugh said to her. “But have you ever tried saying no to your daughter?”
“I do it every day!”
“Well, we haven’t had your practice. Besides, every person over there knows that if it were their mother, they’d feel the same way. Her boyfriend’s with her, and Patrick keeps checking in. That’s all we could do.”
She turned her face up to the monitor. I’m fine, honey. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. “How’s Paul?”
Again that suspicious pause. “I don’t know.”
She gave him no shelter from her stare. “Don’t know or won’t tell me?”
“I truly don’t know, Theresa. I know that the hospital spoke to Patrick once, but I didn’t even have a chance to ask what they said. I’m sorry.” His gaze remained steady, but then this was Chris Cavanaugh, the man who could talk anybody into anything, the man whose entire mission in life was to maneuver and manipulate.
But he couldn’t lie either, right? He would have been busy, and surely they would have told him if Lucas had murdered a cop. The negotiator would need that information. Paul must be all right. He must be.
“We’ll be gone from here soon, and you can find out for yourself.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Lucas is getting ready to bolt. I can tell. He’s hyper.”
They watched Lucas, gun still in hand, armoring himself with the vest. Missy and Brad absorbed his every move, as though waiting to see if he’d put the gun down, or drop it altogether.
Cavanaugh noticed her wrists. “You’re hurt.”
“So are you.”
He felt his chest, grimacing at his own touch. The vest had stopped Bobby’s bullet, but he’d be badly bruised for weeks. “Just a flesh wound.”
“Ah. A Monty Python fan.”
“Isn’t everyone?” Then, as if she might not know this, he added, “Eric Moyers is dead.”
“I saw it.”
“I told him it would be all right.”
He didn’t appear to be thinking about his perfect record. “Chris, it’s not your fault.”
For a moment he seemed ready to laugh. “Of course it is! I broke one of the most important rules-never bring family in. You can’t predict the results.”
“You thought it was the only way to get them to give up.”
He leaned back against the marble, his body positioned in a casual slump while his expression stayed anything but casual. “He trusted me. Everyone trusted me.”
“Snap out of it.” She made her voice deliberately harsh. “Bobby had this planned from the word go. He wanted revenge on his brother, and he used you to get him into the open.”
“But he did it so well. It’s almost like he read my book.”
“He probably did, or one like it.” She studied Lucas from her seated position; he seemed flustered by his partner’s demise, but not shocked. “These two played us from the very first minute. We assumed they didn’t mean for their robbery to devolve into a hostage crisis, but they did. They meant to spend all day here. They meant to kill Eric. Bobby meant to die, and Lucas helped him.”
“Why?”
“That’s the whole question, isn’t it?”
Lucas interrupted her words. Not taking any chances, he had the automatic rifle in his left hand and the handgun in his right. “Okay, Missy and Brad, up and at ’em. I need one little favor, and then you can go.”
The young man moaned.
“Come on, Brad, it’s your time to shine-make up for being the little whiner you’ve been all day.”
The two bank employees stood up. Brad trembled. Missy seemed to have moved beyond fear to extreme annoyance. “What now?”
“Those two duffel bags need to go in my car. They’re a little heavy, but you can drag them. It’s unlocked-Theresa, you didn’t lock the car, did you?”
Sounds still seemed to come from the opposite end of a long tunnel. “I… I don’t think so. I can’t remember.”
“If not, come back in and I’ll give you the keys.” Lucas sounded like a helpful rental-car agent, until he added, “Because if you fail to secure those bags in the backseat of that Mercedes out there, I’ll blow out your spine before you make it to the other curb. Got it?”
“Then what?” Missy demanded.
“Then you can go. Walk across the street into the waiting arms of our boys in blue. Or go have lunch at McDonald’s for all I care. I won’t need you anymore. The rest of you, move down here. Sit on these steps.”
Brad brightened visibly, and he and Missy moved over to the duffel bags. He picked up the straps to one of them and made for the door. He could lift only half the bag off the floor and dragged the remainder of it. Missy did the same.
Lucas followed them, hugging the wall next to Bobby’s body. “Put them in the backseat, lengthwise, so that half of each duffel is wedged between the two front seats. Don’t leave the car until it’s done. At this range I can’t miss.”
Missy and Brad left without a word, without a backward glance for their fellow captives.
The phone rang.
“That,” Cavanaugh said to Lucas, “would be Laura. You might want to talk to her.”
“I don’t think we’ll be needing another negotiator. You’ll all be going home soon, at least most of you. I can’t fit too many people in that car.”
Cavanaugh muttered something under his breath.
“What?” Theresa asked.
“He’s going to take a hostage with him. I figured he would, but it still sucks.”
“There’s no way to take him down with one of us in the car?”
“A sniper could get him through the window. They’d have to do it before he gets moving, though. It’s risky.”
She watched the two freed hostages through the glass door.
Brad shoved his duffel into the backseat and then ran, not directly across the street but down the center of it, south toward Superior. Missy struggled, maneuvering the two bags into place as Lucas had instructed. Then she walked with defiant calm over to the library building, where three young men in fatigues emerged to welcome her.
“All that money could form a barrier between him and the hostage,” Cavanaugh observed.
Lucas surveyed the line. “Eeny, meeny, miney-”
“What happened to letting four people go?”
“That was Bobby’s deal, Chris, not mine, and unfortunately it fell through.”
“You don’t seem real broken up about losing your partner.”
Lucas didn’t glare at him, not exactly; his face just grew still in a way Theresa had come to recognize as equivalent to a glare. “Bobby was the best friend I ever had, so don’t tell me how broken up I am. But I respect his wishes.”
“Him dying was part of the plan?”
“I told him to stay where he’d have some cover. He could have hit Eric through the glass or an open door. Bobby worked on his impulse control in therapy, but apparently not enough. He had to tell Eric why he was about to die.” He took a moment to regroup. Theresa believed him. He hadn’t wanted to lose Bobby.
“How did you know I’d produce Eric for you?”
“We didn’t, but it was worth a try. The trick was to make you think it was your idea.”
Cavanaugh looked as if he’d been slapped.
“Time to go,” Lucas told them briskly. “I need somebody the cops would never shoot at. And could there be anything more beautiful, and more vulnerable, than a mother and child?”
Jessica Ludlow gathered Ethan more tightly in her arms, eyes wide.
“Yes, you, my little southern Madonna. And you, Theresa. You’re both coming with me. The guys can stay here. This is how it’s going to work-”
“No,” Theresa said.
“No,” Cavanaugh said. “Leave them here. You can only make things worse for yourself by adding kidnapping to your list of charges.”
“Chris, you’ll be picking up a pitchfork in hell and still trying to talk St. Peter into opening the gates, I swear. We’re not negotiating. We were never negotiating, get it? We needed you to produce Eric and the money, that’s all. Now shut up. You, Theresa.”
“You don’t need me.” She emphasized every word. “You have a young woman and a little boy. No one will risk hurting them. I’d just be in the way.”
Everyone in the room stared at her as silence flowed in, tamping down the last echo of her voice, pressing on her shoulders like guilt.
“Theresa…” Cavanaugh began.
She couldn’t look at him. “He won’t hurt them. I trust him.”
Lucas muttered, “Of all people…”
“Leave both of them,” Cavanaugh said. “I’ll go.”
“I just might take you up on that, Chris. I’m sure your heroism would do wonders for the sales of your next book. Even if it’s published posthumously.” Lucas still wore that cold, closed-down look that frightened her, and it settled on her as if she were the only person in the room. “I think you need to explain this sudden lack of altruism, Theresa,” Lucas said, speaking just loudly enough so she could hear him. The security guards almost certainly could not. “It’s got everyone quite mystified.”
“I want to live, that’s all. Leave me and Chris here with the guards. You can’t fit us all in that car anyway.”
“But I need good hostages. The cops won’t shoot at you, their little scientist lady, and they sure as hell ain’t going to risk their shining star. He’s the only cop who gets on TV without having to be indicted first.”
“Let him go,” she repeated, desperation spreading through her voice.
“No.”
Cavanaugh interrupted. “Why do I get the feeling that you two are having a conversation the rest of us aren’t privy to?”
“Can’t we just get out of here?” Jessica Ludlow asked. “What are we waiting for?”
Lucas answered without looking at her. “First I need to know what Theresa knows and who she’s told.”
“I’ve been stuck in here with you! How could I have told anyone anything?”
Cavanaugh turned toward her, putting a hand to his chest when the movement hurt him. “Told anyone what?”
“Go ahead, Theresa,” Lucas goaded. “I’m not going to let him go anyway.”
Theresa sighed. “This was never about the money. It’s about Mark Ludlow’s murder.”
Jessica stared. “Lucas didn’t kill my husband.”
“No,” Theresa told her. “You did.”