Takeover - Lisa Black [101]
Unless Eric Moyers was part of this plot and his appearance part of what the cops had wondered about all day—the robbers’ exit strategy. Though one of the cardinal rules of hostage situations was never to bring family members to the scene, these two might not know that. It happened on TV all the time.
Either way, it seemed clear to her that Bobby Moyers had expected Cavanaugh to produce Eric and that Bobby had no intention of giving up afterward.
Cavanaugh was about to walk into a trap and bring a possibly innocent civilian along with him. A civilian—or a reinforcement?
She couldn’t warn Cavanaugh. She didn’t even know if she was right.
Sunlight slanted off one of the glass doors across the street as it opened. A young man in fatigues, rifle in hand, stepped out and held the door open. Cavanaugh and Eric Moyers filed out.
Cavanaugh wore the same shirt and pants she’d seen him in earlier, but a bulletproof vest covered his chest. They had put one on Eric Moyers, too. They must have been sweating in those, for all the good it would do. Even Theresa could squeeze off a head shot at this range.
“Here they come,” Lucas said.
Bobby said nothing. He seemed suspiciously unsurprised at his brother’s existence.
Theresa let her gaze roam the street without turning her head. Did a sniper have her in his sights? Trying to leave the doorway would get her a bullet through the spine, and cops and robbers alike would assume she had tried to escape, instead of tried to warn them away from the subterfuge about to take place. She looked up at the sixth floor. Surely Frank stood at the telescope, though she saw only a row of dark holes. The sun had shifted to the west.
Despite the heat, Eric Moyers’s skin shone a pasty white. He had to be terrified. Agreeing to walk across the street and talk to his brother probably didn’t sound so bad until he stepped out in front of all the guns, glanced at the barricades demarcating the safe areas from the unsafe ones, and noticed that while the hum of the city went on around them, East Sixth remained deathly silent.
I hope you’re watching, Frank. She slowly shook her head in a one-inch arc.
“Hold still,” Lucas hissed.
Cavanaugh and Eric Moyers stepped off the curb and into the waves of heat rising from the pavement. Bobby pushed on the metal frame of the door closest to him.
Behind them Ethan let out a laugh, his high-pitched giggle bouncing off the walls.
Cavanaugh and Moyers reached the middle of the street. The negotiator spoke. “Bobby, we’re here. Come on out.”
I have to warn them. I’ll have to scream, and quickly. But if I take a deep breath, Lucas will know.
If she could even get a deep breath, he held her so tightly. She began to suck in air, slowly, steadily.
Bobby pushed the door completely open.
Now. “Don’t—”
Lucas’s hand covered her mouth, pulling her head back against his shoulder. Damn, he was fast!
She wriggled, more to keep him from slicing the insides of her lips against her teeth than to reattempt her plan. She needed only a split second to shout a warning, but the more she twisted, the tighter he held her.
On the other side of the glass, Cavanaugh waited with Eric Moyers in the street while Bobby crossed the sidewalk. Both men watched him; Cavanaugh gave no indication of noticing her struggle just inside the door.
“That’s close enough, Cavanaugh,” Bobby said to him. “Hands up, and turn around in a circle. I want to see that you’re not armed.”
She watched Cavanaugh turn slowly, fingers splayed above his head. Defenseless, unless he had a handgun underneath the bulletproof vest.
Bobby stood about eight feet from them, blatantly armed to the teeth. “Okay. You can put your hands down, but don’t come any closer.”
Eric Moyers spoke. “Hi, Bobby.”
From behind him she watched Bobby cock his head. “It don’t sound like you, bro.”
“I told you I have a cold.”
“What are you doing alive?”