Takeover - Lisa Black [112]
She could press it into Cavanaugh’s hand. He was stronger, trained in hand-to-hand. Let him do it. He’d have to reach around her, but he could use his right hand, and she would have to use her left. She would be free to grab the gun barrel, to keep Lucas from shooting them in the time it took him to bleed to death.
Because maybe she didn’t have what it took to kill a man, and this would be a bad time to find out.
They approached the end of East Ninth, where it dead-ended into the pier. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame sat to their left, and the World War II submarine, the Cod, to their right. The huge stage and seating for the induction ceremony concert rose directly in front of them. The fishy smell of the lake air blew through the car from the open windows.
“How are we going to get to Brian?” Jessica asked.
“We’ll stay under the bleachers. Everyone will be looking at the explosion.”
The painted guitars outside the rock hall sped by. Jessica couldn’t have been driving more than twenty miles an hour, but falling out onto the pavement and possibly a curb at that speed could easily kill them both. Theresa would rather stay in the car, except that the car was going to blow up. Lucas intended to drive the car into the hidden caverns under the seating and set off the explosives. If the bleachers collapsed, it would take even more time before the cops could tally the bodies.
The explosives were in the backpack, and the backpack was in one of the duffels, with the money. The duffels were too heavy to be carried by one person.
“What about the money, Lucas? If you detonate the explosives, won’t you lose part of your take?”
“Just one. I can get the other one out.”
One of the bags would blow along with the car, for the same reason Jessie now threw bills out the window. Money distracted people, and no one would ever believe that he would have left it behind after all he’d done to get it. If the money wound up in the wreck of twisted metal, then Lucas must be in there as well. It would be months before the DNA got sorted out. He’d salvage enough for Jessie and him to start a wonderful new life together. She’d sell her paintings, and they’d travel the world.
If they got away.
“You’ll never make it,” Theresa told him. “It’s impossible to get out of this car and away from it fast enough. The concert area is a little concrete peninsula, with only one bottlenecked way in or out. Every cop in the city will surround you in thirty seconds, and there’s nothing to the north but water.”
“And,” he reminded her, “boats.”
One shot, she thought. As much as she wanted to be the one who took him down, the man who put Paul at death’s door, she had to be practical. She had always been practical. Her grandfather had taught her that.
She pressed the scalpel into Cavanaugh’s right hand and slipped off the protective cap. He was right-handed, wasn’t he? She tried to remember how he dialed the phone…. Yes.
She moved her left hand to the back of the front seat, pretending to steady herself as Jessica barreled over a speed bump. “You don’t have a boat. You don’t even have a car.”
“Ah, but, Theresa, what’s better than having a boat?”
Cavanaugh squeezed her fingers, but she didn’t know if that meant good luck or grab the gun. “Having a friend with a boat,” Theresa said.
“Exactly.”
“But you don’t have any friends either.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say.”
Jessica spoke suddenly. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Yes you can.” While maintaining a firm hold on the gun, Lucas twisted out of his jacket, then produced yet another plastic tie-wrap. “You two, put your hands up here. Just the tied ones.”
“What if Ethan gets whiplash?” Jessica fussed.
“He won’t. It’s just canvas, it won’t hurt us. Right there—see the section with the white stripe at the top? Aim for that.”
Jessica sped past the end of East