Takeover - Lisa Black [113]
“Give me your hands!” Lucas demanded again, lowering the barrel of the gun to point it at them.
Theresa grasped the headrest with her bound hand and leaned forward, as if she wished to discuss this in private. “Why don’t you just shoot us now? You didn’t show much enthusiasm for killing Cherise—is that because you don’t enjoy it?”
She never heard his answer. Instinctively mirroring, as most humans will, he leaned toward her ever so slightly. She grabbed the gun barrel.
Using the back of the seat as an anchor, Chris Cavanaugh pulled himself forward and struck downward with as much force as he could accumulate in the tight space. The scalpel entered Lucas’s neck, and the handle snapped off. Theresa closed her eyes against the spray of blood and felt the burning metal within her palm as Lucas pulled the trigger of his handgun. She let go. The bullets entered the roof.
Jessica screamed.
Lucas put both hands to his neck. For an instant he caught Theresa’s eye, his face reflecting pain and disappointment. Blood flowed between his fingers. He brought the gun around again. She moved her hand up to knock it away but couldn’t make herself grab the hot metal with her singed palm.
Jessica hit the brakes, instinctively reluctant to hit the black canvas wall.
Then the door came open, and Cavanaugh launched them both into the air. Theresa managed to get with the program just in time to push outward with her legs, trying to clear the doorsill so they wouldn’t be dragged alongside the moving vehicle. The car door, trying to blow shut, smacked her in the chest.
Lucas swiveled the gun, following them, but without his earlier lightning-quick ability.
Jessica continued to scream.
Theresa’s torso met the concrete, slightly on her right side and with Chris Cavanaugh completely on top of her. The air left her lungs, and she rolled, gasping. Amid the squealing of brakes, the car disappeared behind a black canvas curtain. The shot never came.
Then nothing.
CHAPTER 33
4:01 P.M.
“Theresa?”
She opened her eyes, shut them again. The sunshine hurt too much. Damn, it was hot.
Cavanaugh persisted, patting her cheek. “Theresa. Are you okay?”
She squinted, tried to shake off the liquid dripping into her eyes. It hurt to breathe. “I’d be better if you hadn’t landed on top of me.”
He made a sound like a laugh and helped her to sit up. One side of his face bled where it had scraped the ground. He held up their bound hands; now both their wrists were bloody. “You don’t have another one of those scalpels, do you?”
Her body seemed intact, nothing broken or even bleeding profusely. But it hurt to sit, hurt to breathe, hurt to exist, especially for the right half of her torso—she must have cracked a few ribs. Her lungs worked in short gasps, expanding no more than absolutely necessary.
Sirens wailed around them in a symphony of noise. Most continued past them, skimming the bleachers, but one pulled up in front of them. Mulvaney, Jason, and Frank piled out.
The veteran detective reached her side before the other two got out of the car. “Theresa.”
“I’m all right. At least I’m still alive, I mean. Lucas—”
“They’re under the bleachers,” Cavanaugh cut in.
“We saw it. They won’t get far.”
“Certainly not Lucas,” Theresa said, with only a twinge of hysteria. She let Cavanaugh explain the plan. Mulvaney got on the radio; he instructed the assembling marine units to check all boats in the area for Lucas’s accomplice. “Where’s the money? I mean, what they didn’t distribute to the masses.”
“In the car, with the RDX,” Theresa said, grimacing as Frank cut apart the tie-wraps with a Swiss Army knife. “How’s Paul?”
Frank looked up, into her eyes, and she knew. She knew.
“Mom!”
Rachael bounded from another arriving patrol car before it even stopped moving. Mindless of her ribs, Theresa opened her arms. The impact hurt like hell, and