Takeover - Lisa Black [39]
Would this man ever stop startling her? “Paul?”
Well, duh. How many other fiancés did she have? She took another deep breath. “He’s been a cop for seventeen years. He’s currently a detective in Homicide. He’s a good cop.”
Cavanaugh waited as she tossed her empty bottle into the wastebasket. “I’m sure he’s a great cop, Theresa, but I’m not writing a brochure for the department. Tell me what he’s like.”
Not a word came to mind, and she stared at him in confusion. Glass slides and databases were her bailiwick, not psychology. “I don’t know what you want.”
“It’s an open-ended question, I know. This is why I ask: He’s a cop in their midst, but he’s in plainclothes and he’s not tied up with the security guards, so our two guys in there clearly do not know that he’s a police officer. That means they haven’t searched him, haven’t found his gun, so now he’s ten feet away from these guys and he’s armed. What is he going to do?”
She glanced at the TV screen again; she had trouble looking away from it for more than a few seconds. Not much had changed in her absence. Paul still sat second from the end of the row of hostages, fidgeting now and then but obviously unhurt. “All he’ll care about is protecting those people. Frank says he’s a Boy Scout.”
“What do you think?”
It took her a while to answer. “I think he cares about doing the right thing. That’s why I want to marry him. My ex-husband never cared about the right thing. Paul is more like—”
“Your father?”
She gave a tiny jump, glared at him, and then looked away. She would never admit that; it made her sound like a neurotic little girl. No matter how true it might be.
Cavanaugh, mercifully, moved on. “Where did he propose to you?”
“What?”
“I’m just trying to gather information here, Theresa. Where did he propose?”
She smiled, unable to help it. “In an alley. In the rain. We had just cleared a triple homicide at a bowling alley, with about fifteen shots fired over three rooms—”
Cavanaugh’s dimples were showing, but his eyes seemed deadly serious. “So he’s kind of impulsive? You hadn’t expected a proposal?”
Her mouth formed a no, but that would be a lie. She had expected a proposal from their first kiss. “It wasn’t a complete surprise, but yes, a diamond popping out of nowhere sort of threw me.”
“Ah, he had the ring already. So he’s not that impulsive.”
“No, no. He’d had dinner reservations at Pier W, champagne on ice, the whole scenario, but then the pagers went off.” Apparently impulsivity was not a desired trait during hostage negotiations, which made sense. But what about the hostage takers’ impulses? “What did Lucas mean about having an idea to get the money?”
“I wish I knew. I called back, but he made Missy answer. She said Lucas does not wish to speak to me at this time, and neither does Bobby.”
She nibbled a fingernail, a habit she thought she’d broken in high school. “It would help if we could communicate with Paul. Can’t we text-message the Nextel?”
“It would beep. I already asked his partner that. We can’t risk drawing their attention to him.”
“No,” she agreed fervently. “We can’t. Where is Frank—Officer Patrick?”
“Trying to find someone in this city who knows Bobby Moyers. Supposedly he’s got a brother who works for Continental Airlines, and Patrick went to run him down.”
Jason returned, finishing a sandwich. “They have food in the conference area, you know.”
“Good,” Cavanaugh said. “Can you grab me something on rye?”
Jason tossed a cellophane-wrapped square at him. “I anticipate your every need, boss.”
“Glad to hear it. Now tell me who Lucas is.”
“I just got off the phone with Corrections. There are no known associates under that name in Moyers’s file for the original armed-robbery charge. No cellmates by that name at Mansfield. He only served eight months for that, due to a combination of prison overcrowding, good behavior, and a shaky ID on the ‘armed’ part of the armed robbery.” The young man paused to swig Cherry Coke. “Theresa? You want a sandwich?”
Even the idea of food made her want to retch. “No