Takeover - Lisa Black [41]
“No.” Brad’s air of nonchalance wouldn’t have fooled a three-year-old. “I take them to our museum and then the vault—the old vault. It’s empty now. A historical conversation piece.”
“No money or robots?”
“No. The old vault was part of the original 1923 construction—anyway, I’m never in the work areas. We can’t have hordes of middle-schoolers disrupting the staff.”
“Still, you know the layout. What else is in this building? And, just as with Mr. Thompkins here, lying to me would not be a good idea.” Lucas stroked the M4 to make his point.
The young man swallowed hard. “There’s offices, for the analysts and the examiners. There’s the security team. There’s the bank officers’ rooms on the ninth floor. We have a little vending area—”
“Bank officers. Do they have vaults up there?”
Brad snorted, envy overcoming fear, if only for a moment. “Hardly. More like Oriental rugs and Ming vases.”
“Really?”
His head bobbed in his desperation to please. “The vice president for general counsel even has an original Picasso.”
“Uh-huh. Where does this hallway go, this one behind y’all here?”
“The employee lobby—it opens onto Superior. There’s also the elevator to the parking garage and the one to the loading dock, where that shipment is coming in at two.”
Lucas came closer to the boy. “You’re all pushing me toward this two o’clock shipment, aren’t you? Why is that?”
“I’m not pushing anything.”
“You just want to go home, is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes.” Fear etched crow’s-feet into his face as Brad screwed his eyes shut, trying to blot out the image of the M4’s barrel, a yard from his nose. “Yes.”
Paul kept gazing at Lucas, trying to remember every detail, just in case the guy got away. In case Paul lived to see him get away.
“If it makes you feel better, Brad, I may change my mind about that shipment. Hell, at this point what’s another few hours?” Without warning he walked away from Brad, disappearing behind the reception desk to return with a box of Kleenex.
“Here.” He handed it to the receptionist, seated next to Paul, who hadn’t stopped crying since the first shot rang out. “Clean yourself up. Missy, isn’t it?”
“Thank you,” she breathed.
“That’s okay. You hang in there, because I need someone to answer the phones.”
She wiped her eyes, which did not stop filling up. “Please let me go. You have to let me go.”
Lucas had begun to walk away, but her speaking up seemed to surprise him. “Why is that?”
“My little girl. She’s three years old, and she needs her mommy. She’s so precious—”
The sobs that accompanied this appeal would have softened the heart of Genghis Khan, but Lucas showed no signs of sympathy or even interest. Instead he moved over to the woman who had brought her baby along, one of the two women who’d been hiding behind the teller cages. Mark Ludlow’s wife, now his widow, though Paul figured she did not know of her recent change in status. “What’s his name?”
The woman’s eyes were huge and sea blue under untidy lengths of dishwater-blond hair. She clutched the child to her, his head resting against her shoulder. He seemed to be dozing, the skin around his nose slightly reddened, but he kept his grip on a tiny stuffed dog wearing a Browns football helmet. Mother and son appeared well fed and neatly attired. “His name is Ethan.”
“That’s nice. You name him after his daddy?”
“N-n-no. I just liked it.”
“Uh-huh. So why ain’t Ethan in school—What’s your name?”
The woman next to her spoke up, tossing auburn curls from her eyes. “She’s Jessica. Can’t you let them go? He’s just a little boy.”
Lucas considered her. “It’s not polite to jump the line. And I’m sure Jessie here can speak for herself.”
“He’s only two,” Jessica Ludlow said with a delicate southern accent, so softly Paul could barely hear her. “I found a nice day-care lady, but he wasn’t feeling well this morning, and she wouldn’t take him.”
“So you brought him to work?”
“I didn’t know what else to do. I was just going to tell my boss that I’d have to take the day off.” Her lips crinkled, and she gulped in a breath. “Then I was going