Takeover - Lisa Black [57]
“Who are you?”
“I’m a forensic scientist with the medical examiner’s office.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m engaged to marry that cop.” The truth, Cavanaugh had said. That’s the only way it can work.
“Really.”
Having to hold her arms up ached. She needed more push-ups in her routine.
“Theresa!” Frank called from somewhere behind her. She did not turn. The poor guy could forget about the Homicide chief’s position if he couldn’t handle one hysterical relative—another corpse littered in the wake of her decision.
“So I let him go,” Lucas said, “and you’ll walk in here with the keys?”
“I’ll throw them to you.”
“I don’t think so, sugar. I’m going to be down one hostage, and a cop makes a good one. You’re close enough. He goes out, you come in. With my keys.”
Her personal phone rang. She didn’t want to answer it. It was probably Cavanaugh, and she didn’t want to think about the names he’d call her.
But it gave out the first few notes of “Devil in Disguise” before she could turn it off. “My phone is ringing,” she said to Lucas. “I have to answer it.”
He only laughed.
She took that for permission and slowly pulled the phone from its clip.
“Mom?” her daughter said. “The math final wasn’t so bad after all. The first question had this triangle—”
“Rachael, I can’t talk right now.”
The briefest of pauses, a hiccup of time. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m glad your test went okay, but I have to go. I’ll call you back as soon as I can, okay?”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s wrong. You should probably go to your dad’s after school. You know he likes to see you.”
“Something’s really wrong, isn’t it? You always think you sound so calm, and you don’t, you never do! What is it? Is it Grandma?”
“No, no. I just have a situation at work.”
“Don’t give me that shit!”
“Language,” Theresa said automatically, but didn’t blame her. Her daughter had just walked into her own personal Twilight Zone, and they both knew it. Theresa didn’t take her sight off of Lucas, hovering beyond the door. “I have to go. But I love you, Rachael. No matter what, I love you more than anything.”
The last thing she heard before flipping the phone shut was her daughter screaming. “Mom—”
Theresa pushed the “power” button.
She had just terrorized her daughter and might render her motherless before the day was out, and all to save her boyfriend. Looked like the Mother of the Year award would slip through her fingers once more.
To her surprise, Lucas asked, “Are you okay?”
Make your decision.
Then stick to it.
“Keys,” she reminded him, making them jangle for emphasis.
“You stay right where you are. You don’t move, you don’t drop those keys for nothing, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then you got a deal. Don’t move.”
She saw the shadowy figure retreat, listened to the bottom tones of a conversation. She heard Lucas say, “I don’t care!” but everything else was unintelligible.
Let him still be able to walk, she thought.
Where was Rachael? She had to be in school, probably in lunch period. Was she screaming at the phone now, demanding that her mother answer her? She’d probably call her grandmother next. Who was sixty-four. With a bad mitral valve.
I may have just destroyed every member of my family.
Paul appeared in the doorway, with the black man in the uniform who had been sitting next to him. Theresa could see why. Paul’s face looked ghost white in the brilliant sun, and he leaned his weight on the other man until they both staggered. The blood-soaked suit coat around his thigh had begun to slip from his hand. They emerged from the door. Usual city noise went on in the surrounding blocks, but this stretch of East Sixth had become as silent as the grave.
Two hostages for one. That’s something, she thought. Cavanaugh should be pleased with that.
Her sweat turned to ice. Paul’s face reflected his bewilderment as his conscious