Takeover - Lisa Black [62]
Theresa accepted the boy almost as reluctantly as his mother had given him up. The situation was about to deteriorate even more.
She watched as Lucas picked up the red backpack off the floor and dumped its contents into the oversize duffel at Bobby’s feet. He brought the bag, a simple red nylon sack with a Spider-Man logo, over to them; his passage set off another volley of barking from the K-9 unit’s dog, so that he had to raise his voice to instruct Jessica Ludlow, “Take this. Fill it up. Do not let the cops add any dye packs, GPS devices, et cetera. As soon as you get back, I’m going to unload this pack into another bag, so anything planted in here will be found. Every item I find in this bag that isn’t money is one bullet that goes into your boy there.”
The young woman paled.
“You’ve got twenty minutes. Every five minutes after twenty minutes, I put a bullet in your boy. You don’t come back at all, then neither does he. Got it?”
“But how…?”
“I’m sure security is running all over this building. They can help you. They’ll want to use you to get to me, but I’ve got a gun pointed at your little boy’s head and they don’t, so who wins here? Hmm?”
Jessica didn’t take long to think about that one. “You do.”
“Right.” He handed her the empty backpack. Then, with a hand on her shoulder, he turned her around and gave her a slight shove toward the elevators in the employee lobby. She did not take her eyes from her son until she disappeared around the marble information desk.
The boy twitched violently in his sleep, as if rocking in the wake of her departure. Theresa rubbed his back and wished the dog would pipe down. She didn’t relish the thought of having to explain to a two-year-old that his mother had gone on a bank robber’s errand. She had no faith that the security force would allow Jessica’s maternal instinct to overcome her self-preservation. They certainly would not have allowed Theresa to trade herself for Paul. If they could have stopped her, they would have.
The baby stirred. They always know, Theresa thought, a parent from a nonparent. I don’t smell like her, I don’t pat his back like she does. My shoulder is bonier. A host of subconscious clues were telling him that he’d been abandoned to a stranger, and they would prod his conscious into investigating. And she doubted that Lucas would have much patience with a crying child. She rubbed his back again. Please sleep.
“You,” Lucas said to her again. “Scientist lady. What are they doing at the command center?”
“Watching you.”
“Through the windows?”
She nodded.
“And the cameras here?” Lucas gestured at the walls, where the lobby cameras nestled in the corners.
She nodded again.
That didn’t satisfy him. “Answer me when I ask you a question.”
She pointed at the small boy’s back. “He’ll wake up. My voice isn’t familiar.”
“I don’t care much about baby’s naptime, Theresa. I can handle cryin’ kids. What do they know about us, me and Bobby? Ah, you’re hesitating. That’s not a good idea, Theresa. It makes me nervous. It makes me think you’re lying to me.”
Again she gestured at the small boy in her arms, keeping her voice as quiet as possible. “I don’t want to wake him. They know that Bobby’s last name is Moyers and that he just got out of jail in Atlanta.”
Bobby moved closer, listening.
Lucas had been standing still, but somehow he became even more so, a change minute enough that it could have been a trick of the light. It prompted her to explain, “They traced the car. It’s registered to him.”
“Uh-huh. And what do they know about me?”
“Nothing.” The child stirred in her arms.
Did he relax just slightly? “Nothing at all?”
“Not a thing. About that car—they didn’t want me to take it. I sort of stole it.”
Now Lucas actually grinned. “A car-stealing scientist lady. I’m so glad you decided to join us, Theresa.”
“My point is, they don’t want you to have it. You might want to leave sooner rather than later, in case they move it away again.”
He threw a glance over his shoulder, but said, “I’m not too