Takeover - Lisa Black [69]
“Set the boy down,” Lucas said to Theresa, referring to Ethan. “Just leave him there.”
“He’ll run away.”
“Missy, you hang on to the kid. I need to show Theresa something. Just hold the back of his shirt so he don’t run around.”
Missy moved to the other side of Brad and slid the boy from Theresa’s lap, gently easing him into her own. Ethan seemed sufficiently interested in Lucas’s movements and did not protest.
“Get up.”
Theresa stood, her knees reluctant to move but not half as reluctant as her mind. Why had she antagonized him? Why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut?
On the other hand, Lucas seemed to have forgotten Jessica Ludlow’s tardiness.
The phone began to ring.
He ignored it. “Come here.”
She complied. It didn’t seem that she had another option. But Lucas merely grabbed her right elbow with his left hand, leaving his gun ready in his right. He prodded the muzzle of it into her rib cage, and she flinched.
“We’re going to take a stroll. Just walk with me, nice and easy, and I won’t have to pull this trigger, understand?”
“Yes.”
He gripped her elbow tightly enough to stop the circulation, and they made a careful excursion past the other hostages. The pool of Paul’s blood had developed a yellow halo as the serum separated out from the red blood cells. She looked at the security guards with a wincing glance; their barely contained fury hurt her eyes. The dog growled. The phone kept ringing.
The teller cages continued in the marble and gilt tradition of the rest of the lobby. Behind the fancy ironwork grates sat counters filled with the accoutrements of work: tape dispensers, staplers, rubber stamps of all sizes and shapes, framed photos of adorable children. The third drawer down at each station had been pried open, the locks mangled, except for one. Cherise’s work area, complete with a nameplate and a photo of herself and a boyfriend with a beach in the background. The entire drawer, undamaged, lay on the floor.
Theresa took this in as they passed. Lucas did not pause but continued past the tellers’ cages, around to the narrow, walled-off section behind them. Theresa could already smell it. The burnt gunpowder and the tinny odor of blood.
On a worn section of carpet, directly below a stack of computer printouts and a half-empty coffeepot, the young woman had bled out onto the springy carpet. This, then, was the missing Cherise.
1:00 P.M.
Patrick had never felt more helpless. Returning to the library’s video monitor only to find Theresa missing from the hostage’s lineup had been déjà vu in the worst way. Cherise had gone off in the same direction and hadn’t come back. Paul had been shot before their eyes, or before the cold black-and-white eyes of the video monitor. Now Theresa, and he couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. He should have stayed over there. No, he should have stayed here, made Cavanaugh distract Lucas. “Why didn’t you do something?”
“I called. He ignored the phone. But she’s all right. We’re catching snatches of her voice.”
“Maybe it’s time to use the snipers. Or the assault time. Or the 101st Airborne.”
“The snipers are ready,” Cavanaugh said. “They’ve had a hundred opportunities to pick off Lucas, but Bobby stays out of range. He could shoot a few hostages or set off their RDX, wherever they’ve got it. For amateurs they’ve been pretty careful so far.”
“Do we know they’re amateurs?” Assistant Chief Viancourt asked.
“We don’t know much of anything at the moment.”
Jason hung up his cell phone. He had spent enough time on it to leave a red slash across his face. “Lucas Winston Parrish was injured five years ago in an explosion during a training mission in Germany. He was stationed at the base there. He still carries a few pieces of shrapnel against his ribs.”
Patrick sighed. “Theresa called it.”
“Maybe,” Cavanaugh said. “What else?”
“He told the military that both his parents were