Takeover - Lisa Black [71]
“You might have gotten out of this without murdering. Now there’s no going back.”
He squeezed her elbow again in a vein-crushing grip as they exited the teller area. “What makes you think I want to go back? What do you think is the whole point of this?”
“Good question.” She turned to the security guards this time, taking in their faces, the way their bodies tensed at her passage, as if frustrated that they could not help her. The dog let out one sharp whine. “What is the point of all this?”
“The point is that I’m more than willing to kill to get what I want.” He announced this not only to her but to her fellow hostages as they returned to the reception desk. “Isn’t that right, Theresa?”
They turned to her with pleading looks, wanting her to disagree. She could not. Despite the reluctance in his voice, if not his words, Lucas had killed without apparent hesitation or remorse. “He killed her. Cherise is dead.”
Missy cried out. Brad and the security guards gasped, a single, unanimous drawing-in of breath.
Lucas released her arm, leaving a tingly sensation as the blood flowed back. “Sit back down, Theresa. Missy, let go of the kid. His mama’s overdue.”
“You can’t shoot this baby,” the receptionist intoned, just as Theresa had a scant ten minutes before.
“I’d set him aside if I were you. The bullets will go right through him into your lap.”
“You ain’t going to shoot this little boy.”
“Theresa,” Lucas said. “Take the kid from Missy.”
She had been scanning the street outside—was that a movement, or a wave of heat distorting the air?—and blurted out without thinking, “Why me?”
“Because Missy wants to be a hero, an inspiration to receptionists everywhere. You, on the other hand, will do anything to get back to your man and your daughter.”
“Not hold up a baby boy as a target for you.”
“You sure?”
Was she? Didn’t she owe it to her own child to stay alive, no matter the cost? Then what the hell was she doing here? Why hadn’t she let Paul go, to be sure she could keep being a mother to Rachael?
But could she sacrifice someone else’s child?
Make your decision, her grandfather had said. Stick to it.
“No,” she told him. “I won’t.”
He lifted the automatic pistol, aiming downward at both the young boy and the receptionist. “Suit yourself.”
“It isn’t smart,” Theresa warned.
“Who said I was smart?”
“You did,” she insisted desperately. His finger closed on the trigger.
The phone rang.
The elevator bell dinged. Theresa heard a frenzied rush of footsteps.
Jessica Ludlow threw herself into the lobby, toting a visibly stuffed red backpack. “Stop! Don’t kill him!”
Lucas ignored the phone and pointed his automatic rifle at the floor. “Well, well. Ethan’s mommy has returned.”
The young woman threw the backpack at Lucas’s feet, went to her knees, and pulled her child back from Missy. He clutched his stuffed Browns mascot, crying.
Lucas snatched up the bag with one hand. “Take a look at this, Bobby. The little lady came through.”
“I filled it up.” Jessica’s breath came in gasps. “The bank-loan department had cash in drawers. Hundred-dollar bills.”
“Just lying around?” Lucas said. He crouched on the floor next to the large black duffel and opened the red backpack as if it were a present plucked from under a Christmas tree. Theresa had just seen his handiwork in Cherise, but she felt positive, in her heart of hearts, that Lucas felt relieved to spare Ethan. Most people had a soft spot for children, she thought. It didn’t make him any less dangerous.
The phone continued to ring.
“No,” Jessica Ludlow explained. Stress made her voice bounce off the walls. “The cops met me. You said that was okay as long as I came