Takeover - Lisa Black [72]
“I did. Relax, Jessie.” He had emptied half the backpack when he asked, “Did they fill this bag?” He began to remove the bundles of money and place them in the oversize end pocket of one of the black duffels. He stacked them carefully, perhaps to fully utilize the space.
“No, I did. I told them not to add any dye packs or anything.” She cradled Ethan’s head under her chin. He let out a shout now and then, but, it seemed, more as communication than as notes of distress.
Lucas’s movements slowed. “How much is here?”
“I’m…I’m not sure.”
“Of course you are.” His momentary elation faded before Theresa’s eyes, and his voice turned cold and accusing. “They would have told you, because they’d expect me to ask.”
Jessica Ludlow trembled. “Eight hundred forty thousand. I know you said a million, but—”
“That isn’t good enough.”
“I filled the bag.”
“Not enough.”
Jessica wrapped her arms around her baby and sank back against the marble information desk. Lucas continued to transfer the money in quick, deliberate movements.
“You have over a million,” Theresa said, “with what you got from the teller cages.”
He glanced at her, and somehow the fury in his eyes frightened her more than his gun. “I didn’t ask you.”
After he emptied the bag, he zipped the end compartment closed and folded the now-empty red backpack into a side pocket. Then he stood and whirled in a quick 360, surveying his partner as he spun. “Keep an eye on your car, Bobby. That two o’clock shipment is getting closer. We might as well wait for it.”
“Come on!” Bobby didn’t care for the idea. “Let’s just get out of here!”
“We need more money.”
“Send her back upstairs, then!”
“It worked once because the cops had no time to plan. It’s not going to work a second time. Besides, we’ll have all the money we can carry pulling up to the curb outside in less than an hour. Then we can go.”
Next to Theresa, Jessica sighed, either in disappointment at Lucas’s decision or in relief at her son’s narrow escape. The phone still rang.
Between Bobby’s scowl and his rough skin, he could have been a villain in a comic book. “I think it’s a mistake.”
“We’re not done here. Do you think we’re done here?”
Bobby didn’t answer.
Lucas turned back to the hostages. “Missy, would you please answer that damn phone?”
CHAPTER 21
1:04 P.M.
Lucas got back on the line with Cavanaugh. The pool of Paul’s blood had coagulated, though the humidity from the open door kept it from drying very fast. Theresa rubbed the back of her neck and wondered if Paul had needed a transfusion…. Silly thought—of course he would need a transfusion, probably several. She wished Lucas hadn’t taken her cell phone, even if she couldn’t risk using it. Cell phones had become the security blankets of the twenty-first century.
Ethan took a swipe at her with his stuffed dog, as if he didn’t want her to get any ideas about holding him again. He wanted his mother, and that was that.
Theresa tried not to think about Rachael’s reaction, should she die.
Hell, what if she survived? The thought filled her with fresh terror. Rachael was not stupid. Once the shock wore off, her mind would reconstruct the events and come to this conclusion: Her mother had made a choice between her daughter’s best interests and those of a boyfriend, and the boyfriend had come first. There were few crimes less forgivable than a lack of maternal instinct, and Rachael had inherited her mother’s process of anger: slow, cold, and implacable.
Suddenly, dying did not seem the most frightening option.
The little boy continued to watch her, warily. Jessica Ludlow’s breath had not yet slowed to normal.
Theresa leaned toward her. “Cute Browns dog.”
The young woman glanced down at the stuffed animal her baby held. “He loves it.”
“I remember when Burger King gave those away—it was years ago now. My daughter collected the whole set.”
“I think our new neighbor gave it to him.”
Dogs, Theresa thought. The dog with the security guard was trained to sniff explosives, not drugs. It barked up a storm every time Lucas passed by. She’d assumed that