Takeover - Lisa Black [73]
She had been close to the man twice, once when he frisked her, once when he pressed an automatic pistol into her side before escorting her to see Cherise’s body. She had brushed up against his chest, his sides, and felt nothing under the clothing but muscle. Even with the dark colors and the loose jacket, she could not see any suspicious bulges. And the explosives were not in the car. They could be in the duffel bag on the floor in front of her. Or they could have been installed somewhere in the offices behind the teller cages, and that was why he’d killed Cherise. He needed her to open something—what? a vault? a computer server?—so that he could set the explosives, but he couldn’t leave her alive to tell the other hostages, who might panic.
But why not just detonate the explosives, if that was his plan? What he was waiting for?
And why would a target worth blowing up be found in a minimum-security area on the ground floor?
She watched Lucas converse with Cavanaugh. He had to have a plan. She shouldn’t let his super-cool persona convince her that he had more brains than he really had—perhaps his only talent lay in acting—but everything she felt about him gave the impression that he did have a plan. He’d also have a backup plan, and a backup to the backup.
Maybe there was nothing of financial value in the cubicles. Maybe there was only a part of the foundation, a structural support, without which at least a few floors would collapse. She knew that four or five pounds of RDX would turn a good-size truck to pieces of rubble. He could have carried twenty pounds back there in his trip with Cherise, and no one would know. But why set the charges out of sight? There were no cameras back there, and he had killed the only witness.
Perhaps the real hostage here was the Federal Reserve building, a historic landmark built in 1923. Or was it the backup plan? Is that why Lucas had not blown it?
Perhaps he needed the RDX for his escape. A large explosion would make a great diversion. All eyes and rescue personnel would head for the destruction, while Lucas and Bobby and a hostage or two made for the Mercedes.
It could be a booby trap, so that after all the excitement had ended and the workers poured back into the building, an explosion would take some out. But deaths under those circumstances would not help him, and they would produce a relatively low body count if he meant it as some sort of protest. Whatever else he was up to here, politics did not seem to be part of it.
She needed to talk to Cavanaugh.
“Thanks for holding him.” Jessica Ludlow startled her out of her reverie. “He’s getting hungry, is the problem.” Bobby watched them but did not tell them to shut up. Jessica Ludlow had been through an extremely stressful morning and, like most people would, needed to vent. “He’s fussy now, but he’s going to be ten times worse in another half hour. I have his snacks in my bag, but I don’t know what that monster will do if I try to get them.”
Theresa tried to soothe the worried mother. “I don’t think he wants to hurt a child.”
“I think he wants to hurt all of us.” Jessica frowned. “Why don’t these guys just leave?”
“I keep asking myself the same thing.”
“My husband must be frantic.”
Theresa’s chest tightened up for a moment. She had no idea what to say. Jessica’s husband lay on a gurney at the M.E.’s office, but Cavanaugh had been right. She could hardly tell Jessica that now. “I’m sure the authorities will let him know you’re okay.”
“But Ethan—” The young woman ran out of words, no doubt imagining her husband imagining his child’s demise.
Theresa patted her shoulder. Ethan knocked at Theresa’s hand with the Browns dog, pointed at his mother’s floral-print handbag, and said, “Baba.”
“Bottle,” Jessica translated. “I told you he was hungry. We don’t do bottles anymore, remember, baby? You’re a big boy now.”
Maybe we can use that, Theresa thought. Cavanaugh said to keep the hostage takers occupied