Takeover - Lisa Black [88]
Theresa froze.
Rachael stood with her stomach pressed against a metal barrier with CAUTION! stenciled on its side. She wore the same clothes she’d worn to school that morning, pencil-thin jeans and a black V-neck T-shirt that Theresa felt was too tight for a buxom seventeen-year-old. Rachael’s boyfriend, Craig, who must have been pressed into service to drive her downtown, flanked her. On her other side, Frank had a hand on each of her shoulders, almost certainly to keep her from leaping the barricade and rushing to her mother’s rescue. That would be Rachael.
“Who’s that?” the police sergeant asked.
Theresa’s shock instantly ceded to fury. What was in Frank’s mind, to let Rachael get this close? If bullets started to fly, who knew how far they could go, not to mention allowing her a ringside seat to her mother’s potential murder? Wasn’t this traumatic enough—did she have to be an eyewitness as well? Had he lost his mind? She was seventeen bloody years old! He should have locked her in the back of a police car if he had to, just get her out of there.
And she would throttle Craig, if she lived through the day.
But the two men hadn’t told her to sacrifice herself for her fiancé. They did not create this situation.
If I run, I could make it. The cops wouldn’t stop me. I’d be halfway up the street before Lucas could react, and he couldn’t hit me. He might shoot everyone else, but not me.
And he might not shoot anyone. He’d have seven hostages left, it’s not like he couldn’t spare one. Unless everyone else tried to run out, too. Then he’d shoot. He’d have to.
“Mom!”
If she ran, she could make it.
“Lucas.” She spoke calmly and clearly. “My daughter is out there. I’m going to wave to her, just wave my hand. I won’t move.”
“She’s out where?”
“Behind the barriers.”
“Really.” His head poked out from behind Jessica Ludlow’s, just an inch. “Invite her in.”
She snarled an obscenity at him, startling in its ferocity.
Perhaps it startled him as well, or merely amused. “Okay, okay. Relax, Theresa, I was just kidding. Your feet don’t move. Go ahead and wave—once. Then get back to my money.”
She gazed at her daughter, so far away that her face was not clear, just the shape and the hair and the voice. Was she crying? Was she angry? Which would be worse?
If she ran, she could make it.
Theresa waved, two swipes of her right arm. Rachael saw it; she stopped her frantic movements, and as her body stilled, it seemed to deflate. It’s hitting her now, Theresa thought. She came there, she saw her mother, and now she was figuring out that that was all she could do. That was all anyone could do. Theresa was stuck, and no one could help her.
Unless she ran.
“Don’t take one step forward, Theresa,” she heard Lucas say. “If you do, I’ll kill half the people in this room. I’ll still have the other half.”
Then you’d give the authorities no choice but to take you out, no matter the cost, she thought, but she knew it didn’t make any difference. Her decision had been made, and she felt almost grateful to him for helping her make it.
She kept moving packages but could not take her eyes off her daughter.
Craig put his arm around Rachael’s waist, and Theresa wished he wouldn’t. The girl might pass out in the heat. But Rachael must have calmed some, since Frank had removed his hands from the girl’s shoulders. Maybe it did her good to see me, Theresa thought. Maybe then the whole thing won’t seem so bad. If she survived.
The sergeant interrupted her thoughts. “Any of the hostages seem to be working with them?”
She thought of Jessica Ludlow. Where had she been last night, if not at home to notice her husband’s dead body on the sidewalk? Or had he been killed early that morning, after she left? Theresa hadn’t seen the least sign of familiarity with the robbers, and the young woman could not have faked her terror on Ethan’s behalf. “No.”
“Either of them seem to have any medical problems?”